DEPARTURES

fiction by:

Amanda Earl
Emily Falvey
Spencer Gordon
Kate Heartfield
rob mclennan
Wes Smiderle
+ Steve Zytveld

Departures comes out of a monthly fiction writer's workshop in Ottawa started in 2006 by Tina-Frances Trineer, with its first meeting December 6, 2006 at Cuppedia on Main Street, with early participants Tina, rob mclennan, Amanda Earl, Kate Heartfield and Josh Massey. Other members Emily Falvey, Steve Zytveld and Wes Smiderle were added in April, 2007, around the time Tina moved to Wakefield. Spencer Gordon joined in September, 2007.

Amanda Earl's sexually explicit fiction appears in anthologies by Cleis Press, Alyson Books, Thunder's Mouth Press, Carroll and Graf and in local magazines, The Puritan and Front & Centre. On line you can find her recent smut at Thaneros.com, Lucrezia Magazine (lucreziamagazine.com) and Lies With Occasional Truth (lwot.net). Her stories and musings on sex & sexuality can also be found at amanderotica.blogspot.com.

Emily Falvey is a writer, curator, and art critic currently living in Ottawa. Her fiction recently appeared in decalogue 2: ten Ottawa fiction writers (Chaudiere Books, 2007), and her essays and art criticism have been published by galleries and museums across Canada.

Spencer Gordon was born in 1984 in Thompson, Manitoba. Although he currently resides in Ottawa, Ontario, he will be attending the University of Toronto in the fall of 2008, taking an MA in English in the Field of Creative Writing. Recently, his fiction has appeared in zaum (previously Mandala). He is the co-editor and co-founder of The Puritan: Ottawa's Literary Prose Journal. Find his interviews with authors such as Robert Kroetsch and Guy Vanderhaeghe online at puritan-magazine.com. He can be reached at spencerkjgordon@gmail.com.

Kate Heartfield rode the OC Transpo beast for 11 years, before giving in and buying a car and a house in the country last year. When she isn't writing fiction, she writes editorials and columns for the Ottawa Citizen. Last year, she was a student in the Humber School for Writers correspondence program, where her mentor was Paul Quarrington.

rob mclennan recently returned to Ottawa after his tenure of writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta. The author of over a dozen titles of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles are the novella white (The Mercury Press), the travel book Ottawa: The Unknown City (Arsenal Pulp Press) and subverting the lyric: essays (ECW Press). A writer, editor, publisher and organizer of the small press action network - ottawa (span-o), he regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Wes Smiderle is an Ottawa writer. He’s napped on buses, slept around on trains, snoozed at sea and drifted off at the wheel but he’s never been able to fall asleep on an airplane.

Steve Zytveld was born in Kamloops, BC, but has spent most of his life in Ottawa, where he currently lives with his wife Catherine in a cramped downtown apartment with their guinea pigs and thousands of books. He has been a writer of prose and verse, a peace activist, a labour activist, a performance artist, a Parliament Hill reporter, an editor, a publisher, a poster artist, an actor, and a scholar of mediaeval literature. He learned to ride a horse before he learned to drive a car. Nowadays he hosts the Dusty Owl Reading Series when he isn’t working on any of a number of writing projects, including a novel, The Passing of Arthur King, and a nonfiction work tentatively titled No Simple Highway: A History of The Prescott Highway. His work has appeared in a number of publications, including this one.

$6 / +$2 for postage/shipping

above/ground press subscribers rec' a complimentary copy;

mail all your money to:

rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

new from above/ground press: Peter F. Yacht Club #11

Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan
May 2008 (Edmonton issue, part two)

With new work by various Yacht Club regulars & irregulars:

Douglas Barbour;
Jenna Butler;
Amanda Earl;
Jesse Patrick Ferguson;
Laurie Fuhr;
Lea Graham;
William Hawkins;
Karen Massey;
Marcus McCann;
rob mclennan;
Max Middle;
Sean Moreland;
Jennifer Mulligan;
Catherine Owen;
Pearl Pirie;
Roland Prevost;
Wes Smiderle;
Janice Tokar;

$5 / +$2 for postage/shipping
above/ground press subscribers rec' a complimentary copy; mail all your money to:
rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa Ontario Canada K1R 6R7

related links: information on issue #10 ; information on issue #9 ; information on issue #8 (Edmonton issue, part one); photos/report of the Ottawa launch of #8 ; information on issue #7 ; photos/report of the reading/regatta for issue #5 ; Amanda Earl's review of Laurie Fuhr's issue #5/6 (mis-numbered Calgary special) ; information on that issue ; 2008 subscription info w/ some backlist ;

new from above/ground press;

HOW TO EDIT

Chapter A.

by derek beaulieu

ALBERTA SERIES #8

8 pages, 8 1/2 x 11

produced in an edition of 200 numbered copies in Edmonton, Alberta by above/ground press as the final installment of above/ground press’ ALBERTA SERIES, April 2008.
designed by mdesnoyers

derek beaulieu [see his 12 or 20 questions here] lives in Calgary. he is the author of several books of poetry, the most recent being Chains by Paper Kite Press.

