The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, June 20: Pirie, MA|DE, Bandukwala, Moran + Smith,

span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading

featuring readings by:

Pearl Pirie (QC)
MA|DE (Windsor ON)
Manahil Bandukwala (Ottawa ON)
James K. Moran (Ottawa ON)
+
Mahaila Smith (Ottawa ON)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, June 20, 2025
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

author biographies:

Pearl Pirie lives slowly in rural Quebec. A queer, p/t abled settler on unceded land of the Anishnaabe, she is the author of footlights (Radiant Press, 2020)  You can find her on socials— Instagram, Patreon, Substack and at www.pearlpirie.com.

MA|DE (est. 2018) [pictured] is a collaborative writing entity, a unity of two voices fused into a single, poetic third. It is the name given to the joint authorship of Mark Laliberte and Jade Wallace — artists whose active solo practices, while differing radically, serve to complement one another. Their work has appeared in literary journals internationally, including Augur, CV2, Grain, PRISM, Salamander, The Woodward Review and Vallum. MA|DE has written 4 chapbooks, including the bpNichol award-shortlisted A Trip to the ZZOO (Collusion Books 2020). MA|DE's debut full-length poetry collection, ZZOO, is out now from Palimpsest Press, and another collection, Detourism, is forthcoming with Palimpsest in 2028. More: ma-de.ca

Manahil Bandukwala is a writer and visual artist. She is the author of Heliotropia (Brick Books 2024; shortlisted for the Pat Lowther Award and the Raymond Souster Award) and MONUMENT (Brick Books 2022; shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award). She has been twice longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, and was selected as a Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Star in 2023. See her work at manahilbandukwala.com.

James K. Moran’s poetry and speculative fiction have appeared in Another Dysfunctional Cancer Poem Anthology, Burly Tales, Bywords, Glitterwolf, and On Spec. Lethe Press published his fiction collection Fear Itself and horror novel Town & Train. Moran writes across genres about cosmic carports, drag-queen warlocks and nomadic superheroes. He reviews for Arc Poetry Magazine, Plenitude and Strange Horizons. Findable at jameskmoran.blogspot.ca, @jamestheballadeer.bsky.social (Bluesky) and jamestheballadeer (Instagram). Moran lives in Ottawa, on the unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Mahaila Smith is a researcher, poet, editor and MA student based on the traditional territory of the Algonquin Anishinabeg in Ottawa, Ontario. They won the 2024 John Newlove Poetry Award and were nominated for the Rhysling and Best of the Net awards. They adore fibre crafts and collecting sea-glass. You can find more of their work on their website: mahailasmith.ca. Their debut narrative poetry collection, Seed Beetle is available from Stelliform Press.

The Factory Reading Series pre-small press book fair reading, November 15: Sherwood, Reid, Hamilton, Baglow + Rodrigues,

 span-o (the small press action network - ottawa) presents:

The Factory Reading Series
the pre-small press book fair reading
celebrating THIRTY YEARS of the ottawa small press book fair

featuring readings by:

Claire Sherwood (Montreal)
Monty Reid (Ottawa)
Seymour Hamilton (Chelsea QC)
John Baglow (Ottawa)
+
Tazi Rodrigues (Ottawa)

lovingly hosted by rob mclennan
Friday, November 15, 2024
doors 7pm; reading 7:30pm
Anina’s Café, 280 Joffre-Bélanger Way

[And don’t forget the ottawa small press book fair, held the following day at the Tom Brown Arena]

Claire Sherwood [pictured] is a Montreal writer, visual poet, and oral storyteller. Her short fiction has appeared in Minority Reports: New English Writing in Quebec (Vehicule Press), and her poetry in Kola Magazine (The Black Writers’ Guild), Zettel Magazine (Underbridge Press), carte blanche magazine (QWF online), Helios (Ediciones de la Salamandra Negra), My Island My City (sitting duck press), What Lasts (2 Susans Poetry Circle). Her new chapbook Eat Your Words was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Monty Reid was born in Saskatchewan but has made his home in Ottawa for the past 25 years. He has published a dozen books of poetry, most recently Garden (Chaudiere, 2014) and Meditatio Placentae (Brick, 2016). He has also published award-winning non-fiction and more than 20 chapbooks with publishers in Canada and abroad. His work has won National Magazine Awards, the Lampman Award, the Stephansson Award (3 times) and has been short-listed 3 times for the GGs. Magazine publications include The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Grain, CV2, The Puritan, Train, Dusie, Manoah and many others. His latest chapbook Vertebrata was published by Montreal’s Turret House Press.

Seymour Hamilton lives in Chelsea, Quebec with his wife Katherine. He is much happier writing stories than he ever was before he retired from ordinary work-work, which in his case involved a lot of marking, editing, and writing in the academic world and the civil service.  He has written eight books of fiction, six of them a post-apocalypse science fiction trilogy that got out of hand and spun off three sequels, with a seventh coming soon.  He also wrote a novel about 1960s back-to-the-land hippies in Nova Scotia, and a collection of inter-related stories called The Laughing Princess, which feature dragons of great power and authority.

John Baglow is a former union executive officer (PSAC), and presently writes and lives in Ottawa. Baglow has published three books of poetry, Emergency Measures (Sono Nis Press, 1976), Journey Under Glass (Penumbra Press, 2004), and more recently, Murmuration: Marianne’s Book (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2023). He has also written a critical study of the Scottish poet Hugh MacDiarmid, The Poetry of Self (McGill-Queen's University Press, 1987). His poems have appeared in numerous literary magazines, nationally and internationally.

Tazi Rodrigues (she/her) is a writer and aquatic biologist. A second/third-generation-settler from Treaty 1 territory, she lives in Ottawa on the unceded land of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation. She placed second in the 2023 Kloppenburg Hybrid Grain Contest for her essay on learning Portuguese and listening to fish, and won the 2024 Diana Brebner Prize for her poem on looking for bees. Other writing has appeared in The Fiddlehead, CV2, and Canthius. She is currently writing about ecological sound, caring for the worms and foster cats who live with her, and counting bugs at her neighbourhood pollinator garden.