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About
Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer is equal parts literary memoir, advice for the emerging writer, and reckless tirade. Ross has been active in the Canadian literary underground for a quarter of a century: he's sold thousands of his books in the streets, published and edited magazines, trained insurgents in his Poetry Boot Camps, and started Canada's first Small Press Book Fair. Where the media focusses only on the glamorous literary lives of its few superstars, Ross gives us a glimpse into How Writers Really Live. In Confessions, he declares himself the King of Poetry, explores his floundering Jewish identity, wanders into the best bookstore in Canada, offers a crash course in avoiding writing, pisses off his publishers, runs a renegade Canada booth at the International Book Fair in Managua, and begs egomaniacal young writers to stop bugging the hell out of him. Many of these essays are culled from Ross's bimonthly 'Hunkamooga' column in Word: Toronto's Literary Calendar. Others are written specifically for this collection.
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Reviews
"...this is writing that works because, as with all good confessions, it's from the heart but comes by way of the brain."
Vancouver Review
"No reformed baby boomer or slumming trust-funder, Ross has the battle scars and knows poetry isn't about flowers and meadows, it's about blood and guts."
Quill & Quire
"[Ross] tells us a lot about the political economy of self-employed poets as well as the personality disorders that result from seeing 'crappier writers than me get more attention'. All writers have such feelings at times. Ross majors in them, with a minor in insulting his betters."
The Georgia Straight