April 5, 2013 - 8:35am
Featuring Dennis Lee, Book Reviews, E-version and Reading by Bill Gaston
*Portal 2013*, VIU’s full-colour annual literary magazine, will hit newsstands across the country May 1st, but will be launched in Nanaimo Thursday, April 11th, at CHLY’s Global Headquarters, downtown at 25 Front Street in the historic Globe building (formerly The Courts), with doors opening at 6:30 pm.
The free public event will be catered and will include live music and readings by each of the magazine’s 19 contributors as well as award-winning Victoria writer Bill Gaston. Gaston’s novel *The World* is nominated for the 2013 BC Book Prize for fiction.
The launch will also award scholarships to VIU’s best Creative Writing students and celebrate the success of the department and its talent this year.
*Portal 2013* brings to vibrant life the fiction, poetry, non-fiction, scripts, artwork and photography of VIU students in every department and year of their undergraduate degrees. Within its 88 pages, Mary Fraughton conducts an inspiring interview with celebrated Canadian poet Dennis Lee, 2012’s Gustafson Distinguished Poetry Chair best known for his children’s poetry *Alligator Pie* and *Garbarge Delight*.
Lee’s lecture “Re-greening the Undermusic” will be published as a chapbook in the Gustafson series this spring.
“*Portal 2013* is the culmination of work by incredibly talented contributors, a focused and hard-working staff with whom I am proud to have worked, and our tireless Publisher and professor, Joy Gugeler, who helped bring it all together at the eleventh hour,” says Mike Calvert, *Portal’s* Managing Editor.
From a suburban neighbourhood to an alien hillside, from Stonehenge to Tofino, and from the deep sea to 100,000 feet above Earth, *Portal’s* tagline, “Words to transport you” has never been more true. These stories will move you not only through place, but through time, time that has accrued nearly two decades of *Portal* back issues as it prepares to celebrate 20 years in circulation.
*Portal 2013* for the first time will feature book reviews by Canadian authors Vincent Lam, Patrick DeWitt, Will Ferguson, Dave Bidini, Don McKay, Roo Borson and Clea Roberts.
“As space allotted for the arts disappears from newspapers and magazines, we wanted to create a new home for literary critique as part of *Portal’s* legacy,” says Calvert.
*Portal* will also be available as an e-zine for the first time this year.
“Our progression to digital format is a direct reflection of the publishing industry and its current state of transition. It is a chaotic metamorphosis moving from tradition to technology, from indie bookstores to Amazon.com, from hardcover and paperback to Kindle and Kobo, and from writers who were simply under contract to write and occasionally read their works, to writers who now need to be multi-tasking proprietors of their own small literary businesses,” Calvert says in his Letter from the Editor.
*Portal 2013* can be purchased for $9 at the launch, on newsstands, at VIU’s bookstore, and by emailing viuportal@gmail.com. The website (below) will soon feature a shopping cart to sell issues online.
For interviews or to cover the launch contact:
Kate Fothergill, Publicity (viuportal@gmail.com); Joy Gugeler, Publisher, 250.790.2623; [Portal website](https://portalmagazine.ca/); [facebook.com/portalmag](https://www.facebook.com/portalmag); [twitter.com/PortalMagazine.](https://twitter.com/PortalMagazine)
Tags: In the Community
