Two new opportunities at the National Arts Centre

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Two new opportunities at the National Arts Centre:
- Creative Producer Fellowship
- Apprenticeship Program for Technical Production, Producing and Design
The calls close on Dec 4th.


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Monday, November 18th

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Solidarity is our Strength: Auction for Gaza, Lebannon and Sudan
from November 18th-28th

NO ARMS IN THE ARTS TOUR
Monday, November 18th - 7-8:30PM
Librairie Drawn and Quarterly, 176 Rue Bernard O
Featuring: Catherine Hernandez, Jacob Wren, Marcela Huerta, Nyla Matuk, River Halen, Sadie Avery Lake, T. Liem, and more!

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Some press quotes for Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim

Some press quotes for Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim:

“This is a deeply moving, challenging novel, and certainly very prescient. What is our obligation to others, particularly those in war-torn countries? How are we implicated through the tangled threads of history? Wren has written an anti-war novel, but it’s far more nuanced and unclear than I think we’d like to believe that the position of anti-war is. … A perfectly positioned novel for the current historical moment.”
– Alison Manley, The Miramichi Reader

“In Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, Jacob Wren has written a courageous, alarming and utterly original work of fiction. The ethical conundrums it addresses are myriad and relevant, and while it offers no solutions, it is relentless in its exposure of unflattering human truths that many of us, given a choice, would prefer to avoid.”
– Ian Colford, The Seaboard Review

“A Jacob Wren novel is known for several things: narrators undergoing neurotic self-interrogation, a consideration of the gap between theory and practice, and a certain metafictional flair when it comes to signalling the work’s own existence as a radical text. All of these authorial trademarks are sent into overdrive in Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, Wren’s introspective protest novel about the role that doubt plays in any political awakening.”
– Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Quill & Quire

“Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is an anti-war novel that reminds us of our complicity in global conflicts, while offering a glimpse of the hope that drives resistance.”
– Ariane Fournier, Maisonneuve

“Jacob Wren’s latest scintillating work of literary fiction, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, is a book in revolt. Wren crafts a bold and unsettling narrative with the kind of clarity to explore ethical dilemmas that are both numerous and timely.”
– Samuel Wise, Montreal Guardian

"Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is a book full of discomfort, despair, and uncertainty, as collective organizing can be; but, like collective organizing, it also brims with the energy of argument, exchange, and a staunch belief in alternative ways of living..."
- H Felix Chau Bradley, Montreal Review of Books

"In Jacob Wren’s Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim, published in September, an unnamed narrator navigates an unnamed war zone, internally monologuing on morality and pain. These slightly blurrier, vaguer worlds suggest a search for a human universal. While reference-heavy writing is stuffed, like a meme’s compaction of complex emotion and history into a single low-res image, there’s an alternative roominess: space to take ideas past previous or logical bounds, or to articulate opinions that a mutual follower hasn’t posted already. Those ideas are probably harder to sell, and to write."
- Greta Rainbow, The Walrus

"So is it a satire of western activists’ mentality around the suffering of faraway others, or is it a case of it? Does it offer a utopianism we need, or a fantasy couched in sophistry? Yes and no, and guilty on all counts. But in risking annoying/offending everyone, like an inverted Houellebecq, its currents of maximal yearning and doubt still agitate the nervous system weeks after reading."
- Carl Wilson, 'Crritic!'

"Dry Your Tears To Perfect Your Aim is a swan song to fiction where the "Utopia" it imagines is NOT the utopia where a single person, through sheer tyranny of will, can change the world. It is instead a "Utopia" where "fiction" is once again useful in creating an immediate, urgent, revolutionary and libidinal mythos."
- Khashayar Mohammadi, Called To Fiction

“If the personal is political, then isn't the political personal? This was a question that I had throughout reading this reflective and well-written book. No matter where your political beliefs fall, Jacob Wren's new novel demands to be read for its poignant and propulsive nature. And I will double down on Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim on being one of the best pieces of Canadian Literature this year. Just don't let the prize lists fool you. You're smarter than that.”
– Adam Ferris on Goodreads

