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

Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal August Readings

My friend Erick Lyle (of San Francisco, California) and I will be doing readings in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal next week. Soft Skull just published Erick’s book On the Lower Frequencies, most of which was originally published in his long-running zine Scam.

We did a reading together the last time Erick was in Montreal and got rave reviews, so these should be some hot shows.

Come by and check it out!

Toronto: Tuesday, August 19 @ This Ain’t the Rosedale Library (86 Nassau), 6 pm W. Cathy Crowe and Joey Comeau

Ottawa: Wednesday, August 20 @ The Invisible Cinema (319 Lisgar, corner Bank), 7:30 pm.

Montreal: Thursday, August 21@ The Greasy Goose Salon’s “Street Meet” Edition held in front of La Centrale Gallery Powerhouse (4296 St. Laurent, corner Marie-Anne) during the street fair! 7:30 pm W. Alex Megalas and Zoe Stronyk

Tour

Last week I went on a short tour of the American North East roadie-ing for the mighty Black Feelings, who were a total pleasure to travel with and watch every night. All the shows were good and punk. One was in an art gallery in a four story house in Philly. One was in the back room of someone’s birthday party in a loft in Williamsburg and one was in the super organized punk house called the Thunderdome in Providence.

High points include driving around and looking at stuff, seeing old friends in NYC and checking out a bunch of art, including the fucked Murakami show on at the Brooklyn Museum right now. The main low point of the tour was getting disgustingly sick on the second day of tour with a flu that I’m only getting over now.

Thanks to everyone who put us up, esp. Ian and Matt in Brooklyn and everyone else who offered to put me up in NYC. Thanks to Alex in Providence for finding some natural medicine for me and trading zines. And a huge thanks to Owain, Brian and Kyle for bringing me along in the first place and being nice to me when I was ill. Total bros.