Back to All Events

The Magdalene Feast Reading Series: February 2022

  • http://www.twitch.tv/usurperkings (map)

Canadian cyberpunk author Sapha Burnell heads our inspection into the feminine and/or the strange with authors from around our globe. This February, we’re joined by American author & linguist Matthew Buscemi to discuss the aspect of genre on Twitch, Discord & YouTube Live.

The Magdalene Feast is a Reading Series featuring authors, who focus on the non-binary or feminine, the strange or the other. We’re diving into genre this February, and enjoying Matthew Buscemi’s portrayal of a strong feminine in fantasy.

Come listen to Matthew and Sapha as they read from their latest works, and be part of the Q&A sessions via Twitch or our Beautiful Machines Discord.

February’s Authors:

Copyright © Mary Grace Long Photography 2014

Copyright © Mary Grace Long Photography 2014

Matthew Buscemi

My professional skills are numerous and varied. I discovered a talent for mathematics and algorithms early, which eventually developed into a career in software engineering. I also love stories, particularly genre-bending stories that push the boundaries of the imagination. This passion developed first into a voracious appetite for speculative fiction, later into penchant for writing my own stories, and eventually also into professional experience with print layout and publishing.

I hold degrees in literature and linguistics, and I have taught English in Japan. I have a fondness for philosophy, particularly that of Ancient Greece and Rome. I love the ways in which technology lifts us up, but I fear what it can do to us when abused. I think often about the future. In my novels I explore the strange, wonderful, terrifying, magnificent, and perilous possibilities of human experience. I enjoy academic conferences, particularly literary ones, and I dabble in literary analysis.

You may read all this and wonder, am I first and foremost a software engineer, a writer, a publisher, a print designer, or a researcher? My answer: I don't accept “first and foremost.”


Copyright © Sapha Burnell

Sapha Burnell

“Sapha is like a young Wolfgang Pauli, in every laboratory he went, there was a little explosion.” Cyberpunk/magic realism author & poet Sapha Burnell’s works focus on the interlock between mysticism, mythology and science with a pugilist’s eye. The product of Vancouver’s multiculturalism, Sapha steeped in divergent cultures, religious experiences and gender roles, until battling with traditional opinions became a daily war. On hiatus from the written word, she volunteered for a West African Medical Charity, and returned to the written world with an international perspective. As an editor & literary theorist, Sapha’s work focuses on comparative mythology & the ethics of futurism. On Twitch, Sapha critiques prose twice a week, and writes online once.

A member of The Writers Union of Canada, Sapha lives in BC with their spouse and speaks on gender roles, cyberpunk, martial arts, comparative mythology, wine education & religion, when the #hallowesfam isn’t chatting it up on discord or twitch.