some reviews + interviews re: On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024)

I've been feeling very fortunate for the amount of reviews/interviews around my collection of short stories, On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), a book not yet a year old. And might we see you this afternoon at the Made in Alta Vista Market? Jim Tubman Chevrolet Rink, 2185 Arch Street, Ottawa (outside the  Canterbury Recreation Complex). I'll have copies of On Beauty available for sale (along with a whole slew of other books/chapbooks etcetera) from 4-8pm. Come on by! And don't forget I'm reading in Ottawa with Amanda Earl and Christine McNair this coming Sunday! June 1, 2pm at the Lieutenant's Pump at 361 Elgin Street (most likely from a slew of unpublished work, fyi)

I recently caught Andrew Torry's review over at Alberta Views, which is pretty good, but it was Salma Hussain via The Temz Review that is easily my favourite (she really gets what the book was attempting/doing, etcetera). There's also Michael Greenstein via The Seaboard Review, Joyce MacPhee via Apartment613, Natasha Baldin via The Charlatan, the piece "8 Alberta Books That Don't Follow the Rules" at ReadAlberta.ca (is mine an "Alberta Book"? I mean, it was produced by a publisher in Alberta; does that make it an "Alberta Book"?), Alice Violett via her blog and J Jill Robinson, via Goodreads. So nice! Hugely appreciating how many folk are responding at all, let alone so positively. As well, further reviews of my work I've linked over here, on my author website.

There have even been a few interviews around the collection, which is pretty cool. Hollay Ghadery and I discussed the collection as part of the New Books Network podcast not long back, via JWT BookAdventures, reposted for reading ease at my clever substack, with Jamie Tennant over at his podcast last fall, with Ivy Grimes via her substack, and with the delightfully-brilliant Alan Neal as part of CBC Ottawa's All in a Day, which was enormously cool. As well, further interviews I've done exist over here, in case such appeals (there's a whole bunch of them, including some other recent ones). Here's hoping I can place the follow-up collection, which has been making the rounds since last summer (and hopefully this year I can complete the novel-in-progress that sits between the two collections, finally). And, naturally, there's always that small part of me that wants to get all of this off my plate so I can begin to dig deep into some new prose-thoughts I've been having lately around The Crystal Palace, of all places. Where might that go?