Category: reading

Book Launch Tonight: Leonard Cohen You’re Our Man

I have a poem in this fine book. If I were in Montreal I’d be reading at the launch tonight. If you happen to be in Montreal, check it out.

7:30 PM
Thursday, Sept. 17, 2009
Westmount High School Auditorium
4350 Ste. Catherine St. West
Westmount/Montreal, Quebec
Tickets are $5 and available at the door.
Doors open at 7 P.M.

Poets reading tonight include:

Ann Weinstein, Jason Camlot, Ann Lloyd, David Solway, Donna Yates-Adelman, Michael Mirolla, Jeffrey Mackie, Angela Leuck, John Fretz, Grace Moore, Meredith Darling, Rona Feldman Shefler(a classmate of Cohen’s,) Sue Borgersen(arriving today from Nova Scotia,) erika n. white, Sandra Sjollema, Ryan Ruddick(Westmount High teacher,) Brian Campbell, and Eleni Zisimatos, Ehab Lotayef, Lesley Pasquin, and standing in for Margaret Atwood will be Westmount High Student, Elisha Hill, reading Atwood’s poem, “Setting Leonard to Music.”

Proceeds from this event will support the Foundation for Public Poetry’s “Leonard Cohen Poet-In-Residence” program at Westmount High(Cohen’s old high school.) This initiative is a collaboration between Westmount High School, the Foundation for Public Poetry, and the Westmount High Alumni Association.

Books are $25 and will be available for sale and signing.

More info: http://publicpoetry.wordpress.com/
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J. R. Carpenter
Lucksoap.com

Next Stop, SappyFest!

Literary types of all stripes will invade SappyFest this year. Thursday, July 30, I’ll pack a suitcase full of zines and novels and join the migration eastward.

SappyFest is a little independent music festival produced annually in partnership with the Ok.Quoi?! Contemporary Arts Festival, Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre. The festival takes place July 31 – August 2, 2009, in Sackville, New Brunswick, the centre of the universe.

If you happen to be in the centre of the universe that weekend, come visit me at the Zine Fair, Saturday August 1, 12 to 4 PM at the United Church. There will be participants from across Canada, a kids workshop, a presentation by Andy Brown (Conundrum Press) and readings by Jeffrey Makie, Jaime Forsthythe and Dawn-Aeron Wason.

Sunday, August 2, 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM, check out the The Vogue Writers Block, a multi-media event at The Vogue Theater (Sackville’s art deco movie theater) featuring The Joe, Catherine Kidd, J.R. Carpenter, Lezlie Lowe, Andrea Dorfman, Ian Roy, and Thesis. I’ll reading a section of my novel, Words the Dog Knows, that traverses three different electronic literature projects (How I Loved the Broken Things of Rome, Entre Ville, and in absentia).

Now a registered non-profit organization, SappyFest Incorporated, the festival was founded in 2006 by the good people of Sappy Records, Julie Doiron, Jon Claytor and Paul Henderson.

Ok.Quoi?! is an interdisciplinary festival of contemporary art, focusing on video, audio, new and independent music produced by Struts Gallery & Faucet Media Arts Centre in partnership with SappyFest. The works of over 50 artists will be presented over 6 days in a variety of screenings, installations, concerts, broadcasts and performances. Alongside exciting international and national work, Ok.Quoi?! features new and innovative projects from local and regional artists. All events save for the Last Chance for Summer Romance concert and barbecue are free, and open to all ages.

More info: SappyFest & Ok.Quoi?!


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J. R. Carpenter
Lucksoap.com

Vallum Cafe/Culture Reading Series – July 23, 7pm

I will be reading some of my most poem sounding prose in Montreal this Thursday when Vallum: contemporary poetry reading series Cafe/Culture returns with fantastic lineup of Oana Avasilichioaei, J.R. Carpenter, Holly Luhning and Anne Cimon grace the ultra-cool Le Zigoto Cafe, 5731 du Parc (just below Bernard). Door prizes and a surprise musical guest! It all starts at 7 p.m. on Thursday, July 23rd, 2009.


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J. R. Carpenter
Lucksoap.com

Nuit Blanche Readings from Le Livre de chevet @ theCCA Bookstore

I will be reading from Les huit quartiers de sommeil at the Canadian Centre for Architecture Saturday February 28, 2009, as part of a Nuit Blanche slumber provoked by Daniel Canty, Haunted by the images of Ms Annie Descôteaux and Mr Pol Turgeon. Graphic Design Feed. Scenography Amuse.

