Stan Rogal, Irene Marques, and Thea Lim at The IV Lounge Reading Series

Stan Rogal, author of the novel As Good As Dead (Pedlar Press, 2007), Irene Marques, author of the poetry collection Wearing Glasses of Water (TSAR Publications, 2007), and Thea Lim, author of the novel The Same Woman (Invisible Publishing, 2007), are reading at The IV Lounge Reading Series on January 11 at 8:00 p.m.

About As Good As Dead:
As Good As Dead is a cautionary tale about an unknown writer "living in the bowels of anonymity" who suddenly hits it big with a novel-turned-movie deal. On his quick trip to fame, Vic stops along the way to comment on celebrity, marketing machines, the notion of banging out an overnight success on one's typewriter, and the act of becoming a legend.

At its most basic, the novel is about language: all meaningful attempts to communicate end in failure and/or comic tragedy due to the limits of language. The novel is also written as a roman à clef in good humour -- many of the characters are recognizable within the Toronto writing community. Rogal couples his dramatic wit with an accelerated stream-of-consciousness style in his fifteenth book and third novel.

About Wearing Glasses of Water:
These evocative and complexly intriguing poems suggest a variety of modern issues. Combining the real with the imaginary, the logical with the intuitive, the mystical and the mythical, and both oral and written traditions, they bring together different geographical, temporal, and cultural spaces to explore spiritual alienation and the nature of being, and the power of language both to liberate and to oppress.