It is perhaps un-journalistical of me to declare unabashed love for one small press in a sea of small presses that I’m supposed to be covering and critiquing. It is perhaps also unwriterly of me to make up words (see fourth word of last sentence and fifth of present). But I didn’t go to no journalism school or no writer’s school so I’m gonna declare a big ol’ crush on Toronto’s BookThug. I’ve enjoyed its publishing endeavours for a while, but this mild acquaintance became full-fledged love at its book launch on May 24 at Supermarket. If you missed it, you can now watch the whole thing here.
As Twitter addicts might point out, I missed half the BookThug launch myself, as I was racing around the city trying to squeeze in three launches. But I did catch the tail end with these three great readers and writers: Phil Hall (the most weird and wonderful Robert Crumb-like grandfather I never had) reading from Killdeer, Aisha Sasha John (why is every writer not doing call-and-response readings and bringing their extended family to launchs?) reading from The Shining Material, and the self-deprecating and then entirely too talented Jake Kennedy, reading from Appollinaire’s Speech to the War Medic.
Take a watch. I recommend it.