above/ground press TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY reading and launch: Reid, Barwin, Reed, O’Connor + McCann

above/ground press twentieth anniversary reading and launch

readings and new titles by Monty Reid, Gary Barwin, Marthe Reed, Wanda O’Connor + Marcus McCann

Friday, August 23, 2013

The Mercury Lounge, Lounge Level (second floor)

doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm

$8 cover / includes the new issue of The Peter F Yacht Club

Monty Reid (Ottawa ON) ~ Moan Coach

Gary Barwin (Hamilton ON) ~ Seedpod, Microfiche

Marthe Reed (Syracuse NY) ~ After Swann

Wanda O’Connor (Montreal QC) ~ damascene road passaggio, selections

Marcus McCann (Toronto ON) ~ Labradoodle: An Essay on David McGimpsey

The event will also be the launch for the limited-edition chapbook I simply began: above/ground press at 20 [an interview with rob mclennan]. Conducted by Cameron Anstee, the interview chapbook will beproduced by his Apt. 9 Press.

Author bios:

Monty Reid is an Ottawa writer. His most recent full-length collections are Disappointment Island (Chaudiere) and The Luskville Reductions (Brick). Recently he has published chapbooks with various small presses, including above/ground, Apt. 9, Gaspereau, corrupt, red ceilings, and many others. His new mistranslation of Nicolas Guillen’s El Gran Zoo is forthcoming from BuschekBooks. He currently works as Managing Editor of Arc Poetry Magazine and plays guitar and mandolin in the band Call Me Katie. 

He will be launching the chapbook Moan Coach (2013), his fourth above/ground press chapbook after Six Songs for the Mammoth Steppe (2000), cuba A book (2005) and In the Garden (sept series) (2011).

Gary Barwin is a writer, composer, multimedia artist, and the author of 15 books of poetry and fiction. His books include Franzlations (with Craig Conley and Hugh Thomas; New Star), The Obvious Flap (with Gregory Betts; BookThug), The Porcupinity of the Stars (Coach House). He is winner of the 2013 City of Hamilton Arts Award (Writing), the Hamilton Poetry Book of the Year 2011, and co-winner of 2011 Harbourfront Poetry NOW competition, the 2010 bpNichol chapbook award, and the KM Hunter Artist Award. Barwin’s work has been published and performed in Canada and internationally. He received a PhD in music composition from SUNY at Buffalo. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario. garybarwin.com

He will be launching the chapbook Seedpod, Microfiche (2013), his second above/ground press item after “SYNONYMS FOR FISH,” STANZAS #26 (March, 2001).

Marthe Reed is the author of three books: (em)bodied bliss (Moria Books 2013), Gaze (Black Radish Books 2010) and Tender Box, A Wunderkammer (Lavender Ink 2007). A fourth book, Pleth, a collaboration with j/j hastain, will appear in September 2013 from Unlikely Books; a fifth will be published by Lavender Ink (2014). She has also published four chapbooks as part of the Dusie Kollektiv. Her poetry has appeared in New American Writing, Golden Handcuffs Review, New Orleans Review, HOW2, MiPOesias, Fairy Tale Review, Exquisite Corpse, BlazeVOX, and The Offending Adam, among others. Her manuscript, an earth of sweetness dances in the vein, was a finalist in Ahsahta Press’ 2006 Sawtooth Poetry Contest; her manuscript Nights Reading was a finalist for the Elizabeth P. Braddock Prize (Coconut Books). An essay on Claudia Rankine’s The Provenance of Beauty: A South Bronx Travelogue appears in American Letters and Commentary.

She will be launching the chapbook After Swann (2013).

Wanda O’Connor is a graduate of Concordia’s Creative Writing and Classics programs, and most recently completed an MA in Literature with a considerable focus on Robin Blaser’s stunning carmen perpetuum. damascene road passaggio, selections is an excursus through transitions of semi-tones and silence, possessing no address nor addressee nor gaze nor superior flattery. Wanda is currently at work on a long poem manuscript and is an editor at Lemon Hound.

She will be launching the chapbook damascene road passaggio, selections (2013).

Marcus McCann is the author of two previous above/ground titles: Heteroskeptical (2007) and Town in a Long Day of Leaving (2010). Labradoodle is his ninth chapbook. He is a winner of the John Newlove Award and the EJ Pratt Medal for poetry. His two trade collections Soft Where (2009, Chaudiere Books) and The Hard Return (2012, Insomniac) can be found at Glad Day, a bookshop he co-owns with some 20 queer radicals in Toronto. marcusmccann.com

He will be launching the chapbook Labradoodle (2013), his third above/ground press chapbook after Heteroskeptical (2007) and Town in a long day of leaving (2010).