Brockton Writers Series 10.05.23: Andrew F. Sullivan

Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of The Marigold (ECW Press), a novel about a city eating itself. The Handyman Method, a novel co-written with Nick Cutter about home improvement gone wrong, is forthcoming from Gallery Books / Saga Press in August 2023. Sullivan is also the author of the novel WASTE (Dzanc Books) and the short story collection All We Want is Everything (ARP Books), both named Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.

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THE ART OF THE MARIGOLD

Andrew F. Sullivan

My book The Marigold is a polyphonic, fungal horror novel about a city slowly being eaten from within, feeding off the past. I’ve been really lucky to work with many great artists over the last year to bring this work to life. A novel’s prose stands on its own, but a book faces the world as an art object. How it feels in the hand, how it looks on a shelf, how the fonts leap off the page—all these things matter. Artists in all formats need to support one another and reaffirm our solidarity. It’s been extremely humbling to work with so many great artists to support The Marigold.

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Book Cover by Jo Walker

My book cover itself was created by Jo Walker under the direction of Jess Albert at ECW Press. Jo has created some amazing covers for writers like Jeff Vandermeer, Jia Tolentino, and Jenny Offill. A stark, deceptively simple image, The Marigold cover conveys so much about what hides within, a battle between different systems—corporate, organic, civic, and occult—all vying for control over a city already damned and drowning. It explains this book to anyone at a glance.

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The Wet Comes Home Illustration by Bhanu Pratap

Bhanu Pratap is one of my favourite comics artists working today. Bhanu created some early sketches for The Marigold, and I was really excited to follow through with him on his illustration for the tower. Bhanu’s use of colour and the fluid, fleshy way he depicts bodies has always drawn me to the painful contemporary fables he tells. We ended up turning this illustration into a small poster for the book, sending it out into the world. I feel like Bhanu’s worlds resemble my own—stark, beautiful, and dripping.

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Dreaming Cities Poster by Sid Sharp

Sid Sharp is a brilliant artist, someone whose work has the power to unsettle and compel. Sid’s children’s book The Wolf Suit flips an idiom on its head while haunting every page with forms bent and twisted in the forest. After reading an early version of the book as a PDF, Sid captured it so clearly in this piece, a world that lingers long after you close your eyes. This is an imagined Toronto, but one that feels real, tactile, and scabbed over. We used this painting for my Toronto launch, and I could not have been happier.

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Cabeza Ink Drawing by Franz Stefanik

I’ve been getting tattooed by Franz Stefanik for about seven years now, shedding a fair amount of blood and sweat in the process. Franz has a bold, distinct style that’s quickly recognized on streets across southern Ontario. After he read an early version, Franz created an incredible ink drawing of Cabeza, a rebellious portion of the Wet, my fungal force creeping through the city. With this ink drawing that we converted into a print, Franz captured the unsettling ability of the Wet to mimic humanity, and its desire to take on our collective face.

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Tower Block Illustration by Jeff Martin

My friend Jeff Martin is a comics artist based in Edmonton who’s lately been creating some amazing TTRPG’s with his partner, Caitlin Fortier, including Fail Marines, Hell, Inc: The RPG and BURGERPunk. I asked Jeff to take on The Marigold in the vein of Judge Dredd and 2000 A.D. comics and he brought it with all these wonderful colours. The natural world seizing power as the city falls into chaos is a major subplot in the novel, humming beneath the primary narrative, and I love this take on that relationship in this piece. The raccoons of Toronto are crafty, burly creatures—kaiju in their smallest form.

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Little Ghosts Books Poster by Veronika Dawydow

I met Veronika through the world of zines. I love her style and her sketches. She’s created multiple versions of my dog Iggy, including the cover for his infamous Bread Zine. For the Little Ghosts Books launch, I wanted something to express a lighter side of the novel. Raccoons are inherent to the very idea of Toronto and since this was a Q&A, I wanted to play around with the scene. In Toronto, the raccoons are getting closer to becoming human every day. Veronika captured that carefree, reckless capacity for joy with this piece.

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Hamilton Launch Poster by J.R. Bolt

Walking along the shore of Lake Ontario last winter, I found a stuffed panda bear tied to an electrical tower. This was my introduction to Hamilton, the city I’ve called home for the past 4 years. For my hometown launch, I wanted to capture a sense of industrial unease. My good friend J.R. used my silly photo to whip up a poster that immediately establishes a sense of dread, a warning about something left behind to fester. The Marigold, like almost all my fiction, is about what happens when we try to bury the past. It always comes back. It was always here.

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Brockton Writers Series 10.05.23: Douglas Davey

Douglas Davey is author of the YA novels M in the Abstract and Switch, published by Red Deer Press. Douglas lives in Guelph with his family where he spends his time in various nerdy endeavours such as reading, playing games, and showing B-movies in his garage. You can find him on Instagram @solongsuccour and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglaspauldavey.

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Detouring Around the “Block”

Writer’s block seems to come to every writer eventually. My particular strain came at the end of (and partly in response to) an incredibly prolific period in my writing life. My first two novels had done well, the second in particular, and overall I was pleased with the reviews and the feedback. At the same time, they were intensely personal, and the process of writing and publishing them took a heavy emotional toll. Still, before the second book had even hit the shelves I was hard at work on a third, (equally-personal) manuscript, as well as amassing enough short stories for a collection. 

Then, life hit me. Personal and professional challenges accumulated until they felt insurmountable, and I found myself unable to write more fiction.

