Jer's Garage

I'm going to be reading at the Lab Cab Festival in Parkdale July 27–28

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:36:18 -0400

I’m not sure which day yet, but I’m excited. More details to come soon. For now, check out their website! Lab Cab stands for Laboratory Cabaret. Experimental!

Here I am reading at the Ruckus Reading Series

Tue, 18 Jun 2013 22:22:00 -0400

At the Ruckus Readings, performing a multimedia, interactive version of my second-person weird-date story “Police Radio.” Audience members could use my wireless keyboard to choose what facial expression the girl in the story had (you can see the options here); when I held up a red light, audience members had to take what I said as an instruction; and I used an edited and looped version of this track as a soundbed. Thanks to Kris and Katie for organizing the event, the audience members for coming out and participating so unabashedly, and my fellow readers, Andrew Shenkman, Mathieu Dominic Ramsawak, and Jakub Wasikiewicz.

I'm reading at the Ruckus Reading Series Saturday June 15

Fri, 31 May 2013 11:10:00 -0400

Mark your calendars, because on Saturday, June 15, I’m going to be reading at a brand new reading series based at the bar/café The Only, located on the Danforth. The event starts at 7 p.m. Until then, check out an interview the founders Kris and Katie did with me on the Ruckus website, and surf around and learn about what sounds like it’s going to be a phenomenal addition to the Toronto literary scene. I’ll post more details on my reading when available. UPDATE: Here is the Facebook event.

This is what people are going to be thinking as they walk past the bar, except that they probably know how to spell “ruckus” in their minds.

Snippets from 8th House Collaborations

Sat, 16 Feb 2013 10:18:00 -0500

Here’s a video the lovely people at 8th House Publishing made a while back (and which I forgot to post) showing snippets of the performances at the first 8th House Collaborations, which is when I collaborated with Ian Turner Illustration and the band The Benefit of the Free Man to perform a multimedia version of my story “The Green Knight Gets the Blues,” which appears in my forthcoming collection from 8th House, tentatively titled Eyeless and Gazing.

rob mclennan writes on the history of In/Words for Open Book Ontario

Tue, 12 Feb 2013 09:23:00 -0500

In/Words is the literary magazine/reading series/chapbook press/set of weekly writing circles at Carleton University. Ottawa’s favourite son, rob mclennan, has written an in-depth feature article for Open Book Ontario about the history of In/Words and some of its alumni, including yours truly, Jeff Blackman, Cameron Anstee, Leah Mol, Peter Gibbon, Justin Million, Bardia Sinaee, Ben Ladouceur, jesslyn delia smith, Jenna Jarvis, and Rotem Yaniv.

My forthcoming collection is "One To Watch" for 2013 according to Spindle Magazine

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 12:08:00 -0500

Spindle Magazine gives me a shout-out (as well as my pal Ben Ladouceur):

Here at Spindle, we like to think we’ve not only got our fingers on the pulse but that we actually have the ability to see into the future. Because of our unprecedented ability to see such things, we’ve ditched the tired old ‘Best of 2012′ format and gone for Ones To Watch 2013 instead. Here are the team’s picks for the arts in the upcoming 12 months:

[ … ]

Thomas Dearnley-Davison, Canadian Correspondent

Book: ‘Eyeless and Gazing’, by Jeremy Hanson-Finger. Jez is a Spindle pal and brilliant writer so his first book promises to be something special; also Ben Ladouceur’s debut poetry collection ‘Otter’ – because he’s a great poet and not just because there’s a poem about me in there.

Article about me in Spindle Magazine

Sat, 22 Dec 2012 09:54:00 -0500

The always-charming Thomas Dearnley-Davison interviewed me and Math Rosen a while back, and now both articles are available in the new issue of Spindle (Math / Jeremy).

Photos from 8th House Collaborations are up

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:40:00 -0500

Check them out!

