Dentro La Terra is pleased to announce the launch of a new partnership with Montreal-based cultural center “Diversity District”. Through this partnership we reaffirm our commitment to support authors from marginalized and diverse background, including BIPOC, racialized, LGBTQ+ writers by giving them access to an inspiring creative space and providing them with good conditions to write freely.

Dentro La Terra is proud to be able to provide these authors, often subject to exclusion, alienation, precarity and uprooting, with an opportunity to form social bonds, discover other ways of life, and partake in fertile conversations and exchanges with artists and communities with different histories, imaginaries, and visions of life.

We are excited to share also the beauty of Abruzzo with authors from diverse backgrounds who can root their literature and creation in a healthier relationship with the earth. With this programme taking place in September, we look forward to exposing our residents to the grape harvest and wine making that will be in full swing at that time of the year.

DIVERSITY DISTRICT 2022 RESIDENTS

As part of this programme we will welcome in September stephanie roberts. Based in a small town in Quebec, stephanie roberts is a prize-winning poet, widely published and critically praised. Her work has been featured in numerous periodicals and anthologies, in Canada, the US and Europe. Born in Central America, stephanie roberts grew up from the ages of two to eight, as an undocumented child, in Brooklyn, New York. She attended New York University and graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Marketing. For a few years thereafter, she worked in a number of New York City department stores. After growing disillusioned with the grind of retailing, she took a sabbatical, undertaking biblical studies for a year, subsequently receiving a diploma with high honors. She eventually emigrated to Canada where she lived in and around Montréal before settling, as a citizen, in the Beauharnois region of Quebec. At Dentro La Terra she will work on a new project tentatively titled ‘Poems Across the Americas’, a semi-autobiographical poetry manuscript consisting of poems which traverse the poet’s experience as citizen of three countries: Panama, the US and Canada.

At the same time, Dentro La Terra will also be welcoming Kimberley Ann Surin. Based in Montreal, Kimberley Ann Surin is a French-Canadian filmmaker with Haitian descent. Over the years, she worked on a variety of projects, including fiction, documentary, advertising and animation. She has gained experience working for several production companies, including Warner Brothers, Reel FX, Sphère Média Production, and Aetios Productions. In 2020, she directed and wrote her first documentary ‘Against All Odds’, a short movie about the lack of diversity in professional and junior hockey. In early 2021, she directed, wrote and produced her second short film ‘Nourrir les Rêves’ which premiered at the HotDocs International Film Festival and is now available on Crave. The focus of all her creative work is to uplift the voices of black, marginalized, and under-represented talent in front of and behind the camera. At Dentro La Terra Kimberley Ann Surin will be working on a feature-length fiction film.