Looking back at this tough time in my life, I realize that my experience with writer’s block followed the classic stages of grief. First, denial. Writer’s block was a disaster that only befell other people, not me, like being in a plane crash or hit by lightning. Then came anger, as I mercilessly berated myself for my own ineptitude. Bargaining came next: if I could just complete this task or get that room renovated THEN I’d be better set up to write, (ignoring the fact that I wrote my first manuscript in surroundings that verged on the Dickensian). Depression, the fourth stage, was an unwanted and lifelong companion, and was never far away to begin with. Finally, acceptance. Which isn’t to say that I was writing fiction again, just that I was able to face the situation realistically.

I was still compelled to write, but with fiction off the table, what was I to do? I wanted something easy breezy, and less emotionally burdensome than my fiction writing had been. So what were my interests? I was a librarian, a film buff, a lover of word puzzles, and the B in LGBTQ+. With this in mind, I wrote and published a library journal article on the now-very-timely subject of drag queen storytimes. After that, I started up a column in another journal, this time assembling back-catalogue movie recommendations based on esoteric themes of my own invention. I paired that column up with another featuring my own cryptic crosswords and other word puzzles. I hadn’t overcome my writer’s, but I was definitely detouring around it.

Slowly, ideas began to seep back into the part of my brain reserved for fiction writing.

Now, with quite a lot of time having passed, I’ve put all of my unfinished projects aside and am proceeding with new work, something very different for me, and a story that feels more like a fun challenge and less like a self-directed exorcism. 

I guess the lesson is: when it hits you—and chances are it will—be kind to yourself. One way or another, and given enough time, you can drive past the block.

Brockton Writers Series 10.05.23: Dwayne Morgan

Dwayne Morgan is a two-time Canadian National Poetry Slam Champion. Morgan made the 2022 Shifter Magazine list of outstanding Black men in Canada, and won the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Celebration of Cultural Life award, and the 2018 the Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award for Career Achievement in the Spoken Word. Morgan has received both the African Canadian Achievement Award, and the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Morgan has published fourteen collections, including two children’s books and a memoir. In 2009, Morgan’s work was translated into French, culminating in the book, Le Making of d’un Homme.

Dwayne’s work ethic has taken him across North America and internationally. His emphasis on quality has driven his success and has made him a well-respected component of Toronto’s urban music community, as well as the North American and global spoken word scenes.

@dwayne_morgan and www.dwaynemorgan.ca

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26 Years and Counting

A promotional spoken word video for Dwayne Morgan, looking at the past 27 years through poetry. Timed and edited by Timothy Ashley, Not That Famous Films.

Wednesday, May 10th, 2023—6:30 p.m.

Brockton Writers Series presents readings by:

Douglas Davey

Sahar Golshan

Dwayne Morgan

Andrew F Sullivan

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Special note: As we adapt with current social distancing regulations, we’re happy to announce our event will be hosted in-person at the Glad Day Bookshop, located at 499 Church St., Toronto. We will also live stream the event on the Brockton Writers Series YouTube channel! The event starts at 6:30 p.m.

The reading is PWYC (suggested $3-$5) and features a Q&A with the writers afterward. Books are available for sale.

 If you’d like to donate, please do so here.

Many thanks to the Ontario Arts Council for their support.

We are also planning to have ASL Interpreters at our May event! 

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GUEST SPEAKER

“Grant Writing 101” by Dominik Parisien

Dominik Parisien is a disabled, bisexual French Canadian and the author of the poetry collection Side Effects May Include Strangers (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2020) and the forthcoming memoir On a Scale of 1 to 500 Miles: A Memoir of Chronic Pain (Penguin Canada). He also co-edited several award-winning anthologies, including Disabled People Destroy Science Fiction, The Mythic Dream, and The Starlit Wood. 

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READERS

Douglas Davey is author of the YA novels M in the Abstract and Switch, published by Red Deer Press. Douglas lives in Guelph with his family where he spends his time in various nerdy endeavours such as reading, playing games, and showing B-movies in his garage. You can find him on Instagram @solongsuccour and LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/douglaspauldavey.

(photo credit Soko Negash)

Sahar Golshan is a writer, language learner, and the director of the short documentary KAR. She is the 2022 winner of the Marina Nemat Award for Creative Writing in Non-Fiction. Her picture book TOO LOUD! will be published in spring 2024 by Annick Press and is illustrated by Shiva Delsooz.

Twitter: @SaharGolshan 

Instagram: @sahargolshanwriting

Dwayne Morgan is a two-time Canadian National Poetry Slam Champion. Morgan made the 2022 Shifter Magazine list of outstanding Black men in Canada, and won the Toronto Arts Foundation’s Celebration of Cultural Life award, and the 2018 the Sheri-D Wilson Golden Beret Award for Career Achievement in the Spoken Word. Morgan has received both the African Canadian Achievement Award, and the Harry Jerome Award for Excellence in the Arts.

Morgan has published fourteen collections, including two children’s books and a memoir. In 2009, Morgan’s work was translated into French, culminating in the book, Le Making of d’un Homme.

Dwayne’s work ethic has taken him across North America and internationally. His emphasis on quality has driven his success and has made him a well-respected component of Toronto’s urban music community, as well as the North American and global spoken word scenes.

@dwayne_morgan and www.dwaynemorgan.ca

Andrew F. Sullivan is the author of The Marigold (ECW Press), a novel about a city eating itself. The Handyman Method, a novel co-written with Nick Cutter about home improvement gone wrong, is forthcoming from Gallery Books / Saga Press in August 2023. Sullivan is also the author of the novel WASTE (Dzanc Books) and the short story collection All We Want is Everything (ARP Books), both named Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year. He lives in Hamilton, Ontario.