Fall blur

The one good thing about a prolonged absence from blogging is that it sometimes means I have been doing other writing. In this case, it happens to be true. I'm probably jinxing my progress by mentioning it here (doh!), but I feel like I've got momentum right now and I can see my current draft taking shape. I think I've talked about this particular project being almost done for at least two years running, if not longer, but it has been stuck at the 70% mark for a long time. Even when I edge up the word count, the scope gets larger, so the progress feels negligible. Anyway, I think I was saying, yay writing. So yay!

I also never posted the result of the Montreal Tournament of Books at Paragraphe Bookstore. Bone and Bread won! They very kindly invited me in to sign some stock.

Signing stock at Paragraphe Bookstore

Ahhh, early September, when it was still warm enough to wear a sleeveless linen dress. What you can't see is that I'm also wearing my wedding shoes: yellow flower Seychelles heeled sandals. I am colour-coordinated infrequently enough (and restrained to just one colour even less frequently) that I think this fact needs to be documented here. Actually, for a pair of yellow shoes, it turns out they match quite a few things I own! I wish I could say the same for all my other brightly coloured shoes. Also: I like how long my hair looks in this picture.

I also asked for a photo in front of the tournament poster!

Yes, that is a French poster for a tournament of English books. 

Other semi-recent goings-on in the writing world include a reading at Drawn & Quarterly for the launch of Teri Vlassapoulos's novel Escape Plans. Here are some photos from the evening that I grabbed from Facebook!

With Ian McGillis (host of the evening and former QWF mentor to both me and Teri), Teri and Lesley Trites.

Just the readers. 

I have been saying no to a lot of readings because they are always scheduled at exactly my baby's bedtime, but I have long admired these ladies and a trip to my favourite neighbourhood bookstore is always a treat. Thanks for the invitation!

Singing at a holiday concert tomorrow afternoon, so I'm off to see if I still have my dollar-store Santa hat from years past. I have a feeling it was a victim of the fire, but I'm hoping to be happily surprised.

Alma Mater Matters and a trip to Ottawa

You know when something is so perfect that you don’t know how to write about it without somehow diminishing it?

Even two three four weeks out from the event I did at the College of the Humanities at Carleton University, I’m not sure what I can say about it that would do it justice. I really had the nicest time!

Before I went to Ottawa, I thought a lot about what I remembered from my university classes as part of my Humanities degree, and I realized it's hard to predict what will stick with you. I jotted down a few of the random facts that have lingered in my mind in the dozen or so years since I graduated. I listed a few of them at the beginning of my reading, and I'm sharing a couple of them here upon request: 

• Paradise is shaped like a multifoliate rose 


• Flatterers are found in the 8th circle of hell 


• Ezekiel cut his beard into three parts (which, respectively, were burned, chopped, and  thrown to the wind)   

So basically the recesses of my mind belong mostly to Dante and the Old Testament. 

I also dug out some of my old notebooks from university and flipped through them to see what I'd frantically underlined or highlighted in my notes as critically important knowledge from our Humanities lectures. 

Pack rat or archivist: you decide.

Here are some of the choice phrases I’d highlighted in my notes:

• Socratic speech is always adapted to suit the interlocutor.


• The experience of transcendence also involves the experience of immanence.


• Happiness is contemplation.


• There is an erotic compulsion to intellectual virtue.

Yep.

After my random reminiscing, I did a reading from Bone & Bread and a Q & A with Ottawa poet David O’Meara. David did some one-on-one feedback sessions with aspiring College writers back in the day and very helpfully stopped me from writing like a Victorian. So it was fun to be able to thank him in person and chat about writing, too. 

Everyone was incredibly generous with their questions and comments, and it was lovely to see old friends and former professors in the audience. I never imagined speaking in that lecture hall and having my (revered!) profs ask me questions about the creative process. It was humbling and thrilling all at once.

