While Melissa was enjoying the hot tub in wine country and learning about circ, I made the trip to Ottawa (28 below plus wind-chill factor) for the launch of our winter issue. I flew on Bearskin airlines, a small (16 seater?) prop plane with a ceiling so low you have to bend at the waist to navigate the aisle. I had arranged a meeting at the Canada Council on Friday to discuss some of the challenges TNQ faces in the next few years—some we share with all print publications (see Rosalynn’s post on the complexities of sustaining a print publication in a digital age) and some unique to our own journey. On Saturday, I was to have the great pleasure of introducing the readers at the issue launch.

The evening had been arranged by Ottawa board member, Melissa Hammell, as part of an on-going reading series at the Manx pub orchestrated by poet David O’Meara.  Melissa and I prepared by (a) getting our hair cut and (b) cajoling our husbands to undertake “duties as assigned,” in this case lugging a suitcase full of issues and TNQ t-shirts to the pub, setting up a display table, and handling sales (both, it should be said, are mathematicians and the accounts balanced perfectly at the end of the night).

The Manx is a nifty little bar on Elgin Street. Tucked below street level, all dark wood except for the small brass-topped tables jostling for room between bar and entry, and with a kitchen serving up hearty pub food, it’s as close to cozy as you can get on a wintry Ottawa night. When we arrived, David was oiling the hinges on the door so stragglers wouldn’t disrupt the readings. Many old friends and TNQ writers had made their way there, among them Kathleen Winter (all the way from Montreal!), Wendy Brandt, Mary Borsky, Colette Maitland, Matt Payne, and Jean Van Loon. It was fun to catch up with those we knew and to put a face to those we’d encountered on the page only.

Reading were Journey Prize winner Heather Birrell—our “Writer-at-Large” both literally (she’d come from Toronto) and figuratively (she was the featured “travel” writer in the issue)—and Ottawa poet, story writer, and novelist Elisabeth Harvor. Heather read from “The Mr. Shredder Man,” an affecting account of a chance encounter on the streets of Toronto with a dangerously ill man. The immediate predicament of getting him help triggers memories of Heather’s father’s untimely death. The essay ends with a clear-eyed, heart-wrenching meditation on grief in its various guises. Harvor’s story “A Postcard from Iceland” (ditto this blog entry!) was one of several that defined the issue’s theme, but she read instead from her poetry. In both the story and the poems she shared, she grapples comedy and anger, longing and loss. It’s a fun and often instructive mix.

The program ended on a warm note as Elizabeth Hay, winner of our Edna Award for the best non-fiction published in the magazine in the previous year, reading from her winning memoir, “Last Poems,” conjured “a particularly hot and hellish summer” when she and her growing family were facing eviction from their third floor flat in a working-class neighbourhood in Brooklyn. In the section she read from, her younger self  rages against her Italian landlord, a man who both cowed and infuriated her, and who became the exemplar of the many self-appointed tyrants under whom her neighbours suffered. She understands, even though she doesn’t yet see how, that she will eventually escape these oppressive circumstances, and she sets herself the task of telling the stories of those who won’t. Elizabeth, for those who haven’t heard her, reads in a voice that matches the subtlety and timbre of her words. The evening ended with dinner and talk and much jollity as we tried to read the migrating menu board, finally captured on my husband’s pocket camera.

It would be great to travel to all the far-flung corners of the country where New Quarterly readers lurk (though our favorite sale of the evening was of a year’s subscription to a man who had just wandered in for the warmth). Alas, time and airfares prevent, so send us your stories of cold nights warmed by the written word, and we’ll share them here, minus the burgers and brew!