NOW OUT from BLACK MOSS PRESS
Becker’s Universe & Other Stories brings together a group of tales, 16 in all, that range from the doomed-to-failure search for the perfectly-designed home (“The Architect”) to electro-hermits emerging from caves (“The Singular One”), from poor old Franz unable to rest (“Kafka’s Ghosts”) to an Italian household waking up to strange noises coming from the wine barrels (“The Cantina”). The collection is bookended by two Becker stories: “Becker’s Universe: Part One” and “At the Re-Invention of Becker: Part Two” in which the main character attempts to navigate through a constantly changing world that starts with inexplicable nightmares out of nowhere and ends with Becker getting to meet his “creator” in the midst of a war zone. Throughout, the stories seem as if they’re anchored in typical situations mostly of the everyday variety—a job, walking along railway tracks, writer’s block—only to morph into strange places that serve to leave the reader disoriented and uncertain.
from EXILE EDITIONS, 2023
Found in a submerged bank vault in New Orleans, The Collection Agency Files is a faux translation from the German consisting of five sections and a fragment of a sixth relating to events that take place during and immediately after the Second World War. Blending historical facts and alternative history themes, it chronicles the creation and subsequent actions of an all-powerful “collection agency” in Nazi Germany and the adventures of one of the agents (Claudius) in the midst of the rapid rise and even more rapid collapse of the Thousand Year Reich. The germ of the idea arose from the question: How did we get to today’s credit crisis?
As WW II grinds toward its close a shadowy Pynchonian bureaucracy stalks the Third Reich. What is its connection with a cabal of classicists and an indebted French priest? Michael Mirolla’s new novella The Collection Agency Files is darkly unsettling and progressively surreal. --K.R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan
As WW II grinds toward its close a shadowy Pynchonian bureaucracy stalks the Third Reich. What is its connection with a cabal of classicists and an indebted French priest? Michael Mirolla’s new novella The Collection Agency Files is darkly unsettling and progressively surreal. --K.R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan
Check Out 49th Shelf's Must-Read Speculative Writers: https://49thshelf.com/Blog/2023/10/23/Must-Read-Speculative-Writers
Read a review of The Collection Agency Files in Hamilton Arts & Letters: samizdatpress.typepad.com/hal_magazine_issue_17-2/book-review-michael-mirolla-by-karl-jirgens-1.html
Read a review of The Collection Agency Files in Hamilton Arts & Letters: samizdatpress.typepad.com/hal_magazine_issue_17-2/book-review-michael-mirolla-by-karl-jirgens-1.html
from BLACK MOSS PRESS, 2021
A good poem keeps its promise to the world, collects the details of transient reality, and reveals them reborn and remade with the prestidigitation of language. Michael Mirolla’s At the End of the World works magic with his haunting voice, his linguistic sleight of hand, and his ability to transform experience into the marvellous. Here is magic and mystery in the hands of a master. —Bruce Meyer
The high-performance pieces in At the End of the World steer a reader off-road – into the cave, the bog, the pool; the “electric marketplace,” “dyslexic day,” the “gunslinger afternoon.” Into the “terror called language.” Michael Mirolla’s poems are philosophical yet conversational; tough, wise, witty and gripping. Ironically romantic. Plato, Zeno, Updike and Pound, Cohen, Woolf, Rilke and Kafka can watch, from the vault, Mirolla glow in his own “added shadows.” I’m blown away and beckoned back – surprised each read by his “magic use of words,” if not fully “safe from both light and darkness.” —Elana Wolff
Michael Mirolla is a daring and imaginative writer who takes us on journeys to places we haven’t been. “A place with neither inside / nor out. A place that can’t be imagined. / Imagine then what can’t be imagined.” In his new collection At the End of the World he employs inventive language, erudite allusions and extraordinary metaphors creating poems as surreal caverns filled with tragedy, beauty and courage of the world. This book reveals Michael Mirolla at the summit of his poetic power. —Laurence Hutchman
The high-performance pieces in At the End of the World steer a reader off-road – into the cave, the bog, the pool; the “electric marketplace,” “dyslexic day,” the “gunslinger afternoon.” Into the “terror called language.” Michael Mirolla’s poems are philosophical yet conversational; tough, wise, witty and gripping. Ironically romantic. Plato, Zeno, Updike and Pound, Cohen, Woolf, Rilke and Kafka can watch, from the vault, Mirolla glow in his own “added shadows.” I’m blown away and beckoned back – surprised each read by his “magic use of words,” if not fully “safe from both light and darkness.” —Elana Wolff