There were old friends from Carleton, former classmates and teachers...even a girl I used to babysit! But one of the most exciting reunions was with B., my dearest and very best friend from Grade 1/2, and her mom, who was my fourth grade teacher...and my first serious editor. (The editing is another post for another time.)

B, me, and Mrs. D

I wish I'd taken more photos, but my phone was in danger of powering down all day. I popped back into the seminar room before we headed out to dinner to snap this one: 

A different perspective on my old lecture hall...the front!

After the talk and the reception, there was an alumni reunion dinner. It was so wonderful to catch up with everyone and find out what they’re doing now. There were also old issues of our College literary journal, including some poems of mine I'd completely forgotten about! I was happy both to be reminded of them (okay, of some of them) and to have them restored to me with just a couple of quick photos.

Catching up with former profs/old friends

My friend K came to get me (after a complicated series of back and forth texts in which we realized that even though both of us went to Carleton, neither of us could remember any meeting place accessible by car well enough to describe it to the other person), and after I changed into pyjamas and took a couple of Tylenols (some kind of strange stress headache had taken hold the minute the talk was over) and actually gotten into bed and turned the light out, I managed to touch base with my Winnipeg writer friends and ended up having a long-distance meeting until about midnight Ottawa time. So fun! I keep forgetting about the magic of Skype.

The magic of Skype: illustrated! 

And if all that wasn't already an absurd amount fun to pack into 36 hours, the next day friend K gave me a private cross-country skiing lesson.  Maybe next time I'll fully graduate to poles. And her lovely parents cooked a delicious early supper so we could eat together before I had to catch my train home. 

K said I was a natural, and I almost believe her!

Victoria Writers Festival

(I'm playing catchup here on my blogging, though I'd actually written most of this in Victoria.) 

I had a rough start to my journey that involved horrendous Montreal traffic, missing my flight, waiting a bunch of hours for another flight via Toronto which then ended up being diverted to Vancouver, where we spent a bunch of hours waiting for Victoria's fog to clear. Eventually they sent us to hotels at around 2 in the morning to sleep for four hours before an 8 a.m. flight that (luckily!) turned out to be one of the only ones to make it out of Vancouver that day.

I'd called ahead to the hotel to make sure I'd be able to check in early and get some sleep, and I even got there in time to get some breakfast before an intense power nap until the early afternoon. I was sorry to miss Jan Zwicky's talk on Poetry and Meaninglessness (doesn't that sound amazing?? and apparently it was), but the sleep and shower were more important at that point after a full 24 hours of stressful travelling. 

The festival event itself was stellar...the kind where you're absolutely riveted by everybody's reading and immediately want to run out to buy and read all the books you don't already have. I was nervous before the reading but I was happy with how it went. The other amazing writers were Angie Abdou, Ayelet Tsabari, Sarah Peters, Jay Ruzesky, and Annabel Lyon. 

It was fun to meet Angie in person after knowing her from Twitter, and Ayelet, after meeting briefly at Eden Mills. (At this point, looking back after the Vancouver festival, it seems crazy to think this was the first time I really hung out with either of them! Love you ladies!) I was sorry not to have remembered to bring my copy of 1996 to get Sarah Peters to sign it...it is one of the few books I can actually locate after the great post-fire-cleaning-move-jumble of earlier this year. 

It was also nice to re-meet Annabel Lyon, though I was a little too shy to say much. (It is just possible I may have accosted her in the bathroom at the offices of the Canada Council a few years back and introduced myself as a superfan. I've noticed that I am way, way more awkward around the women I adolize than the men...or at least feel as though I am...but let's not analyze that here. Is anyone else like this or is it just me?  Anyhow, I'd convinced myself that maybe I had only thought about introducing myself then, but actually hadn't...or that I'd waited for a more opportune moment in the hallway or something...but this remains unconfirmed.) She brought her daughter along to the reading, which was nice to see, so I managed to keep myself in check and not bother her with, well, all of the above!

Here are some quick cell phone snaps from Julie Paul, who was up in the balcony, to give you an idea of the venue.