"Still, Wren is one of the few “political” writers of quality working in the Canadian small press. If you are able to accept that Dry Your Tears is more a work about the paralysis of western do-gooders than the lives of active revolutionaries, it has considerable insight to offer—particularly on the centrality of faith to radical political activism. In its final third, the protagonist and a character from “the thin strip of land” struggle with the grey lassitude of living in Canada after experiencing revolutionary life. Faith is a phenomenon fed by privation, sparked by opportunity, and sustained by fellowship—to maintain a faith in revolution in the face of the comfortable, mannered aloneness of Canadian culture requires uncommon conviction. Having thus diagnosed the challenge, Wren uses his final act of authorial sleight of hand to move himself out of the way, implying that a younger generation shaped by eroding material conditions, grounded in collectivist principles, and raised without a reflexive shame at its own being will be the locus of a change to come. It’s a notion based on faith as much as evidence, but belief is what is called for now."
- Mulgrave on Goodreads

“Subversive and experimental in approach, Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim brings forward questions, as urgent as they are conflicted, around issues of personal responsibility in times of political turmoil. The book asks readers to confront the ethical, moral, and practical considerations of becoming involved in political struggles – especially when they are not the struggles of your own people. Who has the right to bear witness? Who has the right to tell the stories of others? Does Wren’s narrator act out of courage and compassion? Or the curiosity of a tourist? Original in its form and passionate in its prose, Wren has offered an important anti-war novel that poses big questions and dares the world to answer.”
- Jury comments from 2024 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction

Plus:
Writer’s Block at All Lit Up
Possible Politics: A recommended reading list at 49th Shelf
Interview with Open Book

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is #3 on the October edition of the Hamilton Review of Books' Independently Published Bestsellers List.



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Venez travailler pour PME-ART / Come work for PME-ART

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Venez travailler pour PME-ART !
Consultez notre offre d'emploi : Direction générale & production exécutive
Date limite de candidature avec lettre d’intérêt et C.V. : le 10 novembre 2024

Come work for PME-ART:
Read the General Manager & Executive Producer Job Offer
Applications are due by November 10, 2024


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Boycott Indigo

More info at: Boycottindigobooks.com

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by University-Rosedale for Palestine (@ur4palestine)

Reviews, Press & Events

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is in stores now.


Reviews so far:
Ian Colford in The Seaboard Review
Jean Marc Ah-Sen in Quill & Quire
Alison Manley in The Miramichi Reader
Ariane Fournier in Maisonneuve
Samuel Wise in the Montreal Guardian
H Felix Chau Bradley in the Montreal Review of Books
Greta Rainbow in The Walrus
Carl Wilson in 'Crritic!'
Khashayar Mohammadi Called to Fiction

Press so far:
Writer’s Block at All Lit Up
Possible Politics: A recommended reading list at 49th Shelf
Interview with Open Book

Instagram so far:
booksaredeadly
Adam Ferris
whatithinkaboutthisbook
niknak.tbr.stack
tinamayreads
lindsay_wincherauk
readandbookmarked
leafbyleaf_official
valerier6671
thattmum
graceisbookedandbusy

Read an excerpt at Send My Love To Anyone.

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Events and Parallel Events

Thurs Sept 19 at 7pm:
MONTREAL LAUNCH with Alexei Perry Cox
at Librairie Drawn & Quarterly

Sun Sept 22 at 1pm:
Frontline Fiction: War and Humanity / Saad T. Farooqi & Jacob Wren
at the Toronto International Festival of Authors

Tues Oct 1 at 7pm:
TORONTO LAUNCH with Malcolm Sutton
at Another Story Bookshop / Eventbrite link

Sat Oct 5 at 11am:
Weaving the Self into Story: An Exploration of Auto-fiction
with Erin Brubacher, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Jacob Wren & Ann Yu-Kyung Choi (Moderator)
at The & Festival, Mississauga

Tues Oct 8 at 7pm:
Sofia Ajram launches COUP DE GRÂCE
in conversation with Jacob Wren
at De Stiil Books

Thurs Oct 10 at 8pm:
Aaron Kreuter's Montreal Launch for Rubble Children
with Jacob Wren and Anita Anand
at Bar NDQ

Sat Oct 19th at 4pm
An afternoon of book launches
Jacob Wren launches Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim
Knut Ove Arntzen launches TEATER I BEVEGELSE
Hordaland Kunstsenter
Bergen, Norway

