Featuring:
Welcome to the Weird America by A.G. Pasquella
Radioland by Matt Cahill
Please help us welcome these fabulous new books into the world on November 2, 2022 at 7:00 p.m. at Burdock Brewery, 1184 Bloor St. West, Toronto, ON.
This is an accessible event. As such, we ask that attendees please wear masks when not eating or drinking.
About The Books
Welcome to the Weird America by A.G. Pasquella
A.G. Pasquella’s Welcome to the Weird America brings together three of his brilliant, fabulist novellas, each of which is filled with strange language and extraordinary surprises. In Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus?, written like a comic-book adventure without the images, a talking chimpanzee becomes a televangelist. In NewTown, the author’s love letter to science fiction, a teenage boy named Sammy joins a motley band of rebels intent on overthrowing the bungling admiral of a huge spaceship. And in The This & the That, Pasquella takes us back to the old weird America, an America of hucksters and hobos, cartoons and carnivals.
From questions about money and God to environmental collapse, to the intersection of humanity and technology, A.G. Pasquella tackles complex subjects with beautifully surreal prose and a deep delight in the tradition of weird fiction. These mesmerizing, upending stories will have readers setting off on a fascinating journey down an unknown road with no destination, or end, in sight.
Radioland by Matt Cahill
In Radioland, Matt Cahill’s mesmerizing new literary thriller, music, fame and magic wind together in an eerie mystery.
There are whispers about murders on the scene in Toronto, from bartenders, hairdressers and others who trade in rumours. When the bodies are found they are altered in disturbing ways. No one knows who the killer could be. Perhaps it is Kris, a troubled musician who has just reached a level of fame only to have his life collapse around him. Perhaps it is Jill, a sensitive with a dangerous magic that calls strangers to her.
As Kris struggles to deal with a childhood experience of sexual abuse he finds a strange advertisement on a hydro pole. By answering it he begins texting Jill, another lost soul reaching out for connection. In bits and pieces, they share their stories, discovering truths about themselves and the people surrounding them, until they must face the danger that is stalking them both.
About The Authors
A.G. Pasquella’s writing has appeared in various spots including McSweeney’s, Wholphin, The Believer, Black Book, Broken Pencil and Utne Reader. A.G.’s story “I Was a Teenage Minotaur,” originally published by Joyland, was included in Imaginarium 2013: The Best Canadian Speculative Writing. Pasquella has published three novellas: Why Not a Spider Monkey Jesus? (which also appeared as a thirty-page excerpt in McSweeney’s #11), NewTown and The This & The That. He is the co-editor (along with Terri Favro) of PAC’N HEAT: A Noir Homage to Ms. Pac-Man. A.G.’s three crime novels in the Jack Palace series – Yard Dog, Carve The Heart and Season of Smoke – were published by Dundurn Press. When he’s not writing, A.G. makes music with the bands Miracle Beard and Lasergnu. A.G. was born and raised in Dallas, Texas, and now lives in Toronto, Ontario, with his wife and their two children.
Matt Cahill is a Toronto writer whose debut novel, The Society of Experience, was picked as a must-read by Harper’s Bazaar magazine. His short stories have appeared with Found Press, The Quarantine Review and Fusion Fragment. His essay “On Madness Within Imagination” was selected for Best Canadian Essays 2017. He has a private practice as a psychotherapist.