BLACK FRIDAY 2015 is almost here! Join the editors, staff, and readers of The Puritan for our much-anticipated annual year-in-review event—now a fun-filled highlight of every fall literary season.

BLACK FRIDAY 2015 is a night of celebrations to announce and honour the winners of our Fourth Annual Thomas Morton Memorial Prize in Literary Excellence, judged by Miriam Toews and Ian Williams, for both fiction and poetry. Help us congratulate our winners and runners-up in grand style.

Secondly, BLACK FRIDAY 2015 sees the electronic launch of Issue 31: Fall 2015—a fantastic collection of fiction, poetry, and journalism to end a great calendar year.

Thirdly, and to usher in the glad tidings and the bountiful work published since January, recent Puritan authors will be providing short (short) live readings. These writers (so far) include:

Cian Cruise,

Emma Healey,

Allison LaSorda,

Jeff Latosik

Lee Maracle,

Guillaume Morissette,

Aurora Stewart de Peña,

Jon Chan Simpson,

Sara Jane Strickland,

Kate Sutherland, &

Souvankham Thammavongsa.

This is a must-see night of literary entertainment. Drinks, eats, and gnarly tunes will be on deck, and happy people will be plentiful.

We’re also raffling off two prize packs, which include year-long subscriptions to a number of great literary magazines (details TBA).

We so hope you'll help us warm The Monarch Tavern on November 27th. Celebrations!

WHEN: Friday, November 27, 2015; starts at 7:30 p.m.; ends last call.

WHERE: The Monarch Tavern (12 Clinton Street, Toronto, ON)

SUGGESTED DOOR TITHE: $5

Author Bios:

Cian Cruise is a writer living in Toronto. His work has been published in McSweeney's, Hazlitt, Little Brother Magazine, and Playboy, among other fine places. His website is ciancruise.com

Emma Healey is a writer from Toronto. Her first book of poems, Begin With the End in Mind, was published by Arbeiter Ring in 2012, and her work has been published in places like the Hairpin, the LA Review of Books and more.

Allison LaSorda is an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. Her writing has appeared in The Malahat Review, [PANK], Brick, The Puritan, and others.

Jeff Latosik is the author of Tiny, Frantic, Stronger (Insomniac Press) and, more recently, Safely Home Pacific Western (Goose Lane Editions).

Lee Maracle is an award winning Sto:lo writer of a number of novels, short stories, creative non-fiction and poetry and is currently the outgoing Arts laureate of ON. She currently has 3 new works: Talking to the Diaspora [poetry], Celia's Song [Novel], and Memory serves [20 years of oratory].

'Guillaume Morissette' wrote a novel called New Tab (Vehicule Press, 2014). He lives in Montreal with his cat, Gloomy.

Aurora Stewart de Peña lives in Toronto. She runs Birdtown & Swanville , a theatre company, with Nika Mistruzzi and Mark Aikman. The company is in residence at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. Her plays have been produced in Toronto, Brooklyn, and North Yorkshire, and she’s been a contributor to Definitely Not the Opera and Little Brother Magazine .

Jon Chan Simpson grew up in Red Deer, Alberta, and lives in Toronto. He is a graduate of the University of Toronto's MA creative writing program, and his work has been featured in Ricepaper magazine. His first novel, Chinkstar, came out with Coach House Books in June 2015.

Sara Jane Strickland’s work has appeared in Room Magazine, Joyland, Canthius and The Puritan. She is currently pursuing an MFA in creative writing through The University of Guelph in Toronto. She is the creator and editor of the website petaljournal.com, an online poetry journal of female perspectives.

Kate Sutherland is the author of two collections of short stories, Summer Reading (winner of a Saskatchewan Book Award for Best First Book) and All In Together Girls. Her first collection of poems, How to Draw a Rhinoceros, is forthcoming from BookThug in Fall 2016. She lives in Toronto.

Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of three poetry books. Most recently, Light won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Her story "How to Pronounce Knife" was shortlisted for the 2015 Commonwealth Short Story prize.