Spring 2009!

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She’s Shameless:
Women write about growing up, rocking out and fighting back
Edited by Stacey May Fowles & Megan Griffith-Greene

Co-editors Megan Griffith-Greene and Stacey May Fowles have compiled an anthology of fearless and funny non-fiction about strong, smart and shameless young women. With wit and honesty, the writers share stories of their teen experiences (both positive and negative) on everything from pop culture to high school principals. The book is founded on Shameless magazine’s tradition of smart, sassy, honest and inclusive writing that reaches out to young female readers who are often ignored by mainstream: freethinkers, queer youth, young women of colour, punk rockers, feminists, intellectuals, artists and activits.

Editors’ Bios:

Stacey May Fowles is a writer and McGill Graduate in English Literature and Women’s Studies who has worked in the literary and gallery communities of Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. Her first novel Be Good (Tightrope Books) came out in 2007, her second book Fear of Fighting (Invisible Publishing) was launched in 2008. Her written work has been published in various digital and literary publications, including Fireweed, The Absinthe Literary Review, Kiss Machine, sub-TERRAIN, 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). Her work is also in the anthology Transits: Stories from In-Between (Invisible Publishing) and Cahoots Magazine. She is the publisher of Shamesless magazine.

Megan Griffith-Greene’s experience in activism, arts and journalism started when she was a very shameless teen growing up in Toronto. Now, she is the editor of Shameless magazine, a feminist magazine for teens and young women, and a contributing editor of Chatelaine. She is also a founding editor and designer of The New Pollution new music review, a web-based magazine and pod-cast on indie music. Her writing has appeared in THIS magazine, The Walrus and Chatelaine.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9783351-9-9

Somewhere to Run From
Poems by Tara-Michelle Ziniuk

Tara-Michelle Ziniuk’s second collection of poetry is dangerously sarcastic, Toronto-local, bitter, sweet, and bruising in its honesty. Challenging the notions of what a girl runs from, both literally and figuratively, Somewhere to Run From takes on complex settings from which to depart: poverty, pop and sub-culture, madness and normative sexuality among these locations.

About the Author: Tara-Michelle Ziniuk is a Montreal-born, Toronto-based author, performer and activist with an extensive background in community radio. She has been published in magazines and anthologies across North America and is a regular contributor to NOW, Broken Pencil Magazine, and Herizons as well as writing for This, $pread, HOUR and others. Her first book, Emergency Contact, was released with McGilligan Books in 2006 to wide critical acclaim and was taught through the English Department at York University.

ISBN 13: 978-0-9783351-8-2

Fortune Cookie
Heather J. Wood

A refreshing take on a young woman’s journey, one that does not rely on sexual escapades to catalyze its heroine’s coming of age.

Fortune Cookie is a diary-style novella set in Montreal during the turbulent year of 1989. The book follows Robin through her growing disenchantment with the aimless life of a twenty-something who hasn’t yet found herself in a world that is changing as fast as she is. This subversively feminist work, aimed at young women, is told in first-person vignettes – written in the informal and often humourous voice of 24-year-old Robin. Robin’s vignettes are at times intercut with news headlines, highlighting the political and social events of the year – including Tiananmen Square, the fall of the Berlin Wall and Montreal Massacre.

About the Author: Montreal-born Heather J. Wood is a freelance copywriter and creative prose writer. Her work has appeared in Kiss Machine, Artistry of Life, and Litbits, as well as in two Tightrope Books anthologies: In the Dark: Stories from the Supernatural, and IV Lounge Nights. Heather’s chapbook, Barbies, Breasts and Bathing Suits, was published by Press On! in 2007. She lives in Toronto with her husband Kurt and two cats.

ISBN 13: 978-1-9266390-1-7

 

Bone Dream
Moira MacDougall

This is poetry that maps a woman’s body as a partner to her life experience.

The poems in Bone Dream are darkly sensuous, capturing the unspoken moments of life through images firmly grounded in the body and the material world. Relationships, family and death are explored at times through the medium of a dancer’s body, and at other times through the everyday artefacts we find around us. These poems move, disturb and bring us to realization.

About the Author: Moira MacDougall is the assistant poetry editor of The Literary Review of Canada. She has had poems published in literary magazines and journals across the country. This is her first book length collection.

ISBN 13: 978-1-9266390-0-0

 

 

Fall 2008

Etcetera and Otherwise
words by Sean Stanley
pictures by Kristi-Ly Green

A charmingly illustrated surrealist fable.
A love story.
An erotic journey.

Bookstore owner Otherwise meets the beautiful Etcetera one afternoon when she comes into his store. The two begin on a fantastical erotic road trip that will last 28 days. As Otherwise falls more deeply in love, the mystery of Etcetera grows, culminating in the answer to the most important question of all — “do you love me too?”

