The Darwin’s Bastards Cabaret
See what you get when you ask non-genre writers to step out of their comfort zone to pen speculative, fantasy, dystopian, and futuristic fictions at the launch of Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales From Tomorrow (Douglas & McIntyre), edited by Zsuzsi Gartner. Contributors Pasha Malla, Heather O'Neill, Neil Smith, Elyse Friedman, Jessica Grant, Mark Anthony Jarman, Matthew Trafford and Adam Lewis Schroeder will perform cabaret-style pieces based upon their work, while the audience can take part in a costume party. Gartner will be master of ceremonies for the cabaret. Marc Glassman, Executive Director of This is Not A Reading Series (TINARS) will host the evening.
Darwin's Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow presents social satire, fabulist tales and darkly humorous dystopian visions by some of our most adventurous and distinguished writers. These 23 stories take us on a twisted, wild ride into some future times and parallel universes where characters as diverse as a dead boy, a one-legged international actuarial forensics specialist, a pharmaceutical guinea pig, and a far-sighted fetus engage in their own games of the survival of the fittest.
Editor Zsuzsi Gartner’s collection includes the first new short story by William Gibson to be published since 1997, as well as original, previously unpublished fiction by Lee Henderson, Timothy Taylor, Heather O’Neill, Mark Anthony Jarman, and others.
From recent Trillium Award–winner Pasha Malla’s hilarious take on the apocalypse, where Prince is the only man left alive, to newcomer Matthew Trafford’s brilliant triptych about the fallout from the cloning of Jesus Christ, to iconoclast Sheila Heti’s meditative romp about beleaguered physicists and Oracle of Delphi-like BlackBerrys, Darwin’s Bastards is a fast-moving, thought-provoking reading extravaganza.
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the critically acclaimed story collection All the Anxious Girls on Earth. A former senior editor at Saturday Night magazine, she is currently creative director of Vancouver Review’s Blueprint B.C. Fiction series. She is the winner of a 2007 National Magazine Award for Fiction and the recipient of numerous awards for her magazine journalism. Her stories have been produced on radio in Canada and the U.S. Gartner has lived in Winnipeg, Calgary, Toronto and Ottawa and now lives in Vancouver, a utopian dystopia.
Media/Info
Zsuzsi Gartner: Corina Eberle, corinae@dmpibooks.com, (416) 537-2501 ext 225
This Is Not A Reading Series: Chris Reed, coordinator@tinars.ca, (416) 598-1447
