Monday, September 24, 2007

Merc! Merc! Mercury!

My favourite publisher has launched their new site! Hooray for Mercury! You can read about my forthcoming book if you click the "forthcoming" link, appropriately enough, on the site, which is here.

Brea and I have had an excellent time working with Mercury. They are professional, available, super-friendly, flexible, supportive-- I am so excited about the book (launches TBA very soon) and can't wait to see angela and Bev in person in TO to give them a big hug and a buy them a big beer!

Wednesday, September 19, 2007

multi ilmtu tumil utmli


WHAT: Calgary MultiArts Variety Show #3
WHEN: Saturday, September 22nd, 7:30 p.m.
WHERE: The Soda, 211 - 12th Ave SW (beside the Drum)

DESCRIPTION: Another big event in support of performers of all kinds and Calgary’s Inn From the Cold Charity. A celebration of Calgary’s imagination!


FEATURING:
BANDS: ‘Kara Keith & Your Dignity’ with ‘The Pine Tarts’
FREESTYLE DJ: Leif Olson
POETS: Calgary Slam Team, Natalie Zina Walschots, William Neil Scott, Jill Hartman, and Brea Burton
SOLO MUSICIANS: ryan fitzpatrick and Michelle
DRAMA: Swallow a Bicycle Performance Troupe
SHORT FILMS: Presented by Garth Whelan


TICKETS:

Tickets $8 at Megatunes and Pages Books on Kensington
Available Saturday September 15

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

so unorganized

Brea and I are in the throes of scrambling for cobbling together scratching out a series of tour dates and hosts and venues for Booty. The book is a collaborative work (full title Booty: Hurricane Jane and Typhoon Mary) and will be launched November probably 13 in Toronto, our publisher Mercury’s home. Drifting from blog to blog and searching for reading series and residencies and etc. etc. online always gets me down, quite honestly. I’ve always been patchy at correspondence, even patchier at cataloguing and filing and organizing, so visiting rob mclennan’s blog or Sina Queyras’ blog, I feel like I have failed at life. Ok, not life, but at being in touch and present and engaged with my world and my profession and being the kind of writer who knows how to re-present all the strange and wonderful items of a day or a place or a book and likes to do it daily or even weekly. Blogs. Some writers’ blogs make me so envious.

This fall is going to a little bit busy. The Markin-Flanagan reading with Sina Queryas is on Thursday, then Brea is reading at the Calgary Blow-Out on Friday, and I am also looking forward to hearing Robert Majzels read again, and Emily Carr, who I have heard read just once and who I thought was just terrific, and Bronwyn Haslam. Weekend following Blow-Out, I am reading with Brea, Natalie Walschots, and Neil Scott at the Multi-Arts Variety Show (at Soda at 7:00) and then just couple of days after that Nicole Brossard will be in town. Then the week after that, October 2, I am reading with Rachel Zolf, Sara Lang and Julia Williams at Flywheel (at Pages this time ‘round). The rest of October doesn’t look to congested at this point (not yet anyway, I am sure there are a bunch of things I will want to go to that I haven’t written down—see above about the organizing and filing problem). Then in November, Brea and I and possibly our entourage will be going to Toronto and Ottawa, and maybe one other city. This is after launching in Calgary at one or possibly two places. Oh and Cara Hedley comes to town November 8 to launch her book. And then in December Brea and I are off to Montreal to read at the Atwater series with Jon Paul Fiorentino. If this sounds confusing, it’s because I am feeling a little overwhelmed about juggling dates and places and making sure to do enough to promote Booty, because I want our book to be a success, I want people who might be interested in reading it to find it, to know about it.

Soon Booty will have its own website. That will be pretty cool I think. I’ll post the link here when it is up. Now I am going to go for a walk to enjoy the Calgary fall sunshine like a tourist.