Calgary night out

Last night I walked down to F.A.T.S. (Fifth Ave Tenth St) which on Mondays has 1/2 pizza. A great deal. Invited out by derek beaulieu, a busy man these days. I'm putting out a chapbook of his this fall, he's just put out a few other chapbooks (he creates with fury, this man) and he's not only anthologized in the Post-Prairie book edited by Jon Paul Fiorentino & Robert Kroetsch, he's got two books of his own coming out this fall as well. Chris Ewart was there who I'm sure I've met before. I haven't read much of his stuff, but what I have read is fantastic. Filling Station 033 is out and it contains a prose excerpt of his, outstanding stuff. He just had a novel, lamp, accepted by Coach House which should be out in the spring (when derek is publishing a 3rd book).

In preparation for the move out here I tried to read a bunch of Calgary writers, and from my cursory examination I've concluded that there is one hell of a writing scene out here. Great writers like Jessica Grant, Larissa Lai, & Jill Hartman, to name only a few who have recently published books. Of course others like Nicole Markotic, Aritha Van Herk, & Christian Bok (who I'm taking a class from soon). I think this will be a good place to write. I think that it will push me to really experiment more, in order to keep up with some of the outstanding writers here.

Calgary seems to have a pretty busy little community too. Though there are a lack of publishers. I may have to step up production of my chapbooks so that I can start accepting some new work. Lots of good people around, I should meet more of them on Thursday at a reading organized by the creative writing department here. Also, I got into Suzette Mayr's prose writing class. Mayr is another great writer who just put out a new book called Venous Hum which I'm in the middle of, really funny & clever.