Stuart Ross's Blog, page 27

Celebrating McFadden, Real Resident Reading, Mansfield Launch Party ... and more!

So much has been happening. A week ago last Thursday, David McFadden was surprised in the Mansfield Press office by a 70th-birthday party and the presentation of a festschrift with contributors from across the country.

Dave was lured to his celebratory fate with the promise of a lecture on Chile by Jim Smith. But when he opened the door, his eyes immediately fell on his 96-year-old dad sitting there. And then a big cake that read, "Dave — You're 70! Be calm, honey!"

In a highly secret operation, Jim Smith and I began planning both the festschrift and the party about six months ago. It was pretty tricky getting the various names and addresses and figuring out who was important in Dave's life. I'm sure we missed a lot of people. But we did our best.

The party was a blast. Dave's father (Bill) was there, and Dave's brother (Jack), and Dave's daughter (Jenny) and granddaughter (Chloe). Four generations of McFaddens, and every one of them a wonderful person! Lots of writer friends, and others close to Dave. Stan Bevington, Merlin Homer, John Boyle, Leslie McAllister, Paul Vermeersch, Victor Coleman, Richard Huttel, Margaret Hollingsworth, Paul Dutton…

Denis De Klerck, the publisher of Mansfield Press, was generous enough to offer his beautiful office for the occasion, and to provide some great wine. Stan Bevington and the crew at the Coach House press did a beautiful job on the book, and were also very generous in their billing on this non-commercial venture.

It was a really excellent party. It was a thrill, too, to be able to honour a great writer like Dave, someone who has been a great influence, and a great friend.

Here's the book, A Trip Around McFadden. Contributions from many of the above, plus Diana Hartog, bill bissett, George Bowering, Michael Dennis, and so many more…



Meanwhile, over here in Kingston, where I'm spending the fall as writer-in-residence, October 4 kick-off of the Real Resident Reading Series was a standing-room-only success, with fine readings by Elyse Friedman, Jeff Latosik and Jennifer Londry.

The second instalment of the Real Resident Reading Series takes place tomorrow night (October 18) at 7:30 pm at the Grad Club on Queen's Campus:



And finally, for now, looking forward to this Tuesday night in Toronto, when Mansfield Press celebrates its 10th anniversary with the launch of five new books and guest readings by the poets Denis De Klerck published in his inaugural year. This will also be the launch of my imprint, "a stuart ross book." There's a lot going on in Toronto this Tuesday night, but this'll be a wonderful party. Here are the details:



Over and out.

My new book trailer!

Over and out.

Real Resident Reading Series @ Queen's

Tomorrow marks the first instalment of the reading series I'm curating this fall in Kingston as part of my writer-in-residency at Queen's University. Here's the poster. Imagine it in colour.



Over and out.

Kingston, Pernice, Mansfield

I've been in Kingston nearly two weeks. My writer in residency for the Department of English kicked off officially this past Monday. I have a great apartment in a very quirky, nifty neighbourhood about 20 minutes' walk from the campus, and a great office I share with Carolyn Smart in Watson Hall. Already, I've done a couple of quick class visits and met with a couple of student writers. One of the main purposes of the residency is to give me time to write, and I've been at that, too: a few po...

ReLit hat trick, etc

Much happening, little time to blog:

The Gabriel Gudding workshop a few weeks back was a nifty event with a full house, that house being the new offices of Mansfield Press. It was the first event other than a small-press sale put on by members of the Meet the Presses collective. Gabriel's a smart-as-hell guy, and though I worried we were heading into academic territory in the one-hour lead-up to actually writing, when we got down to it, the prep all came together. We wound up each writing a si...

EXCLUSIVE! POETRY WORKSHOP WITH GABRIEL GUDDING (and a reading too!)

The always surprising Chicago poet Gabriel Gudding leads a poetry workshop in Toronto on August 12, 5:30 to 7:30 at the offices of Mansfield Press, 1 Wiltshire, Unit 204A (near Dupont & Symington).

Here's the skinny:

Encomium and Petition

This workshop will explore the writing of these two kinds of poems. We'll examine contemporary and experimental, as well as ancient and consecrated, examples of these subgenres in order to understand the practices, methods, uses and relevancy of this ancient...

my imprint logo, residency at Queen's University, & other stuff

So, publisher Denis De Klerck at Mansfield Press has given me my own imprint, under which I'll publish some fiction, some non-fiction, and mainly poetry. Have I mentioned this here before? I'm not sure. Anyway, the first two titles that will be released under the "a stuart ross book" imprint are set to launch in October, at the press's 10th-anniversary hoedown. The books are both first collections of poetry: Goodbye, Ukulele, by Leigh Nash, and Stray Dog Embassy, by Natasha Nuhanovic.

I think ...

Cigarettes review from Broken Pencil

Last year, my story collection Buying Cigarettes for the Dog was reviewed by Broken Pencil founder/publisher Hal Niedzviecki. Hal and I had a little spat resulting from the fallout from the review, but I gotta say, mostly he's been a very strong supporter of my work. I never did put the review up here, and I just found it on the Internet. I think it's pretty insightful. I learned from it. This is from Issue 43 of BP. (Hal's theories aside, a small correction is probably in order: in paragraph...

July 25, Toronto: Poetry Boot Camp

I've scheduled a Poetry Boot Camp for mid-summer. Because I so often have return Boot Campers, I make it a point to devise several new writing strategies for each session.

Accept no substitutes.

STUART ROSS'S POETRY BOOT CAMP
Sunday, July 25, 10am-5 pm (w/ 45-minute lunch break)
Christie/Dupont area
$75 includes materials and light snacks

Prepayment guarantees your spot. To register, write Stuart at hunkamooga@sympatico.ca.

BOOT CAMP DESCRIPTION
A relaxed but intensive one-day workshop for beginning ...

Cigarettes reviewed in Event

Nice to see a stray review of Buying Cigarettes for the Dog pop up in the literary journal Event. Here it is:

EVENT

Stuart Ross, Buying Cigarettes for the Dog, Freehand Books, 2009
Amy Jones, What Boys Like and Other Stories, Biblioasis, 2009

Sometimes at an EVENT fiction board meeting, one of our team will put forward an inventive ultra-short manuscript as a 'sorbet piece,' a palate cleanser between other works lined up for publication in upcoming issues. The collected short-fiction works by...