Insomniac Double Launch in Ottawa

Monday, May 13, 2013 - 7:30pm

Raw Sugar Cafe
692 Somerset St W
Ottawa, ON
K1R 6P4

Please join Insomniac Press for short readings and long celebrations with two fabulous new books by Insomniac authors Jason Christie and Jani Krulc, both Calgarians and both stunning writers.

UNKNOWN ACTOR

When poetry meets theatre in the mind of Jason Christie, a smashing performance results! Then as the curtains close, Christie sneaks off the stage, through the scenery, and out into the wilds of the Internet — and straight into the footlights and teleprompters of human experience. Like a method actor in character long after the credits have rolled, off set, off his rocker, Christie runs wild from Goethe’s Faust to Burton’s, through 1984 and B movies from the ’80s and back again. Beneath his offerings to the actor — questionable acting lessons, dubious plot treatments — lurks a deep unease at our accepted practices of looking at each other, kid. Get out the popcorn and turn on your mobile device. This is going to get dramatic.

JASON CHRISTIE grew up in Milton, Ontario. He studied at York University and the University of Calgary. In 2007, he joined the Kootenay School of Writing. His poetry has appeared in many journals and magazines, including filling Station, dANDelion, Poetry Is Dead, Action, YES!, The Capilano Review, West Coast Line and Interim. He edited, alongside a.rawlings and derek beaulieu, the anthology Shift & Switch: New Canadian Poetry (Mercury 2005). His two previous collections of poetry are Canada Post (Snare 2006) and i-ROBOT (EDGE 2006). He lives in Calgary.

THE JESUS YEAR

Out of the most ordinary moments, Jani Krulc brings us the extraordinary. Sharp, yet subtle, the stories in this collection have been masterfully polished; they are a pleasure to read.

—Johanna Skibsrud

The Jesus Year explores the space between joy and tragedy, happiness and despair, sincerity and absurdity. A husband won’t throw his wife a party for her thirty-third birthday; a woman becomes obsessed with redecorating her familial cabin; a couple’s west coast elopement turns dangerous; a father must talk his daughter out of cancelling her wedding; a mother meets her thirty-year-old daughter for the first time; three friends’ lives collide at an annual Christmas party; and a downtown couple drive to a prairie church to plan the perfect wedding. In these stories, the banal details of life crash against momentous occasions, revealing what is hidden and recasting what is already in plain sight.

JANI KRULC lives in Calgary with her partner and their animals, Pinot and Gigi.