Michael Mirolla is a daring and imaginative writer who takes us on journeys to places we haven’t been. “A place with neither inside / nor out. A place that can’t be imagined. / Imagine then what can’t be imagined.” In his new collection At the End of the World he employs inventive language, erudite allusions and extraordinary metaphors creating poems as surreal caverns filled with tragedy, beauty and courage of the world. This book reveals Michael Mirolla at the summit of his poetic power. —Laurence Hutchman
Second Prize winner in the 2024 Pier Giorgio Di Cicco Poetry Award
From the jurors:
"We are pleased to recognize Michael Mirolla with the Second Prize in the Pier Giorgio Di Cicco Poetry Award for his book, At the End of the World. Despite the apocalyptic title this collection of poems evokes many different moods: happiness, surprise, contemplation, and sorrow while it explores themes of love, magic, the surreal and death. Mirolla gives us an original voice that takes us on several journeys into the imaginative world that he creates. Using the image of the cave the poet meditates on the dwellings of our prehistoric ancestors, Celtic, and Roman caves, and the modern train tunnel. Mirolla turns the quotidian into a new experience with his unexpected use of language. We were particularly struck by the poems, “An uncle prepares to complete the circle,” a meditation on old age, and “In the cave of lost language,” a complaint on the difficulty of speaking and writing. In the emotionally moving poem, “To a poet struggling to recover her words” he captures the tragedy of dementia for a writer who lived for language and expression. There are references to Zeno, Plato, Kafka, Mallarmé, Updike, Woolf and other authors. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound borrowed the phrase, “il miglior fabbro” from Dante and we can apply it here to Mirolla for his craftmanship as a poet and as mentor to many aspiring writers."
"We are pleased to recognize Michael Mirolla with the Second Prize in the Pier Giorgio Di Cicco Poetry Award for his book, At the End of the World. Despite the apocalyptic title this collection of poems evokes many different moods: happiness, surprise, contemplation, and sorrow while it explores themes of love, magic, the surreal and death. Mirolla gives us an original voice that takes us on several journeys into the imaginative world that he creates. Using the image of the cave the poet meditates on the dwellings of our prehistoric ancestors, Celtic, and Roman caves, and the modern train tunnel. Mirolla turns the quotidian into a new experience with his unexpected use of language. We were particularly struck by the poems, “An uncle prepares to complete the circle,” a meditation on old age, and “In the cave of lost language,” a complaint on the difficulty of speaking and writing. In the emotionally moving poem, “To a poet struggling to recover her words” he captures the tragedy of dementia for a writer who lived for language and expression. There are references to Zeno, Plato, Kafka, Mallarmé, Updike, Woolf and other authors. T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound borrowed the phrase, “il miglior fabbro” from Dante and we can apply it here to Mirolla for his craftmanship as a poet and as mentor to many aspiring writers."
from EXILE EDITIONS, 2020
Vivid language powers the highly inventive narrative of Michael Mirolla’s new collection as he navigates vast science and speculative fiction territories. These are bold voyages, to limitless expanses that defy convention – travels beyond the boundaries of the familiar, to cosmic atolls where the reader will take in the wonders of imagination let loose.
“In Paradise Islands and Other Galaxies Michael Mirolla’s forays into the multiverse of imaginative fiction are both cerebral and playful, replete with painterly imagery and whimsically creepy irony.” —Claude Lalumière, author of Venera Dreams: A Weird Entertainment.
Watch Michael Mirolla's virtual book launch here
from QUATTRO BOOKS, 2019
EMAIL [email protected] TO PURCHASE A SIGNED COPY
The Last News Vendor follows an existentialist narrator who devises a plan to fade out of his own life in a subversive and comically absurd attempt at self preservation, leaving his partner and two children with no memory of him. Comparable to Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis as an allegory of transformation, reality and the absurdity of human existence; Michael Mirolla's newest novella is a dreamlike meditation on broken spirituality, a collapsing society and the overburdened contemporary soul.
Reminiscent of Ernesto Sabato’s The Tunnel, Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornografia or Elias Canetti’s Auto da Fé... This is a rare book of a kind that Canadians don’t often write. It is a pleasure to read something that is this original and this well done.
—Aaron Schneider, The Temz Review
Brazen, unflinchingly creative... [Mirolla] has delivered in his newest novella, The Last News Vendor, the quintessential metamorphosis of the observer to the observed and at the cutting edge of literary metaphors.
