If you’re in self-isolation and you’ve already burned through your pile of books, skip over to Invisible Publishing to grab some ebooks. The best part? Pay whatever you choose, AND one hundred percent of proceeds go to the authors. (I guess that’s two parts.) So you can scoop up my books, but also dozens of other staggeringly wonderful titles from writers like Michelle Winters, Seyward Goodhand, Tyler Hellard, HB Hogan… Fiction, poetry, nonfiction. Fill your phone or laptop or tablet or e-reader (does anyone still use those?), make your isolation more enjoyable, support independent Canadian publishing, and toss some money at Canadian authors. Everybody wins!
Mattawa River Writers Festival
UPDATE (3/18/2020): The Matawa River Writers Festival has been postponed in light of the effort to contain the spread of COVID-19. Please watch this space or the festival website for announcements regarding what form the rescheduled event will take. Stay safe, everyone! Stay home!
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I’ll be speaking at the Canadian Ecology Centre in Samuel de Champlain Provincial Park in April as part of the Mattawa River Writers Festival. Really looking forward to this one. Registration is now open for this amazing weekend, and it would be great to see you there.
Describing the Days Ahead
I have a piece entitled “Describing the Days Ahead: A cli-fi primer” in Canadian Notes and Queries’ special issue, Writing in the Age of Unravelling. Working with guest editors Sharon English and Patricia Robertson was a great experience, and I’m grateful to them for including my article in this timely collection.
New Edition
This persistent little book has just entered a new printing — its fifth — the first to feature any editorial changes. Over at the Invisiblog I wrote about that small change, and why it felt necessary to do now.
To Cause a Tiger, Easthampton, MA, November 16
I’ll be hitting the road soon to bring my one-note act to beautiful western Massachusetts, reading at the opening of To Cause a Tiger in Easthampton. Join us!
This promises to be a good one. If you’re in Peterborough, please consider coming!
Fall Fiction Bash, Peterborough
The Bottom of the Order: Every Fifth Day
The Seattle Mariners’ history is one long tale of woe studded with infrequently dazzling displays of capability, with all of it adding up to exactly zero championships. I say this as someone who has counted several Mariners as his favorite players. There’s no logic to this, just as there’s no relief from the routine cruelties of time and money. It just is.
— “Every Fifth Day,” the last entry in the season-long The Bottom of the Order series, for Hobart
Word on the Street, Toronto
I’ll be at The Word on the Street in Toronto this Sunday, September 22, reading and in conversation with Giller-longlisted short story master K.D. Miller (!) on a panel called Emotional Landscapes. We’re in the Vibrant Voices of Ontario tent at 11:00 AM. Join us!
The Bottom of the Order: Snap, Go, Fling
The cherry and strawberry seasons have passed; the apples are reddening. Only a few games remain. A Pit Spitter lays down a bunt, and the runner on third crashes in: a perfect suicide squeeze.
— “Snap, Go, Fling,” for Hobart
The Bottom of the Order: Your 2003 Detroit Tigers
The thing I can’t wrap my head around, when it comes to the 2003 Detroit Tigers, is what it must have been like to show up to work every day. What must it have taken, as the losses mounted – up to and including the 119th, the most defeats ever amassed by an American League team, and tied with the ’62 Mets for the most losses in major league history – to rouse oneself for the excruciating daily repetition of a very public abasement?