Reading at the Victoria Writers Festival

We all did a Q & A up on stage later

There were so many lovely readers and people to talk to afterwards that I had to be hurried out to get a ride to the afterparty and I missed checking out the bookstore (which had already packed up)!  My friend H. came with her mom, which was so nice. I love meeting people's moms!

I got to meet other internet writer friends, too! 

Mega-selfie with Ayelet Tsabari and Will Johnson

The afterparty was at the lovely home of festival co-organizer John Gould and his partner Sandy, and it was a beautiful spread! I was unfortunately still really tired, in spite of my nap (and maybe partially because of the time difference, too), and so I caught a ride back to the hotel at the rather respectable hour of midnight (it's respectable either way you look at it...somehow managing to be both reasonably late and reasonably early). Nevertheless, I managed to have a lot of fun while I was there. I also had some really interesting conversations with people about their travels up north and have vowed (again) to make it up there one of these days.

Here are a couple of photos I nabbed from Twitter:

Me and Ayelet!

A photo where you can spot my encroaching fatigue:

 Twitter pals IRL: Me, Angie Abdou, and Ayelet

One party highlight was meeting the daughter of Julie Paul, one of the festival organizers. Thanks to Julie's posts on Facebook, I basically now regard her as a kind of celebrity. She offered me a cupcake (absolutely delicious and looked professionally made, which is not surprising because she has her own cupcake business!) I also got to hear her play and sing one of her own songs before I left. Pretty cool for a girl who (I think) just started high school not long ago. You rule, Avery Jane!

                  

I also got some nice goodies from the festival I've been using a lot, including some nice Victoria Writers Festival bookmarks that I'm using in the, oh, nine or so books I'm in the middle of right now and a giant Greater Victoria Public Library reusable bag with funky graphics that people keep commenting on and which has now been used for groceries, an overnight trip to Halifax, and even trick-or-treating.

All in all, a wonderful festival and a great experience and I'm so grateful to have been invited!

24 hours in Toronto

I'm becoming an expert on the 24-hour trip to Toronto. Top tips: take taxis, wear flat shoes, and call ahead to place your lunch/dinner orders if eating out. This will all save time and stress and let you squeeze the most out of every minute. 

This trip was less crazy than my book launch trip to TO, but it still went by in a whirl. I flew in via Porter at 8 p.m. after a full day of work, got to the hotel a little before 9 p.m., then ordered supper up to my room and started revisiting the notes I'd made for my library talk.

The next morning, I stopped by the House of Anansi offices (always a treat!) and met the new fiction editor at Anansi (a lovely woman who offered me free books...which, given the overflowing state of my apartment, is not unlike offering crack to an addict), left gleeful with a copy of Skim and Hellgoing, the new Lynn Coady (yay yay yay), had a lovely lunch with L, my new publicist, and headed to the Deer Park branch of the Toronto Public Library.

I was nervous that I wouldn't have enough to say...and also nervous that I had too much to say, or that what I'd planned to talk about would be boring (I think readers and writers often have different concerns and preoccupations when it comes to books), but everyone who attended was lovely and made me feel very welcome. Many of them had already read Bone & Bread and had interesting comments and questions.

I was very excited to meet one of them in particular: Catherine Bush's mom! I gushed here previously about getting to meet Catherine at Eden Mills, and I was so happy she asked her lovely mother to stop by and say hello.  (Her mom even rescued me before the reading by helping me locate a key to this very puzzling washroom.)

I usually get uptight about following the directives of signs, 

but this one I was quite happy to ignore completely.

L. suggested we take a picture -- I'd been too shy 

to ask Catherine for a photo together!

Then I had a fantastic though somewhat rushed visit to the brand new David Bowie exhibit at the AGO (so many amazing things to see and hear...and pretty much all the memorabilia you could imagine). I could easily have spent more than twice as long. 

A shot from outside as there was no photography allowed inside the exhibit.

Toronto looking pretty.

