Three Stories in Ryga: A Journal of Provocations

Three of my short stories appear in the inaugural issue of Ryga: A journal of Provocations, a new publication of The Ryga Initiative at Okanagan College, in association with the Okanagan Institute.

Ryga: A Journal of Provocations consists of a single or multiple works by writers whose work the editor considers worthy of readers' attention. It is published as a 275-page book, on good quality recycled paper, with a full colour laminated cover, 4 times a year, and offered for sale at $20 each through the book and periodical trade, and on http://www.ryga.ca/.

Ryga editor Sean Johnston writes:

Carpenter's quietly moving stories are about endurance in the wake of tragedy. They're about the impossibility of fully understanding the world we live in. Bodies of water dominate the stories and the constant, rhythmic movement between the literal and the figurative undersurface emphasizes the fragility of human life.

The narrator in "Truth, Dare, Double-Dare, Promise to Repeat," for instance, longs for the inevitable sexual knowledge of adulthood, but the sinister nature of the impaired vision, the silty water where she and her friends swim, makes the future dark and dangerous.

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Reading at Hypertext and Hypermedia Lab, Carlton University

I'm headed to Ottawa for a few days to do a reading and to check out StoryTrek system at the Hypertext and Hypermedia Lab, a new Digital Humanities research facility at Carleton University. Hypermedia Lab members collaborate on research projects related to digital text and narrative, game studies, theatre, film and new media cultures.

StoryTrek: A System for Itinerant Hypernarrative is a new hypertext system for mobile computing that adds fine-grained locational functionality to the "live hypernarrative" system, an adaptive, online e-literature engine that builds stories on-the-fly from data mined in real time from the internet. With funding from SSHRC's Image, Text, Sound and Technology (ITST) program, the folks at Hypermedia Lab are integrating textual interfaces with GPS and digital mapping tools for the delivery of site-specific information in narrative form, allowing authors to create narratives that are geospatially sensitive and location-specific.

Tuesday, March 9th, 4 pm, I'll read from recent work at Carlton University, 2017 Dunton Tower, wherever that is. Hopefully someone with GPS and digital mapping tools for the delivery of site-specific information in narrative form will guide me to the venue. The reading is presented by The Department of English and The Hypertext and Hypermedia Lab. A reception will follow. It's all free and all are welcome!
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