Mail all your money (payable to rob mclennan) to (before May 31):
rob mclennan, writer in residence

Department of English and Film Studies

University of Alberta

3-5 Humanities Centre

Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5

(after June 1st)

858 Somerset Street West, main floor

Ottawa Ontario K1R 6R7

$4 (+ $2 for postage; outside Canada, $6+2$ US)
(while supplies last; produced in a numbered run of 200 copies)

above/ground press subscribers rec' a complimentary copy;

2008 subscriptions still available

new from above/ground press: Peter F. Yacht Club #10

Edited & compiled & typeset & paid for by rob mclennan, in Edmonton AB
March 2008; “in by one, out by four”

$5 / +$2 for postage/shipping

above/ground press subscribers rec' a complimentary copy

with new writing by:

Jeff Carpenter

Trisia Eddy

Lainna Lane

+ rob mclennan

This issue comes out of an informal writing/social group that the four of us (all, but for myself + Lainna, completely unaware of each other previously) started within weeks of my arrival in Edmonton, coming together slowly from mid-September, 2007. The title makes reference to a previous publication of four poets in roughly the same format, in by one, out by four (suggesting just how quickly the little publication was put together) [see my note on such here] in Edmonton in 1980, featuring the poetry of then-Edmonton poets Douglas Barbour (the only one still here), George Melnyk (now in Calgary), Monty Reid (now in Ottawa) and Stephen Scobie (now in Victoria, BC). This little publication is dedicated to them—rob mclennan, March 08, Edmonton AB..

Jeff Carpenter is currently acting as Acting Director of the Alberta Research Group. National Anther is a sequence of acrostics using ten lines from Michael Palmer’s First Figure (1984). Several other constraints were built in to play off the book/folio form whilst riffing off some unlikely couplings from Canadian literature (and beyond). Reading aloud exercises tongues and lungs and minds’ Is. Fast as you can. ☺ Trisia Eddy lives and writes in and around Edmonton, Alberta. Her work has been broadcast on radio, and has appeared both online and in print, most recently with ditchpoetry.com, Perspectives Magazine, Existere, and fait accomplit. She is the founding editor of red nettle press, which released her chapbook, what if there's no weather, in 2007. An upcoming series of red nettle poets is set to be released in 2008. ☺ Lainna Lane has lived in Ottawa, Vancouver, and most recently Edmonton where she is very slowly completing her English and Comparative Literature degree at the University of Alberta. She finances this by working in an office tower guarded by peregrines. When not in office or school she enjoys traveling, working at Other Voices literary magazine, playing dodgeball, and mixing a mean mint julep. She has one publication in this year's student edition of the Olive Reading Series chapbook.☺ rob mclennan is the beginning and the end (or something); the author of thirteen trade poetry titles, he is the author of a novel (white, The Mercury Press) and two non-fiction titles (Ottawa: The Unknown City, Arsenal Pulp; subverting the lyric: essays, ECW Press), and will be launching another on the University of Alberta Bookstore’s espresso book machine in late May. He is (and was) the 2007-8 writer in residence at the University of Alberta in Edmonton☺

coming in May; The Peter F. Yacht Club #11, "Edmonton issue" part two!

related links: information on issue #9 ; information on issue #8 ; photos/report of the Ottawa launch of #8 ; information on issue #7 ; photos/report of the reading/regatta for issue #5 ; Amanda Earl's review of Laurie Fuhr's issue #5/6 (mis-numbered Calgary special) ; information on that issue ; 2008 subscription info w/ some backlist ;

new from above/ground press:

WEDNESDAYS'

by Douglas Barbour

ALBERTA SERIES #7
42 pages, 8 1/2 x 11

produced in an edition of 200 numbered copies in Edmonton, Alberta by above/ground press a part of above/ground press’ ALBERTA SERIES, March 2008.

