Tightrope Books
The writer walks a tightrope balanced on art, suspending disbelief, working without any net except the one woven with words.
Click on Author's name to go directly to their title.
 |
Ian Burgham |
|
In The Dark |
|
IV Lounge Nights |
|
Andrew Daley |
|
George Fetherling |
|
Stacey May Fowles |
|
Paul Hong |
|
Sandra Kasturi |
|
Emily Pohl-Weary |
|
Linda Rogers |
|
Fraser Sutherland |
|
Myna Wallin |
IV Lounge Nights
Edited by Alex Boyd and Myna Wallin
Grab your martini, the I.V. Lounge is Toronto’s coziest place to kick back and listen to fiction or poetry. For ten years, every other Friday night, that’s exactly what has happened at the I.V. Lounge reading series, as fiction writers read alongside poets, emerging talent next to established talent, and local writers with those passing through town.
I.V. Lounge Nights is an anthology that gathers twenty-nine talented writers together to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the series, and relaxing with literature on a Friday night.
Fiction and poetry from Ray Hsu, David Clink, Carmine Starnino, Karen Solie, Matthew Tierney, Goran Simic, Rob Winger, Michael V Smith, Steve McOrmond, Dani Couture, Evie Christie, Leigh Kotsilidis, Sue Sinclair, Catherine Graham, Sharon McCartney, Molly Peacock , Michael Bryson, Shaun Smith, Matthew Trafford , James Grainger, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Emily Schultz, Andrew Daley, Moez Surani, Jessica Westhead, Alayna Munce, Heather J. Wood, Stacey May Fowles, and Alexandra Leggatt.
Be Good
Fiction by Stacey May Fowles
Read
an excerpt in the Danforth Review
Be Good interweaves
competing accounts of the same series of events: love affairs, failed
relationships, obsessions, and moving from familiarity. Each of the characters
has a distinct persona, which is shattered by the end of the book. Morgan,
the bad girl, finally comes to terms with herself in a B & D relationship
with a much older man. Hannah, the good girl, is revealed to have
a secret obsession with Morgan, which ultimately expresses itself sexually.
Estella, the spoiled rich girl, who self mutilates in order to
find some connection with her increasingly empty life. Jacob, Morgan's
artist boyfriend cannot move away from the drama and excitement that Morgan
brought to his life, even after their relationship has ended. Finn,
the man that Morgan hopes will bring her to a "normal life"
and who turns out to have sexual secrets of his own.
The experiences of these twenty something characters are often their first
taste of departure from the familiar, from home, revealing their ongoing
alienation and isolation where the only reliable narrator is the future.
Author Bio:
Stacey May Fowles' written work has been published
in various digital and literary publications, including Fireweed, The
Absinthe Literary Review, Kiss Machine, subTERRAIN, Lickety Split and
Hive Magazine. Her non-fiction piece “Friction Burn” appeared
in the widely acclaimed anthology Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of
Gender and Conformity (ed. Matt Bernstein Sycamore, Seal Press.) She has
work forthcoming in the anthology Transits: Stories from In-between (Invisible
Publishing) and Cahoots magazine. She is a recent recipient of the Toronto
Arts Council, Ontario Arts Council and Canada Council for the Arts grants
for works in progress.
Manual for Emigrants
In Fraser Sutherland's latest collection of poems, Manual for Emigrants, all the myriad aspects of exile and belonging are explored in ways both witty and moving. The voices of the outsider and the voices of those who believe they belong are juxtaposed in an impassioned dialogue that is never finished. This is a poet who manages to ask hard questions, take a political stance, and still have humour and compassion.
Bio:
Fraser Sutherland has made a practice of hanging around people whose first
language isn't his own, and are otherwise as different as possible from
him. Which is surprising, or maybe isn't, because he is descended from
an unbroken line of Highland Scots, was born in northern Nova Scotia,
and has lived in Halifax, Ottawa, Montreal, and Nelson, B.C. He now resides
in Toronto.
Among other jobs, Sutherland has been a journalist, book reviewer, editor,
and lexicographer. Mostly he's been a writer. At last count, he's published
14 books, of which Manual for Emigrants is his eighth selection of poetry.
Some of his work has been translated into Albanian, Farsi, French, Italian,
and Serbo-Croat. He handles his own translation into English.
Excerpts:
ENOUGH
We have enough prairies, mountains, lakes, and seas.
We have enough people to walk, climb, and swim in them. Enough room for them to do it. Enough room to go around for people who don't know anywhere else to be. Who don't want to be anything else than what they are.
Us.
We keep our distance. That's how we get along.
We don't want your sweat, your cooking smells, the jabber of your markets, what you call your music leaking out under from your closed doors, worse your open doors. You want to huddle, you can huddle where you came from.
Don't get in the way of our distance.
The Stone Skippers
In The Stone Skippers, Burgham launches dazzling poems that explore the
central core of our humanity upon the Canadian literary landscape. The
poems examine how love is a
territory we map with little skill. The speaker returns again and again
to the distances we set up or have imposed upon ourselves by relationships
of desire and love, all against the motif of conversations - inner
conversations, day-to-day conversations, one-sided conversations, unfinished
and halting
conversations.
