The next installment of the Test Reading Series (curated by Mark Truscott) will be a conjoined event: it's also doubling as the Toronto launch-pad for CAROUSEL 20 (see content list below). Rob Read, one of the featured poets in the new issue, will be reading from his 'Book of Sparrows' suite, and copies of CAROUSEL 20 will be available for purchase at a discounted rate of $8 for the evening!

Rob Read and Souvankham Thammavongsa (bios below)
Mon 23 October 2006, 7:30 p.m.
Mercer Union, a Centre for Contemporary Art
37 Lisgar Street, Toronto
pwyc ($5 recommended), all of which goes to the readers:

For more info, visit: the Test site and Carousel. For more information, contact details, and a handy-dandy map, click here.

SPX 2006 will be held the weekend of October 13 and 14, 2006 at the Marriott Bethesda North Hotel & Conference Centerm, Bethesda, MD, just one mile outside the nation's capital, Washington DC. In its tenth year SPX now serves as the preeminent showcase for the exhibition of independent comic books and the discovery of new creative talent.

SPX will bring together over 300 artists and publishers to meet their readers, booksellers, distributors, and each other. SPX will be open to the public from 2pm Friday, October 13th and run through 8pm that evening. The celebration continues Saturday from 10am to 7pm, culminating in the 10th annual Ignatz Awards Reception. In addition, expect great programming all weekend long for you to enjoy!

SPX 2006 marks the tenth annual presentation of The Ignatz Awards for outstanding achievement in comics and cartooning. The Ignatz, named after George Herriman's brick-wielding mouse, recognizes outstanding work that challenges popular notions of what comics can achieve, both as an artform and as a means of personal expression. The Ignatz is a festival prize, the first such of the United States comic book industry. Winners will be determined by ballot during SPX and presented at the gala Ignatz Awards ceremony.

As with every year all profits from SPX will go to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, protecting the First Amendment rights of comic book readers and professionals.

Chaudiere Books (rob mclennan & Jennifer Mulligan) & the ottawa international writers festival invite you to the launch of three of the first four Chaudiere Books titles on Thursday, October 26, 2006, 7pm at the National Library & Archives Building, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa as organized by the ottawa international writers festival. A free event, lovingly hosted by Chaudiere Books editor/publisher rob mclennan. They will be launching Ottawa writer Clare Latremouille's first novel The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, Toronto-area Meghan Jackson's first poetry collection movements in jars, and former Alberta poet Monty Reid's first Ottawa poetry collection Disappointment Island.

Eloquent, poignant and witty, Garry Gottfriedson’s new collection of poetry explores themes of duality in the parallel world of cowboys and Indians. Whiskey Bullets speaks to the unique experience of growing up aboriginal while remaining immersed in cowboy and ranching culture. Gottfriedson unveils hidden truths, bringing to the fore inescapable issues of gender, sexuality, race and politics. Candid and challenging, Whiskey Bullets is thought provoking and deeply engaging.

There were surprises aplenty at yesterday's announcement in Toronto of the short list for the 2006 Scotiabank Giller Prize for excellence in Canadian English-language literature.

For the first time in the Giller's 13-year history, the five candidates for the country's top literary prize—the winner gets $40,000, the runners-up $2,500 each—are largely unknowns (rookies in two cases) published mainly by small or medium-sized presses. Gasps were heard as the nominees were announced...

...In an interview after the announcement ceremony, [Adrienne] Clarkson said the jurors "had no agenda" except that of "excellence and literary value -- what was the author trying to do and did he or she succeed." She said she "wasn't conscious at all" of the fact that, in four of five cases, the books were from small publishers that traditionally print no more than 2,000 copies of a work of fiction at any one time. "All the books were beautiful in their presentation, professional in design," she said. "There was nothing that looked like it was run off a Gestetner."

Read more at the Globe & Mail.

Source: James Adams, The Globe & Mail