Whispers and Cries (and Launches and Boxes)

Happy Friday, folks. We've taken a bit of a blog break this week, to--it seems--spend prodigious amounts of time at Canada Post, and then the USPS, and then in the warehouse, where a minor cascade threatened to and then in fact became a great ol' tumbledown disaster. (We always knew Stephen Henighan's Report on the Afterlife of Culture was a weighty book.) But no spines were damaged, nobody was unduly traumatized by what we'll politely call the 'customer service' at the Fort St. Post Office in Detroit, and we're back to blog another day. 

This morning I'd like to highlight three interviews that happened over the course of this week, the first appearing just yesterday in The Rover; the next in Northern Poetry Review; the last on Allyson Latta's blog. 

The Rover piece is especially specially special, since it's performed by ex-pat Biblio-author Kathleen Winter, and it's introducing Alice Petersen, who's launching her new collection of short stories this Monday at the Atwater Library. Here's what Kathleen had to say in her opening statement:

"I first read Alice Petersen when my friend, author Alice Zorn, sent me one of her stories in the mail, torn out of a literary magazine. I went online to find more of Petersen’s work because I loved the way her writing cuts with precision across dangerous emotional territory. I loved her subversive humour and sensuality of character and imagery. Now Petersen’s first collection, All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis) is set to launch this month in Montreal. Quill & Quire has already called it “a beautiful tribute to human fragility and the inevitability of change.” Authors David Bezmozgis and Mark Anthony Jarman have called it impressive, compelling and wise. I had the honour of asking Alice Petersen to share with Rover a little about the underground streams that nourish her work."

Not faint praise, huh? For the rest of the interview, you can go here. Alice will also be reading at Novel Idea in Kingston on May 11th, 7 PM, with Quattro poet Chantel Lavoie.

As for the others? NPR has done an interview with poetry wunderkind Amanda Jernigan about Groundwork, and Allyson's blog features Rebecca Rosenblum talking about what exactly her seven treasures are. Click the links above if you're interested. And keep checking back next week for fiction updates, and maybe even (if we're lucky and if you all behave very well) a few renegade poems. A bientot!