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Book*hug Press and Perfect Books present the Ottawa launch of Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood by Adrienne Gruber. With special guests Brecken Hancock, Ben Ladouceur, and Katherine Leyton.Thursday, July 18, 2024
7:00-8:30 pm ET
Perfect Books, 258 Elgin St., Ottawa, ON
Admission is free. All are welcome to attend.
Books will be available for purchase, and, of course, the author will be signing!
Praise for Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes:
“In this stunning and deeply personal collection of essays, Adrienne Gruber explores modern motherhood in all its beautiful, terrifying, confusing, grotesque, joyful, sometimes mundane, sometimes ridiculous glory, in a way that is both intimate and yet wholly universal. With a poet’s ear for language—unsentimental, startling, sharp as a razor—and a memoirist’s knack for finding meaning in the chaotic churn of everyday life, Gruber cracks open her own heart to show you the truth in your own. Honest, tender, and firmly rooted in the body and its connection to the natural world, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes is a deep, anguished howl in the dark, a love letter to a complex family, and a careful catalogue of the things we pass on, and the things we must carry on our own.” —Amy Jones, author of Pebble & Dove
“The essays in this book, like Gruber’s articulation of the chimera, reveal a matrilineal narrative of split flesh, eyeballs, sour milk, creepy puppets, blood, illnesses, and grief that leave the nerves exposed. Gruber writes with the precision of a scalpel, revealing with great dexterity, care, and fierceness a beast that lives across lives and stories.” —Elizabeth Ross, author of After Birth
Bios:
ADRIENNE GRUBER is an award-winning writer originally from Saskatoon. She is the author of five chapbooks, three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control, and This is the Nightmare, and the creative nonfiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs, and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the Antigonish Review’s 2015 Great Blue Heron poetry contest and SubTerrain’s 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event’s 2020 creative nonfiction contest, and was the runner-up in SubTerrain’s 2023 creative nonfiction contest. Both her poetry and nonfiction have been longlisted for the CBC Literary Awards. In 2012, Mimic was awarded the bp Nichol Chapbook Award. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
BRECKEN HANCOCK is a poet, essayist and screenwriter whose work has appeared in Tolka, Hazlitt, Best American Experimental Writing, and Best Canadian Poetry. Her first book, Broom Broom (Coach House, 2014), won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, was shortlisted for the ReLit Award, and was named by The Globe & Mail as a debut of the year. She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize, was a finalist for the RBC Emerging Artist Award, and read at the American Library of Congress in Washington D.C. as part of the US/Canada Capital Poetry Exchange. Brecken’s screenplay “Don’t Tell Me How Nice It’s Gonna Be” was a finalist in the 2022 SWN Screenplay Competition & quarterfinalist for Final Draft’s Big Break. She lives in Ottawa.
BEN LADOUCEUR is an author living on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Nation (Ottawa). His first book, Otter, was selected as a best book of 2015 by the National Post, nominated for a Lambda Literary Award, and awarded the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award; his second book, Mad Long Emotion, was awarded the Archibald Lampman Prize. He is the recipient of the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for emerging LGBT+ writers, and a National Magazine Award for Poetry. His short fiction has been featured in the Journey Prize Anthology and awarded the Thomas Morton Prize. His third book, a novel called I Remember Lights, will be out in 2025 through Book*hug Press. He is represented by Marilyn Biderman at Transatlantic Agency.
KATHERINE LEYTON is an award-winning author from Toronto. Her first book, a collection of poems entitled All the Gold Hurts My Mouth, won the ReLit Award for Poetry and was shortlisted for an Ottawa Book Award. Her most recent book, Motherlike, is a feminist memoir about new motherhood. She has worked as a screenwriter and journalist, and currently lives in Ottawa.
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Perfect Books Ottawa, Pakalolo Cannabis, 258 Elgin St, Ottawa, ON K2P 1L9, Canada,Ottawa, Ontario
