Genrebending and Liminal Fiction

27may5:00 pm6:00 pmGenrebending and Liminal FictionWith A.G. Pasquella, Corinna Chong, Geoffrey D. Morrison, and Sonia Urlando5:00 pm - 6:00 pm(GMT-04:00)

Event Details

Where does the line lie between prose and poetry, if a line exists? Can you have a science fantasy? What even is genre – and what are the benefits of treating it like a playground rather than a strict set of categories? These authors mold and shape genre like modeling clay.

Welcome to The Weird America by A.G. Pasquella
Wolsak & Wynn

A.G. Pasquella’s Welcome to the Weird America brings together three of his brilliant, fabulist novellas, each of which is filled with strange language and extraordinary surprises. From questions about money and God to environmental collapse, to the intersection of humanity and technology, Pasquella tackles complex subjects with deep delight and beautifully surreal prose. In Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus?, a talking chimpanzee becomes a televangelist. In NewTown, a teenage boy named Sammy joins a motley band of rebels intent on overthrowing the bungling admiral of a huge spaceship. And in The This & the That, Pasquella takes us back to the old weird America, an America of hucksters and hobos, cartoons and carnivals. These mesmerizing stories take us on a fascinating journey down an unknown road with no end in sight.

The Whole Animal by Corinna Chong
Arsenal Pulp Press

For fans of Souvankham Thammavongsa, Lynn Coady, and Lisa Moore comes a striking debut collection of short stories that explore bodies both human and animal: our fascination with their strange effluences, growths, and protrusions, and the dangerous ways we play with their power to inflict harm on ourselves and on others.

Falling Hour by Geoffrey D. Morrison
Coach House Books

It’s a hot summer night, and Hugh Dalgarno, a 31-year-old clerical worker, thinks his brain is broken. Over the course of a day and night in an uncannily depopulated public park, he will sift through the pieces and traverse the baroque landscape of his own thoughts: the theology of nosiness, the beauty of the arbutus tree, the pathos of Gene Hackman, the theory of quantum immortality, Louis Riel’s letter to an Irish newspaper, the baleful influence of Calvinism on the Scottish working class, the sea, the CIA, and, ultimately, thinking itself and how it may be represented in writing. The result is a strange, meandering sojourn, as if the history-haunted landscapes of W. G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn were shrunk down to a mere 85 acres.

Speakers for this event

  • A.G. Pasquella

    A.G. Pasquella

    Author

    A.G. Pasquella’s most recent book ‘Welcome To The Weird America’ has been compared to a ‘lit stick of dynamite.’ He is also the author of the Jack Palace crime novels. A.G. was born in Dallas, Texas and now lives in Toronto, Ontario.

    Author

  • Corinna Chong

    Corinna Chong

    Author

    Corinna Chong’s first novel, Belinda’s Rings, was published by NeWest Press in 2013, and her short fiction has appeared in magazines across Canada. Her debut collection of short stories, The Whole Animal, was published this spring by Arsenal Pulp Press. She lives in Kelowna, BC and teaches at Okanagan College.

    URL https://www.corinnachong.com

    Author

  • Geoffrey D. Morrison

    Geoffrey D. Morrison

    Author

    Geoffrey D. Morrison’s debut novel, Falling Hour, was published in February 2023 with Coach House Books. He is also author of the poetry chapbook Blood-Brain Barrier and coauthor of the experimental short fiction collection Archaic Torso of Gumby. He lives on the unceded Squamish, Musqueam, and Tsleil-Waututh territory.

    Author

  • Sonia Urlando

    Sonia Urlando

    Moderator

    Sonia Urlando (she/her) is an editor, writer, and podcaster based in Toronto. She has a love of incisive questions, an affection for trickster figures, and a wealth of facts about greyhounds. You can find her at Augur Magazine, where she serves as a Senior Editor (Copy & Proofs) and hosts the newly-launched podcast Murmustations all about worldbuilding through speculative genres. 

    Moderator

Partners

Accessibility Sponsor: Wolsak & Wynn