DC Books and the Canada Council present the launch of

At the Bottom of the Sky.
Peter Dubé’s new fiction collection

SPARTACUS books
Sunday, May 27th, 5 p.m.
Reading & signing
319 West Hastings (2nd floor).

EXCERPT:

“A riot. That’s what the media call it, anyway. A tumult of bodies: some uniformed and bearing truncheons, others in shorts made from second-hand fatigues, a handful with balaclavas pulled over their faces - all of them pushing and pulling, slamming into each other. In some places blood streaks across flesh. Dust clouds climb above the scene and overhead helicopters lend someone a view through them. To my left, a few women dressed in billowing print skirts remain seated, arms linked as a cop leans in, fury in his eyes and one arm outstretched towards them. I can hear the terrifying skirl of the sirens.

Zack’s hand is shaking, and all he’s doing is handing me the photograph. He remembers the afternoon as clearly as I do, I guess. His eyes are moist.”
(From At the Bottom of the Sky)

Peter Dubé is the author of the novel Hovering World (DC Books 2002), the short fiction collection At the Bottom of the Sky (DC Books, 2007) and the Vortex Faction Manifesto (Vortex Editions, 2001) In addition, his essays and critical writings have been widely published in journals such as CV Photo and Esse, and in exhibition publications for various galleries, among them SKOL, Occurrence and The Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery of Concordia University.

He is the President of the Quebec Writers’ Federation and a member of the editorial board of the art magazine Espace Sculpture. Peter lives and works in Montreal.

for more information:
http://www.peterdube.com/

The Vancouver launch of Delible is on tomorrow night:

Friday, May 18th, 8 p.m.
Spartacus Books
319 West Hastings (2nd floor)

Come celebrate with me.

So, there’s a reading from Delible up on Trevor Cole’s wonderful site, Authors Aloud.

On the weekend, the Vancouver Sun did an interview/profile:

This Thursday, the OPEN TEXT reading series continues with Jon Paul Fiorentino reading at Capilano College at 12:30 p.m. (Cedar 140, Cap College, 2055 Purcell Way).

And Friday night (the 18th) is the Vancouver launch of Delible (Spartacus, 8 p.m.), and then on Sunday night, I’ll be doing a radio interview on Coop Radio’s Storytelling Show.

This past weekend, I read a letter from Talon Books that was so dire, the friend who showed it to me had hidden it from her partner (who has a truly stunning first book out this fall). She thought it’d depress him. Something about a big computer (named SAP) calculating book motility ….

While in Montreal for Blue Met, I met with Jeanette Kelly at All in a Weekend and was interviewed about the book. They’ve archived it here….

Highlights of Blue Metropolis:

• Seeing Francesca LoDico win the Accenti Magazine award for non fiction for her beautiful piece “The Disappearing Sicily.”
• Late night Chinese at VIPs with a lot of lovely folks, some old friends, some new. Seeing David McGimpsey, Jason Camlot, Donavan, and my lovely editor, Jon Paul Fiorentino (who was the best editor — thanks Jon).
• Dinner with Robbie Dillon and friends at a posh Sushi restaurant hidden away behind a non-descript metal door.
• Listening in on Suhayl Saadi’s interview at CBC; the man speaks like he writes, in beautifully articulate pages, ready for print. Sunday night, he joined a big and bawdy table of us for dinner.
• Seeing Nigel Thomas & Sherry Simon on a panel on writing about writers. When the panel was discussing respect for writers, Thomas said something about how a real sign of respect for writing might look something like a living wage…
• I’m in the midst of reading Claire Latremouille’s Desmond Road Book of the Dead and Catherine Kidd’s Missing the Ark (and also reading a brilliant masters thesis) and at Blue Met, I picked up a few more, among them: Language Acts (edited by Jason Camlot and Todd Swift) and At the Bottom of the Sky by Peter Dubé (who’ll be here in Vancouver to launch the book later this month).

So, Delible came off the press yesterday and Insomniac is shipping it out. I’ll see it for the first time when I arrive in Montreal for the launch at Blue Met.

This morning, Bernard Kelly had a smart review in the Gazette:

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We’re getting ready to move and as I was cleaning out the files, I found this … an early version of the cover for jacks:

If you’re in Montreal, I’ll be launching the new novel, Delible, there in a couple of weeks and would love to see you.

Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival
Weds, April 25th, 8 p.m.
DELTA CENTRE-VILLE Hotel
777, University Street, Square-Victoria Metro.
(Room: La Terrasse; free!)

I’ve just been replaying an interview I did with Betsy Warland in January about writing spaces and the materials of writing (going to start transcribing it next week). She’s just finished a collection of essays on the subject, and one of the ways in which she formulates her writing space is as a heightening of the ordinary; every day language and objects, she points out, are the materials of writing. So, in her space, she arranges her materials with deliberation and consistency in order to evoke and sustain whatever writing project she’s working on at a given time. It’s as if the threshold to her study door is one that abandons the happenstance. I’m excited by her collection. There are so many books out there about writing, but this one is a different and more interesting approach altogether. Anyway, it’s the first in a series of such interviews on writers and their spaces I’m doing for Matrix. Next up, writers who write in public spaces (like the local coffee shop or the VPL); and after that, an interview with a writer whose orientation to text is through sound and echo.

I’m just putting in the last edits on the new novel, Delible (uh, again), which I’ve been working on forever, or so it seems (of course, abandoning a few 200 page drafts and beginning from scratch is an integral part of the process, which is why it takes me so long). The thinking began in April of 1999, when I was handed a missing poster. Throwing it out wasn’t an option, because the girl hadn’t been found. Putting it away amounted to throwing it out. So, I ended up putting up the poster over my desk, and when I moved to Vancouver, the poster moved with me. Every day, I sat down to write, and it was below the poster, seeing the girl’s unknowing smile. That picture haunted the edges of my thinking. It shaped the direction my writing took.

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