I’m thrilled to have just published an article in the magazine Eighteen Bridges, based out of Edmonton. My article, “Walmart in Whitehorse: searching for culture in a consumerist paradise,” is a sneak peak at some of the work that I’ve been doing toward my next book, which is called Malled: The Cultures of Shopping in Canada. Please find the article here. A big thank you to the folks at Eighteen Bridges for making space for this work!
I was thrilled recently to host the 2017 Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta’s Canadian Literature Centre. This year’s lecture, the eleventh in the series, was delivered by Canada Reads-winning author Heather O’Neill in the wake of the publication of her new novel, The Lonely Hearts Hotel. The video of the talk is now online; I encourage you to watch and enjoy my brief introduction and, more importantly, her lively and engaging conversation about the lessons that she learned from her father.
I’m profoundly grateful to the editors of the journal Public, and particularly special issue editors Sean O’Brien, Imre Szeman, and Eva-Lynn Jagoe, for making space for an interview with me in the newly released issue 55: Demos. The interview was very graciously conducted by poet and critic Ryan Fitzpatrick. I was very pleased to have the opportunity to discuss some of my current thinking there, especially thinking through the necessity of dwelling in messiness and complexity. You can order the journal here. The interview, “Living in Messy Times,” is the final piece in the issue.
It’s an honour to have served as the press editor for 59 Glass Bridges, the first novel just published by Steven Peters. Editing this deeply imaginative, at-times surreal and Dantesque novel has been profoundly satisfying work. I heartily recommend the quirky, labyrinthine underworld that Peters renders in this book about a place that feels a lot like the Calgary in which I live, but with a twist. Do see the page from NeWest Press here.
The Carriage Station: Print History Workshop has been engaged in supporting and fostering poetry in the community, most recently by supporting Pop-up Poetry events. And now, University Affairs has taken an interest in the project. Please click to read their article on the recent event, all done in partnership with derek beaulieu, Beth Everest, Richard Harrison, Calgary’s current Poet Laureate Micheline Maylor, Natalie Meisner, Mount Royal students, and yours truly.
Thanks to everyone who made it out today at Mount Royal University to the English program’s pop-up poetry event! Featuring derek beaulieu, Beth Everest, Richard Harrison, Micheline Maylor, Natalie Meisner, campus student and — ahem — yours truly, today’s event was a wonderful showcase of poetry, pounded out on the Carriage Station‘s collection of old and clunky (and wonderful) typewriters. It was a great day; gratitude to all who were there!
The Carriage Station: Print History Workshop is a space designed to celebrate print culture and writing. Housed in Mount Royal University’s Faculty of Arts, the Carriage Station is a repository for housing and tending to obsolete analog print technologies. Founded by derek beaulieu, Kit Dobson, and Richard Harrison, and starting with nothing more than a clutch of typewriters and a mimeograph machine, the space is geared toward hands-on learning about how print is made, how print arrives in readers’ hands, and how print affects the very works that writers produce.
Starting in the fall of 2016, the Carriage Station runs workshops on print culture, invites students and the wider community in to witness and play with old technologies, supports pop-up poetry events, and accept donations of materials from typewriters to printing presses. It is open by appointment and is interested in hearing from anyone with an interest in print culture. Please contact Kit Dobson or derek beaulieu to find out more.
Thank you to everyone who attended the conference Maladies of the Soul, Emotion, Affect: Indigenous, Canadian, and Québécois Writings in the Crossfire of a New Turn! This conference was held at the Banff Centre from September 22nd to 25th, 2016. When organizing events, one never quite knows what to expect in advance. I am so grateful to my colleagues, mentors, peers, and friends who made this a great event. It was likely the most colleagial, convivial, and genuinely kind academic event that I’ve yet had the privilege to attend, which is no mean feat.
This event would not have taken place without Marie Carrière, Director of the Canadian Literature Centre, who was the main organizer of this event. Ursula Moser, of the University of Innsbruck’s Centre for Canadian Studies, was the event’s other key organizer. My thanks to them both for inviting me to participate in the organization of the conference. Our funders, from all three of our institutions, were also necessary for the work to proceed.
The information for the conference can be found here. We anticipate that a publishing project will arise from this work. Stay tuned for more!
I’m very glad to have had the opportunity to contribute to the edited collection Ten Canadian Writers in Context, edited by Marie Carrière, Curtis Gillespie, and Jason Purcell and published by the University of Alberta Press. My contribution to this volume is a discussion and analysis of Eden Robinson’s book The Sasquatch at Home, originally delivered as the Kreisel Lecture at the University of Alberta. I’m a long-standing admirer of Robinson’s work and have had the chance to write about her fiction previously, so this was a very welcome piece for me to write. Robinson continues to surprise and impress me for the ways in which she keenly analyzes colonial cultures (and colonial literary expectations), and for how neatly she manages not to defer to either while writing about and honouring her territory and people. Thank you to the editors!
I’m honoured to be the 2016 winner of the Rita and Charles Bronfman Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award is given for outstanding teaching in McGill’s Institute for the Study of Canada. Thanks to my students in Canadian Studies 405: Shopping in Canada for our wonderful conversations throughout the winter semester during my time as the Eakin Visiting Fellow in Canadian Studies.
Photo credit: Owen Egan