The night of 1 million events

Headed into Toronto yesterday to meet with some friends and to catch some evening literary events.

It was a crazy night. Leigh Nash and Ken Sparling were reading in Lillian Necakov's great Boneshaker Reading Series at the St. Clair/Silverthorn Library; Elyse Friedman, Pasha Malla, Michael Winter and Julie Booker were reading short fiction at an Anansi event at Sneaky Dee's; Rachel Zolf was reading at the usually bland and open-mic-plagued Art Bar Reading Series at Clinton's; Paul Vermeersch was hosting the Insomniac Spring launch at Magpie, featuring old friend Stan Rogal, new friend Mike Spry, and a poet named Sam Cheuk; and Jay MillAr's BookThug was launching about three hundred new titles at The Supermarket in Kensington Market.

I had hoped to get to four of the events, and then whittled my aspirations down to three, and wound up making it to two.

Saw lots of great people and one fuckin' dink.

Here are the books I wound up buying yesterday evening:

Dance, Monster!, by Stan Rogal (Insomniac)
Distillery Songs, by Mike Spry (Insomniac)
The Obvious Flap, by Gary Barwin & Gregory Betts (BookThug)
Killdeer, by Phil Hall (BookThug)
I Can Say Interpellation, by Stephen Cain & Clelia Scala (BookThug)
The Coming Envelope Issue 3, edited by Malcolm Sutton (BookThug)
Instructions for Pen and Ink, by Edward Nixon (Cactus Press)

Here are the inscriptions that appear in the books, censored to protect the signers:

"Over all the years, thanks pal!"

"I can say…thank you & best wishes. With admiration"

"With grateful thanks (there is no shuttle bus)"

"Obviously!"

"Without your support of [censored], I don't think this would have made it into print. Thank you so, so much."

"the osteo pathic flipper thanks Stuart!"

"Thanks for coming to the Launch. All best [censored] with admiration."

"[a drawing of what appears to be a hand poking out of a long sleeve and perhaps with a bullet hole or nail hole in the palm]"

Over and out.