Community Updates
MYTH POETRY BOOK LAUNCH - TERESE MASON PIERRE
Join Terese Mason Pierre for the launch of Myth, her debut poetry collection! Myth is “a little tropical, a little lyrical, a little speculative, a little sad ... something for everyone!” Featuring guest singer Toria Liao, and poets Faith Arkorful, Farah Ghafoor, and Natasha Ramoutar (who is also hosting!) They will be selling copies at the event, as well as hosting a signing after the performances.
Register at the link below!
Code Noir (Knopf Canada/Soft Skull Press) - canisia lubrin
longlisted for carol shields prize for fiction
The Ampersand Review’s Issue No. 6 featured author Canisia Lubrin has been long-listed for the $50,000 Carol Shield’s prize for Fiction for her debut work Code Noir!
From their website: “Canisia Lubrin's debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.
Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star. The stories are accompanied by black-and-white drawings—one at the start of each fiction—by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.”
You can find our conversation with Canisia in Issue No. 6 here:
Devouring Tomorrow (dundurn press)
March 25th, 2025
Hello, readers! Looking for your next speculative fiction read? Dundurn Press has a book worth taking a bite out of! The gripping anthology, Devouring Tomorrow: Fiction from the Future of Food, edited by A.G. Pasquella and Jeff Dupuis, is full of work from many amazing Ampersand contributors, including Gary Barwin, Dina Del Bucchia, Jacqueline Valencia, and A.G.A. Wilmot.
“Our lives, our culture, our community all start with and revolve around food and eating. Sharing meals with family and friends has been a hallmark of human society from our earliest beginnings. But we are entering an era of unprecedented change. Climate, technology, the global spread of crop diseases, droughts, and the loss of pollinators threaten to change not only how much food we eat, but what we eat and how we eat it.”
You can find Devouring Tomorrow on Dundurn Press’ website, linked here:
DEAD WRITERS LAUNCH - MARCH 18TH, 2025
Have you read our interviews with Cassidy McFadzean and Naben Ruthnum? Did you catch Jean Marc Ah-Sen and Michael Lapointe at our Reading Series? If so, then you’ll love Dead Writers, released today by Invisible Publishing!
In this collaborative fiction project, four writers navigate the protean concept of the “bargain” in novella-length stories. A biographer surveying the career of a “haunted” literary figure, a lovelorn journalist entering into a diabolic covenant, a tourist attempting to stay sober through her holiday travels, and a doctor’s complicity in a colonial scandal: These horror-inflected offerings of existential dread, tainted pasts, and uncertain futures serve as an unbalancing reminder that there is always a high price to pay for the corruption of the soul.
You can find Dead Writers at Invisible Publishing’s website, linked here:
support from the Ontario Arts Council! - November 13th, 2024
Thank you to the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support of The Ampersand Review Reading Series for the 2024/2025 season through the Ontario Arts Presenters Projects Grant!
nomad customs and snaptique sponsorship - April 2nd, 2024
We are happy to announce a generous sponsorship from NOMAD Customs for our upcoming Issue No. 5 launch. They will be providing a Snaptique photobooth for our attendees to create lasting memories during the festivities.