Launch report

Thanks a million to everyone who came out yesterday and packed the People’s Co-op bookshop for the launch of my novel Malarky. I have been so touched by the warm response to my book by so many. Thank you all again.

Thanks especially to Grandma Suzu and Toni who made such beautiful food and very decent tea in lovely china cups and saucers no less. Our friends Scot and Leanne added Jameson’s to the shot glasses and coffee. The place was hopping.

Lovely music played by my son on the fiddle, Miss Otis Regrets sung richly by Lori Weidenhammer making her debut on Ukelele and the later hour duets with Cameron Wilson, esteemed violinist and composer and my son Cuan who played a rendition of Tom Anderson’s lament Da Slockit Light, Devils Dream and The Fishers Rant.

The People’s Co-op is a lovely spot for a book launch and a lovely spot to sell out of every book we had. We sold 51 books and could have sold another 10! It was a lively day on the Drive, a festival and protest was taking place down the street and the sun was out for us all.

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Saturday, the day before yesterday’s launch, I participated in the New Star Firebombing Benefit at the Western Front. It was again a super event: 15 readers and a hub of determined good will. I loved reading in a group that had George Stanley reading a poem called The Vacuum Cleaner in it. Fred Wah also read some intriguing stuff from his early 70’s poetry collection Tree, which i am now keen to read. To be honest the cross section of writers and audience reminded me of descriptions I’ve read or heard or perhaps imagined took place in Vancouver in the 1970’s or perhaps a bit earlier. As I read it struck me how influenced my novel Malarky is by what I have been exposed to here in literature and poetry and by the many writers who have supported me here.  It was a reading which made me feel very much at home here. Maybe because of the collective and determined manner in which people had come together. Much of the material that was read also resonated with this.