August 6th, 2008

The Salon des Refuses

You may have heard that Penguin Canada recently put out a new anthology of Canadian Short Stories. You may also have heard that it doesn’t seem to contain a number of true innovators of the form–people like Clark Blaise, Mark Jarman and Heather Birrell. To make these omissions a bit more obvious–and perhaps a bit more appreciated, The New Quarterly and Canadian Notes and Queries have worked together to create The Salon des Refuses (I’m sorry, I can’t for the life of me get Blogger to do the accent). The summer issues of these two journals will showcase some of the best of what’s being done with short stories these days, and to talk about stories in general and in specific. I suspect there will be some word for the art of anthologizing, as well.

These two issues will be on newsstands this month, and if you subscribe to one I think the other one will just turn up, too (good deal!) There’s also going to be a This is Not a Reading Series event–a literary forum–on Wednesday August 13, at the Gladstone, from 8:30 to 10:30. I’m stoked.

Full disclosure: I have work in both these issues, too. There’s the Metcalf-Rooke Award feature–three stories plus an interview with Amy King–in TNQ, and a long profile with John on the writing life in CNQ. Getting to rub margins with the Salon authors is a huge honour, and it does inspire the imagination…maybe if I keep on going, keep writing and rewriting, keep learning and asking questions and leaving parties at 10:30 to go home and work, someday in the far off future, I too could be ignored by a prestigious anthology. In such company, it’s a pretty heady thought.

I love all the boys with the band
RR