The table of contents presents – in collaboration with the CCA Bookstore and Nuit Blanche – 16 premonitory readings from Le Livre de chevet, and the launch of www.latabledesmatieres.com

Readings by Salvador Alanis, Mathieu Arsenault, Oana Avasilichioaei, Nathalie Bachand, Daniel Canty, J.R. Carpenter, Angela Carr, Renée Gagnon, Louis-Philippe Hébert (Onil M.), Annie Lafleur, Erín Moure, Steve Savage (Desavage), Mélisandre Schofield, Franz Schürch, François Turcot and Jacob Wren

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Can you hear, deep down in sleep, the murmur of books? Le Livre de chevet conveys you into their secret. This collective and more or less practical tome, to be published in the Fall of 2009, is designed to accompany and to alter your slumber.

We invite you, on this All Nighter, into the darkness of the CCA bookstore. From 8 pm to 1 am, 16 authors from the book to come will step up, every 20 minutes, into the ghostly glow of dreams, to give you, at the sound of the alarm, with clocklike precision, a premonitory reading in English or in French.

Over the course of the evening, 16 sleeping places in Le Livre de chevet will also be auctioned off to the highest bidding dreamers.

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Le Livre de chevet
Montréal, Le Quartanier, 240 pages
ISBN 978-2-923400-60-0
To be published in fall 2009
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All-Nighter 2009
Saturday February 28
to Sunday March 1
from 8 pm to 1 am

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CCA Bookstore
1920 rue Baile
Montreal (QC) H3H 2S6
t 514 939-7028

www.cca.qc.ca/Bookstore
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J. R. Carpenter
Lucksoap.com

Reading List 2008

I got a massive amount of writing done in 2008. That made it made it a strange year for reading. Early on in the year I appear to have had a ghosts and devils fixation. What was I thinking, reading Will Self, How the Dead Live and Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita back to back?

Between January and May I read and re-read a lot of chapters, articles and essays related to the texts I was working with in the Tributaries & Text-Fed Streams electronic literature project. Many books were harmed in the making of that work, some are pictured here, but few of those fragmentary readings are represented in the list below.

I had a great but short lived burst of short story reading in the spring while I was writing the postcard stories for the in absentia electronic literature project, but once that piece was launched I had to focus on finishing writing my first novel, Words the Dog Knows. It was a cold, wet summer, which was fine as I barely left my apartment. To get through the long days of writing toward impossibly short deadlines I soon realized that I couldn’t read anything even remotely resembling anything I would ever write. So it was a summer of long post-colonial novels written by American women.

I thought I’d get back to my regular reading habits once Words the Dog Knows went to the printer, but despite a brief window were I got to catch up on a few books written by friends, most of my fall reading was muddled by travel. Between book tours, conferences, lectures and meetings I was on the road non-stop from mid-October to mid-November. All I can say is, Gulliver’s Travels makes great sense on trains and airplanes.

My New Year’s reading resolution: to read Don Quixote in it’s entirety. Toward this end I have booked a one week vacation on a Cuban beach. The things I do for literature!

Here, from last to first, are books read in 2008:

  • Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus
  • Sherwood Anderson, Winesburg, Ohio
  • Carson McCullers, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter
  • Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels
  • Salman Rushdie, ed., Best American Short Stories 2008
  • Jonathan Lenthem, Girl in a Landscape
  • Marguerite Duras, Moderato Cantabile
  • Paul D. Miller, Rhythm Science
  • Mariko & Jillian Tamaki, Skim
  • Ernest Hemingway, In Our Time
  • Emily Holton, Dear Canada Council / Our Starland
  • Liane Keightly, Seven Openings of the head
  • Jacques Derrida, Paper Machine
  • N. Katherine Hayles, Writing Machines
  • Joe Brainard, I Remember
  • Harold Brodkey, Stories in an Almost Classical Mode
  • Cynthia Ozick, Trust
  • Maya Merrick, The Hole Show
  • Kate Pullinger, A Little Stranger
  • Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go
  • Leni Zumas, Farewell Navigator
  • Jason Camlot, The Debaucher
  • Keri Hulme, The Bone People
  • Ha Jin, Waiting
  • Amy Tan, The Hundred Secret Senses
  • Barbara Kingsolver, The Poisonwood Bible
  • Robertson Davies, Tempest-Tost
  • Claire Messud, The Hunters
  • Joy Williams, State of Grace
  • Julie Doucet, 365 Days
  • Barry Hannah, Geronimo Rex
  • Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle
  • Steven Heighton, The Shadow Boxer
  • Michael Crummey, Flesh and Blood
  • Kerstin Ekman, Blackwater
  • Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss
  • G. V. Desani, All About H. Hatterr
  • Michale Hoeullebecq, The Elementary Particles
  • Rick Moody, Demonology
  • Goethe, Faust
  • Christopher Funkhouser, Prehistoric Digital Poetry
  • Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
  • Jeff Parker, The Back of the Line
  • Etgar Keret, Missing Kissinger
  • Raymond Carver, Short Cuts
  • Lorrie Moore, Like Life
  • Maurice Blanchot, Death Sentence
  • Jean Rhys, Wide Sargasso Sea
  • Eva Figes, Light
  • Elizabeth Bishop, The Complete Poems 1927-1979
  • Maureen Adams, Shaggy Muses
  • Mary Robison, Why Did I Ever
  • Valerie Joy Kalynchuk, All Day Breakfast
  • Lawrence Weschler, Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet Of Wonders
  • Flan O’Brien, At Swim-Two-Birds
  • Rilke, Duino Elegies & The Sonnets to Orpheus
  • Anya Ulinich, Petropolis
  • David McGimpsey, Sitcom
  • Jeff Parker, Ovenman
  • Will Self, How the Dead Live
  • Mikhail Bulgakov, The Master and Margarita
  • Mark Amerika, META/DATA

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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com

    WORDS THE DOG KNOWS – Toronto Launch – Monday, November 17, 2008

    We invite you to join us in celebration of the publication of Emily Holton’s latest book, Dear Canada Council/Our Starland (Montreal: Conundrum Press) and J.R. Carpenter’s first novel, Words the Dog Knows (Montreal: Conundrum Press). Animations, music, and two beautiful books – take your pick! – they’re all great excuses to come drink too much in Parkdale on a Monday night.

    A This Is Not A Reading Series event presented by Pages Books & Magazines, Conundrum Press and EYE WEEKLY.

    Monday, November 17, 2008, 7:00pm
    Gladstone Hotel Ballroom
    1214 Queen Street West
    Toronto, ON

    J. R. Carpenter’s long-awaited first novel Words the Dog Knows follows the paths of a quirky cast of characters through the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Theo and Simone set about training Isaac the Wonder Dog to: sit, come, stay. Meanwhile, he has fifty girlfriends to keep track of and a master plan for the rearrangement of every stick in every alleyway in Mile End. He introduces Theo and Simone to their neighbours. He trains them to see with the immediacy of a dog’s-eye-view. Words the Dog Knows isn’t a story about a dog. It’s a story because of a dog. Walking though the the jumbled intimacy of Montreal’s back alleyways day after day, Theo and Simone come to see their neighbourhood ­ and each other ­ in a whole new way. For more information on Words the Dog Knows please visit: http://luckysoap.com/stories/wordsthedogknows.html

    Emily Holton’s novella Dear Canada Council is an illustrated plea for plane tickets, in which the narrator details her plans to “found a town”. Complete with Incas, crickets, and a small family of deaf-mutes, her written request doubles as what also might be the craziest love poem you’ve ever read. Awestruck and sleepless in Hamilton, she is haunted by visions of celebrity reporter Brian Linehan, obsessed with a young boy she saw once on the TV news, and just wants to do better, get married, and wear a sash, a red mayor’s sash. Can’t Canada Council help her out? // Emily Holton’s Our Starland is a novella broken into small, dreamy pieces. Flash by flash, its pieces ferry a cast of characters through a season as they navigate the fruit picking diaspora of the Okanagan Valley. Hitchhiking, nightwalking, these characters remember the constellations wrong, leave their daughters alone, and sleep outside, once again, but with a sleeping bag this time. For more information on Dear Canada Council / Our Starland please visit: http://www.conundrumpress.com/nt_holton2.html

    J. R. Carpenter: http://luckysoap.com
    Emily Holton: http://www.emilyholton.com
    Conundrum Press: http://conundrumpress.com
    THIS IS NOT A READING SERIES: http://www.pagesbooks.ca/events.php

    So many dear friends turned out for the NYC and Montreal launches we can’t wait to take the show on the road. Here’s some of the fun we’ve had so far:


    NYC launch at KGB Bar, Thursday October 23, 2008


    Montreal at Sky Blue Door, Friday November 7, 2008
    Maya Merrick at the he Book Table


    Montreal at Sky Blue Door, Friday November 7, 2008
    We love you Andy Brown.


