The Fictitious Reading Series

Literary types in the Toronto area, mark Sunday, January 29th on your calendar. That evening, the second instalment of The Fictitious Reading Series will take place at 7:30 pm in the gallery space above This Ain’t the Rosedale Library (483 Church Street). The featured writers are Jason Anderson and Alexandra Leggat. Both will read from recent work, and the evening will conclude with an informal onstage interview conducted by me.

Jason Anderson’s first novel, Showbiz, was recently published by ECW Press. Anderson was inspired by the true story of Vaughn Meader, a JFK impersonator whose career ended abruptly with the President’s assassination. In Showbiz, Anderson spins this tale into an alternate fictional universe, “a dark comedy about the cost of fame, the story of a man who became a walking punchline and a writer who’ll do anything to hear the rest of the joke.” In a review in Quill & Quire, Adair Brouwer described the novel as “nervy, funny … as flash as a pinkie ring and as sharp as a sharkskin suit.”

Alexandra Leggat is the author of two collections of spare, dark short stories, both published by Insomniac Press. The first, Pull Gently, Tear Here, was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed First Fiction Award. The second, Meet Me in the Parking Lot, was praised by Wendy Banks in a Globe & Mail review as “a success, unified by its cars and bars and imploding marriages, and above all by the rich, spooky washes of mood it invokes.” Banks concluded: “You feel you're in good hands with Leggat in the driver's seat; she knows where to go.”

Come out to hear these writers read next Sunday night! And if that's geographically impossible, I heartily encourage you to seek out their books.