Ian Orti is a Canadian writer who travels extensively. He writes books which sometimes win awards and frequently writes articles and columns in magazines, as well as the occasional story or poem in a literary journal. He is a senior editor of The Barnstormer, a literary sports journal.

he is currently working on lots of other stuff.

this is a short docu-portrait shot in 2010 by australian director tim kelly for his series ‘big small’ for the pop montreal festival.

BIG SMALL – IAN from Tim Kelly on Vimeo.

Press

“…unlike anything I’ve read before.”
—- Kate Watson, Atlantic Books Today

“an engaging, energetic read, its themes lively and intriguing in their labyrinthine philosophy and its language witty and with the density of poetry that you can slice through to discover new insights.”
—-Prairiefire Review of Books Vol 10, No 3 (2010)

“L (and things come apart) is an extended prose poem about a new relationship springing from the ashes of a lacerated and incinerated relationship. Orti has constructed a dark, enticingly murky tale that might or might not be a romance. The book is deceptively rich and complex in form and imagery despite its comparative brevity.
As it culminates, [the book] reveals its circular structure, similar to the likes of Under the Volcano, with which it shares a hypnotic quality. This is a book that will be something new and fresh with each re-reading, which it deliciously invites.”
—- Bookgaga December 18, 2010

“Orti’s world has a consistent absurdist tilt, a kind of Ionesco lite. the novel too is fuelled by a kind of eerie nowhereness in its inner lives and urban spaces. The final messaging that these characters and their readers are bound up in the usual dance of fiction – real people finding meanings in imagined people – pulls the magic rug from under Orti’s weirdly seductive, sharply rendered dream world. Happily, his surging imagination mostly outpaces his impulse to lecture. This strange city and its lost souls don’t easily leave the mind.”
—- Jim Bartley, Saturday Globe and Mail, Review: First-Fiction, August 6, 2010

Dreamlike in tone, Orti’s work is at once odd and humorous. Linear time is insignificant; the future and the past weave their way in and out of the narrative along with alternative endings found in stories called, aptly, “Epilogue,””Last Call,”and“Postscript.”
—- Mark Patterson, Rover: Montreal Arts Uncovered, February 28, 2010

more press…