As Canadian poet Carolyn
Smart has remarked, "Ian Burgham's
collection, The Stone Skippers is a rare volume: a book filled with generous
emotion as well as craft and polish. What is said is as important as how
it is said. Each line break, each simile, each rhythmic construct: all
these things display both care and wisdom, and that's a treasure."
"Here's a gifted new poet, madly dashing his lovetorn heart against the poetic stones of the universe. Impetuous, inspired, wild, unadorned, unrepentant, desperate…this is a voice you don't want to miss." - Di Brandt, winner of the Governor General's Award for Poetry, short list winner of the Griffin Prize for Excellence in Poetry. (Canada)
"There's exceptionally
thoughtful and complex writing here, writing that always seems to enter
emotions with great courage and finesse. These poems are
genuinely moving." - Barry Dempster, short list winner of the Governor
General's Award for Poetry and winner of the Confederation Poetry Prize
(Canada)
"These poems
mark the emergence of a mature and distinctive poetic voice. The language
is sure and elegant….This is the work of one who has a rare quiet
musicality, the ear for the possibilities of language." - Alexander
McCall Smith, award winning author of the Number One Ladies Detective
Agency series (UK)
"I often judge the worth of poems by my willingness to return to a book out of necessity. The Stone Skippers is such a book" - Roland Leach, Poet and recipient of the Newcastle Prize for Poetry (Australia)
The Animal Bridegroom
In the fantastical world of Sandra Kasturi's poetry, myth intersects with reality resulting in a unique dream world that even those who generally shy away from poetry find irresistible. Filled with instances of role reversal, shapeshifting and gender bending, the feminist streak running through these poems becomes a bedtime story whose ending is suspect, unexpected and filled with dark humour. Whether running with the wolves, or sleeping with them, Kasturi uses her sly words to turn everyday conventions inside out.
About Sandra Kasturi's work:
"A deft ebb and flow of sentences and sentence fragments ...The consequent surge in aural and linguistic intensity gives voice and shape to Kasturi's anxieties, transforming foreboding into awe, even amusement ...along with Kasturi, we all go under." - John Barton
Read a review: http://blogto.com/books_lit/2007/07/the_tale_of_an_animal_bridegroom/
Go to : http://sandrakasturi.com/
Tell Your Sister
How badly would you like to undo the terrible consequence of a rash decision you made long ago?
In their final year
of high-school fate has dealt former friends Aaron Fenn and Dean Higham
two very
different hands. For Dean, the year is just a matter of killing time before
he can leave their small Ontario town of
Hereward for McGill
University. For Aaron, it is a year of abandonment, boarding houses, bad
timing and bad luck.
As an adult Dean, now a successful Toronto condo salesman, faces the question, "How do you undo the past?" after a chance encounter with the sister of his childhood friend. He returns to the town in which he and Aaron were once friends and enemies to look for some concrete link between the present and that past and with that, some place of absolution for the part he played in Aaron's fate.
Read a review : http://www.blogto.com/books_lit/2007/06/tell_your_sister_a_tale_of_regret_and_consequences/
Go To : http://www.andrewdaley.net/
In
The Dark
Stories From The Supernatural
Featuring twenty-eight works by Canadian authors that encompass everything from madmen and ghosts to poltergeists and spooks, In the Dark offers something for everyone.
Beginning with the introduction right through to the last piece, the contributors grapple with ghosts and various denizens of the unknown in unexpected ways, pinning them to the page with words.
With In the Dark, editors Myna Wallin and Halli Villegas bring together a collection of stories that are by turns witty, eerie and frightening.
Every story is as
unique as the dark shadows of each writer's imagination, the place where
all supernatural stories begin.
In the Dark Contributors:
Sandra Kasturi, Catherine Graham, J.Y.T. Kennedy, J. H. Korda, Dennis
E. Bolen, Priscila Uppal, Pelayo Matute, Katherine King, Brett Alexander
Savory, Michael Kelly, Sue Bowness, John Barlow, Stephen Humphrey, Andrew
Leith Macrae, Heather Wood, P.G. Tarr, Gemma Files, Halli Villegas, Barb
Rebelo, Colin Martin, Ewan Whyte, Christopher Canniff, Joanna Sword, Bruce
Meyer, Myna Wallin, Isabella Colalillo-Katz, E.P. Leeson, Ursula Pflug,
Elana Wolff
Your
Love is Murder
or the Case of the Mangled Pie
Short
stories by Paul Hong
ISBN 0-9738645-2-4
CAN $14.95 USA $12.95
June 2006
Fall in love with Julia, an adolescent guerrilla; witness Robin wax philosophic with Batman on regret and loss. Paul Hong unloads animals, superheros, Korean children, and a Native elder into a big city that rhymes with Doronto. Any reader is like the detective that weaves through this collection of short stories to uncover everyday mysteries. Hong's stories are a blend of hearsay, folklore and opaque traditions leading us to the simple treasures buried beneath our feet.
