I’m thrilled to be able to announce that one of the essays Roxane Gay chose as “Best of 2019” from Gay Magazine has now garnered a Notable in Best American Essays 2020! I believe it’s my fourth Notable for Best American Essays, and I had one for Best American Short Stories, too, once. Congrats to the other Notables, with whom I’m honoured to be mentioned and to the essayists. Thanks to the series editor, Robert Atwan! #canlit
Put out by above/ground press in Ottawa, ‘Would You Like a Little Gramma on Those?’ was first published by Joy Magazine and is reprinted here in different form as part of above/ground’s new prose imprint. Kinda thrilled to see this, and with one of my photos on the cover, too. Thanks, above/ground press! Check them out here to see their lineup or to subscribe to their series:
Kirsten Ott Paladino, best-selling author of
Equally Wed: The Ultimate Guide to Planning Your LGBTQ+ Wedding
is editor-in-chief and founder of the attractive site “Survivor Lit,” which launched today:
I have an essay among many other survivors’ poems and essays. My essay is “Blue Earring.”
Blue Earring
above/ground press in Ottawa has begun a series of prose chapbooks and I’m happy to say that publisher/editor Rob Mclennan chose one of my stories, ‘Would You Like a Little Gramma On Those,” to join several other wonderful stories by the following authors in his initial run. Despite all my books, this is only my second chapbook ever (the first being ‘Going Santa Fe’ from League of Cdn Poets)! I’m very excited!
Here is the press release and following that a link to above/ground’s blog:
Leaning up to the press’ twenty-eighth year of production, Ottawa’s above/ground press launches a prose imprint, “prose/naut,” and announces its first four chapbook titles, which will each become available over the next few weeks:
Amanda Earl, Sessions from the DreamHouse Aria (September 2020)
Jane Eaton Hamilton, Would You Like a Little Gramma On Those? (September 2020)
rob mclennan, Twenty-one stories, (September 2020)
Keith Waldrop, from THE LOSS FOR WORDS (October 2020)
Why a prose imprint? With more than one thousand poetry-specific publications produced over the past nearly thirty years, why branch out into prose? I suppose the straightforward answer is that there appear to be fewer possibilities for publication for lyric prose than even there were five ago, despite the wealth of materials being produced. There is some incredible work being done, and my own frustrations as a reader has brought us, one might say, to this.
The series hopes to include single-author chapbooks of prose, from fiction to other forms, all of which will be included as part of the regular above/ground press annual subscription package. Review/media copies will also be available upon request (while supplies last).
If you wish to pre-order all four titles, I would be open to that: $20 for all four (add $3 postage for American orders; add $10 for international).
If you would rather, you could simply subscribe to above/ground press RIGHT NOW and all four would be included: 2021 annual subscriptions (and resubscriptions) to above/ground press are available: $75 (CAN; American subscribers, $75 US; $100 international) for everything above/ground press makes from the moment you subscribe through to the end of 2021, including chapbooks, broadsheets, The Peter F. Yacht Club and G U E S T [a journal of guest editors] and quarterly poetry journal Touch the Donkey [a small poetry journal].
Just what else might happen? Currently and forthcoming items also include new poetry chapbooks by Julia Drescher (two this year!), Billy Mavreas, ryan fitzpatrick, Sarah Burgoyne and Susan Burgoyne, Paul Perry, Jérôme Melançon, Ava Hofmann, Alexander Joseph, David Miller, Sa’eed Tavana’ee Marvi (trans. Khashayar Mohammadi), katie o’brien, Nathanael O’Reilly, Amelia Does, Andrew Brenza, Genevieve Kaplan, Geoffrey Olsen, Franco Cortese (four over the next few months), Zane Koss, Dennis Cooley, Barry McKinnon and Cecilia Tamburri Stuart as well as a whole slew of publications that haven’t even been decided on yet.
Why wait? You can either send a cheque (payable to rob mclennan) to 2423 Alta Vista Drive, Ottawa, Ontario K1H 7M9, or send money via PayPal or e-transfer to rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com (or through the PayPal button at robmclennan.blogspot.com).
For further information, email publisher/editor rob mclennan at rob_mclennan (at) hotmail.com, or follow the myriad of links at http://abovegroundpress.blogspot.com/
Stay safe! Stay home! Wear a mask! Wash your damned hands!
Folks, there’s a new reading every Wednesday for the next month posted at Event Magazine for your listening enjoyment. Join John Elizabeth Stintz, Rose Cullis, Tawahum Rice and me! Honoured to have been chosen and to be in such great company.
Covid-19 has stolen my voice. I went silent in March and am still mostly silent. I live alone so not seeing people makes this more severe. I’m struggling to write. Maybe I don’t believe there’s a reason any longer, though one could certainly argue that there’s never been a more vital time to lift your voice. I am trying every day to lift mine.
I find solace in making art. I’ve been doing a month-long art journal for the first time since I was in art school, when I would sometimes keep one for a particular class. It’s been instructive. This torso reminds me that creating torsos was an original love of mine and probably what I would have worked on if I had expanded into sculpture.
5″x7″ canvas board, ink, acrylic, etiquette book paper, collage, watercolour pencil, marker
I’ve been doing a series of mini 5″ x 7″ paintings on canvas board, and I’ve put some of them up on my visual art page here, and publicly on FB. Enjoy!
