Three local writers rob mclennan, Christine McNair and I will be reading from recent and forthcoming work. We all have books for sale via cash / square. Gratitude to the Writers Union of Canada and the Canada Council for the Arts for their support! Reading will take place on Sunday, June 1, 2025 at 2pm. Doors: 1:30pm. Lieutenant's Pump, 361 Elgin, the Queen's Room.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan currently lives in Ottawa, where he is home full-time with the two wee girls he shares with Christine McNair. The author of some fifty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, his most recent titles include On Beauty: stories (University of Alberta Press, 2024), the poetry collections Snow day (Spuyten Duyvil, 2025) and the book of sentences (University of Calgary Press, 2025), and the anthology groundworks: the best of the third decade of above/ground press 2013-2023 (Invisible Publishing, 2023). The current Artistic Director of VERSeFest: Ottawa’s International Poetry Festival, he spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta.

CHRISTINE MCNAIR is the author of Charm (winner of the 2018 Archibald Lampman Award) and Conflict (finalist for the City of Ottawa Book Award, the Archibald Lampman Award, and the ReLit Award for Poetry).  Conflict was shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her chapbook pleasantries and other misdemeanours was shortlisted for the 2014 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Toxemia (Book*hug 2024) is her first published work of hybrid non-fiction -- a poetic memoir of her experience with preeclampsia, illness, and various aspects of toxicity. She currently works as a book doctor in Ottawa.

Amanda Earl writes, reviews, edits, publishes, facilitates workshops, organizes literary events. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca, editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry and your editor if you’ll have her. Her poetry books include Beast Body Epic, Genesis, Trouble, and Kiki. Her creative missions are whimsy, exploration and connection with kindred misfits. She writes so that fellow misfits don’t feel alone. More info: AmandaEarl.com.

Please join AngelHousePress in celebrating National Poetry Month 2025 with Amanda Earl, Margo LaPierre, Lisa Richter and Chuqiao Yang for readings of recent and forthcoming work. We are grateful for the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the League of Canadian Poets. This reading will be hosted on Zoom. Please contact amanda@angelhousepress.com well before the date to receive the link. Amanda will host the reading on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Peoples. 

BIOS

Amanda Earl is a pansexual polyamorous feminist writer, editor, publisher, visual poet and reviewer living on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabe Peoples. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca and the editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry. Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a collection of near-death long poems. Her creative mission is whimsy, exploration and connection with kindred misfits. More information is available at AmandaEarl.com. Amanda will be reading from” desire, a footnote,” a long poem which began as a response to her recent return to dating apps, but is beginning to be an exploration of radical love, relationship anarchy and cherished friendships. Margo LaPierre is a freelance literary editor and writer. Her second poetry collection, Ajar, is forthcoming with Guernica Editions in October 2025 and recently her chapbook In Violet was published by Anstruther Press. She serves on Arc Poetry magazine’s editorial and executive boards and is a member of the Ottawa-based poetry collective VII. She’ll be graduating from UBC this spring with an MFA in Creative Writing. In her fiction and poetry, she seeks to destigmatize bipolar disorder and psychosis. Yellow and orange often show up in her work to signal alarm or warning. Blue is sometimes a portal. Lisa Richter is a poet, writer, and educator from Toronto. She is the author of Closer to Where We Began (Tightrope Books, 2017) and Nautilus and Bone (Frontenac House, 2020), winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry, the National Jewish Book Award for Poetry in the US, and other honours. She is currently completing her MFA at the University of Guelph. Her third collection of poetry will be published by University of Alberta Press in spring 2026. Chuqiao Yang’s poems have appeared in The Unpublished City, Ricepaper, Arc Poetry Magazine, Canthius, Prism, Grain, CV2, Room, and on CBC Radio. She was a finalist for the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and her chapbook, Reunions in the Year of the Sheep, won the bpNichol Chapbook Award. The Last to the Party is her first full-length collection. Yang lives in Ottawa.

Beast Body Epic is for anyone who’s circled the drain or knows someone who has. The book is about having the shit kicked out of you & surviving.

"Amanda Earl’s Beast Body Epic delivers on the promise of its title, fusing visual, lyric, and narrative poems with classical mythology to tell a story that’s part body horror, part fever dream, and part testament of survival from a poet who refuses to die. " Jim Johnstone, author of The King of Terrors

"Beast Body Epic is a hypnotic chronicle of illness and recovery witnessed through a kaleidoscopic looking-glass. Equally tender and brutal with honesty, Earl gives us a beguiling long-form poem about what the body and spirit can endure and how we can survive and thrive. Wisdom crafts this work, a deeply lived understanding that can only come from enduring the unendurable. Luscious and wildly resonant, Beast Body Epic will astound, move, and give you strength."  Sandra Ridley, author of Vixen

“In Beast Body Epic, Amanda Earl refracts the experience of unwellness through an assortment of communications. She leans into visual poetry, the epic, allusion, disassociation, memoir, verse, prose, fable, allegory, and other modes in order to tell a complex story in a surprisingly succinct work. The variation is not only necessary, it’s seamless, and Amanda’s text flows with the protagonist through crisis into stasis and onward.“  Elee Kraljii Gardiner, An Introduction to Beast Body Epic.

Launches took place in Montreal, on Zoom and at VERSeFest 2024 in Ottawa. More info on readings, reviews and interviews will also be available on AmandaEarl.com.

Beast Body Epic was longlisted for the League of Canadian Poets 2024  Raymond Souster Award.

Click here to purchase via Paypal. If you don't use Paypal, email amanda at angelhousepress dot com for alternative arrangements .

AngelHousePress Celebrates National Poetry Month with Conyer Clayton, Ellen Chang-Richardson and Amanda Earl

Saturday, April 13, 2024 2pm EDT on Zoom

a free reading sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets

Ellen, Conyer and Amanda will read recent and forthcoming poetry.

Register in advance to receive Zoom link in confirmation e-mail. 

Conyer Clayton is an award-winning writer and editor from Kentucky now living in Ottawa, whose multi-genre work often explores grief, disability, addiction, and gender-based violence through a surrealist lens. Their latest book is But the sun, and the ships, and the fish, and the waves. (Winner of the Archibald Lampman Award, Anvil Press). They are a Senior Editor at Augur, Nonfiction Editor for untethered magazine, and guest edited issues of CV2 and Room Magazine. You can find their nonfiction and poetry in Best Canadian Poetry 2023, This Magazine, Room Magazine, filling station, Canthius, Arc Poetry Magazine, CV2, The Capilano Review, and others. Photo credit: Curtis Perry.

Ellen Chang-Richardson is an award-winning poet of Taiwanese and Chinese Cambodian descent living on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg. The author/co-author of six poetry chapbooks, their writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Turtle Island including Augur, Anti-Heroin Chic, The Ex-Puritan, third coast magazine and Watch Your Head. They are an editorial member of Room magazine, a poetry editor for long con magazine, the co-founder of Riverbed Reading Series and a member of the poetry collective VII. Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn) is their debut collection. Photo credit: Curtis Perry.

Amanda Earl (she/her) is a queer writer, reviewer, visual poet, editor, and publisher who lives on Algonquin Anishinaabeg traditional territory, colonially known as Ottawa, Ontario. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca, and editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry.  Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a collection of long poems about her near-death health crisis. Her latest chapbook is Seasons, an excerpt from Welcome to Upper Zygonia. Amanda is grateful for funding from the Ontario Arts Council Recommender Grant Program for Writers. Photo credit: Charles Earl.