designed by mdesnoyers

Douglas Barbour [see his 12 or 20 questions here], poet, critic, and reviewer, is Professor Emeritus of English at the University of Alberta, where he has taught creative writing, poetry, Canadian literature, twentieth century poetry and poetics, and science fiction and fantasy. Books of poetry include Visible Visions: The Selected Poems of Douglas Barbour (NeWest Press 1984), which won Alberta's Stephan Stephannson Award for poetry, and Story for a Saskatchewan Night (rdc press 1989). More recently, Fragmenting Body etc. (NeWest Press 2000), Breath Takes (Wolsak & Wynn 2002), A Flame on the Spanish Stairs (greenboathouse books 2003), and Continuations, with Sheila E. Murphy (University of Alberta Press 2006). Critical works include Daphne Marlatt and Her Works, John Newlove and His Works, bpNichol and His Works (ECW Press 1992), and Michael Ondaatje (Twayne Publishers 1993). Lyric/Anti-lyric: essays on contemporary poetry appeared from NeWest Press in 2001. Transformations of Contemporary Canadian Poetry in English appeared from Adam Marszalek in Poland in 2005. Essays have appeared in journals and anthologies in Canada, the United States, Australia, Great Britain, New Zealand, Denmark. He has delivered papers at conferences on Canadian Studies and modern poetry, in Australia, Germany, New Zealand, Poland, Sweden, Scotland, and, of course, Canada. He was inaugurated into the City of Edmonton Cultural Hall of Fame in 2003.

Mail all your money (payable to rob mclennan) to:

rob mclennan, writer in residence
Department of English and Film Studies
University of Alberta3-5 Humanities Centre
Edmonton, AB T6G 2E5

$6 (+ $2 for postage; outside Canada, $6+2$ US)

(while supplies last; produced in a numbered run of 200 copies)

above/ground press subscribers rec' a complimentary copy;
2008 subscriptions still available

new from above/ground press:

STRUM OF UNSEEN

by Pete Smith (Kamloops BC)

$4

[after Fred Douglas’ book Menu For Sunset: An Apparent Story Illustrated With Pictures and his photo/text exhibition Menu For Sunset.]

publisht in Edmonton by above/ground press in an edition of 300 copies, March 2008. a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy. To order, add $1 for postage, & in Canadian currency; if sending from outside Canada, send in American, payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1R 6R7; above/ground press subscribers receive (honest!) a complimentary copy; calendar year subscriptions available for $40, & include chapbooks, broadsides, STANZAS magazine & The Peter F. Yacht Club.

Pete Smith: Unlettered & unfettered. Migrated from England to Kamloops in 1974. Is a retired psychiatric nurse. Chapbooks include 20/20 Vision and cross of green hollow (Wild Honey Press, Eire), Harm's Length (Cambridge, UK). Long poem sequences, Mother Tongue: Father Silence (Tinfish, Hawaii); CLIV (Alterran Poetry Assemblage); Evacuation Procedures & Second Horace (Great Works). Poems in W, The Gig, The Capilano Review (forthcoming). Essays & reviews in Agenda (London, UK); The Gig (Toronto); The Paper (Sheffield, UK); at jacket #9; & forthcoming in Crayon (USA), The Gig 19 (improvisations on the works of Deanna Ferguson) & a chapter in The Salt Companion to John James (Cambridge, UK).

new from above/ground press:

The Sad Phoenician’s Other Woman
by Amanda Earl
$4

"a response to The Sad Phoenician by Robert Kroetsch, Completed Field Notes, The University of Alberta Press, 2000

italicized phrases are taken directly from the above long poem, which i loved and the rest is written in the spirit of the poem in the voice of a woman who developed a thing for adverbs"

also still available:
E l e a n o r (2007)
by Amanda Earl
$4

publisht in Edmonton by above/ground press in an edition of 300 copies, March 2008. a/g subscribers receive a complimentary copy. To order, add $1 for postage, & in Canadian currency; if sending from outside Canada, send in American, payable to rob mclennan, c/o 858 Somerset Street West, main floor, Ottawa, Ontario Canada K1R 6R7; above/ground press subscribers receive (honest!) a complimentary copy; calendar year subscriptions available for $40, & include chapbooks, broadsides, STANZAS magazine & The Peter F. Yacht Club.

Amanda Earl's poetry is forthcoming in Rampike, The New Chief Tongue and Van Gogh's Ear. above/ground press published her second chapbook Eleanor in 2007. Her poetry has also been recently featured in ottawater.com, Ditchpoetry.com and Unlikelystories.org and published by Vancouver's pooka press, Ottawa's Peter F. Yacht Club and in Calgary's Holy Beep! Amanda is the managing editor of Bywords.ca and the Bywords Quarterly Journal. You can read about Ottawa's literary shenanigans on her blog: amandaearl.blogspot.com.