Join us online for a digital reading and discussion celebrating the launch of David Berry's On Nostalgia. Joining David will be Naben Ruthnum, author of Curry: Eating, Reading and Race.

https://zoom.us/j/98004485839?pwd=eUR1ZEhEaDdWbkUxQmFCQzg0T0drUT09

Meeting ID: 980 0448 5839
Passcode: 332256

From movies to politics, social media posts to the targeted ads between them, nostalgia is one of the most potent forces of our era. On Nostalgia is a panoramic cultural history of nostalgia, exploring how a force that started as a psychological diagnosis of soldiers fighting far from home has come become a quintessentially modern condition. Drawing on everything from the modern science of memory to the romantic ideals of advertising, and traversing cultural movements from futurism to fascism to Facebook, cultural critic David Berry examines how the relentless search for self and overwhelming presence of mass media stokes the fires of nostalgia, making it as inescapable as it is hard to pin down. Holding fast against the pull of the past while trying to understand what makes the fundamental impossibility of return so appealing, On Nostalgia explores what it means to remember, how the universal yearning is used by us and against us, and it considers a future where the past is more readily available and easier to lose track of than ever before.

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David Berry is a writer and cultural critic. His work has appeared in the Globe & Mail, Hazlitt, Toronto Life, and elsewhere, and he was an arts and culture columnist for the National Post for five years. On Nostalgia is his first book. David currently lives in Edmonton.

Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction, has been a National Post books columnist, and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Joyland, and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley's first novel will appear in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.



 

The Single Onion will feature A. B. Dillon, Claire Kelly, Irene Naested, and Pankhuri Sinha for an online reading, with Shelf Life Books as a co-host.

WHEN: Thursday, October 15th, 7pm

WHERE: the Zoom link will be posted closer to the event date.
About the readers:

A. B. Dillon is an award-winning author and educator. Her first book, Matronalia, won the 2019 Alberta Writers' Guild Award for Poetry. 'Miss Mercy', a selection from this book, was long-listed for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize. Originally from Windsor, Ontario, Dillon now resides in Calgary, Her newest collection, Murmuration, is a hybrid of memoir and poetry, curated masterfully upon the physics of flock behaviour called murmuration, which uses the rule of sevens — the idea that an optimal balance can be achieved when the birds interact with about seven of their neighbours. This is the construct that is used for the poet to delve into personal loss, grief, and redemption.

Claire Kelly (she/her) lives and writes on Treaty 6 in Edmonton, AB. She has written two full-length poetry collections. The first, Maunder, centres on the act of walking and is available from Palimpsest Press. One Thing – Then Another, her second collection, was released in April 2019 with ECW Press and looks at the disjointedness of cross-country relocation. In 2016, she curated a chapbook of emerging Edmonton poets for Frog Hollow Press’ City Series. Her latest chapbook, Another Final Girl: Horror Poems, was released in fall 2020 with Rahila's Ghost Press.

Irene Naested, Full Professor and Professor Emerita from Mount Royal University (MRU), is an author, visual artist and educator. She has authored numerous books, chapters, journal articles, and teacher resources on teaching and learning. Her poetry, prose and art have been published nationally and internationally. She received a teaching award from MRU and a Canadian national art teaching award from the Canadian Society for Education through Art. Irene’s visual art and writing become multi-layers of exploration of ideas, insights, meditative moments, and principles of composition gleaned from nature to tell her story.

Pankhuri Sinha is a bilingual poet and story writer from India, who has lived in North America for 14 years. She has two books of poems published in English, two collections of stories published in Hindi, and five collections of poetries published in Hindi, and many more are lined up. As well, Pankhuri has won many prestigious, national-international awards, and has been translated in over twenty-one languages. Her writing is dominated by themes of exile and immigration, gender equality and environmental concerns. After doing her BA Honours from Delhi University, and PG diploma in Journalism and Communication, from Symbiosis Pune, Pankhuri did her Master’s in history from SUNY Buffalo, and has an unfinished Phd from the University of Calgary. She plans to return to academia, and is currently freelancing.

The Single Onion takes place the third Thursday of the month, nine times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at:

www.singleonion.com.
For the most up-to-date Single Onion news, check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion

We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets, and the Calgary Arts Development.

Join us for a wonderful afternoon of classical guitar performances brought to you by the Classical Guitar Society of Calgary. Free admission! Please keep in mind that due to social distancing measures our regular restriction of 10 customers in store will still be in place.

Brett Gunther
Stephen Demaer
and more!

The Classical Guitar Society of Calgary was founded in 1974 to promote interest in and study of classical guitar. That is still their goal. The society brings some of the best classical guitarists from around the world to Calgary to perform and teach masterclasses. They also hold social gatherings where local amateur and professional guitarists perform for each other.
http://www.classicalguitarsocietyofcalgary.com/

Join us for a virtual reading in celebration of the launch of Marc Herman Lynch's debut novel Arborescent (Arsenal Pulp Press). Joining Marc this evening will be poet and novelist Joshua Whitehead.
Ghosts, doppelgangers, and a man who turns into a tree: a startling fiction debut that strives to articulate the Asian immigrant body.

In the beltline of a run-of-the-mill Canadian metropolis, an apartment complex called Cambrian Court has become the focal point of an outlandish unfurling, where even the laws of physics are becoming questioned. Embroiled within this psychic plot are three neighbours - Nohlan Buckles, Hachiko Yoshimoto, and Zadie Chan - complete strangers whose ordinary lives have become rife with bizarre antagonists: an ogrish landlord, a fanatical romantic, a psychic horticulturalist. The further they are drawn into this otherworld the more reality becomes suspect: Nohlan is convinced he's turning into a tree; Hachiko's staging of a kabuki comes to life; and Zadie unwittingly begins to produce doppelgangers. Distant at first, they come to realize just how dependent and intertwined their lives are.
In Marc Herman Lynch's debut novel, some people explode, and others come back to life, but at the heart of it all are the fleeting yet indelible connections we make with one another. Darkly funny, lyrically charged, and gothically absurd, Arborescent is a raw and brilliantly imagined depiction of our disconnected contemporary world.

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Marc Herman Lynch is a first generation, French-Chinese immigrant. He has an MA from the University of Calgary and is the president of filling Station magazine. Arborescent is his first novel. He lives in Calgary.

Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree/nehiyaw, Two-Spirit/Indigiqueer member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of the novel Jonny Appleseed (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the poetry collection full-metal indigiqueer (Talonbooks, 2017) and the winner of the Governor General's History Award for the Indigenous Arts and Stories Challenge in 2016. He is also the editor of Love after the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, publishing in fall 2020. Currently he is working on a PhD in Indigenous Literatures and Cultures in the University of Calgary's English department (Treaty 7).