Sandra Alland
"Reminiscent of Miranda July and complemented
by a deadpan delivery, Alland's words are at once
drolly funny and sweetly strange."– Lock Up Your Daughters Magazine,
Glasgow, Spring 2009
photo by Christiana Papazoglou
Bio: Sandra is a writer, multimedia artist, performer and activist. Her poems, stories, articles, installations, plays, photographs and videos have been published and presented across Canada, the US, Mexico, Bermuda, Scotland, England and Spain.Sandra’s short film, Here, about queer and genderqueer migrants to Edinburgh, screened at Berlin's 2010 Entzaubert Film Festival. Her short, Slippery, was showcased at GFest 2009 in London, as was her multimedia poetry-music-video collaboration, We Apologise For Any Inconvenience (with Zorras).
Sandra has published two books of poetry, Blissful Times (BookThug, 2007) and Proof of a Tongue (McGilligan, 2004). In 2009, Forest Publications released her first chapbook of short fiction, Here's To Wang.
Other publication highlights include London's Chroma Journal (for which she won 3rd prize in their international poetry contest 2008), This Magazine (Canada), Drunken Boat (U.S.A.), make/shift (U.S.A.) and Alucema Review (Spain). Sandra has recently been anthologized in Outspoken: A Canadian Collection of Lesbian Scenes and Monologues (Playwrights Canada Press, 2009), Can'tLit: Fearless Fiction From Broken Pencil Magazine (ECW, 2009), Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament (Mansfield Press, 2010), and Matrix Magazine's New Feminisms.
"Alland’s poetry flies, and it is full of her life’s intelligence
and emotion, social and political connection."
– rabble.ca, Toronto, Summer 2007
Besides being known for text-based work, Sandra also has a reputation for innovative multimedia and sound poetry collaborations and performances. She currently collaborates with Y. Josephine and Ariadna Battich in the poetry-music-video fusion group, Zorras. They have performed widely throughout the UK, including at Bar Wotever, Soho Theatre, Museum of London, GFest (Cochrane Theatre), The Arches, Itsy's Kabarett (Voodoo Rooms), Cocoon Counter Culture Festival (GRV), Aye Write! Festival and Edinburgh Festival.Sandra co-curates Edinburgh's queer and trans cabaret night, Cachín Cachán Cachunga!. She co-created Canada's first Silent Slam (a live, projected writing competition), and has created events for entities including Toronto's This Ain't the Rosedale Library, The Theatre Centre and The Queen West Art Crawl. In 2003-04, Sandra took part in an exchange between Canada and Mexico to explore the nuances of translation between languages and media (Banff Centre and FONCA). She has also been artist-in-residence at Glasgow's Trongate 103.
Sandraslittlebookshop, for which Sandra is publisher, editor and translator, has published five chapbooks and one book, Some Poems By People I Like. The press now has an online presence with More Poems By People I Like.
Sandra also writes arts criticism and the occasional scrap of other forms of journalism.
