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.

On Clare Latremouille's The Desmond Road Book of the Dead:

In Clare Latremouille's debut novel, The Desmond Road Book of the Dead, she writes a story through the lives of multiple generations of women in a family line. Moving seamless through a lyric of decades, blood and voices, Latremouille works her story through a collage of prose and poetry to their compounded end, and her authorial voice is fierce, lyrical and impassioned. Once you step inside the doors of her house, it becomes impossible to leave.

On Monty Reid's Disappointment Island:

Since Alberta poet Monty Reid moved from badlands Alberta (Drumheller) to badlands Quebec (Aylmer) in April 1999, he has barely published at all, with his last trade collection Flat Side (Red Deer Press) appearing the fall before. Now that he has moved directly into the City of Ottawa, he gives us his Disappointment Island, made up of a sequence of sequences, including some that have previously appeared in editions by BookThug and above/ground press. Monty Reid takes the best of a small idea and stretches it, moving from poems that are short, individual, and even quick, and that resonate through simple information, in that way that feels almost Creeley-esque, to the extension of an idea pulled gracefully across the page. The winner of the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry three times and a three-time Governor General's Award nominee, these may poems hold the weight of the emotional world on their shoulders, referencing bluegrass, the Gulf Islands and Cuba, as well as friends and lovers, and they never disappoint.

On Meghan Jackson's movements in jars:

Meghan Jackson's poems are a series of studies of small moments, like figures of fine glass. Formerly publishing quietly under the name meghan lynch, her movements in jars is a work honed and steeled over an extended period of time, and one that many of her readers have been waiting on with bated breath. Her poems are the alabaster that capture without destroying and explore and display without diminishing; hers is a sacred, scrying art.

For more information on the launch, call the ottawa international writers festival office at (613) 562 1243 or check out their website at www.writersfest.com ; for more information on the press (our official website will be launched soon), email rob mclennan at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Jennifer Mulligan at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

Source: Chaudiere Books

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dsendecki said:

The Danforth Review has a great profile on Chaudiere Books and an interview with rob mclennan. In answer to the question, "What prompted you to start the press?", rob answers: For years now I've been complaining that Ottawa doesn't have a local publisher. Because we are the capital city, a lot of national gets in the way of local, including the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery, etcetera. We have a number of publishers here that are national who happen to be in the city, but who aren't necessarily useful to the ground-level writers who exist here. I think of presses like Vehicule in Montreal, Arsenal Pulp in Vancouver and Turnstone in Winnipeg whose geography were essential to the beginnings of what they were doing, and thus helped shaped the city around them, through publishing writers from those places. Check out the rest of the interview here

October 17, 2006

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