    Montreal at Sky Blue Door, Friday November 7, 2008


    Montreal at Sky Blue Door, Friday November 7, 2008
    It’s this much fun!
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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com

    The Pilot Reading Series October Edition

    Presented by Matrix magazine, Pop Montreal and the QWF.

    J.R. Carpenter
    a. rawlings
    Darren Bifford
    Michelle Sterling
    Rebecca Silver Slayter

    hosted by Mike Spry
    music by Billy Fong Parade

    Sunday October 26th
    Bar Blizzarts, 3956A St. Laurent, Montreal
    doors @ 9 – readings @ 9:30

    J. R. Carpenter grew up on a farm in Nova Scotia and has lived in Montreal since 1990. She is a two-time winner of the CBC Quebec Short Story Competition and a Web Art Finalist in the Drunken Boat Panliterary Awards 2006. Her electronic literature has been presented internationally. Her short fiction has been broadcast on CBC Radio, translated into French, and anthologized in Le livre de chevet, Short Stuff, Lust for Life and In Other Words, and has appeared in journals including Geist, The New Quarterly and Matrix. Her first novel, Words the Dog Knows, is published by Conundrum Press (Montreal, 2008). http://luckysoap.com

    a.rawlings’ first book, Wide slumber for lepidopterists (Coach House Books, 2006, Alcuin Award recipient, Gerald Lampert Award nominee), documents a night in the life of Northern Ontario. rawlings co-edited Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (The Mercury Press, 2005), co-organized The Lexiconjury Reading Series (2001-6), and hosted Heart of a Poet (2005). She currently facilitates sound/text/movement workshops for all ages. a.rawlings’ escapist fantasies feature kynlíf með álfum, Ghentish snails, and a theremin; and yes, someday, she will escape.

    Darren Bifford currently lives in Montreal, where he teaches philosophy at Champlain College, St. Lambert. He is the reviews editor for Matrix.

    Michelle Sterling lives and longs for the nineties in Montreal. She is a member of the Soulgazers writing collective and her work has appeared in Maisonneuve, Islands Fold, $2 Comes With A Mixtape, and The Art of Trespassing by Invisible Publishing.

    Rebecca Silver Slayter is an MA student in creative writing at Concordia University and an editor of Brick literary journal. She has published fiction in places like The Antigonish Review and The Hart House Review, and won a Hart House Poetry Prize and a Hart House Fiction prize in 2003 (2nd place in both cases).
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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com

    New York City Launch – Words the Dog Knows – KGB Bar, October 23, 2008

    Dear Friends. We invite you to join us in celebrating the publication of J.R. Carpenter’s first novel, WORDS THE DOG KNOWS (Montreal: Conundrum Press) with an evening of readings from Montreal and New York-area fiction writers that will take you from the swamplands of Florida to the streets of Montreal and onward to points beyond. J.R. will be joined by New Yorker Karen Russell, fellow Conundrum author Corey Frost, and Canadian New Yorker Nora Maynard.

    KGB Bar http://kgbbar.com/calendar/
    85 East 4th Street, New York City, NY
    Thursday, October 23, 2008
    7:00 pm – 9:00 pm (free)

    J. R. Carpenter’s long-awaited first novel Words the Dog Knows follows the paths of a quirky cast of characters through the Mile End neighbourhood of Montreal. Theo and Simone set about training Isaac the Wonder Dog to: sit, come, stay. Meanwhile, he has fifty girlfriends to keep track of and a master plan for the rearrangement of every stick in every alleyway in Mile End. He introduces Theo and Simone to their neighbours. He trains them to see with the immediacy of a dog’s-eye-view. Words the Dog Knows isn’t a story about a dog. It’s a story because of a dog. Walking though the the jumbled intimacy of Montreal’s back alleyways day after day, Theo and Simone come to see their neighbourhood ­ and each other ­ in a whole new way.


