Presented by Small World Music and Qissa

Qissa Festival is a one-day, free celebration of literature, storytelling, and performance by newcomer and refugee writers and artists in Canada. The festival weaves together panel discussions, dramatic readings, musical collaborations, and participatory arts activations to create a dynamic, multi-disciplinary experience.

The festival invites readers, listeners, publishers, arts organizations, and community members into conversation—centering newcomer voices not as emerging subjects, but as established artists, thinkers, and cultural producers.

Each session requires a separate RSVP due to limited capacity.

This festival is recommended for audiences 16 years and older.

The Schedule

First Session: 11 AM – 12:30 PM
The Art of Small Talk: “What Do You Do?”
The session opens with a performance based on the work of Maya El Helou, a comic artist and anthropologist, drawn from her literary work on Small Talk. Through a presentation and a live reading, this performance dissects the rituals of small talk, including the comic challenge of responding to What do you do? when the answer is: I study death. The presentation flows into a theatrical performance based on Blessing O. Nwodo’s Time to Earn a Living. Through her work, Blessing interrogates the absurdity of the phrase “earning a living,” questioning a system that demands proof of worth for the very act of being alive, and insisting instead on our inherent right not just to survive, but to live well. The performances would be followed by a panel discussion.

Second Session: 1:30 PM – 2:45 PM
Mirror, Mirror: Disappearance and the Migrant Body
This multidisciplinary performance by Tala Motazedi unfolds through narration, contemporary dance, sound, and projected archival imagery. Centered around a mirror on stage, the piece begins with a century-old family story and moves to the present, tracing the disappearance of a father, and ultimately, the disappearance of the self through migration. The performance is followed by a dramatic reading of writer Mostafa Al-A’sar’s piece, Never Forget What You Are that explores migration as a series of “smaller deaths.” Together, Mostafa and Tala examine disappearance as a condition of migration, followed by a panel conversation with the writers.

Third Session: 3:00 pm – 4:15 pm
Reappearance: Letters Across Distance and Time
This session opens with a reading by Sana’a Jaber from A Letter to Baba, an intimate reflection on time, distance, and the small details that measure separation. Accompanied by live music, the piece reflects on the quiet transformations that unfold across years of separation. It is followed by a performance by Salman Haider, whose poem After Eight Years traces the fragile encounter of reunion. Through poetry and music, the piece reflects on reconnection after years of separation. The session concludes with a panel conversation.

Fourth Session: 4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Empire, Movement, and Food
This session opens with An Evening in the Government House, a two-character drama set in 1906 and written by author Harleen Singh. Over the course of a winter evening, Mary Minto, the Vicereine of India, and her Sikh ayah, Harnam Kaur, speak of children, memory, and distant lands — including Canada. Through their conversation, the play contrasts two very different experiences of imperial movement. The performance is followed by a panel discussion on the legacies of empire and migration, and concludes with a participatory presentation by Ahmer Naqvi, multidisciplinary writer whose work examines popular culture. Through a shared tasting experience, he reflects on assimilation, commodification, and the lingering presence of colonial histories in everyday life.

Fifth Session: 6:15 – 8 pm
Remembering & Forgetting 
Screening by Tala Motazedi and Sana’a Jaber. Through image, voice, and sound, the films reflect on memory, displacement, and the shifting relationship to language and self that migration can produce. The screenings are followed by a conversation with the artists and an audience Q&A.

Musical Evening
The festival concludes with a live musical performance featuring Gandhaar Amin and Dhaivat Jani. Blending classical training with contemporary interpretation, their work moves across traditions, languages, and diasporic soundscapes. Rooted in migration, memory, and musical lineage, the evening offers a celebratory and reflective close to the day’s conversations.

About the Organization:
Qissa is a storytelling platform that documents, archives, and exhibits oral histories of immigrants to Canada. Telling the stories of immigrants in their own voices, Qissa challenges the western gaze through which stories of immigrants are framed.

Learn more about the full festival schedule and writers, here. 

The 2026 Small World Music Series is sponsored by TD Bank Group through the TD Ready Commitment and funded by the Government of Canada, Canada Council for the Arts, Ontario Arts Council, and the City of Toronto through the Toronto Arts Council.