TNQ is taking it on the road again

for our Lists Issue launch. Since our Governor-General’s-Award-winning guest editor Diane Schoemperlen lives in Kingston, we’re heading there to celebrate the joy of lists and our Spring Issue, “To List Is Human,” in her home town.

Come join us this Tuesday, May 11, 7-9pm at The Grad House, 162 Barrie St, Kingston. Featuring readings by Diane Schoemperlen, Sandra Ridley, Joanne Page, Colette Maitland, Richard Cumyn, and Hume Baugh.

Doors open at 7; readings begin at 7:30
Cover: Pay what you can

About the readers:

Diane Schoemperlen won the 1998 Governor General’s Award for Fiction for her collection of illus¬trated stories, Forms of Devotion. She is also winner of the 2007 Marian Engel Award, for a body of work by a writer in mid-career. “A Nervous Race” is one of a book-length collection of stories and collages to be called By The Book. Each piece in this collection will be based in one way or another on the text of an old text. She lives in Kingston, Ontario, with her son, Alex.

Sandra Ridley won the bp Nichol Chapbook Award and was a finalist for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry in 2009. Her first manuscript of poetry won the 2008 Alfred G. Bailey Prize and is forthcoming with Hagios Press. Recent work can be found as a chapbook titled Rest Cure (Apt. 9 Press). Poems included in this Lists issue are part of a book-length collaboration with Michael Blouin.

Joanne Page is a visual artist and writer, living in Kingston. Her published work includes three volumes of poetry: The River & The Lake, Persuasion for a Mathematician, and Watermarks (2009), nominated for the Trillium Book Award.

Colette Maitland’s short stories have appeared often in TNQ. Her poem was written specifically for the Lists Issue. She tells us that her mother, Rita, was then coming to the end of her long struggle with a particularly cruel neurological disease called Cortical Basal Degeneration (she died in March, 2009). The poem also placed as one of twelve finalists in The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Annual Postcard Competition.

Richard Cumyn lives in Kingston, Ontario. His sixth book, The Young in Their Country, will be published in the fall of 2010 by Enfield & Wizenty. Cumyn’s short stories have appeared in many Canadian literary publications, including The Journey Prize Anthology.

Hume Baugh has been an actor for over 25 years. He has written two plays: The Girl in the Picture Tries to Hang Up the Phone (presented to date in Toronto, Ottawa, Windsor and Montreal) and Crush (presented at Summerworks 2008 in Toronto). He has published fiction and poetry in This Magazine (winning their Great Canadian Literary Hunt in 1996 with his story “Sisters,” published pseudonymously) and Queen’s Quarterly.