Join us tonight at 7 p.m. for the launch of the mRb's Spring Issue!
We will be celebrating the season's best in Quebec
literature at the launch party for this year's spring issue of the
Montreal Review of Books. Three exciting Montreal authors will read from
their most recent books: Neil Smith from his highly anticipated debut
novel, Boo; Anita Anand from her debut collection of stories, Swing in
the House; and Larissa Andrusyshyn from her second book of poetry,
Proof. These three featured books will be available for
purchase at 10% off, and we'll have plenty of copies of the spring mRb
on hand – stop by to pick up your copy, share glass of wine with us, and
take home some excellent literature!
Neil Smith is a French translator and the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller Bang Crunch. He
has been nominated for the Hugh McLennan Prize, the Commonwealth
Writers' Prize, Best First Book (Canada), as well as the Journey Prize
three times. He has also won the First Book Prize from the Quebec
Writers' Federation. He lives in Montreal.
Praise:
"What I love about Boo, and Neil Smith's writing in general,
is his ability to create the most imaginative and other-worldly
stories, while grounding them in an empathetic emotional landscape. It
makes him able to write about adolescents without anything feeling
juvenile, and about adults without losing any sense of wonder. Neil is a
true original as a writer, and from the first page, Boo is an
unforgettable character and Town is an unforgettable setting (this
sounds like the promise of standard flap copy, but it's in fact
extremely rare). The novel explores the pain of being different and the
delight of being unique, with both its main character and the reader
going on a most unexpected journey." —Paul Taunton, Knopf Canada
Anita Anand was born in Montreal. She moved back and forth
between her hometown and such places as the Bronx; Bedfordshire,
England; and Richmond, B.C. In every neighbourhood where she has lived,
she has been the only person her age of Indian origin. Her writing has
appeared in The Globe and Mail, Frostwriting and the Louisiana Review.
Praise for Swing in the House:
These stories are full of undercurrents that disturb the surface, and
these disturbances, in their turn, dazzle as they reflect light. Anita
Anand is a sensitive observer of human behaviour and, because she is
unafraid to explore difficult
emotions, her stories reveal–in broad strokes and subtle
shadings–glimpses of truth.
–Elise Moser, author of Lily and Taylor and Because I Have Loved and Hidden It.
This is a wise, assured and wonderfully intelligent collection that
announces the arrival of an exciting new talent. –Dennis Bock
Larissa Andrusyshyn’s first book Mammoth (DC Books 2010) was
shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize and the Kobzar Literary Award.
Her poems have been shortlisted for Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year and
the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award. She works with a local
non-profit to offer creative writing workshops to at-risk youth. She
lives, writes and is planning her zombie apocalypse survival strategy in
Montreal.
Andrusyshyn's Proof explores the worlds of entomology, memory and
mathematics. What can be proven with empirical evidence and what
demands reason. The poems examine the means of observation from the
entomologist to the grief stricken mathematician. From break-ups to Dung
Beetles, these poems move from microscope to recollection and from the
abstract math proof to the visceral sting of the wasp’s barbed quill.