An Evening With Garry Thomas Morse — Book Launch

Launch of Prairie Harbour (Talonbooks) hosted by Kristian Enright. Co-presented by the Winnipeg International Writers Festival as part of our collaborative Fall Literary Series.

In this contrapuntal follow-up to Discovery Passages, Garry traces multiple lines of his mixed ancestry. These include the nomadic “pre-historic” movements of Wakashan speakers who were later to form various West Coast First Nations; the schismatic mindset of Jedidiah Morse, the “father of American geography”; and eternal struggles of European Jewish relations, artists, and close friends against perennial anti-Semitism. Set around the vigilantly maintained border/lines that mark the relatively “unsung” decline of natural prairie life, this unromantic “wrecklogue” radiates outward from a new real-estate development in Regina, Saskatchewan.

Garry Morse’s poetry books with LINEBooks include Transversals for Orpheus and a tribute to David McFadden’s poetic prose in Streams. Garry’s two poetry books with Talonbooks include a homage to San Francisco Renaissance poet Jack Spicer in After Jack, and an exploration of his mother’s Kwakwaka’wakw First Nations ancestry in Discovery Passages, finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Discovery Passages was also voted One of the Top Ten Poetry Collections of 2011 by the Globe and Mail and One of the Best Ten Aboriginal Books from the past decade by CBC’s 8th Fire.

Morse’s books of fiction include his collection Death in Vancouver, and the three books in The Chaos! Quincunx series, including Minor Episodes / Major Ruckus (2013 ReLit Award finalist), Rogue Cells / Carbon Harbour (2014 ReLit Award finalist), and Minor Expectations, all published by Talonbooks. Garry is currently living here in Winnipeg.