. "I always tell my writing students not to try to wrap things up in a neat little bow when they’re actually complicated and unresolved. That the lack of closure can be a better ending than manufactured closure that’s not genuine. The parts of the story that don’t seem to fit tog … | Continue reading
. The beginning could also be the end. The idea of a lost masterpiece was of course alluring. But was there one? Did it actually exist? Perhaps the rumour was the work. Setting up the rumour was the masterpiece in and of itself. I didn’t know. No one knew. This is not that story. … | Continue reading
. The fact that it's Macklemore who's bringing the protest music wasn't on my bingo card: HIND’S HALL. . | Continue reading
. Very excited that Riches et pauvres and La joie criminelle des pirates have been translated into French and published by Le Quartanier: https://lequartanier.com/auteur/95-jacob-wren The original English versions of these books are Rich and Poor and If our wealth is criminal the … | Continue reading
. Between writing novels, I attempt to start writing new novels, many false starts. Why does one of the starts eventually take while the others don't? Not a reason but a feeling. Mostly a feeling that I don't know where it's going but I want to find out. . | Continue reading
. “Living longer means you witness the daily onslaught of stupid and mean that passes for reality. Living longer means you witness the toggle between progression and backlash, over and over like a tennis game from hell. Living longer means you meet young people who are better o … | Continue reading
. “Living longer means you witness the daily onslaught of stupid and mean that passes for reality. Living longer means you witness the toggle between progression and backlash, over and over like a tennis game from hell. Living longer means you meet young people who are better or … | Continue reading
. It was around this time I was given a room at The House of Climate Grief. What exactly is this place? I would tell you if I knew but I really have no idea. Almost no idea. There are about a hundred of us here. Every few months someone leaves only to be quickly replaced. There a … | Continue reading
. Ryan Dombal: “…your career is a good example of how being an underdog isn’t necessarily something to overcome.” Robert Wyatt: “Well, that’s about the nicest thing anybody’s said to me in years. I hope that’s the truth. It’s not even a moral question. It’s a question of pride. Y … | Continue reading
. Thank you to Manuela Pacella for this in depth and charming account of my work in the Italian version of Flash Art: https://flash---art.it/2024/04/jacob-wren/ Here is a summary, in Italian, of Polyamorous Love Song: Il cinema e il film sono molto presenti in questo libro. Un pe … | Continue reading
. PME-ART has been working on this for a long time and we're excited to finally be able to announce it: Survival Technologies by Kamissa Ma Koïta and Elena Stoodley at FTA on May 30,31 & June 2,3, 2024 More info here: https://fta.ca/en/event/survival-technologies/ Image by Kamiss … | Continue reading
. Scrolling through Twitter and I randomly see that claire rousay is reading my book: https://twitter.com/clairerousay/status/1769129525349368109 http://bookthug.ca/shop/books/authenticy-is-a-feeling-my-life-in-pme-art-by-jacob-wren/ | Continue reading
. From Desire Without Expectation Jacob Wren $5 "Writing comes easily to me, while I find most other things in life exceedingly difficult. This is often a problem with writers. The truth of what they write is deeply shaded by a writerly distance from life which is also often conn … | Continue reading
. If you’re in Montreal this Wednesday (March 13, 2024 at 19:30) you should definitely go see Like Eagles at La Chapelle Scènes Contemporaines: https://levivier.ca/en/concert/2023-24-season/eagles Facebook event. A re-creation and multimedia conception of the film Like Eagles (Mā … | Continue reading
. "I now find myself thinking of such conversion experiences as some kind of mini-utopia. Utopia reflecting a desire for the world to change and these personal experiences being evidence that an individual’s sense of purpose and action can shift – more, and more quickly, than one … | Continue reading
. Possible opening for a new book: “Things are going badly. But not everything can go badly, or at least not all the time. On the other hand, no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse. For my entire life, for as long as I can remember, I have felt the world as a cat … | Continue reading
. “My name is Aaron Bushnell, I am an active duty member of the US airforce, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers it’s not … | Continue reading
. Possible title for my next book: The World Ends in Our Desires . | Continue reading
A quote from my book Authenticity is a Feeling: My Life in PME-ART. As posted by Lucy Bellwood on Tumblr: https://lucybellwood.tumblr.com/post/728466340736827392 “Sometimes it seems to me that the process of rehearsal is simply a process of emotional armouring: we will make every … | Continue reading
