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Literary Criticism Canadian

Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer

by (author) Stuart Ross

Publisher
Anvil Press
Initial publish date
May 2015
Category
Canadian
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781772140453
    Publish Date
    Mar 2016
    List Price
    $12.99
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781772140187
    Publish Date
    May 2015
    List Price
    $18

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Description

Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer takes up where Stuart Ross's Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer left off in 2005. Memoir, tirade, unsolicited advice - this new volume is drawn largely from Stuart's notorious "Hunkamooga" column that ran in subTerrain, but also includes pieces from his blog as well as previously unpublished work.

Here they are together in their offbeat brilliance: snarky, provocative, funny, outlandish, and self-deprecating, these "confessions" are urgent dispatches that disrupt the too often polite conversation concerning Canadian literary matters. In these pages, Ross says what so many others only think.

Praise for Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer:

"For a quick and dirty breath of fresh air, it's difficult to beat renegade urban poet Stuart Ross's latest effort. ... Ross has the battle scars and knows poetry isn't about flowers and meadows, it's about blood and guts." (Steven Knight, Quill & Quire)

"... a wonderful book - funny, outrageous, and acute. I'll even say it's the best short-essay collection about the writing life that I've read in ages. ... Every aspiring writer should read Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer, just to find inspiration. And so should every established writer - just to keep humble." (Lynne Van Luven, Malahat Review)

"Of greatest interest ... are the postscripts that follow many of Ross' essays. Of particular note are those endnotes which deal with the results of his publishing certain columns - such as losing his publisher, or losing friends from the writing community. This fallout, however, may have been expected as Ross is frequently acerbic and trenchant in his criticism, but no less witty or correct for being so." (Stephen Cain, Canadian Literature)

About the author

Stuart Ross published his first literary pamphlet on the photocopier in his dad’s office one night in 1979. Through the 1980s, he stood on Toronto’s Yonge Street wearing signs like “Writer Going To Hell,” selling over 7,000 poetry and fiction chapbooks. A long-time literary press activist, he is a founding member of the Meet the Presses collective, Editor at Mansfield Press, and for eight years was Fiction & Poetry Editor at This Magazine. He is the author of two collaborative novels, two story collections, seven poetry books, and the novel Snowball, Dragonfly, Jew, which co-won the 2012 Mona Elaine Adilman Award for Fiction on a Jewish Theme. He has also published a collection of essays, Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer, and co-edited the anthology Rogue Stimulus: The Stephen Harper Holiday Anthology for a Prorogued Parliament. Buying Cigarettes for the Dog won the 2010 ReLit Award for Short Fiction. His most recent poetry book is You Exist. Details Follow. He lives in Cobourg, Ontario.

Stuart Ross' profile page