call for submissions: Writing KOOT

Open Letter is seeking critical, literary-historical, and creative submissions for a special issue dedicated to the Kootenay School of Writing.

“Writing KOOT” will be guest edited by Gregory Betts and Robert Stacey.

Since its founding in 1984, the Kootenay School of Writing has pursued an ambitious program of radical politics and poetical experimentation, making it one of the most significant avant-garde movements in the history of Canadian literature. Even so, critical response to the movement has been slight and, generally speaking, insular. With hope of redressing this situation, Open Letter seeks submissions from a wide range of scholars regarding the history and practice of KSW, its writers, group affiliations, and associated publications. KSW has been described as a “centre of avant-garde writing in Canada”—yet one that that seemingly rejects avant-gardism, along with centrism, aesthetic purity, and the values and assumptions underpinning the neoliberal nation-state. The special issue will address and reflect the various complexities and paradoxes that make KSW such a rich field of enquiry.

Possible Topics could include (but are not limited to):

- KSW in relation to avant-garde aesthetics/movements
- KSW and work
- KSW and postmodern media
- KSW in relation to radical politics
- KSW socio-political histories
- Internal/external tensions
- spaces and places of KSW
- Individual author studies

Completed papers are due no later than 1 November 2009. Please send copies to either Gregory Betts or Robert Stacey. For more information, please feel free to contact the above (full contact information below).--

Gregory Betts
Assistant Professor
English Language & Literature
Brock University
500 Glenridge Avenue
St. Catharines ON L2S 3A1
(905) 688.5550 x 5318

Robert David Stacey
Assistant Professor
Department of English
University of Ottawa
352 Arts Building
70 Laurier Ave. East
Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5