This Week on Friday Live: Rebecca Ruth Gould, Gregg Chamberlain, and Michelle Barker

Every Blog Has Its Day

Well, dear reader, we seem to have reached that part of the pandemic proceedings in which this socially-distanced editor turns as squirrelly as a rodent in an empty doughnut-shop dumpster. And after three months of isolation, the voices in this head are sounding an awful lot like happy hour at an auctioneering convention. 

In this Covid cacophony, it’s less that the inkwell has run dry and more like someone dropped some Diet Coke and Mentos down there. As with overeager participants in a Zoom call, these voices need order and shushing. Lo, the writing prompt.

In this case, the search for coherent inspiration led to a scroll through adages and idioms. And to a long list of rejects. In the blog-topic discard pile: ‘Two to Mango’, exploring the newly split grocery duties of spouses during quarantine. ‘Don’t Judge a Book by its Lover’, cautioning about the perils of shopping for literature with series superfans. ‘Two Words with One Groan’, revealing the stress relief found in writing doggerel. And, ‘Forgive and Then Stet’, featuring tips for working with an overzealous editor. 

Why not stop and tell how prose is this week on Friday Live? (Okay, last one!) Although we can’t guarantee pun-free proceedings, our authors never fail to delight and inspire.

Friday’s live line-up

Every Friday, from 10:00-10:30am Pacific, we are livestreaming readings featuring three authors who will read their work and answer questions from the audience. This week on Friday Live, we bring you Rebecca Ruth Gould, Gregg Chamberlain, and Michelle Barker.

Rebecca Ruth Gould

Rebecca Ruth Gould is the author of the poetry collection Cityscapes (2019) and of the award-winning nonfiction work Writers and Rebels (2016). Her short story ‘Hands’ appeared in Pulp Literature Issue 25. Her translations of Persian poetry include High Tide of the Eyes: Poems by Bijan Elahi (2019, with Kayvan Tahmasebian) and After Tomorrow the Days Disappear: Ghazals and Other Poems of Hasan Sijzi of Delhi (2016). Her fiction has recently appeared in Mumber Mag and Cobalt Review. Follow her on Twitter @rrgould or learn more here.

Gregg Chamberlain

Gregg Chamberlain is a community newspaper reporter who lives in rural Ontario with his missus and four cats, who allow their humans the run of the house. His short story ‘The Monster Hunter’ appeared in Issue 10. His work has appeared in the Daily Science Fiction website, SciPhi Journal, Prose ‘n’ Cons Mystery Magazine, and in the Alternate Hilarities anthology series from Strange Musings Press.  Find him at facebook.com/gregg.chamberlain.

Michelle Barker

Michelle Barker is the author of The House of One Thousand Eyes, which was named a Kirkus Best Book of 2018 and has won numerous awards, including the Amy Mathers Teen Book Award. Her newest novel, My Long List of Impossible Things, was released by Annick Press in the spring of 2020. Her story ‘MVP’, winner of the 2017 Surrey International Writers’ Conference Storyteller’s Award, appeared in Pulp Literature Issue 18. Michelle holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and works as a senior editor at the Darling Axe (darlingaxe.com). She is represented by Westwood Creative Artists. To learn more or visit her blogs, go to michellebarker.ca.

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