Descant is releasing "A Summer Reader". This issue of the magazine centres around the idea of being able to take its audience places — be it tropical destinations, modest towns, marvellous cities or the interior landscapes of sundry personae.

Why spend hours packing your suitcases and boarding long flights to who-knows-where when you can sit back with a glass of wine, thumb open the latest issue of Descant and allow yourself to be transported to amazing locations? Patrick Roscoe lures you into the dusty streets of town poised between southern slopes and the sea, where you’ll witness a mother do the unthinkable. See fragments of Cuba in poetry by Glen Sorestad. Travel to China, via the fiction of Alan Bao, and watch a young man struggle with his roots. Join Mark Kingwell on a trip through lush slices of New York’s past. Andy Verboom invites you back to his last day of school to watch him burn all of his books. With their faceted displays of love, poems by Mary Corkery, Robert Hirschfield and Trisha Rose take you on a romantic getaway. And if you’d like to escape the present entirely, head back to Elizabethan England, nineteenth century Paris and the 1980s through illustrations by Scott McKowen and stories by Patsy Short and Andrew Madigan.

Win raffle prizes from North American literary magazines, including Brick, Echolocation, Existere, Glass Buffalo, filling Station, Prism International and Riddle Fence. There are also some spectacular book prize packs from ChiZine Publications, Coach House Books, Goose Lane Editions and Thistledown Press.

Come and celebrate the season we’ve all been waiting for as Descant launches "A Summer Reader". Grab a cool drink at the warm and inviting Pauper's Pub and listen to readings by poets Mary Corkery, Stevie Howell and Assia Messaoudi, fiction writer Heather Babcock and essayist Mark Kingwell. Light snacks will be served. This is a free event and everyone is welcome.

To learn more about, and read excerpts from, the issue, please visit: http://www.descant.ca/issues/descant-165-a-summer-reader