When I finally got to the train station (I literally ran from the cab to the gate), everyone was already boarding. But I made it! 

looking forward

So today is the day I start thinking about the fall. I've updated the "Events" tab above, but  here's everything in handy list form, which right now is making me equal parts nervous and excited. It's almost time to start thinking about what to read, what to say, and ironing dresses. If you live in Guelph, Toronto, Kingston, Victoria, or Vancouver, I really hope you'll come say hi!

SEPTEMBER

Eden Mills Writers' Festival

Readings at the Mill

Sun. Sept. 15 12:30 p.m.

with Grace o'Connell and Iain Reid

Toronto Public Library

Author reading: Saleema Nawaz on Bone and Bread

Fri. Sept. 27 2 p.m.

Deer Park program room

Kingston WritersFest

"Writing through Race"

Sat. Sept. 28 1:30 p.m.

with Wayne Grady

Moderated by Barbara Bell

OCTOBER

Victoria Writers Festival

Sat. Oct. 19 7:30 p.m.

with Angie Abdou, Annabel Lyon, Sara Peters, and Jay Ruzesky.

Hosted by Lee Henderson

The Vancouver Writers Fest

"All in the Family"

Fri. Oct. 25 10-11:30 a.m. 

with Dede Crane, Andrew Kaufman, and Mary Swan

Hosted by Angie Abdou

"Corner Stories"

Sat. Oct. 26 2 p.m.

with Anthony De Sa, Wayne Johnston, and Maria Semple

Hosted by Aislinn Hunter

"Celebrating 25 Years of Journey"

Sun. Oct. 27 1:30 p.m.

with Theodora Armstrong, Douglas Glover, and Shaena Lambert

Hosted by Timothy Taylor

Winnipeg moments

I feel like there’s more to write about than this Winnipeg trip, but what I want to write about is less of any actual thing and more about that expectant, spring-y feeling of possibility that seems to be in the air right now…in spite of Montreal’s continuing iffy weather.  Maybe I just feel that way because I’ve come to the end of a long string of public writerly responsibilities (which are really wonderful to have, but which weigh on me heavily), and I feel like I might be able to get back to some happy medium of actual writing and seeing friends, neither of which seems to have happened very much in weeks and weeks.  In other words: hurray!  It truly does feel like school is out, and me with it.  Maybe that’s really all there is to say about it, so… done!

This past weekend, I went to Winnipeg to give a reading at McNally Robinson as part of the Thin Air Winnipeg International Writers’ Festival. I view this trip as a landmark in that it is probably the first trip in my entire life where I did not overly stress out about packing for it in advance.  (Yes, it’s only a weekend trip, but that hasn’t stopped me from insane packing stress in the past.)  I spent almost no time packing and my suitcase was even really light (especially for me)….until this happened:

A fundraising book sale for the Thin Air festival...can't beat those prices!

My friend K enabling me.  Her hubby A. carried their adorable baby 

while my books got wheeled over to the hotel.

I know my husband and I need to go through and prune our collection…and I know we just paid a back-breaking sum to clean the ones we have, but I couldn’t help myself.  This was actually the restrained pile because as I was browsing I noticed a bunch of books (mostly CanLit) that I’ve purchased over the years and STILL haven’t read.  With my selections this time I tried to take into consideration a) what I will actually read  and b) what is not likely to be available at the university library (hence the inclusion of more than a few mysteries/thrillers/YA books).  Unfortunately, I was so excited about my purchases that I actually managed a faux-pas of plugging the used book sale while at the bookstore for my reading (doh!!)  But in my experience, book lovers aren't deterred from buying new books by the prospect of buying used books at some point later, so I hope no harm was done.

Thanks to some very accommodating friends, I was able to pre-schedule seven separate hang-outs over the course of the weekend, along with the planned bookstore reading. I saw new babies, new houses, and shared a cup of bacon.  I had the most delicious homemade brunch in St-Boniface, a wonderful salad at Prairie Ink, and gin and tonics in Wolseley.  I dished with poets, fiction writers, graphic novelists, and above all, loved all the low-key hanging out and catching up with friends. I miss you, Winnipeggers!  So nice to see you all. The reading itself went well, I think, and at least was not entirely populated by people I know.  Most importantly, there were people there (never a guarantee!).  Thank you so much to everyone who showed up!!

