Montreal Mirror Noisemaker 2010

In anticipation of the publication of my book Ghost Pine: All Stories True (more about this soon), the Montreal Mirror has named me one of its Noisemakers– “one of the 29 Montrealers guaranteed to raise a ruckus” in 2010.  What an honour. Thanks to Meqo Sam Cecil for taking the photo and Vince Tinguely for writing such a cool article. You can read it here.

Books 2009

Rock Crystal by Adalbert Stifter, Bird by Bird by Ann Lamott, Wizard of Earthsea, Gifts and Voices by Ursual K. Leguin, Veronica by Mary Gaitskill, Sleepless Nights by Elizabeth Hardwick, Multi Force by Mat Brinkman, The Odyssey by Homer, Cruddy by Lynda Barry, King Dork by Frank Portman, Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton, No Great Mischief by Alistair MacLeod, Three Day Road by Joseph Boyden, Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon, Fifth Business by Robertson Davies, The Moons of Jupiter by Alice Munro, Babel Tower by A.S. Byatt, Elizabeth Costello by J.M. Coetzee, The Ghost Writer, Zuckerman Unbound and Exit Ghost by Philip Roth, We Keep a Light by E.M. Richardson, Black Squirrel by Daniel Poliquin, The Shadow Line by Joseph Conrad, My Present Age by Guy Vanderhaege, From the Fifteenth District by Mavis Gallant, Book Business by Jason Epstein, Livability by Jon Raymond

Reviews

Went through the files and typed up a fraction of the dozens of Ghost Pine reviews that have appeared in various punk rags over the past decade and a bit. Check it out here.

Also here’s an out of focus picture of me (back when I had long hair) reading at Alden’s old house, the Media Tree in St. Henri, from a couple of years ago. I don’t know who took it.  Alden (whose curly head is front and centre in the photo) is in Clues, with Ghost Pine pal Brendan. Their record is coming out next month on Constellation.

Zine Rack Launch Party at the Dep, Fri. April 17!

My zine distro is finally up and running! And it’s in a dep!

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Come celebrate the launch of the Dep’s new zine rack, and new summer hours!

FRIDAY APRIL 17th two of Montreal’s best young writers,

Anna Leventhal and Michelle Sterling,

read at Depanneur Le Pick Up (7032 Waverly at Mozart). Reading at 7 PM, open til 9 PM.

Chef Beaver will be preparing a vegan option for the dinner special (details tba) and the regular menu will, as always, be available.

Anna Leventhal – Editor of the now classic anthology The Art of Trespassing (Invisible Publishing), last year she was also nominated for the ultra-prestigious Journey Prize for her short story “The Polar Bear at the Museum.”

Michelle Sterling – Featured in recent issues of the journals Matrix and Two Dollars Comes With Mixtape, Sterling won last year’s Expozine Award for her mind-blowing story “The Bedrooms of the Nation.”

The Dep’s Zine Rack features: Cometbus, Doris, Chainbreaker, Keep Loving Keep Fighting, Kiss Off, Scam, You Live for the Fight When That’s All You’ve Got, Special, Cement Flour Stains, Soulgazers, I Was a Teenage Vegan Cookbook, America?, Life During Wartime, Ghostpine, and many more local and international titles!!!!

Review

Hope Amico, creator of the rad zine Keep Loving Keep Fighting, wrote the following about the story “Artificial Hip Summer” in Negative Capability:

It’s so hard for adults to write about being a kid, especially about punk rock, and the enormity of discovering music that sounds like how you feel, without sounding cliche or thin or just fake. Good job. You did it.

Kitchen Reading Series

Above is my contribution to the Kitchen Reading series presented by Pistol Press and Invisible Publishing. Shot on location at Depanneur le Pick Up.

Negative Capability

I published a new zine under a new name just to change things up a little. It has a bird on the cover. You can find an excerpt here. Negative Capability issue number one is $3 postpaid while copies remain. Happy new year.

Best Books I read in 2008

Roberto Bolano 2666 and Amulet; Richard Holmes Shelley: The Pursuit; Guy de Maupassant Afloat; George Saunders The Braindead Megaphone; Kristin Ross The Emergence of Social Space: Rimbaud and the Paris Commune; Tove Jansson Moominland Midwinter and Moominland in November; Luc Sante Kill all your Darlings; Theophile Gautier My Fantoms; Rebecca Solnit Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscape for Politics; Bohumil Hrabal I Served the King of England; Per Petterson In the Wake and Out Stealing Horses; Terry Eagleton After Theory; Erick Lyle On the Lower Frequencies: A Secret History of the City; Devon Code In a Mist; Robert Mellin Tilting: House Launching, Slide Hauling, Potato Trenching and Other Tales from a Newfoundland Fishing Village; Ursula K. Leguin Tehanu; Martin Kellerman Rocky Vol. 1: The Big Payback and Rocky Vol. 2: Strictly Business; Walter Mosley Devil in a Blue Dress; Jaime Hernandez The Education of Hopey Glass; Louis Rastelli A Fine Ending; Michael Winter This All Happened; Kim Cooper In the Aeroplane Over the Sea; Kenneth Oppel Airborn; Anna Leventhal ed. The Art of Trespassing; Andre Schiffrin The Business of Books: How International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing and Changed the Way we Read; E. H. Gombrich A Little History of the World

The Art of Trespassing

I have a story in the new anthology edited by fellow Soulgazer, Anna Leventhal. Entitled The Art of Trespassing it’s being put out by Invisible Publishing, who have organized some events to help launch it into the world.

I will be appearing at the Montreal launch on Saturday, September 13 reading with fellow contributors Dan Gillean, Anna Leventhal, Sean Michaels, JB Staniforth, Michelle Sterling, Vincent Tinguely and Teri Vlassopoulos. It starts at 8pm and is at the Redbird (135 Van Horne).

Sunday, September 14 I will be reading in Kingston with Anna Leventhal, Vincent Tinguely and Stephen Guy at Novel Idea (156 Princess Street). I also might read a poem at the guerilla reading taking place on Wolfe Island ferry afterwards.

All events are free and hopefully BYOB.

Soulgazers II Tuesday August 26

For the past two years I’ve been part of Soulgazers, a kind of literary super-group. Every month we meet to critique our stories and once a year we collect our greatest hits in a small anthology and give an action-packed reading.  Come by and check it out.

Soulgazers II Reading and Book Launch / Tuesday August 26, 7PM / at Casa del Popolo (4873 St. Laurent)

Featuring readings by:

Michelle Sterling

Simon Reader

Jeff Miller

Anna Leventhal

Camilla W. Ingr

Spencer Krug

Also, thanks to everyone who came out to see me and Erick read in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal last week. Special thanks to Charles at This Ain’t the Rosedale Library, Nick at Invisible Cinema and Spike and Jenny at the Greasy Goose for making it such a sweet success