. I've been thinking a lot about how Polyamorous Love Song came out ten years ago. How it was a moment that, in some ways, really changed my life. The first time it had occurred to me my books could have any sort of readership. I had always assumed I would be a writer without a r … | Continue reading
. “In my writing my instinct was to defy form, but I very much sought in defying it to affirm it, an irony that was difficult enough to articulate, much less defend.” – Percival Everett, Erasure * [Fascinated by the idea that they’ve made an Oscar-nominated film from Percival Eve … | Continue reading
. The Air Contains Honey With a reading by Assiyah Jamilla Touré Fundraiser for Brique Par Brique Co-presented by Arts in the Margins La Sala Rossa Wednesday January 31st, 2024 7:30pm doors / 8pm show $16 + tax in advance / $20 at the door NOTAFLOF (The Air Contains Honey only pe … | Continue reading
. The Haunting Presence of a Network: On Eugene Lim / By Shinjini Dey: https://www.clereviewofbooks.com/writing/eugene-lim I’ve been reading all of Eugene Lim’s books for a while now and it was really nice to read such an important essay on his work by Shinjini Dey. A short excer … | Continue reading
. I only posted albums on my 2023 end of year list. But if I'd also had individual songs I would have definitely included Pum Pum Poetry by PYNE featuring Gavsborg: https://pyne-sound.bandcamp.com/track/pum-pum-poetry Such an amazing track. | Continue reading
. I guess I'm working on a trilogy (of a sort): https://radicalcut.blogspot.com/2020/10/three-trilogies.html . | Continue reading
. I’ve updated the PME-ART website just in time for the holidays: www.pme-art.ca . | Continue reading
. My new novel Dry Your Tears to Perfect Your Aim is now available for preorder: https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/jacob-wren/dry-your-tears-to-perfect-your-aim-by-jacob-wren/ (I've been working on this for so long and am so curious what people will think of it.) Cover art by K … | Continue reading
. [So it seems like I now do this list more or less every year. I really do love lists. As with previous years, this is in no particular order and many of these things didn't come out during the previous year. As well, there should really be more performances and exhibitions on t … | Continue reading
. I'm happy to announce that Le Quartanier is publishing updated French translations of my books La famille se crée en copulant and Le génie des autres: https://lequartanier.com/auteur/95/jacob-wren Read an excerpt of La famille se crée en copulant. Read an excerpt of Le génie de … | Continue reading
[I heard this read last night at Paroles de résistance pour une Palestine libre. This is an excerpt.] "i will tell my jewish kids we have long story. more than what is seen now. we are a people who wander and wonder who have a bag prepared in the corner. i will tell them israel i … | Continue reading
. “I went through a period once when I felt like I was dying. I wasn’t writing any poetry, and I felt that if I couldn’t write I would split. I was recording in my journal, but no poems came. I know now that this period was a transition in my life. The next year, I went back to m … | Continue reading
. Perhaps now would be a good time for everyone to read Anaïs Duplan's exceptional book I Need Music: "When I first come into contact with an image, I say, what is an image? I begin to believe paradoxically one failed picture is the total picture. I can tell there’s an art to sta … | Continue reading
. As writers and publishers, we express our support for the protestors who disrupted the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto on November 13th, 2023. The protest called attention to Scotiabank's $500 million stake in Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms man … | Continue reading
Motivated by the urgent need to express our solidarity with the people of Palestine, the Decolonial Love Circle is inviting artists and activists whose communities are united in their struggle for liberation, to lend their voice to the words that fuel resistance. Animé·e·s par l’ … | Continue reading
Just discovered the work of Sudanese artist Amna Elhassan. This is her website: https://www.amnaelhassan.com I don't know nearly enough about what's currently happening in Sudan to write anything about it. But you can read the Sudanese author's Stella Gitano and Abdelaziz Baraka … | Continue reading
. On the populist left, the then favored model of the oppositional spokesman was what Gramsci called the “organic intellectual”: someone who participated in and was part of the community he would uplift. And yet James Baldwin’s basic conception of himself was formed by the fami … | Continue reading
Some lines from For Sure by France Daigle (Translated by Robert Majzels): * The rituals of obsessive neurosis are such that Freud compares this pathology to a “private religion.” * Some books are written to be read, others only to have been written. * Along the lines of thi … | Continue reading