Autumn inauguration

Coach House Books and Snare Books collaborate to unveil five new titles at the Kingston Fall Book Mega-Launch

The Kingston Fall Book Mega-Launch will feature readings from five new titles.
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The Kingston Fall Book Mega-Launch will feature readings from five new titles.

A team of five Canadian authors will join forces in Kingston for a multi-book launch.

Montreal publishing company Snare Books teamed up with the Toronto-based publishers Coach House Books for a five-piece book launch featuring collections from both houses at the Artel. The launch, dubbed Kingston Mega-Launch, will showcase five authors, whose books push the boundaries of language with their poetry and prose.

The Mega-Launch will feature readings from new titles by Leigh Kotsilidis, Tristan Hughes, Jenny Sampirisi, Pearl Pirie and Lesley Trites.

Event coordinator Georgia Webber said Trites’ Echoic Mimic is representative of what Snare aims to publish.

“She’s done a long-form poem that is also mixed genre,” Webber said. “It’s very interesting to read because of the perspective you take as a reader; it’s thrown into so many different places. It’s a really experimental, risky book and that’s what we like.”

The three Coach House publications to be launched in Kingston also stretch poetic conventions. Hughes’ Eye Lake uses rigid prose to tell the haunting tale of three families and three disappearances. Kotsilidis’ Hypotheticals combines poetry with the exploration of the scientific method and its faith in certain truths. Sampirisi’s Croak uses metaphors of biology and reads like a play.

Kingston was chosen for the launch party because of its proximity to both Montreal and Toronto. But, the city’s character and demographic was also taken into consideration when choosing a site for the launch.

“As far as Snare is concerned we’re still trying to figure out where our place is, and trying to find where people are interested in the stuff we’re publishing,” Webber said. “So for us it’s just a little bit of an outreach initiative that we’re taking on, just to reach out to some neighbouring cities.”

According to Webber, the two publishing houses have similar objectives, producing mainly poetry and prose that gives “a platform to the more experimental.” Snare’s publisher, Jon Paul Fiorentino, is a Coach House author. He has published three books with the company, including a poetry collection, titled The Theory of the Loser Class in 2006 — the same year he started Snare Books with co-founder Robert Allen.

Snare puts out about five books annually, while Coach House publishes closer to 14 each year. Coach House publishes poetry as well as fiction and non-fiction books, while Snare focuses primarily on poetry collections. Webber said it’s a coincidence that all five authors reading at the Artel are women.

“Unfortunately two of our authors from Snare live on the West Coast and couldn’t be there for this one, so we just decided to bring our local authors and for Coach House it’s the same kind of situation.”

The Kingston Fall Book Mega-Launch will start at 7 p.m. at the Artel on Oct. 3.

Tags

Coach House Books, Croak, Echoic Mimic, Kingston Fall Book Mega-Launch, Literature, Snare Books

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