Wed Oct 23 at 8:30pm:
The Power of Political Prose
with Conor Kerr, Kirsten McDougall, Jacob Wren & Michelle Cyca (Moderator)
at the Vancouver Writers Fest / Waterfront Theatre

Sun Oct 27 at 3:30pm:
The Afternoon Tea
with Myriam J. A. Chancy, Anne Fleming, Conor Kerr, Kirsten McDougall, Claire Messud & Jacob Wren, hosted by Bill Richardson
at the Vancouver Writers Fest / Performance Works

Wed October 30th
Montreal Review of Books Fall Launch
with Amal Elsana Al’hjooj, Arjun Basu & Jacob Wren
at P'tit Ours (formerly Ursa)
Doors at 6:30, readings at 7:00pm

Ask for Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim as your favourite local bookshop or order it directly from the publisher here.

Renee Gladman Symposium

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Very excited to be part of the Renee Gladman Symposium

Porter Square Books: Boston Edition / Thursday, September 5, 2024 - 6:00pm to 9:00pm

RSVP here: https://www.portersquarebooks.com/event/renee-gladman-symposium

Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is available for preorder

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Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is available for preorder.

Read a long excerpt at Send My Love To Anyone.

And a brief excerpt below:

"I start to think about all the stated reasons for this war and other wars like it. For humanitarian reasons (every time an expensive humanitarian bomb landed on civilians, it was enough to turn even the most optimistic Pollyanna into a hardened cynic). To fight communists. To fight terrorists. To stop the spread of communism or terrorism or extremism or something else. To help people. To improve the lot of women. Because we’re right and they’re wrong. Because: Why do they hate us and why do they hate our way of life? Because war has always existed and will always exist. To increase the quantity of democracy in the world. Because we have a responsibility to the world and to freedom. For freedom. For strategic reasons. To stop a domino from setting off all the other dominoes.

And then I move on to what I think the reasons are for this war and so many others. Because our leaders need therapy. Because a bully needs a victim. Because so-called powerful men are deeply insecure. So politicians in favour of war can get elected or re-elected by voters in favour of war. To make money. To placate the arms industry and their high-priced lobbyists. To justify never-ending increases in the military budget. To distract from rampant domestic problems. To bring certain natural resources and labour into the jurisdiction of the global marketplace. To ensure these resources most benefit the capitalists doing the bombing and least benefit the people being bombed. Because it’s easier to kill people who look or sound different than you. Because hatred takes on a life of its own. To explain to the world that you do it our way or suffer the consequences. Because a protection racket needs to constantly ensure no one steps out of line or seeks protection elsewhere. So they can set up permanent military bases to keep the surrounding countries in line. Because there is no alternative. Because there is only room for one empire at a time."

atmospheric quarterly

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Thank you to the atmospheric quarterly for publishing the opening section from Desire Without Expectation:

https://www.atmosphericquarterly.com/jacob-wren

Here's a short excerpt:

“I understand the desire for revenge. I have felt it, though I have rarely acted on such feelings. Instead I have let the desire for revenge fester within me. And yet, at the same time, I have never felt that if someone who hurt me was hurt in turn, it would make me feel any better. I have felt the desire for revenge but also see such desires as basically pointless. Sometimes I wonder if a sincere apology would make me feel better. Perhaps most of the apologies I have received didn’t quite feel sincere. Or I didn’t know how to take them in. I often find myself apologizing to others. I fear I might have gotten too good at it.”




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To the Giller Foundation: Cut Ties with Genocide

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"We, the undersigned, have made the decision to withdraw our books from consideration for the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and to refuse participation in all programming or promotions associated with the Giller Foundation."

Read the full letter here.

Instagram post here.

You can also read about it in The Globe and Mail, CBC, Toronto Star, Quill and Quire, and LitHub.

For a longer read: How the Giller Prize Became Associated with Genocide

Grateful to be a part of this. And to all the other authors taking a stand.

In one week, 27 authors with books eligible for this year's Giller Prize have pulled their titles from consideration. 2 of the 5 jurors (Dinaw Mengestu and Megha Majumdar) have also pulled out.

If you have a book out within the Giller Prize eligibility period (Oct 1 2023 - Sept 30 2024), then you should seriously consider signing this letter as well.

# No Business As Usual In Can Lit

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