My Top 10 List for this year over at Little Fiction

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 13:29:00 -0500

10 Amazing 1950s-Cop-Slang Phrases I Learned from James Ellroy Crime Novels in 2012

This year I read four James Ellroy crime novels, all set in 1950s LA: Suicide Hill, The Big Nowhere, White Jazz, and LA Confidential. The thing I like most about James Ellroy is his use of period slang. Here are ten terms he uses regularly that really capture the depraved world he depicts. (more)

November 29 at the Ossington, the band The Benefit of the Free...

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 21:03:10 -0400

November 29 at the Ossington, the band The Benefit of the Free Man and I (along with some projected art by Ian Turner) will be headlining 8th House’s awesome night of multimedia collaboration with a half-hour blend of words and music based on a story from my upcoming collection entitled “The Green Knight Gets the Blues.”

Carleton U's Faculty of Arts interviewed me about my book and about Dragnet

Tue, 30 Oct 2012 15:07:00 -0400

Jeremy Hanson-Finger, a recent graduate of both the English BA and MA programs, has received a book contract from Montreal-based independent press 8th House. The contract is for his collection of short stories titled Nice People Who Care About Each Other Having a Good Time [Edit: Title is now Eyeless and Gazing —Jeremy, January 2013]

Hanson-Finger’s collection explores the hopeless gap between people’s desire to adhere to an idealistic moral code and the grim compromises that inform our actions. For example, in the short story “Saintliness,” a boy tells his therapist that his fantasies of rescuing a girl from danger may have been sublimations of his desire to cause her misfortune and pain. For those David Foster Wallace fans, it should be noted that Hanson-Finger sees his book as a “spiritual cousin” of Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men. (read more)

Here is a video of the awesome chamber/folk group The Benefit of...

Wed, 24 Oct 2012 15:26:55 -0400

Here is a video of the awesome chamber/folk group The Benefit of the Free Man performing their song “Anonymous” on Record Store Day 2012 in Toronto. I will be collaborating with them to produce something for the 8th House Collaboration event on November 29 at the Ossington, at which I will also be reading a story. We are meeting up soon to discuss how this collaboration will go.

My first book of short stories will be published by 8th House Publishing for Spring/Summer '13!

Tue, 04 Sep 2012 10:47:00 -0400

I just signed the contract and drank very refreshing mojitos with 8th House acquiring editor Ryan Hilborn last night and now ~~Nice People Who Care About Each Other Having a Good Time~~ Eyeless and Gazing [Edit: Title change —Jeremy, January 2013] will come out as a paperback and e-book in the spring or summer. You can learn more about 8th House here: they are based in Montreal, but distribute in the US and England as well. Fun fact: they also published a book of poetry by Dragnet contributor Rolli (of “Miss Social Pleasurehole 1969” fame).

FYI, here is what About.com says about the 8th house as an astrology symbol:

The eighth house is one of hidden mysteries, the biggest of which is the final transformation, death. It’s where you find intense emotional wells, the secrets of the soul that unfold over a lifetime. Often we fear what lies in the eighth house, partly because of its power to end our old way of being. Compulsions, obsessions, primal entanglements — these all require serious grappling with the core to untangle. The eighth house concerns those life issues that we’re often at the mercy of, that feel fated, and therefore, hard to resolve.

It’s the life area of sexuality, since merging with another is a kind of death. Orgasm is often called the little death because it’s a surrender to the primal energies. The merging with another in the sex act, transforms us, and is a release of that energy at the core. In the eighth house, you’ll find insight about how you go there with another, and its significance as part of your evolving life.

Anyway, this is all very related to my book. You probably know this if you’ve read any of my stories. I’m all about deaths, little or otherwise, compulsions, obsessions, and so on. Stay tuned!

My poem/very short story "The Cave" is now available in Feathertale's Big Book of Exquisitely Egregious Poetry and Diverse Versification

Tue, 17 Jul 2012 11:41:00 -0400

Find out more and pick up a copy here! Fifty poems for ten bucks. That’s only 20 cents per poem!

