First and foremost, we are thrilled to announce that the fifth Apt. 9 title, and the first one to be fiction, will come from Michael Blouin. Blouin’s excellent first novel Chase & Haven (Coach House) recently won the ReLit Award, and was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel award. The chapbook will be excerpts from a completed, as yet unpublished second novel. If you read Chase & Haven, you’ll understand how exciting the prospect of a second novel from Blouin is (and if you haven’t read it, you should). Blouin is also the author of I’m not going to lie to you (Pedlar Press), a wonderful collection of poetry.The chapbook will be ready and available for the Ottawa Small Press Book Fair on November 28th. On a related note, Michael Blouin will be accepting his ReLit award TONIGHT at the Ottawa International Writer’s Festival. See writersfestival.org for more information.
Also for the fair, we’ve recently completed a small run of reprints of the first three titles (Monty Reid, Sandra Ridley and Justin Million). The second printing of each is an edition of 10 unnumbered copies. So, if you missed getting your hands on one late this summer, you’ll have a second chance on November 28th. Ben Ladouceur’s The Argossey will also be available.
The press is also starting to make plans for 2010. One thing we hope to do is to expand into non-fiction titles. More specifically, Apt. 9 wants to engage with Ottawa’s literary history and is interested in producing chapbooks that deal with it, in a variety of forms (bibliographies, essays, interviews, collections of primary documents…). If you have a manuscript, or an idea for one, send us a brief abstract or proposal (250-500 words) and we will respond to you as quickly as time allows.
That’s it for now, see everyone soon!
Apt. 9 Press 