Malarky at the People's Co-op

As promised, here's a photo-tour of AK's launch yesterday in Vancouver. Many thanks to the wonderful folks at the Co-op for helping put together such a marvellous event (and especial thanks to Grandma Suzu, who provided the goodies, and possibly some teacups?). Take a look! (And if you're playing Spot-the-Author, have a snoop at the second photo especially. Who's that there? Annabel Lyon? Caroline Adderson? Golly.)


AK Reads


& The World Listens

Sideswiped by spring reading

Brian Lynch over at the Georgia Straight has dished up a handful of nummy spring reads, including our own Malarky. Here's what he has to say about AK:

The Irish-born, Vancouver-based writer, essayist, and critic serves up a bold, fragmented first novel filled with grief, politics, black humour, and a sense of the powers and limits of memory. Its axis is an Irish mother, most often referred to simply as “Our Woman”, whose world is sideswiped when she discovers that her son is gay and that her late husband was unfaithful. But she is, as the author puts it, “a woman who refuses to be sunk by what life serves her”, and as her story widens to include issues like the war in Afghanistan and immigration from the Middle East, it joins a long line of ambitious writing that turns the peculiarities of Irish life into a mirror for the world. Due out in April.

Some of those peculiarities might be listed in the anthology you see above & to the right. Maybe? Mebbe not. For previews of new fiction by Amelia Gray, Yasuko Thanh, Ellen Ullman, George Dyson, Bernie Krause, and more, head down the Straight. Turn left at Gibraltar. & last but not least, don't forget AK's launch at the People's Co-op this Sunday, from 3-6 PM! Our fb page tells all. Much like a gossipy woman.

See what happens? A little fanfare and we all pass out.

G'morning, folks, from the Bibliomanse, where it's a nippy 10 degrees and there's malarky in the air. Okay, fine: Malarky in the air, and maybe (sigh) a touch of influenza. There're just 6 measly days till AK's launch at the People's Co-op in Vancouver! It's Sunday afternoon between 3 and 6. That's April 1st, for those of you too congested to count, and it's after noon, which means all Fool's Day hijinks will be over and done with. Ain't nobody putting saran wrap on the toilets of the People's Co-op while AK's in the house. No sir. Really. No pranks. We promise.

Ahem.

April 1st also means we'll be (oh bliss!) kicking off National Poetry Month. I thought I'd set the stage with a little vignette that ran Saturday in the Kingston Whig Standard, and which features our own David Helwig in its listing of local literati. Be warned: it's not an anecdote for the faint-of-heart. Or the pregnant. Or anyone who dislikes loud noises. Helwig, the article notes, was hired at Queen's by George Whalley, who was (apart from a poet) a secret intelligence agent; prior to Whalley Kingston's poetic eccentric-par-excellence was Wallace Havelock Robb. And Robb? Well ...

Robb dressed in robes and struck a ceremonial bell on his property on Abbey Dawn Road when a poet or a pregnant woman came to visit. A visiting Montreal poet died within minutes of striking the bell.

Al Purdy also stopped by but (it seems) was not so easily felled.

A lesson for the ages, folks. Be careful when the trumpets sound. And keep an eye out for David Helwig's translations of Chekhov, which (appropriately enough for spring) are called About Love, and on whose illustrations Seth is now hard at work. It'll be a beaut!