On Wednesday, March 28th, everybody is invited to Coach House spring titles’ ‘coming out’ party at The Dance Cave (529 Bloor St. West, upstairs).
The night promises new and invigorating Canadian literature, as they unleash five staggering CanLit debutantes upon the Canadian reading public:
Tamara Faith Berger (Lie with Me), launches her much-anticipated new novel, Maidenhead, traversing the desperate, wild spaces of the self-consciousness of a teenage girl who enters unfamiliar worlds of sex, porn, race and class.
Heather Birrell (I know you are but what am I?), Journey Prize-winning short story writer, presents Mad Hope, a kaleidoscope of off-kilter stories of families in their varied forms.
Acclaimed poet Walid Bitar (The Empire’s Missing Links) delivers his fifth book, Divide and Rule, a new collection of dramatic monologues, variations on the theme of power structured in rhymed quatrains.
Playwright Karen Hines (The Pochsy Plays), brings her current Calgary hit, Drama: Pilot Episode – a wildly ingenious tale of western oil boom towns, television programs and the unconscious – to Toronto for a dramatic reading.
Susan Steudel, visiting from Vancouver, will launch her debut poetry collection, New Theatre, a lively foray into spaces both geographical and utopian that culminates in a searing portrait of revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin.
Doors open at 8 p.m., and the readings get underway at 8:45. Admission is free, but books and refreshments are not. If you’ve ever been to Coach House’s Wayzgoose party in the Fall, you know they’s be goodtimes had by all.
If you can’t make it to The Dance Cave on March 28, you can still buy the new spring titles for 20% off cover price during the week of the Toronto launch (March 25 – 31) when you order from the Coach House site at www.chbooks.com.