Erin Gray

Bill Kennedy's Manifesto
Margaret Christakos' Manifesto
Jay MillAr's Manifesto

Five New Manifestos on the Book: Our Keynote Panel

In the 1890s, Mallarmé wrote, “to the question of books which are read in the ordinary way I raise my knife in protest, like the cook chopping off chickens’ heads.” In the 1920s, Benjamin declared the book “an outdated mediation between two different filing systems” and dreamt about poets’ renewed public role with “the founding of an international moving script.” Today, new media technologies realize these speculative visions for the future book – but is the book really dead? Caitlin Fisher (winner of the 4th International Digital Literature Award 2008 prize in poetry), Bill Kennedy (co-conspirator behind The Apostrophe Engine), Margaret Christakos (author of What Stirs),
Barbara Godard (Translation Studies in Canada: Institutions, Discourses, Practices, Texts) and Jay MillAr (publisher of BookThug) join in on the speculation and debate by presenting five new manifestos on the book.

TWB Launch of Beyond Stasis: Poetics and Feminism Today

The Summer 2009 issue of Open Letter features new writings by and about a group of avant-garde Canadian women writers born after 1960. Join contributors Angela Rawlings (Wide Slumber for Lepidopterists), Trish Salah (Wanting In Arabic), Erin Gray (noted poet and academic) and Jenny Sampirisi (Is/Was) at this reading and launch celebrating new work by and about some of Canada’s most innovative emerging and mid-career women writers.