Check out this amazing display!!! McNally Robinson is the best.

Me and the indefatigable G.M.B. Chomichuk, just before the reading.

Before the reading, I had a nice dinner and chat with fellow Banff alumnus and brilliant novelist (and reviewer, as previously blogged here) Joan Thomas, whom I'm sorry I didn't get a picture with because she was looking lovely and so summery.  On the other hand, it gives me an excuse to post this photo instead, from a few years back, that I don't think I ever blogged:

Hanging out in the Rideau Hall bathrooms

 at the Governor General's Literary Awards (2009?) 

The few parts I’ve been reading from Bone and Bread at different events didn’t seem to be quite long enough for the time I needed to fill, so I decided to read a section that I haven't read aloud in ages.

I last read it at the QWF mentorship reading many moons ago, and I remember hearing my voice high, tight, and probably near-hysterical sounding.  Definitely my worst reading ever.   For some reason, the section felt so strange and raw and interior, and I could sense it wasn’t connecting with anyone in the audience.  I think it’s possible the readings or some selections of them were being recorded for broadcast on the radio (and this might have contributed to some extra nervousness), but I’m sure they wouldn’t have used mine.                     

So I was happy I decided (at the very last minute…while standing at the podium!) to read that part and kind of own it, for lack of a better term.  It might not have been the most brilliant delivery in the world, but it wasn't awful, which was the previous baseline.  I don’t think the passage has changed at all (if so, only very slightly) in the intervening years, but I’ve changed, and the way I was able to read it in front of an audience has changed, and that makes me really happy.  

The next three photos below all courtesy of my friend Greg Chomichuk (you can follow him on Instagram here):

 Me in conversation with the lovely Charlene Diehl, 
the warm heart at the centre of Thin Air

 Signing stock at McNally Robinson

After the reading, I went out with some friends, most of whom used to be part of a writing group I was in that grew out of a class with Dennis Cooley at the University of Manitoba.  At least four people from our class have now published books (some more than one), and I expect that list to grow in years to come. 

Writers group alumni! (Can Lit quiz: can you spot the 

experimental Canadian poet and critic?)

All in all, it was the perfect trip (including being bumped up to first class on the way in!!) except for a small hiccup in calling a cab to pick me up from the Neighbourhood Bookstore and Cafe, which was so neighbourhoody it didn't appear to have a street address! The guy who was working asked me to check my receipt and then ran outside to look, to no avail. And apparently if you only provide an intersection, the taxi company doesn't actually dispatch you a cab...although they don't tell you that until you call back fifteen minutes later after being eaten alive by mosquitos and getting anxious about missing your flight.  

Even the employee couldn't figure out where it was.

A la prochaine, Winnipeg!

Montreal launch and the four-day weekend

Thursday was the Montreal launch for Bone and Bread, and it went really well!  Thank you so, so much to everyone who came out.

Outside Drawn & Quarterly bookstore.

I met up with some writer friends beforehand, at Le Depanneur cafe, an hour before the Monday Night Choir performed in support of the launch.  (I'm not in this choir, though I've submitted my name to the long waiting list.)  Their set was amazing, and I cannot even describe how special it felt to have the evening start with music like this!  Below is a picture of them performing.  (This photo, and actually all the ones in this post were taken by amazing publicist K.)

Monday Night Choir performing at Le Depanneur cafe

Then we crossed the street to D & Q, where I read a couple of short sections of the novel.

A rare photo of me looking semi-normal while reading!!

This was followed by a fun Q & A with Drew Nelles, the editor of Maisonneuve Magazine, and then, deliriously happy that the public speaking part of the night was over, I signed books and chatted with people and generally felt like the luckiest girl on earth.  And we sold out of all the books!

