The Launch of *A Horse at the Window* and Fundraiser for Fred Victor

Join House of Anansi Press and Fred Victor for the launch of Spencer Gordon's new book, *A Horse at the Window.*

Author Spencer Gordon will discuss the book and other matters with Q&A host, author Pasha Malla.

This event is also a fundraiser for Fred Victor (see below for a description of the charity). Staff will be introducing their services and accepting donations. By donating, you'll also be entered into a raffle draw for a prize package, including books from House of Anansi, a tasting tour for 10 from Henderson Brewery and coffee from Ethica Coffee Roasters.

There will be non-alcoholic (sparking water, etc.) available.

**FRED VICTOR**

Fred Victor is a social service charitable organization that fosters long-lasting and positive change in the lives of homeless and low-income people living across Toronto. Every day, more than 3,000 people use their programs and services. And each person who comes through their doors is experiencing poverty and/or homelessness. Their many programs and services, located at 25+ different sites across Toronto, help people rebuild their lives by offering: affordable housing, transitional housing, shelters and emergency respite, food access services, job training and counselling, health information and community services, community mental health outreach and specialized support programs.

**A Horse at the Window**

A genre-bending collection of dramatic monologues shining a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness.

Borrowing stylistic elements from the prose poem, faux memoir, online diatribe, and philosophical investigation, the twenty-five dramatic monologues in Spencer Gordon’s genre-bending collection shine a light on the anxious, self-directed gaze that defines contemporary consciousness. CEOs lose their obscene wealth in lurid hellrealms; an aspiring writer reassembles a personal history out of fragments from the 2000s; police cadets receive a curious crash course in transduction and ethics; the Great Pacific Garbage Patch and Deepwater Horizon oil spill reveal the immanent sublime.

Ranging from ironic and furious to pleading and melancholic, Gordon’s speakers exist in a world of social media think pieces, hot takes and take downs, fake news and distorted facts, steeped in pop culture and its discontents. They are real people, intimate as kin. But they’re also pseudonyms, ghosts, and playbacks, echoing from insubstantial handles drifting on the web. They lie and lurk and love online, channelling the morphemes of digital language and filtering the concerns of self, performance, digital identity, and complicity through the irreverence, non-rationality, and surprising beauty of Zen.

“Its poetics fanned by tutelary spirits, *A Horse at the Window* spans the burning issues of a world torn between the tangible and the digital. Okay, so it might set your head on fire. But that’s just as well.” — S. D. Chrostowska, author of *A Cage for Every Child*
“*A Horse at the Window* is a *Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance* for our fractured, pixelated 21st century. With maximum velocity, existential wit, and dazzling imagery, Spencer Gordon spins a zoetrope of the Anthropocene that uncannily helps make sense of being alive today, yesterday, and tomorrow while claiming there is no point.” — Zsuzsi Gartner, author of the Scotiabank Giller Prize–shortlisted *Better Living through Plastic Explosives*

**SPENCER GORDON**

Spencer Gordon is the author of three books: a collection of dramatic monologues, *A Horse at the Window* (House of Anansi Press, June 2024), the poetry collection *Cruise Missile Liberals* (Nightwood Editions, 2017), and the short story collection *Cosmo* (Coach House Books, 2012). He was co-founder and was senior editor of *The Puritan* (now *Ex-Puritan*) for over ten years. He’s taught writing across Toronto at Humber College, OCAD University, the University of Toronto and George Brown College. He works as a Principal Associate at Blueprint, a non-profit research organization dedicated to solving public policy challenges. Read more at his website, www.spencer-gordon.com, or follow him on Twitter/X @spencergordon.