The Beat goes on: longtime professor launches another book

English & Humanities Professor Zsolt Alapi reads his story “Marvell's Lovers” during ArtsFest, the

College’s annual free week-long arts and culture celebration. He launched his latest anthology
on September 7.

It’s not your average book launch that takes place in a pub but then again Zsolt Alapi is not your average CEGEP teacher.

With his Pushcart Prize for editing the Best Literary Magazine and his McGill University Ph.D. in literature, Professor Alapi is widely published in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom.   

He is but one of several Marianopolis College professors who are also contributors to the literary world, among them Philip Dann, Andrew McCambridge, Monique Polak, Anushree Varma, Barry Webster and Sabine Walser. The work of these Marianopolis writer-profs is featured in “Writing in the CEGEPs: An Anthology of New Fiction,” Professor Alapi’s latest book, launched at McKibbin’s Irish Pub on the afternoon of September 7.

Theirs are immediate and passionate stories: of a girl who sweats honey; of a woman who has a recurring rendezvous with the Angel of Death; of a remote Canadian mining community’s difficult relationships.

The founder and publisher of the small press Siren Song Publishing, Professor Alapi has edited three books and is a regular contributor to several online websites, writing both criticism and creative fiction. His third chapbook will be published next month and a collection of short stories is forthcoming in the spring.

For the last 25 years, he has taught at Marianopolis courses on introductory college English for students from French high schools, Modernism and Critical Theory, 20th Century poetry and, of course, the Beats.

A self-avowed fan of “the more ‘edgy’ writers,” he puts Charles Bukowski and Henry Miller on his long list of favourite authors. So it’s no surprise to learn that when Zsolt Alapi is not in the classroom he likes to “organize and participate in poetry and prose readings featuring works by the ‘literary underground’.”