Book launch: Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair by Mark Paterson, hosted by Mike Paterson

Please join us to celebrate the launch of Mark Paterson’s new short story collection about the suburbs, Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair.

The evening will be hosted by Montreal comic Mike Paterson.
Special guest appearance by hockey broadcasting expert “Nick Irvin.”

Admission is free and refreshments will be served. Enter by the library’s side entrance at 4023 Tupper Street (corner Atwater). Please note that the auditorium is located on the library’s second floor and is, for the time being, only accessible by stairs.

ABOUT THE BOOK

Tim walks down the main street of town dressed in a gorilla costume. Merry finds diversion and solace in Adam and the Ants lyrics, television show novelizations, and an obsession with her blind neighbour. Alex and John, teenage brothers living under the control of overprotective parents, discover a window onto the outside world in a radio show hosted by a psychic.

Welcome to Montclair, a fictional yet familiar suburb of Montreal. At the heart of this collection is the restless struggle for individuality on the outskirts of the big city. With a warm, funny, and nuanced voice, and flitting in time between the 1980s, 1990s, and today, Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair explores suburbia’s little wild spaces, hidden away in overgrown fields behind strip malls, in dark crawlspaces beneath concrete schoolyard staircases, and in the hearts and minds of its inhabitants.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Mark Paterson is the author of the short story collections Dreamers and Misfits of Montclair, A Finely Tuned Apathy Machine, and Other People’s Showers, all from Exile Editions. His work has won the 3Macs carte blanche Prize, Geist magazine’s Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest, and the Atwater Library’s 150 Words for 150 Years contest. Most recently, his story “My Uncle, My Barbecue Chicken Deliveryman” was a finalist for the 2018 Carter V. Cooper Short Fiction Competition.

Mark was born in northern California in 1971 and spent his childhood in Rosemere, a North Shore suburb of Montreal. His teenage years were days of wandering, living between 1983 and 1987 in Noblesville, Indiana; suburban Boston; and Santa Cruz, California. Just prior to his final year of high school, he returned to the Montreal area where he has lived ever since, currently in the town of Lorraine.