Spells is a violent coming-of-age story set in suburban Canada in the 1970’s. Andy Loch, a chubby 14-year-old, is obsessed with witchcraft and the occult. Convinced that occult forces curse his family, and that he himself possesses supernatural abilities, the boy dabbles in black magic in a desperate effort to connect with his remote father. Andy’s fascination with the occult peaks during "Tut-mania," the craze sparked by the North American tour of Tutankhamun’s burial treasures. As Andy begins a macabre road trip from his small hometown to Toronto to see the exhibition, his world and his sanity spiral out of control.

Spells

Literature & Fiction

Vaughan, RM

Vaughan, R.M.

Dramas & Plays

ECW Press

it’s the extravagance of Vaughan’s vision, together with his lyricism and humanity, that make it possible to walk with him into the darkness, into the place where we are all alone”  Globe and Mail Ruined Stars combines a penchant for formal experimentation with a unique, often engagingly puzzling devotion to language and its limits. RM Vaughan’s third collection, Ruined Stars explores his obsession with travel, magic, and sex  each subject layered and re-layered with the confessional fictions” his poetry is famous for. Fans of Vaughan’s previous books can look forward to more baroque feats of word play, some gossipy asides, and the insights of a questioning heart.

Ruined Stars

Poetry

a misFit book

There are no lost women, only women who've forgotten their scripts.' RM Vaughan's play about Hollywood director Dorothy Arzner comes off the stage and onto the page in this handsome edition from Coach House Books. An insightful look at the gender politics behind the cameras and studios of the golden age of cinema.

Camera, Woman

Coach House Books

Ogres, trolls, demons – monsters, like violence, are always represented as male. Not this time. Celebrated playwright RM Vaughan gives us, in three one-act monologues, three very monstrous women.In A Visitation by St Teresa of Avila upon Constable Margaret Chance, we meet a middle-aged police officer whose world view is determined by her obsession with race, bloodlines and genetic determinism. The Susan Smith Tapes (made into a film for CBC and Showcase by Jeremy Podeswa) shows the famous American who drowned her two young sons trying to recapture the public's attention by auditioning for talk shows. And Dead Teenagers introduces us to a frustrated reverend unhealthily addicted to the spectacle of large funerals for murdered children.

The Monster Trilogy

Everyone falls in love with their therapist at least a little. But what happens when the therapist not only loves you back but also acts upon it? Troubled is the poetic account of the true story of a patient/psychiatrist relationship gone horribly wrong. With his signature mix of scathing self-analysis and volatile wordplay, RM Vaughan brazenly documents how an innocent flirtation with his therapist escalated into dangerous sexual misadventure. But when the clandestine relationship goes awry, the consequences are heart-rending and career-ending.Troubled is brutally honest and erotically frank, a no-holds-barred confession that is itself distrustful of the language of confession.

Troubled

Contemporary

For forty years, RM Vaughan has been fighting, and failing, to get his forty winks each night. He's not alone, not by any stretch.
More and more studies highlight the health risks of undersleeping, yet we have never been asked to do more, and for longer. And we can’t stop thinking that a lack of sleep is heroic: snoozing is a kind of laziness, after all. But why, when we know more about the value of sleep, are we obsessed with twenty-four-hour workdays and deliberate sleep deprivation?
Working outward from his own experience, Vaughan explores this insomnia culture we’ve created, predicting a cultural collision will we soon have to legislate rest, as France has done? and wondering about the cause-and-effect model of our shorter attention spans. Does the fact that we are almost universally underslept change how our world works? We know it’s an issue with, say, pilots and truck drivers, but what about artists does an insomnia culture change creativity? And what are the longterm cultural consequences of this increasing sacri?ce for the everelusive goal of total productivity’?
RM Vaughan ... [is] easily amongst the top ?ve art critics working today. I’ve seen Vaughan turn phrases that have the forcefulness of Christian Viveros Faune, the plainspoken insight of Dave Hickey, and the lyricism of Peter Schjeldahl. Vaughan should never have to do anything but write. ’ Paddy Johnson, editorial director, Art F City New York
RM Vaughan is a Canadian writer and video artist who lives in Berlin and Toronto. Vaughan is the author of nine books and a contributor to over 50 anthologies. His videos and filmed performances play in galleries and festivals around the world.

Bright Eyed: Insomnia and Its Cultures (Exploded Views)

Business & Money

Business Culture

Pervatory

Literary

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Books by Vaughan, RM