Byron Armstrong
Art and Culture Journalist
About
Byron Armstrong
Byron Armstrong is a freelance writer and award-winning journalist who writes about arts, culture, and community. His writing appears in
Forbes (Arts), Esse arts + opinions, The Globe and Mail (Books), Whitehot Magazine, The National Gallery of Canada Magazine, and Arts Help.
Byron has authored curatorial essays for the transatlantic exhibition "When the Bread They Have Cast on the Waters Comes Floating Back" at The D’Aguilar Art Foundation (Nassau, Bahamas) and United Contemporary Gallery (Toronto, Canada), as well as the retrospective show, "Barbara Moore: Life, Lessons and Legacy" at Caliban Arts Theatre. In addition, Byron edited the catalogue essay for "Ilene Sova's "UNKNOWN RELATIVE" exhibition at John B. Aird Gallery for the CONTACT Photography Festival, co-written by curator and Executive Director Carla Garnet, and the artist. He was also a juror and co-curator of John B. Aird Gallery's 2024-2025 "Portraits" online exhibition and publication.
As a freelance journalist, Byron received a Canadian Ethnic Media (CEMA) award in 2022 for his Ricochet Media article exploring the over-policing and surveillance of Toronto's Black communities, two years after writing one of three articles that helped secure a CEMA Award for ByBlacks.com in 2020. Byron's stories "The Abstractions of Sam Gilliam" and "Peril: The World Through the Eyes of Stan Douglas" were selected as two of the National Gallery of Canada Magazine's Top 10 Articles of 2024.
In 2023, an excerpt from his upcoming novel was longlisted in the Top 100 of the 7th Annual Launch Pad Prose Competition, and in 2024 his poetry was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His literary work has been published in Heavy Feather Review, The Malahat Review, Decolonial Passage, and The Write Launch.
He currently resides in Toronto, Canada (Tkaronto) with his family.
