span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

an evening of departing Ottawa writers

with readings by:

rob mclennan (leaving for Edmonton)
& Nicholas Lea (leaving for Fredericton)

with special guest-reader Marcus McCann (staying in Ottawa)

Saturday, July 28, 2007; readings at 7:30pm, doors at 7

at The Carleton Tavern (upstairs), 223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale Market), Ottawa [map here]

author bios:

Marcus McCann currently works for Capital Xtra, and his poetry debuted in The Antigonish Review when he was only 18. His work has recently appeared in a self-published chapbook alongside the work of Andrew Faulkner and Nicholas Lea, and his first solo poetry chapbook is scheduled to appear in August 2007 with above/ground press.

Nicholas Lea was born in Whitehorse, Yukon Territory and grew up in and around the Ottawa area. He now lives and writes and works in Ottawa. He is the author of a previous chapbook entitled, light years (above/ground press) and has published his work in a number of print and online journals. For several years, he has been an active member of Ottawa's poetry community, doing readings, working with journals and participating in workshops, and his first trade poetry collection, Everything is movies, appeared with Chaudiere Books in April 2007. He heads for Fredericton, New Brunswick in August.

Born in Ottawa in 1970 at the Grace Hospital on Wellington Street near Parkdale Avenue, rob mclennan currently lives directly between Ottawa's Chinatown and Little Italy neighbourhoods, and was called "Centretown's poet laureate" by David Gladstone in The Centretown Buzz in the mid-1990s. The author of twelve previous trade poetry collections in Canada and England, he has published poetry, fiction, interviews, reviews and columns in over two hundred publications in fourteen countries and in four languages, and done reading tours in five countries on two continents. The editor/publisher of above/ground press and the long poem magazine STANZAS (both founded in 1993), the online critical journal Poetics.ca (with Ottawa poet Stephen Brockwell) and the Ottawa poetry annual ottawater (ottawater.com), he edits the ongoing Cauldron Books series through Broken Jaw Press, edited the anthologies evergreen: six new poets (Black Moss Press), side/lines: a new canadian poetics (Insomniac Press), GROUNDSWELL: the best of above/ground press, 1993-2003 (Broken Jaw Press) and Decalogue: ten Ottawa poets (Chaudiere Books), and runs the semi-annual ottawa small press book fair, which he co-founded in 1994, currently under the umbrella of the small press action network - ottawa (span-o), which he also runs. Fall 2007 sees the appearance of a new poetry collection with Ireland's Salmon Publishing, a collection of literary essays appears with Toronto's ECW Press, a novella with The Mercury Press, and a title for Vancouver publisher Arsenal Pulp Press, Ottawa: The Unknown City. His online home is at www.track0.com/rob_mclennan, and he often posts reviews, essays, rants and other nonsense at www.robmclennan.blogspot.com. His thirteenth trade poetry collection is The Ottawa City Project (Chaudiere Books), and he was recently named writer-in-residence for the University of Alberta for the 2007-8 academic year, and leaves in September for Edmonton. He will be back for good about nine months later.

for more information, contact rob mclennan at az421 (at) freenet (dot) carleton (dot) ca

the small press action network - ottawa (cleaning out yr literary clogs since 1996)

next span-o event: above/ground press 14th anniversary reading/launch at the factory reading series, Thursday, August 23, 2007