Toronto writer
Paul Hong's short fiction, inspired by everything from religious parables
to pulp fiction, has appeared in Blood and Aphorisms, Broken
Pencil, Mix Magazine, Kiss Machine and in the anthology
Geeks, Misfits and Outlaws edited by Zoe Whittall. He has also
been the advice columnist known as Mr. Well-Hung for Kiss Machine Magazine
since 2001.
ISBN 0-9738645-3-2
CAN $14.95 USA $12.95
June 2006
The poems in this collection are erotic and wry, a first hand tour through the world of today's woman for whom desire is no longer a dirty word. Wallin's poems explore where the sensual woman has been and where she's going. If Candice Bushnell was a poet, these are the sort of poems she would write.
Myna Wallin
is a poet, prose writer and small press publisher. Her work has appeared
in many literary journals and anthologies including: The Algonquin Square
Table Anthology, Eye Weekly, Taddle Creek Magazine, Surface and Symbol,
The Annex Echo, My Lump in the Bed; Love Poems for George W. Bush, edited
by Stuart Ross, Moosecall #1: Mating in the Bleak City/Romance in the
Urban Wilderness, and Kiss Machine, the Disposable Issue.
Myna is also the host of "In Other Words," the monthly literary
radio show on CKLN 88.1 FM.
What reviewers have said about Myna Wallin's work:
"Vulnerable
Positions is a collection of mostly erotic poetry, exploring the wonders
of love
and the act(s) of sex, human existence and experience. There is a feeling
of physicality and sensuality throughout each of these poems."
- Dan Johnson, Word: Toronto's Literary Calendar
"A sly, sensuous imagination is behind the poetry and prose of Vulnerable
Positions. Myna Wallin is a romantic with a wary psychological wit,
daydreaming among the billboards and broadcasts of the latest faux reality.
If you're looking for a perceptive and lively collection which contains
at least one poem about a woman having a passionate
affair with a small black weasel, this is a chapbook you'll love."
- Steve Venright, Spiral Agitator
George Fetherling and His Work
Edited by Linda Rogers
ISBN 0-9738645-1-6
92 pages
Can. $14.95
U.S.A. $12.95
The Toronto Star has called George Fetherling, the poet, novelist and cultural commentator, a "legendary" figure in Canadian writing. The Montreal Gazette speaks of him as "a mercurial, liberal intelligence… the kind of which English Canada has too short a supply." For nearly forty years he has been the professional outsider who is nevertheless at the centre of things, a cyclone of activity in the arts generally and a supportive presence for those who labour there alongside him. His more than fifty books, including Selected Poems and the influential memoir Travels by Night, form a persuasive argument for a distinct Canadian brand of humanism, rooted in our own time and place but honouring the past while acknowledging the cosmopolitan character of Canadian cities. In George Fetherling and His Work, Linda Rogers brings together a range of critics, academics and fellow poets from across the country to discuss various aspects of his life and ideas. Readers who know Fetherling's writing in a variety of genres will gain fresh insight from this retrospective collection. Those coming to Fetherling for the first time will find the book a useful introduction.
George Fetherling is the contemporary embodiment of the versatile person-of-letters tradition, the author of scores of books in a half dozen genres. He is also a cultural activist. Since the 1960s he has been a stalwart of Canadian independent publishing and a vigorous commentator in the national press. He lives in Vancouver.
Linda Rogers
is a poet, novelist, children's writer and anthologist, and past president
of the League of Canadian Poets. She lives in Victoria.
By Emily Pohl-Weary
 |
Video Poems - High-Speed Connections (large files): |
||||
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|
Video Poems - Slower Connections (smaller files): |
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
ISBN 0-9738645-0-8
54 pages
Can. $12.95
U.S.A. $10.95
In Iron-on Constellations, Emily Pohl-Weary sifts through the surface dirt, grime and debris of the city to reveal the isolation, illness, love and sexuality lurking beneath. Through short, confident bursts that act like graffiti on an alley wall, her subversive poems reveal hidden layers of emotion and the beauty of the everyday.
What the reviewers say about Iron-on Constellations:
"Poetry
rarely does anything for me, but I like these. They're sad, and hopeful,
and refuse the easy slide into numbness."
-Jim Munroe, author of An Opening Act of Unspeakable Evil
"These
sensual poems have everything to do with the physical. Ugliness and pain
are expressed in terms of a body slammed against the world, whether it's
the world of machines or the natural world or some mundane thing made
magic by juxtaposition."
-Ken Sparling, author of Dad Says He Saw You at the Mall
Emily Pohl-Weary has been called "the new, sleazy, Judy Blume" (Winnipeg Uniter), "an unconventional and modern-day hero to many young female writers" (Young People's Press) and the "mistress of the empty girls" (Broken Pencil).
Her first
novel, A Girl Like Sugar, about a girl who's haunted by her dead
rock star boyfriend, was published in 2004. The Globe and Mail called
it "wonderfully explicit" and "quietly redemptive."
Earlier that year, she toured across North America with her critically
acclaimed anthology, Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers
and Freaks. In 2002, she co-authored Better to Have Loved: The
Life of Judith Merril, a biography of her grandmother's life, which
won a Hugo Award and was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award.
More Reviews :