kitdobson

Friends, I will be speaking at the conference Text / Sound / Performance at University College, Dublin, on April 25th. My talk, entitled “Text / Sound / Performance / Listening,” focuses on questions of sound and listening, intertwining a conversation about the Athabasca watershed in northern Alberta and the work of contemporary poets who listen closely to land and the environment. (And it’s part of something new that I’m building and starting to share publicly …)

If you happen to be in Dublin, I urge you to consider coming to the conference, which promises to be an amazing one. Read more about it here!

I’m grateful to McGill-Queen’s University Press and to editor Gillian Roberts for their labour in putting together the new edited collection Reading between the Borderlines: Cultural Production and Consumption across the 49th Parallel, just published this month. My essay, “Margaret Atwood’s MaddAddam Trilogy: Reading Across Borders,” is one of the pieces published in this volume, alongside work from many fantastic writers and thinkers. See the table of contents here!

I’m grateful to Wilfrid Laurier University Press and to editors Gregory Betts and Christian Bök for their labour in putting together the new edited collection Avant-Canada: Poets, Prophets, Revolutionaries, just published this month. My essay, “A Poetics of Neoliberalism,” is one of the pieces published in this volume, alongside work from many fantastic writers and thinkers. See the table of contents here!

I will be speaking at the University of Victoria on Thursday, the 15th of November, and am very much looking forward to it! Here is the formal announcement:

Listening to the Land as though Our Lives Depend on It
Kit Dobson (Mount Royal University)
Thursday, November 15, 5:00-6:20 p.m.
CLEARIHUE A207, University of Victoria

This talk marks the beginning of a literary non-fiction project that lies at the intersections of literary studies, ecocriticism, and Indigenous studies. It functions, first, as an interrogation of the anthropocentrism that has resided at the centre of much of my work to date. This interrogation takes the question of listening to the landscape – and especially that of my family’s home in northern Alberta’s Athabasca watershed – as a point of departure. I do so in order to argue that, indeed, our lives do depend on developing the ability to listen to the land, in all possible senses of that expression.

Eighteen Bridges has just published a short piece of mine on bridges, in the summer 2018 issue. This one is specifically on the bridge in Athabasca, Alberta, where my family comes from. You can currently find it on newstands and it should appear in due course on the magazine’s website. The piece just might be a small preview of my new writing project …

It is a distinct pleasure to have written the introduction to Heather O’Neill’s book Wisdom in Nonsense, published this spring by the University of Alberta Press. Heather’s book is based on her Kreisel Lecture, delivered last fall at the University of Alberta, which I also hosted. You can pick up the book from the publisher here!

I’ll be speaking in Regina, SK, on the 27th of May with Daniel Coleman, author of Yardwork, short-listed for the Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction. The event is part of the Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences. We’re speaking at 11am in the Centre for Kinesiology at the University of Regina under the theme of “The Culture of Our Environment.” Daniel Coleman is a wonderful speaker and academic and I’m very much looking forward to sharing the stage with him!

And … it’s out! I’m so happy to see my new book, Malled: Deciphering Shopping in Canada, in print from Wolsak & Wynn. It’s been some time in the making, and now I am keen to see it out in the world. More news on events in due course, but my first events were:

October 10, Salamanca, Spain: a group launch as part of the conference “Narratives of Resilience and Healing” at the University of Salamanca.

October 13, Edmonton: LitFest with Chris Urquhart at MacEwan University.

November 6, Calgary: Interview on CBC’s Homestretch.

November 23, Calgary: Guest on CBC’s Alberta@Noon

You can order the book here, or here, or directly from my publisher here.

In the meantime, here’s what my blurbers have to say:

I’m happy to announce that I will be speaking at Edmonton’s LitFest in October, on the auspicious date of Friday the 13th. Tickets are available here. This event, a “literary smackdown,” features me and Chris Urquhart discussing consumer culture and anti-consumer activism. I’ll be drawing my inspiration from my upcoming book Malled from Wolsak & Wynn. Chris’ book, Dirty Kids, is on the CBC’s list of anticipated fall non-fiction books. It should make for a fun evening. I’d love to see you there!

I’m thrilled to announce that my new book, Malled: Deciphering Shopping in Canada, will be published this fall by Hamilton’s Wolsak & Wynn Press. I’ve been very grateful to Noelle Allen and everyone at the Press for their fine vision, guidance, and editorial hand. It’s been a wonderful process so far, and now I’m looking forward (with, ahem, a wee bit of trepidation, naturally) to seeing the book out in the world! You can pre-order on Amazon here, or on Indigo here, but I encourage you to go direct to the publisher’s website here.