    For more information on Words the Dog Knows, including a full launch event listing and ordering information, please visit: http://luckysoap.com/stories/wordsthedogknows.html or Conundrum Press: http://conundrumpress.com

    J.R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of the CBC Quebec Short Story Competition and a fellow of Yaddo, Ucross and The Vermont Studio Center. Her short fiction has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies and her electronic literature has been presented internationally. Words the Dog Knows is her first novel. http://luckysoap.com

    Karen Russell is the author of the critically acclaimed short story collection, ST. LUCY’S SCHOOL FOR GIRLS RAISED BY WOLVES (Knopf). Karen’s fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Granta, and Zoetrope, among others. She is currently at work on a novel. http://www.randomhouse.com/author/results.pperl?authorid=70463

    Corey Frost is the author of MY OWN DEVICES: AIRPORT VERSION (Montreal: Conundrum Press). Corey has performed his stories at Lollapalooza, The Perpetual Motion Roadshow, and at festivals around the world. http://www.coreyfrost.com

    Nora Maynard     is a winner of the Bronx Council on the Arts Chapter One Competition and a fellow of the Ragdale Foundation, the Millay Colony, Ucross, and Blue Mountain Center. She is a columnist for Apartment Therapy Media’s The Kitchn, and is completing her first novel, BURNT HILL ROAD. http://www.noramaynard.com
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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com

    Words the Dog Knows

    Words the Dog Knows, J. R. Carpenter
    conundrum press (Montreal)
    October 2008
    978-1-894994-34-7
    Novel
    5×7 inches, 168 pages
    $15 CDN / US

    Words the Dog Knows is now available in many fine bookstores including some of my favorites: Pages, in Toronto, and the Drawn & Quarterly store on Bernard Street in Montreal. The best place to order the book online is from the conundrum press website.

    Words the Dog Knows isn’t a story about a dog. It’s a story because of a dog.

    Words the Dog Knows Launch Events:

    NYC – Thursday October 23, KGB Bar
    85 East 4th Street, 7-9 pm
    with readings by Karen Russell, Nora Maynard and Corey Frost
    more info

    Montreal – Friday November 7, Sky Blue Door
    5403 B Saint-Laurent, 7-11 pm
    also launching: J. R. Carpenter, in absentia
    in association with Dare-Dare

    Montreal – Sunday November 9, Blizzarts
    3956A Saint-Laurent, 8 pm
    with Harold Hoefle and Katia Grubisic.

    Toronto – Monday November 17, This Is Not A Reading Series
    Gladstone Ballroom, 1214 Queen Street West, 7:30 pm
    also launching: Emily Holton, OUR STARLAND/DEAR CANADA COUNCIL
    more info
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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com

    Words the Dog Knows – Reading at The Yellow Door

    This has been the most indoor summer ever, but boy has it been productive. I’ve written a novel. I’m as surprised as you are! It’s called, Words the Dog Knows. It’s not really about the dog. It’s because of the dog. Because of the dog the characters come to see their neighbourhood – and each other – in a whole new way.

    It’s almost, almost, almost, but not quite finished, but I’ll be reading excerpts from it anyway at The Yellow Door later this week. Once the book is actually printed, there will launches in Montreal, New York and Toronto. Information about those events will be posted soon. Meantime, here’s the Yellow Door info:

    The Yellow Door
    POETRY AND PROSE READING
    http://www.yellowdoor.org
    3625 Aylmer, Montreal (between Pine & Prince Arthur) Tel: 514-398-6243

    Thursday, August 28, 2008
    Doors open 7:00 pm Reading 7:30 pm At the door $5

    J.R. Carpenter is a two-time winner of CBC/QWF Quebec Short Story Competition. Her novel, Words the Dog Knows, is forthcoming from Conundrum Press, fall 2008.

    Hugh Hazelton is a poet and translator. His third book of poems, Antimatter, was published with CD by Broken Jaw Press in 2003.

    Liam Durcan is a Montreal writer whose novel, Garcia’s Heart, was published in 2007 by McClelland & Stewart.

    Rita Donovan Author of six novels & one non-fiction. Her novels have won several awards, among them: CAA/Chapters Award for Fiction, Landed.

    Saleema Nawaz’s fiction has been published in Prairie Fire, Grain, & PRISM. Mother Superior (Freehand Books, 2008) is her first short story collection.

    Ken Kalman is a poet, playwright, and novelist. Among his publications are a novel, Jesus Loves Me, a play, Defenceless, and Poetry of the Jews.

    Laura Golden is author of a poetry book, Laura’s Garden, 1978-2007. Artist, Reiki master, art therapist. From Now On, and Loneliness (Baico Publishing).

    Tony Robinson-Smith is author of Back in 6 Years (Goose Lane Editions, 2008): In his first book, adventurer Tony circles the planet by land and sea.

    Milton Dawes was one of the seven drummers who started the Tam-Tam drumming on the mountain.

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    J. R. Carpenter
    Lucksoap.com