What short stories did you have to read in high school? “The Dead,” by James Joyce? A couple morbid Roald Dahl pieces that destroyed your childhood fondness for James and the Giant Peach? Modern education might have trained your inner cynic to believe that the short story train ground to a halt a few decades back, leaving little freedom for innovation or invention in the genre today.
Joyland.ca is here to change all that. It’s like a web 2.0 literary journal. Operating without grants or public funding, Joyland is attempting to reinvigorate the short story genre by making new short fiction available online to all. Based in Toronto, Chicago, Los Angeles, Montreal, New York, and London, this digital lit-Mecca has been receiving emphatic praise from the Canadian and American literary communities alike.
Monday night at Green Room, Joyland will be emerging from the web-world into reality. The night’s events are the first stop on a reading tour that will also touch down in New York and Chicago. Presented in conjunction with Montreal’s Matrix magazine, the night will include readings by authors such as Emily Schultz, Brian Joseph Davis, Jon Paul Fiorentino, Sina Queyras, and Arjun Basu. Drop by to see what short fiction means in the 21st century.
The Joyland Montreal reading takes place tonight at 8 p.m. at Green Room (5386 St. Laurent).