Fiction/ ISBN 13: 978-0-9783351-6-8 /$18.95
www.etceteraandotherwise.com

Boredom Fighters!
Edited by Paola Poletto
and Jake Kennedy

This fantastic collection of eighteen graphic poems brings together the talents of artists and writers such as Christian Bök, Lisa Foad, Stacey May Fowles, Marlena Zuber, Tim Gaze, Gustave Morin, Daniel Scott Tysdal, Sherwin Tjia, and Sally McKay.
Poetry/ ISBN 13: 978-0-9783351-5-1 /$21.95

Recent Releases

I.V 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

About the Editors:
Myna Wallin is a poet, prose writer, editor, and radio host. Her first full-length collection of poetry, A Thousand Profane Pieces, was published by Tightrope Books in 2006. She hosts CKLN’s “In Other Words,” interviewing authors from across Canada, and is currently working on a novella entitled Confessions of a Reluctant Cougar.

Alex Boyd was born in Toronto. He writes poems, fiction, reviews and essays, and has had work published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, dig, Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and on various websites including The Danforth Review. He is co-editor of Northern Poetry Review, a site for poetry reviews, essays, and articles. His first full-length book of poems, Making Bones Walk, is available from Luna Publications.

Open Slowly, Poetry by Dayle Furlong

Food, sex, money, status, power, and the latent dangers in unmanageable desire—Dayle Furlong’s debut collection is a rich, sensuous and inspired look at the world around us. Her rendering of strong individual voices allow the reader to experience a memory of childhood dreams, hopes, and terrors, while eavesdropping on adult romances, friendships, and conflicts.

Furlong renders vivid snapshots and precise images—two girls in a park, a statue in a pond, the simplicity of a sliced cantaloupe—all effortlessly capturing life’s complexity. Throughout the collection is a profound appreciation for natural world and its connection to personal experience.

A poetry book that is rife with imagistic language and literary technique, Open Slowly showcases an emerging Canadian writer of considerable talent.

“but he made you feel/soft and pink/not blue or grey as/sleeping asphalt.
So you’ll continue on this route/until the pavement dries/and the potholes are filled in.”
- from Road Signs

About the Author:

Dayle Furlong studied English Literature & Fine Arts at York University. Her poetry & fiction has appeared in Taddle Creek, Kiss Machine, The Puritan, Word & The Voice. She works as a literary publicist and has worked as a screenwriter’s assistant for the television series Slings & Arrows. She has lived in all regions of Canada and has traveled throughout Central America, Asia & the US. She writes and lives in Toronto. Open Slowly is her first collection of poetry.

After the Fires, short stories by Ursula Pflug

After the Fires lights the dark places where reality burns away, revealing something fantastical. In these stories Ursula Pflug’s world unfolda like waking dreams where what was forgotten is remembered. Her narrators accept these shadow worlds as their truth, and the reader is seduced into searching among the ashes for what remains after the fires.

“Ursula Pflug’s stories are the kind you want to carry around with you for those days when it feels like you’re living in a strange and incomprehensible world; her stories will make you feel less alone. They are wondrous and unique little creatures that desire nothing more than to play fetch with your weirdest dreams. They are wild inventions built of words and sentences that dig into your psyche and send back reports about all you never knew of the world. They are sly and joyous, scary and entrancing, profound, unsettling, amusing, and utterly — perfectly! — unique.” – Matthew Cheney, series editor of Best American Fantasy

“We know these characters, they are quizzical, human, endearing. They write letters on air-sickness bags, Saran Wrap, pages torn from magazines. They are our punk roommates, they discuss arrangements, want to bring one more friend to sleep over on the hideabed couch.” -Susan Dyment, The Peterborough Examiner

“This is the kind of reading that requires a little, god forbid, work – it forces thought and reconsideration and discomfort in a great way. It’s often the case that writing that seems difficult or challenging on a formal level manages to best articulate the complexities of human life, and Pflug’s collection is no exception.” -Katelynn Schoop, The Danforth Review

About the Author:

Ursula Pflug is author of the novel Green Music (Tesseract Books, 2002.) She is also an award winning short story writer, professionally produced playwright, book reviewer and creative writing instructor.

Eating Fruit Out of Season, Poetry by David Clink

Eating Fruit out of Season is a book that celebrates the natural world of frogs, bumble bees, crickets, ravens, snowy owls, and endless cottage roads, but also the man-made world of museums, broken VCRs, junk mail grocery stores, a high school cafeteria, and bus platforms. This is a first book for poet David Clink, spanning 12 years of writing covering 40 years of experience, as the author shares with the reader his remembrances of falling out of a tree, days at the cottage, falling in and out of love, and the death of his father. In employing humour and surreal elements, the poems take place in the real world made new again. There are five sections in the book. Themes include childhood and youth; the development of self and interpersonal relationships; maturity, loss, and the fall from a height that has been achieved; and finally, the poet’s relationship with his father, up to, including and after his father’s death.