—Ian Thomas Shaw, Ottawa Review of Books
Reminiscent of Ernesto Sabato’s The Tunnel, Witold Gombrowicz’s Pornografia or Elias Canetti’s Auto da Fé... This is a rare book of a kind that Canadians don’t often write. It is a pleasure to read something that is this original and this well done.
—Aaron Schneider, The Temz Review
Brazen, unflinchingly creative... [Mirolla] has delivered in his newest novella, The Last News Vendor, the quintessential metamorphosis of the observer to the observed and at the cutting edge of literary metaphors.
—Ian Thomas Shaw, Ottawa Review of Books
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Winner of the 2020 Hamilton Literary Award for Fiction
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Winner of the 2020 Reader Views Awards, Short Fiction Category
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Superb. The characters are as notable and outrageous as the storyline ... The Last News Vendor by Michael Mirolla is an unconventional, though strangely appealing journey into another dimension, and I recommend it to those who prefer a bit of the extraordinary in their reading adventures.
— Sheri Hoyte, Reader Views, read the full review here |
"World Poetry Celebrates the Great Michael Mirolla!" World Poetry Cafe (100.5 FM) interview and feature
from EXILE EDITIONS, 2017
Michael Mirolla in The Photographer in Search of Death tells us stories that blend the explicable with the inexplicable. As if a camel were actually passing through the eye of a needle, these stories pass what is commonplace through a hyper-realistic lens into the utterly mysterious. Houses have rooms that appear and disappear. Very real objects, invaded by an unbelievable force, become believably unreal. Streets filled with everyday individuals become— in our modern technological environment— ultra ordinary. What we wish to avoid becomes unavoidable. This is a world beyond the merely "magical"— this is a binary world of becoming.
The stories, which were written over almost fifty years, are a tribute to the rich continuity in the author's writing. Michael Mirolla is an exceptionally talented writer, and many aspiring writers could learn much from his ability to fuse the magical with the real.
— Ian Thomas Shaw, Ottawa Review of Books
— Ian Thomas Shaw, Ottawa Review of Books
Read Michael Mirolla's interview with Saira Peesker on Inside Halton here
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Valentino Assenza on CIUT 89.5 FM HOWL
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Christine Cowley on The Bay 88.7 FM Storylines
Read Michael Mirolla's interview on rob mclennan's blog here
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Hugh Reilly on That Channel
Read Michael Mirolla's interview on A Blue Million Books here
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Valentino Assenza on CIUT 89.5 FM HOWL
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Christine Cowley on The Bay 88.7 FM Storylines
Read Michael Mirolla's interview on rob mclennan's blog here
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Hugh Reilly on That Channel
Read Michael Mirolla's interview on A Blue Million Books here
from LINDA LEITH PUBLISHING, 2016
Giulio di Orio, an assistant lecturer in Philosophy, brings one of his students, known as Torp to the Vancouver flat he shares with his wife Nicole. Soon their landlord is convinced that Torp is the devil incarnate, and the police have arrested him for the street bombings that have been plaguing the city. A sexually-charged tale bubbling with lust, suspected murder, and the twilight of the flower children—all set against the backdrop of martial law in 1970 Vancouver.
Enhanced by the backdrop of 1970s discord and political violence from the Front de Libération du Quebec (FLQ) in Quebec, a strong sense of unease and manipulation permeate the novel. Mirolla leads readers into questions about what makes someone evil, the nature of right and wrong, and how people can be influenced by others... Mirolla's vivid writing and the psychological intrigue will pull readers through to the last page. — Publishers Weekly, read the full review
Mirolla writes with great passion, and his novel will appeal to anyone possessed of a nostalgic interest in this tumultuous period in Canada’s history. — Quill & Quire, read the full review
Torp successfully creates a feeling of mild paranoia, a kind of tense energy... [it] showcases the politics of personal lives amidst the politics of national significance. — Ottawa Review of Books, read the full review
With Torp, Michael Mirolla once again demonstrates that he can be considered one of the finest prose writers in this country. This is a love story that reads like a mystery novel set in Vancouver in 1970. A fable, almost a swan song of the flower-power days. —Antonio D’Alfonso, writer and filmmaker
Check out Michael Mirolla's interviews with Open Book Toronto, The Mississauga News, Inside Halton & The Barrie Examiner
Listen here to Michael Mirolla's interview with Pearl Pirie on CKCU fm's Literary Landscape