About
BlackLit Canada

Our Beginning

Our Future

Our Logo

BlackLit Canada began in 2021 as AfriCANthology Canada, which was the nonprofit created in part to support the launch of a Black Canadian cultural project of the same name. The first major output of the Project was the anthology AfriCANthology: Perspectives of Black Canadian Poets, originally published by Renaissance Press.

A showcase held to promote the anthology that was hosted in Ajax, Ontario in June 2022 led to the founding of BlackLit Durham, which has been hosting bimonthly literary showcases ever since. The series begins its fifth season on October 25, 2026.

The BlackLit Durham program was expanded with the launch of the Canadian Black Literary Festival in August 2026. During the planning stages of the inaugural festival, the organization’s name was changed to the Canadian Black Literature Institute to better reflect our aims, literary aspirations, and ambitions for Black writers in Canada.

BlackLit Canada [insert text here]

The symbol we use as the symbol of the Canadian Black Literature Institute is called “The Living Line.” The mark takes inspiration from historical printers’ devices as one uninterrupted line folded into a compact form, suggesting:

  • lines of writing and accumulated knowledge;

  • ideas moving through an enduring structure;

  • circulation between artistic creation, scholarship, and public life; and

  • continuity without stillness.

The Living Line reads simultaneously as printer’s ribbon, continuous movement and a stylized B, and in its own way captures the essence of the four pillars of our work: preserve, create, amplify, activate.