Liana Cusmano is the 2018 and 2019 Montreal Slam Champion and the runner up in the 2019 Canadian Individual Poetry Slam Championship. They will be representing Montreal at this year’s Canadian Festival of Spoken Word.

With work that explores cultural heritage, sexual orientation and gender identity, relationships, and mental health, Liana was a participant in the 2019 Spoken Word Residency Program at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.

Their poems and short stories have been published in short story collections, anthologies and literary magazines. Liana has performed their work in English, French and Italian, given readings in Montreal, Lisbon and Shanghai, and screened short films in Montreal, Winnipeg and Padua. They also wrote the short films “La Femme Finale,” screened at the 2015 Cannes Film Festival, and are the writer and director of the award-winning “Matters of Great Unimportance,” screened at the 2019 Blue Metropolis Literary Festival.