Happy to say that a poem of mine, “Game Show,” which was published at The Puritan has been chosen for Best Canadian Poetry 2020, edited by Marilyn Dumont and published by Biblioasis. Thank you and congrats to everyone!
Here are some reviews for the series:
“The wide range of writers, forms and themes represented here make it a great jumping-off point for readers who might be interested in Canadian poetry but are unsure about where to start.”—Globe and Mail
“Buy it, or borrow it, but do read it.”—Arc Poetry Magazine
“A magnet, I think, for the many people who would like to know contemporary poetry.”—A.F. Moritz, Griffin Poetry Prize winner
“The Best Canadian Poetry series offers an annual sampling of voices and experiences—a little slice of Canadiana that may be appreciated beyond borders as well.”—Examiner.com
“An eclectic and diverse collection of Canadian poetry . . . a wonderful addition to anyone’s bookshelf.”—Toronto Quarterly
“Bits of eternity, arranged alphabetically.”—Merilyn Simonds
“Canada’s most eloquent, profound, humorous and meditative writers, ranging from the seasoned and well known to the new and upcoming.”—Broken Pencil
Event is a great litmag here in Canada. I am so happy that I won their non-fiction contest today with an essay about guns in Canada and the time I went to a shooting range to combat my fear of them, “The Dead Green Man.” Thank you to the judges, the final judge, and congrats to the other winners! At the start of the year, Gay Mag cited my essay “The Pleasure Scale” as one of their 2019 faves; an EU periodical Queen’s Mob Review of the Decade picked an essay “The Nothing Between My Legs” as one of their best of the decade; recently I was long-listed in the Mogford Food and Drink contest and a few weeks ago, I won 2nd place in the Writer’s Digest short story contest with “The Pride,” a story about a lion researcher who lost her husband in a terrorist attack. It’s all been a relieving start to the year.
In other news, we are in a global pandemic of COVID-19; on this continent we are in the “keep your distance” stage of trying to flatten the curve and slow the growth. Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, wife of our Canadian Prime Minister, has tested positive, and Justin Trudeau is isolating. I wish them well. I wish everyone well as, together, we go through this. Thinking of you all.
Many thanks to the eds! A poem of mine is up at The Puritan!
So fortunate to have had an essay included in Queen’s Mob Review of the Decade. It was The Nothing Between Your Legs, which appeared in Autostraddle and Medium and was later a Notable in Best American Essays (2019). I look forward to reading the ones on this list I’ve missed!
I’m delighted to announce that Roxane Gay has chosen my essay “The Pleasure Scale” as one of Gay Magazine’s favourite essays of 2019. Congrats to everyone!
I’m happy to say I have an essay coming out in this fall collection on disability. You can pre-order now. Here is the link to the book at Amazon.ca. Here is the link for Amazon.com. Here is the Publisher’s Weekly review:
“In this exquisite collection drawn from the Times essays series started in 2016, disability is, refreshingly, seen as a part of daily life, even as the contributors discuss facing a “world that does not expect us and is often not made for us.” Ona Gritz, who has right hemiplegia, a form of cerebral palsy, recalls asking a literary agent who suggested she write a memoir, “Would I have to be disabled on every page?” Coeditor Garland-Thomson, having learning her asymmetrical hands and forearms are caused by complex syndactyly, an exceptionally rare genetic condition, no longer feels like an “orphan” but part of a “world of disability pride and advocacy.” Similarly, the late Oliver Sacks finds value in his disability, an increasing loss of hearing, enjoying how “in the realm of mishearing… a biography of cancer can become a biography of Cantor (one of my favorite mathematicians)… and mere mention of Christmas Eve a command to ‘Kiss my feet!’ ” The 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act comes up often throughout, making fully clear the turning point it represented. Demonstrating, above all, the value of persistence, Catapano and Garland-Thomson’s anthology merits a spot on everyone’s reading list for its brilliant assemblage of voices and stories. (Sept.)” Publisher’s Weekly
Kirkus Review calls it “A rich, moving collection.”
I’m moving some of my essays onto Medium for your reading pleasure! Here’s what’s there so far:
The Pleasure Scale, Gay Magazine, about how, as a near shut-in, I find pleasure
The Preludes to Assault, about a short encounter with Jian Ghomeshi, and sexual violence
The Nothing Between Your Legs, about my non-binary life as a girl in the 1950s; first published in Autostraddle
A Night of Art and Anti-Art, about a walk on beach one evening with Liz
“The Pleasure Scale,” my contemplation on disability, pleasure and pain, is up today at Gay Magazine. Be forewarned that it is sexually explicit.
I realize there’s so much more to be said about pleasure, mine, and, of course, that found by others.
“I want to feel my body opening in the way it can open, like it is split, and is yawning in two pieces like a knifed watermelon, when it can take not only a fist but a globe, it can take every war, every famine, every mining disaster, every broken child behind bars, every river of tainted water into itself and it can turn water clear and take the broken children onto its lap and cause weapons to be laid down and corpses to rise and people to laugh again.”
Happy to unveil a new painting, so far unnamed, from a series I’ve started of dancers, acylic on canvas:
Eaton Hamilton 