Writers are participating on an “entirely voluntary” basis, says Dupuis, unless they are somehow able to secure a grant or funding.Ī couple of programs popular with the pre-teen set are going virtual.Ĭamp Penguin, a summer project of Penguin Random House, is rejigging its third year slightly. “Each issue we plan on interviewing someone of prominence and ask them how they’re dealing with the new normal,” says Dupuis. There’ll also be an interview with the jazz singer Shannon Butcher. Writers appearing in this first edition include Stacey May Fowles who writes about life “Without Baseball,” and the poet Paul Vermeersc, among others. The speed at which it happened “even surprised me,” he says. Within a week, says Dupuis, they were reviewing submissions (they received about 11 “of a solid length”) and began editing, with Dundurn contributing design and marketing help. Between friends and chat groups and neighbours who include writers and someone from Dundurn Press, they cobbled together a team of sorts. Apparently she said “great idea” and they were off to the races. “I was just sitting on the couch with my wife (ROM publishing maven Sheeza Sarfraz) and said ‘Should we throw together a literary journal with some of our friends?’” recounts Dupuis. The genesis of the fledgling new literary journal “The Quarantine Review” is just such an example. But sometimes these things get started when, as Toronto writer and poet Jeff Dupuis tells it, “when you’re in the middle of doing something else.”

It seems intuitive when you look back at it.

A journal of the plague (OK, pandemic) year

Roanoke Ridge by J.J. Dupuis