span-o presents: the pre-small press book fair reading

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

the ottawa small press book fair
pre-fair reading

with readings by:

Amanda Earl (Ottawa)
Adam Thomlison (Ottawa)
Jim Smith (Toronto)
+ Ben Ladouceur (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 24, 2011;
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
The Carleton Tavern,
223 Armstrong Street (at Parkdale; upstairs)

author bios:

Amanda Earl's chapbooks are Welcome to Earth (Book Thug), Eleanor & The Sad Phoenician's Other Woman (above/ground press). She's the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal, and the angel of AngelHousePress.

Adam Thomlison [pictured] is a journalist and author whose work has appeared in forums both prestigious (The Ottawa Citizen, Canadian Dimension magazine) and lowly (the bathroom stall at a bus terminal in Nashville, Frank Magazine). His time at Frank got him banned from Parliament Hill, saw him impersonate government officials and led to his work being read aloud in the legislature of the Yukon. His fiction has appeared in two amply titled books -- We Were Writers for Disastrous Love Affairs Magazine, and These Are Not Movies: Screenplays for Films that Will Never Be Made -- and several zines published by his own publishing house, 40-Watt Spotlight (40wattspotlight.com).

Jim Smith is the author of fourteen books and chapbooks published between 1979 and 2009, including One Hundred Most Frightening Things (blewointmentpress, 1985), Convincing Americans (Proper Tales Press, 1986), The Schwarzenegger Poems (Surrealist Poets Gardening Association, 1988), Translating Sleep (Wolsak & Wynn, 1989), Leonel/Roque (Coteau Books, 1998). His newest book, Back Off, Assassin! New and Selected Poems, published by Mansfield Press in November, 2009, has received a number of glowing reviews, and was one of 22 books on the unofficial (leaked) longlist for the 2010 Governor Generals’ Literary Award for Poetry. His next chapbook, Exit Interviews, will appear in 2011 from Ottawa’s Apt. 9 Press. The eminent Chilean poet Nicanor Parra told his grandson in 2010 that Smith really knew how to do antipoetry, and recently the celebrated Spanish novelist Javier Cercas declared Smith a “Fucking good poet!”

After a year spent living and working in various towns throughout England, Ben Ladouceur spent the summer of 2010 employed at a youth hostel in the hamlet of Blaxhall, Suffolk. He is now living back in Ottawa, his hometown, where he recently launched the chapbook LIME KILN QUAY ROAD (above/ground press, 2011). His poetry has most recently been featured in Ottawater, Cadaverine, and the anthology Pith and Wry: Canadian Poetry (Scrivener Press, ed. Susan McMaster, 2010). Previous chapbooks include: Nuuk, In/Words Chapbook Series, 2008; Alert, Angel House Press, 2009; The Argossey, Apt. 9 Press, 2009; The Bottom of the Sea, The Moose & Pussy, 2011.

+ watch for the ottawa small press book fair, happening the following day at the Jack Purcell Community Centre, Jack Purcell Lane (by Elgin/Gilmour) from noon to 5pm;
http://robmclennan.blogspot.com/2011/02/ottawa-small-press-book-fair-spring.html