The lovely peeps at D&Q also blogged about the night here.  

Chatting with Drew Nelles of Maisonneuve.

Post-reading, I've just been recovering.  My cold got worse after Toronto, and it was so bad just before the launch I actually had to miss a day and a half of work (which almost never happens), and it is in fact still going.  I have actually never seen this much green goo (yuck, sorry) in my whole life.

BUT...it's the four-day weekend!  One of the best things about the Easter weekend is that it always seems to sneak up on me and therefore feels like a surprise holiday.  In the past, I've used this weekend to write furiously, stay up late, and make a huge dent in a project.  Instead, I've been watching endless episodes of Homeland and knitting like mad.  (Shhh...don't tell my piles of laundry and taxes.)  I'm working on a new spring cowl that I'm looking forward to wearing with my leather jacket once the weather is warm enough.  And once I finish it.  I wonder which will come first?  Today the weather in Montreal is weird and windy.  I'm excited for a stretch of warm weather to come.

Hope everyone had a fun and restful long weekend!

saying yes

It has been a few days of interesting invitations.  A couple of invitations to do readings...and a few to do even more interesting things, each one a little (or, okay, a lot) outside of my comfort zone. My inbox is a place of wonder these days.  Wonder (Can I do this?  Are you really asking me?) and excitement (I'm so excited to do this.  Excited and terrified.) Maybe it helps that most of them are a little ways off, but in each case, I said...yes.  The readings and the non-readings both.  (I'm excited to say what the non-readings are, but...soon!)    

Hopefully I'm not dooming myself to hours of anxiety as they approach.  With every reading, it does become a little easier.  But not easy.

This weekend, I'm planning not to think about any of these looming thrills and responsibilities.   To celebrate two years of our knitting group, we're going on a knitting retreat.

Lovely (blurry) ladies at a knit night at T's awhile back.

The knit goes on.

I'm looking forward to good food, good friends, a walk in the woods, and maybe even finishing my hat!  Wishing all of you a lovely and peaceful weekend, too.

How Should a Fan Be? On attending a Sheila Heti reading at McGill University.

This is almost old news now, but two Fridays ago I went to see Sheila Heti give a reading at McGill.  I was a little apprehensive because I’d already been to hear her read from How Should a Person Be? many months ago at Concordia, and quite often writers end up reading the same selection.  The section I’d already heard her read, from the very beginning, was hilarious and amazing and made me go straight out and pick up the book, but I remembered it well enough that I could still hear the passage in her voice in my head when I read it.

Anyhow, I needn’t have worried, and I was glad I attended.  She read from a few of her books, including The Middle Stories and The Chairs are Where the People Go, neither of which I'd read before, in spite of the fact that I have a few friends who have been obsessed with The Middle Stories for years (and the fact that we have not one, but two copies at home). 

The ever-growing to-read pile.

I wish there had been a way to take a surreptitious picture of the crowd.  Stylewise, it’s a relief to spend time in the Faculty of Arts (compared to science and medicine, where fashion is pretty much absent)  Everyone was young and interesting-looking.  Actually, ninety percent of the attendees looked like they’d walked straight out of a Girls episode.  I was worried enough that I had to ask the young woman next to me if it really was the Sheila Heti reading, or if I’d accidentally walked into an undergraduate class.  (I hadn't.)  Then, as I waited for the reading to begin, I overheard the girl behind me explain to her friends in a somewhat bored fashion about how something she did for the PR company she works for had turned into a freelance job writing for HuffPoCanada… which is a drag because her agent is totally waiting for her to finish her novel!  I listened while her just-barely-containing-their-seething-jealousy-and-awe friends duly expressed sympathy.  Meanwhile, I texted my own friends in an amazed and nervous fashion about the terrifying ambition and productivity of the next generation.

Sheila Heti was funny and smart and winning.  Apparently, there had been a request for her to read "the dirty parts" from How Should a Person Be? so she read the "Interlude for Fucking," which is extraordinary in the real sense of the word.