“Poet David Clink hearkens in places for childhood, though the middle-aged poet hovers in each section: the distinctive voice of the librarian or brother or humourist friend is carefully and skillfully revealed in each section. There are a lot of stories about frogs and trees and death and sorting poetry books by last name and the humour is very richly conveyed with a human quality.” -John Stiles

About the Author:
David Clink is the Artistic Director of the Rowers Pub Reading Series, and is a former Artistic Director of the Art Bar Poetry Series. He has been writing and selling poetry since 1995, and is the author of 5 poetry chapbooks and the editor of 7 others. He is a consultant with the Heart of a Poet TV show, and is co-publisher of believe your own press, a poetry chapbook publisher. He is webmaster of poetrymachine.com, a resource for writers. His poetry has been published in Canada, the United States and Europe, including Analog; The Antigonish Review; Asimov’s Science Fiction; Cicada; The Dalhousie Review; Descant, The Fiddlehead; Grain Magazine, The Literary Review of Canada; On Spec, and The Prairie Journal.

Be Good, A Novel by Stacey May Fowles

In this gritty first novel by Stacey May Fowles, a group of Canadian twenty-somethings wrestle with sex, love, and lies. Each character has a distinct persona made of secrets and deceptions, which is shattered by the end of the book. Set against the acutely drawn urban landscapes of Montreal and Vancouver, Morgan and Hannah struggle to navigate the maze of love affairs, failed relationships, obsessions, and departures from the familiar. Deftly shifting perspective from the innocent and idealistic Hannah to the streetwise and damaged Morgan, to their friends and the men in their lives, Be Good eloquently exposes the lies we tell ourselves and others in order to cope with life and reveals the ongoing alienation and isolation of a world where the only reliable narrator is the future.

Broken Pencil Magazine: “…Stacey May Fowles’ first novel…definitely proves she’s a writer filled with talent and insight…The writing is sharp and evocative and shows a deep level of sympathy for the characters and keen psychological understanding…the strength of the writing makes Be Good a very enjoyable read.”

This Magazine: “…probably the most finely realized small press novel to come out of Canada in the last year…Thank you, Stacey May Fowles.”

The Toronto Star: “Be Good is an endearing and ambitious novel, chronicling the ‘walking wounded’ of a Canadian youth afflicted by a culture that implores them to ‘be good’ or ‘go west young f—ed-up chick.’”

The Globe and Mail: “Toronto writer Stacey May Fowles is cruising a scarred landscape between the poles of gay and straight. Refreshingly, she never labours over which pole Hannah or Morgan might favour. Be Good is about twentysomethings stranded among our multiple definitions of what love is, between aimless wants and serial not-havings.”

Quill and Quire: “…the novel offers a thoughtful examination of sexuality, relationships, and what it means to tell the truth.”

The Feminist Review: “In her mesmeric debut novel Be Good, young author Stacey May Fowles demonstrates a budding mastery over the poetic aspects of prose. She showers the reader time and again with rhythmically beautiful sentences…Her skill in using unique description to create evocative landscapes and mindscapes has a hypnotic effect…overall this is an enchanting novel…”

About the Author:

Stacey May Fowles’ written work has been published in various online and print magazines, including Kiss Machine, The Absinthe Literary Review, and subTERRAIN. Her non-fiction has been anthologized in the widely acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and First Person Queer. She currently lives in Toronto where she is the publisher of Shameless Magazine.

Manual for Emigrants, Poetry by Fraser Sutherland

In Fraser Sutherland’s latest collection of poems, Manual for Emigrants,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.

About the Author:

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.

Tell Your Sister, a novel by Andrew Daley

How much would you like to undo the terrible consequence of a rash decision you made long ago? In their final year of high school, fate deals 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 for university. For Aaron, it is one of abandonment, boarding houses, and bad luck. Years later, an adult Dean, now a successful Toronto condo salesman, wonders how to remake the past after a chance encounter with Aaron’s sister sends him careening back to the hometown he abandoned. Tell Your Sister moves deftly through the recent past to show how Aaron and Dean’s friendship and their subsequent lives were determined by the choices they were forced to make. Unflinching and mordantly funny, this novel about blind loyalty, first girlfriends, bowling alleys, big hair bands, petty crime and betrayal is an evocative, unforgettable kind of love story.

“Daley… offers authentic characters who attend bush parties, hang out at the bowling alley, fight with their parents over curfews and hope for a better life. In some of the scenes, the reader can almost hear the band Rough Trade’s 1980s hit High School Confidential playing in the background. And that’s the strength of this story. It takes the reader effortlessly to another time and place.” -Michael Hammond, The Record

About the Author:

Andrew Daley’s first published short story appeared in Taddle Creek in 1997, and in 2004 he became the magazine’s associate editor. He’s also had stories in Kiss Machine, The Fiddlehead and other magazines. Tell Your Sister is his first novel. His website is www.andrewdaley.net.

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