Readers from L-R: Anna Veprinska, Laboni Islam, Suzannah Showler, Andy Vatiliotou, and Daniel Perry. Photo credit: Nora Parker
Comrades and fellow citizens of Internetland, harken unto me! Issue 11 of the Fair Mag Echolocation was successful launched on Tuesday, November 29. If you were there: congratulations, thanks for coming, I hope you had some fun! Maybe you bought a copy? If you weren’t there: I’ll do my best to tell you what you missed. Don’t be sad, just come to our next event.
Our gracious host was The Ossington (#61 guess what street, Toronto). I stress ‘gracious,’ ’cause, through some scheduling snafus and communication breakdowns, our previous venue backed out on us just 36 hours before launch. Maximum yikes! Luckily, The Ossington was able and willing to give our launch a home, and we soldiered on.
You’d think a last-minute venue change on a rainy late-November night would mean a poor turnout. That thought is incorrect. We packed The Ossington’s with friends, supporters, acquaintances, and people who like their literature eclectic and entertaining.
So, like a good knife slicing a tomato in midair, LAUNCH WAS GO:
Justifying my choice of simile
Michael Collins emcee’d. Contributors Suzannah Showler, Aerin Fogel, Laboni Islam, Andy Vatiliotou, Daniel Perry and Anna Veprinska read, whirling us through space and time like some magnificent Reading Rainbow spin-off for grown-ups. Naturally, people applauded. Intrigued? They’re all contained within the pages of Echolocation 11, pictured above.
Reader Aerin Fogel, photo credit: Nora Parker
Door prizes, generously donated by Sam James Coffee Bar, Parmenar Café, Descant Magazine and Book City in the annex, were door’d. Do people who like literary journals also enjoy coffee? Probably.
Incoming Editor-in-Chief and Phoebe Wang thanked Outgoing Editor-in-Chief Annie Russell in absentia (for the very good but also sad reason that she lives in Oregon now) and outgoing Design-Layout-Webperson-General-Doer-Of-Things Rebecca Niles not in absentia. Volunteers were thanked all around, because volunteers make us go and there ain’t none of us making any money off this. More beer was beered and the night came to a cheerful, energetic close.
Merci, The Ossington! Merci, our readers! Merci, our volunteers! Merci, merci, merci!
echolocation 
[…] and volunteered their time to read the thousands of submissions. You may remember them from our issue launch last fall. Their forthcoming responses are […]