Excerpt: The Moths of Burning Man

Illustration by Byron Eggenschwiler.

Iris stands naked, save for a beige thong. She’s shameless and unafraid, arms spread and slathered in gold glitter and Vaseline. Atop her head sits an oversized hamburger hat—puffed yellow buns, brown patty, a plush pickle like an outstretched tongue. She grins maniacally.

We’re at Burning Man, the sprawling festival that, every summer, attracts yuppies, hippies, druggies and queers to northwestern Nevada. The one time of year when over fifty thousand North American freaks swarm the desert. At Black Rock City, the horde builds infrastructure and installations, huffs inhalants, dances hedonistically, tries to hear…

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Your Friendly Cyber Village Psychic

Maisonneuve’s 10th anniversary issue came out this week, so go pick it up and read my article. Also come to the Toronto launch party if you wanna hang out IRL.

In other dark arts news, I have temporarily transformed my personal social media profile into an online fortune telling booth. Private message me your deepest questions about love, life and happiness! Illuminating queries will be given full tarot, tasseography and/or psychic mind meld consideration, and possibly used in a collaborative project. All askers welcome, all topics open. So spill it, Internet!

WiER Author Residency

I’m excited to start my online author residency with WiER, a Canadian non-profit organization, in alliance with the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto (OISE/UT) and the Canadian Education Association (CEA.) I’m in great company with authors such as Brian Brett, Lorna Crozier, and Lawrence Hill.

Also go pick up the Spring  issue of Maisonneuve if you would like to read about my lively experiences amongst Burning Man maniacs and medical wards. If that does not appeal to you then let’s just forget this blog post ever happened, shall we? *poof!*

Matrix: Issue 91: The Mixtape

The new issue of Matrix Magazine is out. It features my story (Mr. Breakfast and his Meat) as well as some cool stuff from Buck 65 (Canadian babe of the centaur-y). On request I’ve updated the Read Me section of this site (just click on any title and it will instantly download). I’m currently en route to Brooklyn and then heading South to Rainbowland. I’ll be off the grid, so if you need me just blow a ceremonial conch!

My Alphabook is Out and About!

Click here to read an alphabook I did with my mom. It’s about math club. Illustration by this cool dude.

Go Read Some Alphabooks!

Everyone should go read these neat Alphabooks and also mark Friday the 13th with an “x” because that’s when the one I made with my mom comes out. It’s about math. In other news I live in Toronto now.

Rad Travel

Some naysayers will argue that travel is not radical, in and of itself. And this Is true: a millionaire can jump on an airplane to Barbados and have an entire hotel to himself, just as a crustie in the U.S. can ride trains motivated solely by cheap escapism. The potential of travel lies in its relative freedoms: time to dedicate to projects, the ability to convey materials and information, flexibility in putting energy into new projects, supporting faraway comrades, the list continues on. Travel can also be used to combat isolation and to give us hope in an otherwise unwelcoming world. As any traveler knows, getting somewhere you’ve never been requires patience and dedication. 

From “Anarchy in the Age of Dinosaurs” (download for free here.) Thoughts? Still working my way through material on nomadism in America. Send me everything you have. Tell me everything you know.

Fundraiser Reading: November 13th, 2011.

"Stop out gothing me" "No, stop out gothing ME!"

I spent the Halloween season in Salem, casting spells and working on the manuscript. It sure is a magical town! I have an upcoming reading at the Centauri Festival of Word and Image. 100% of ticket sales will be used to buy school supplies for the Centauri Rosebud Academy in India. Please come! Some of my students will also be reading!

Details: Sunday, November 13th. 4pm-6pm. Revue Cinema. 15$. Buy tickets here.

For my Fellow “Memoirists”

“I moved on to the memoir section.  After browsing for a while, I knew why it had to be so big: who knew there was so much truth to be told, so much advice to give, so many lessons to teach and learn?  Who knew that there were so many people with so many necessary things to say about themselves?  I flipped through the sexual abuse memoirs, sexual conquest memoirs, sexual inadequacy memoirs, alternative sexual memoirs.  I perused travel memoirs, ghostwritten professional athlete memoirs, remorseful hedonist rock star memoirs, twelve-step memoirs, memoirs about reading (A Reading Life: Book by Book).  There were five memoirs by one author, a woman who had written a memoir about her troubled relationship with her famous fiction-writer father; a memoir about her troubled relationship with her mother; a memoir about her troubled relationship with her children; a memoir about her troubled relationship with the bottle; and finally a memoir about her more loving relationship with herself.  There were several memoirs about the difficulty of writing memoirs, and even a handful of how-to-write-a-memoir memoirs.  A Memoirist’s Guide to Writing Your Memoir and the like.  All of these made me feel better about myself, and I was grateful to the books for teaching me–without my even having to read them–that there were people in the world more desperate, more self-absorbed, more boring than I was.”

- BROCK CLARKE, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, 2007

Litpop Plaque

I am in manuscript hell. In other news, I am no longer quarantined in the Burning Man medical ward being force-fed shrimp Cup-a-Soups: there’s always that. Big thanks to everyone who came out to the LitPop award ceremony. It was a success! I even got an adorable plaque! Look at how happy cartoon me looks!