Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Taddle Creek Launch / Four Minutes

Hey there, sportsfans. Or, you know. Whatever you are. Below are details for the upcoming Taddle Creek launchxtravaganza. My story, Four Minutes, is in it. I read it in London and someone coughed awkwardly, so there you go.

Taddle Creek No. 30 launches Friday, June 14, at the Jet Fuel Coffee Shop, 519 Parliament Street, in beautiful downtown Cabbagetown. As is now the tradition, there will be a barbeque for meat eaters and non–meat eaters alike, and free beer, courtesy of the Good Beer Folks at Steam Whistle. As is also tradition, there will be readings, this time by the Good Literature Folks of Michael Lista, Andrew MacDonald, and the one-and-only Michelle Winters. Doors are at 8:30 p.m.; magazines are five dollars (cheap!).

The month of June also will see the Jet Fuel host the Second Taddle Creek Art Show: Cover Star, a retrospective of original cover photos from Taddle Creek’s first decade (1997–2007) in their original context, uncropped, uncoloured, un-type-ified, blown up really big. The show will run from June 1–30, with the launch party doubling as the show’s opening.

But back to that thirtieth issue: It’s jam-packed with new fiction and poetry by Dani Couture, Jim Johnstone, James Lindsay, Michael Lista, Andrew MacDonald, Emily Pohl-Weary, David Ross, Nick Thran, and Michelle Winters. Plus: Lorenz Peter’s ironically black-and-white comic about rainbows, Clive Thompson looks back at a hundred and thirty-five years of Acta Victoriana covers, Jay Somerset investigates the fate of the Toronto Reference Library’s film collection, Juliet Waters talks to Saleema Nawaz, and Dave Lapp makes you uncomfortable with the latest installment of People Around Here. With a cover by the Doug Wright Award–winning Nina Bunjevac!

How could you even think of missing such an awesome night? (If you don’t show up, how will you complain that the free beer and food aren’t to your liking?) Taddle Creek so hopes to see you on June 14th.

The drawing, which is so perfect it hurts my junk, is courtesy of Matthew Daley.

Thursday, May 2, 2013

Random Thingies

I should really have more of a web presence. Apparently, if you google "Andrew MacDonald writer Toronto" my picture comes up a lot. In one of them I'm drinking. That's fun, right? In the next few months, I've got three stories coming out in three different publications:

1. "Four Minutes" in Taddle Creek

2. "Blindspots" in The Windsor Review: Best Writers Under 35

3. "Something More Vital Than Air" in the Pilot Pocket Book.

Not a lot of people who don't know me know this, but I'm probably leaving Canada soon, and before I do, I'm going to bombard the literary journal circuit with the stories I've been finishing / editing / sitting on for no good reason. Some of these are about . . .

1. Love in an oncology ward

2. A historical-noir set in Renaissance England, featuring two goons who have to reclaim a body (though it's actually about loving family members who disappoint you)

3. One about two guys who try to build a particle accelerator at their cottage (though it's actually about being the family member who disappoints everyone)

4. A woman who tries to find the perfect man for her terminally ill, recently-out-of-the-closet gay husband

5. This dude's relationship with a girl who wants to go to Ukraine to shoot the uncle who abused her when she was younger

6. How a prison librarian in 1980s Romania deals with HIV and a riot that breaks out (note: story features a character called the Peruvian Death Star)

Anyway. Hopefully someone will want to accept one or all of the above for publication.

xo a