Fifty poems representing the best poetry from the first five years of Feathertale.com and The Feathertale Review. Edited by Corina Milic with a special introduction by Pamela August Russell (author of Be Is for Bad Poetry), Feathertale’s first full-length poetry collection features thirty-five poets and includes classics like “Insults to Be Hurled When Your Star Is in the Ascendant” by Michael Spring, and “Sentences I Said to a Stray Dog in Downtown Gary, Indiana” by Greg Boose.

My story "Between Twenty-six and Forty-nine" is now available in Soliloquies 16.2

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:42:00 -0400

I just returned from a lovely time reading at the Soliloquies launch in Montreal! Here is my story in this issue. It’s really dark but at least it’s also funny sometimes.

We played a rousing game of spot-the-native as we passed through the town, as we often did on school trips. You had to shout “chug” every time you saw one. The game had much in common with Punch buggy, but Port Coquitlam had a lot more natives than Volkswagen Beetles. Tyler Courtnall won with a total of thirty-seven points. Sandra Bartz came second with thirty. Now the bus pulled up outside what looked like vacant property between an elementary school and a golf course. Mr. Hannah, our grade eight social studies teacher, had told us that this afternoon’s activity would take place at a farm. (more)

My (mostly) true story "The Concentric Circle Method" is available on The Moose & Pussy

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 14:42:00 -0400

This is a story about childhood sex education and the XV Commonwealth Games. Check it out here!

Once I tried to make a sectional book of monsters as a present for my uncle. You know, the kind where the paper is cut horizontally into thirds, so you can create a mutant with the head of a fish, the body of a policeman, and the legs of a ram. I was probably six years old. I’m not sure why I thought my uncle would like a book of monsters, but once I finished it, my mother read through it and told me I shouldn’t give it to him. She told me that although she and my father were okay with looking at human anatomy, perhaps my uncle wasn’t, so maybe I should make something else for him instead. At the time I understood the subtext: it wasn’t appropriate for a child to give his uncle—or anyone else, really—drawings that depicted genitals. Even if the child represented both male and female genitals as a series of concentric circles, because he didn’t quite understand how to depict a three-dimensional item on a two-dimensional plane. (more)

My story "Climbing into the Sun" is now available from Little Fiction

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 09:36:06 -0400

Check it out here! Dragnet co-editor Andrew Battershill calls it a “Pynchonian clusterfuck,” so you know it has to be good.

Click to the right to view the cover of Climbing into the...

Mon, 02 Apr 2012 11:37:00 -0400

Click to the right to view the cover of Climbing into the Sun!

little-fiction:

Up next: Climbing into the Sun, an epic and twisted tale of love and war, from Jeremy Hanson-Finger. And Year of the Dragon, a story about finding your place, from the uber-talented Will Johnson.

The stories will be on Little Fiction this Wednesday, available for free — as always — to read on your phone, tablet, eReader or computer.

Thanks.

I’m reading at the EW Reading Series Astounding April...

Sun, 01 Apr 2012 11:44:27 -0400

I’m reading at the EW Reading Series Astounding April event on Tuesday, April 10 at 8 pm at Duffy’s Tavern (1238 Bloor St. W) along with Andy Verboom, Patrick Plestid, and Rasqira Revulva. I’ll be up first! Check out the trailer.

My story "Climbing into the Sun" will be available from Little Fiction April 4.

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 11:51:00 -0400

My story "Climbing into the Sun" will be available from Little Fiction April 4.:

My 9000-word short story “Climbing into the Sun” will be available from Little Fiction April 4. Exciting!

little-fiction:

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again — it’s been an amazing start for Little Fiction. We’re approaching five months in existence and I can’t believe that’s all it’s been[…]

April will see stories from Dragnet editor Jeremy Hanson-Finger and (once again) Will Johnson.