The Lion and the Aardvark Toronto Launch Event

With offices in London, a Creative Director in Toronto, and writers from the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland and arguably France, Stone Skin Press is a decidedly post-national operation. Yet since I’m in Hogtown, a nice swath of The Lion and the Aardvark’s 70 contributors happen to reside in the GTA. Thanks to the good offices of the Rowers Pub Reading Series, we’ll be celebrating that fact on Tuesday May 14th at 8pm, in the cozy, craft beer loving confines of the Victory Café in Mirvish Village (Bloor / Bathurst.)

Scheduled to read are Ann Ewan, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Laura Lush, Julie McArthur, Daniel Perry, Richard Scarsbrook, Heather Wood, Halli Villegas, and Jim Zub. Buy a copy and get it signed by the aforementioned, plus interior illustrator Rachel Kahn and your humble editor.

In The Lion and the Aardvark, 70 writers from across the creative spectrum bring their modern sensibilities to the classic fable format. Zombies, dog-men and robot wasps mingle with cats, coyotes and cockroaches. Parables ranging from the punchy to the evocative, the wry to the disturbing, explore eternal human foibles, as displaced onto lemmings, trout, and racing cars. But beware— in these terse explorations of desire, envy, and power, certitude isn’t always as clear as it looks.

Update: Ed Greenwood has had to drop out to attend to a family medical matter. He'll be there in spirit.