author spotlight #2: rob mclennan,

Chaudiere Books is publishing Ottawa writer rob mclennan’s first collection of short fiction, The Uncertainty Principle: stories, later this spring, launching as part of the Plan 99 Reading Series at The Manx Pub in Ottawa on Saturday, May 10, 2014. Some of the stories from this collection, as well as from a subsequent work-in-progress, have appeared online at The Barnstormer, Reader's Digest Canada, matchbooklit, fortunates and Sassafras Literary Magazine, as well as quite a number posted to his blog: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here (for example). A short write-up by the author on composing the form of the short short story also appears at matchbooklit. Other short fiction has appeared online in Numero Cinq, the author's blog and The Puritan, with short essays on composing fiction at The Town Crier, The Puritan and at his blog. American writer Eileen R. Tabios was good enough to do a short write-up on the work-in-progress, here.

Born in Ottawa, Canada’s glorious capital city, rob mclennan [photo credit: Christine McNair] currently lives in Ottawa. The author of more than twenty trade books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction, he won the John Newlove Poetry Award in 2010, and was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2012. This spring also sees the publication of a second collection of literary essays, notes and dispatches: essays (Insomniac press, 2014). Other recent titles include the poetry collection Songs for little sleep, (Obvious Epiphanies, 2012), and a second novel, missing persons (2009). An editor and publisher, he runs above/ground press, Chaudiere Books, The Garneau Review, seventeen seconds: ajournal of poetry and poetics and the Ottawa poetry pdf annual ottawater. He spent the 2007-8 academic year in Edmonton as writer-in-residence at the University of Alberta, and regularly posts reviews, essays, interviews and other notices at robmclennan.blogspot.com

Some recent rob mclennan activity includes a four-part essay on "writing fatherhood" over at Open Book: Ontario, the essay "on writing (and not writing" over at the ottawa poetry newsletter, a write-up at Apartment613 and an article/interview by the Ottawa Citizen, as well as new and newish poems at Connotation Press Online, n/a, Thunderclap and posit.