Another reason I was glad I went was because she mentioned this Paris Review interview with Jean Cocteau that she said had once made a big impression on her. 

Tiens, mon ami, it takes great courage to be original! The first time a thing appears it disconcerts everyone, the artist too. But you have to leave it—not retouch it. Of course you must then canonize the “bad.” For the good is the familiar. The new arrives only by mischance. As Picasso says, it is a fault. And by sanctifying our faults we create.

She cited it in response to a question from the audience (“Are you preoccupied with the ugly in your work?), and the way she described the impression it had made on her was that there may be things in your work that other people criticize or find ugly – and those are the things that make the work unique and which ought to be cultivated the most.  (Cf. the first Impressionists who were despised as making ugly works that we now consider beautiful.) 

I like this notion, though I don’t think that this principle would work ALL the time – I think it would depend a good deal on who’s giving the criticism – but I think it is very interesting nonetheless. 

As someone who also took a long time to write a novel, I was also relieved to hear that she had a lot of unused material leftover in the end. The other thing she said that I thought was interesting was that she wanted HSAPB to be more like a person and less like a book, and I think that she did a good job of achieving that.  (Well, except for the part where it is actually a book, but it is unlike quite a lot of other books.)

Still a book, but a good one!

I stayed afterwards to ask her to sign my copy (nobody else did this...maybe they all have the e-book?), in spite of the fact that I can have superfan qualities that definitely make me sheepish and awkward. (Nevermind that I’ve met her before, or that we share a publisher....there was no mitigation there.) But I love getting my books signed, which was enough to make me determined that we would both just have to endure my awkwardness and Sheila signed it in a really cute way:

Irresistible signing gimmick!  Love it.

There are lots of good profiles on Sheila and reviews of this book, but here is a recent worthwhile U.K. article which convincingly compares her to Philip Roth.

Reading tonight!

I'm reading tonight at Le Cagibi as part of the Taddle Creek Travelling Series of Happenings to promote their Out-of-Towner issue. Sadly, I'm not actually in the issue (now that I've seen the actual magazine, which is gorgeous, I wish I'd known they were doing one, as normally submissions are restricted to writers from Toronto), but I'll be reading with Katia Grubisic, Mark Jarman, and Sarah Gilbert, so I can promise you will not be disappointed! (I am a big fan of Katia's poetry in general and of her excellent Goose Lane collection in particular.)

I'm especially looking forward to Sarah's presentation, which will apparently feature a projector for what I hope is an elaboration of her essay on Mile End. I'm similarly neighbourhood-obsessed, and I was excited to see she wrote about the lemon tree that (bewilderingly) continues to flourish a few blocks away from here in the back lane. I've brought other people to look at that tree, to convince me I'm not dreaming it.

I spent the morning trying to decide what to read. I don't feel like reading from Mother Superior, since I don't want to subject people I know to something that, at this point, they've probably heard before. At the same time, the novel I just finished writing is currently under submission (*fingers crossed* or, as my mother would say, pray for me) and the thought of actually opening the file again to look at it basically fills me with dread. Eeek.

So instead I'm reading from the new-new novel. I'm only about 60 pages in, but I'm still excited about where it's going, so maybe this is a good point to be reading from it. This will be only the second time that I've read from a first, unpublished draft. (The first time, at the QWF mentorship reading back in 2008, didn't go very well -- I was knee-quakingly nervous and more or less breathlessly squeaked it all out -- but I've done a lot of readings between then and now, so I'm going to blame nerves rather than the terror of reading something brand-new.)

But although I have mixed feelings about giving readings (mostly to do with nervousness), I have only one feeling about the importance of reading your writing out loud -- namely, that it is hugely important. No matter how my selection goes over tonight, I'm sure I'll at least get some ideas about things I want to change. And that's great.

If you stop by tonight, come say hi! The doors are at 8 p.m., but the readings will probably start closer to 9 p.m.