Gatherings | Issue 37
Trillium Finalists, Anecdotes Giveaway, Nyla Matuk, Kagiso Lesego Molope, Jami Attenberg, D.A. Lockhart, Sadi Muktadir, Alice Munro Gatherings, and more!
My News
Save This Date! June 18th, 2024 at 7:00pm
Kirby and I will be reading and chatting at Another Story Bookstore in Toronto. It’s our first ever reading together and we’re celebrating the publication of Kirby’s book She and Anecdotes being a finalist in the Trillium Book Award!
Come and join us while we chat and read from our books!
Anecdotes is a Trillium Finalist!
I’m honoured to be in the company of so many wonderful writers! I’m rooting for everyone!
Book Giveaway to help Palestinian Families in Gaza
Anecdotes Giveaway This month I'm hosting a book giveaway for two Go Fund Me campaigns. Campaign #1
Tanis MacDonald includes my first poetry book, Onion Man, in her round up of Reading Working-Class on the Wolsak and Wynn blog.
Mockler’s first book takes place in and around a corn-canning factory in 1980s southwestern Ontario, what the publisher calls “a time in Canada when the recession lay like a lead weight on the shoulders of young people, leaving the future bleak.” I remember working in a terrible job in my no-money 1980s and when I read Onion Man, I could feel the stickiness of an unairconditioned summer workplace, the smells, the listlessness of the workers, especially the young people, the no reason-to-do-anything dead-end of it all. Technically, Onion Man is a story told in poetry, but it reads like a novel – you know, stuff happens, and people speak like they speak.
PS if you are a paying subscriber, you can get a free e-book of Onion Man.
Kirby’s News
Kirby: Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in G. Review of G by Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, The Fiddlehead
Check out Kirby’s tour schedule for their new poetry book, She!
SMLTA Recommends
“What we’re seeing is very troubling,” said author Thea Lim who was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2018. Literary spaces that are meant to be bastions of free speech and discourse are going against the mandate that they were created for, she said. They’re creating a situation for artists where “you either have to be quiet about slaughter, atrocity, genocide. Or you risk your career.”
Read Kagiso Molope’s challenge at Ottawa gala spotlights artists fighting institutional silence on Gaza in the Toronto Star by Shree Paradkar
And that’s the horror of all this: in a room full of some of the most influential people in the country, at a time when we’re witnessing a genocide, many in attendance were worried about how we’re speaking about the atrocities in Gaza and not about how we’re going to end it.
I am terrified of what this means for the people in the middle of this war — which is also to say that I’m terrified of what it means for all of us.
Read Palestine and the Pen by Kagiso Lesego Molope in The Grind
The Miramichi Review is doing a Fundraiser for Palestine and is inviting submissions from Palestinian authors as well as reviews of Palestinian books.
Crooked, Iffy: Tom Prime’s Male Pregnancy In Reverse by Benjamin C. Dugdale in Ex-Puritan
I first read Sadi Muktadir’s work when I was the Canada Editor of Joyland (2013-2020) and selected his story “Quadruple Bypass” which was published in 2019.
His debut novel is out this week and the launch is in Toronto on May 23, 2024! Details below!
Room Magazine is hiring a publisher.
D.A. Lockhart is a past SMLTA contributor, and his poetry book North of Middle Island has been shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award. I’m delighted and honoured to have my book on the same shortlist as D.A. Lockhart and the other finalists!
Here’s a visual poem from his collection!
Very sad to learn of the passing of Alice Munro.
Read 20 Short Stories From Nobel Prize-Winning Writer Alice Munro (RIP) Free Online, Open Culture
The Influence of Alice Munro with Heather O’Neil, CBC
A Life in Quotes, The Guardian
Canadian authors remember Alice Munro and her literary legacy - Heather O'Neill, Kevin Chong, Dionne Irving, Andrew Pyper among the authors who admired the CanLit legend, CBC
Five of the best Alice Munro short stories, The Guardian
Clare Sestanovich joins Deborah Treisman to read and discuss “The Moons of Jupiter,” by Alice Munro, which was published in The New Yorker in 1978.
Sneak Peek from Issue 37
Recommended Substacks
From the Archives
Last Licks
KIRBY reads "Last Licks" from their new collection, SHE, published by knife| fork | book (April, 2024). Distributed by Asterism Books.
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Congratulations on the Trillium nomination!