Leaping Lion Books, an imprint of York’s Writing Department, is launching local author Nic Labriola’s debut collection of short stories Friday.
A student-run publishing house, Leaping Lion Books publishes one book annually – this year it’s Francis and the Animals, which will launch March 8, from 8 to 
10pm, at Q Space, 382 College St., Toronto.
Nic Labriola
The event will feature a public reading and a Q&A period with the author, who will also be available for signings throughout the evening. Q Space will sell food and beverages from its in-store café for the duration of the launch.
Labriola, who teaches literature and writing at Seneca College, writes stories, poems, plays and songs as a way to understand his part in the "human" zoo. His first collection of poetry, Naming the Mannequins, was published in 2009.
Francis and the Animals is comprised of fiction written over the past 10 years, up to and including three weeks before the manuscript went into production. These short stories show what happens when the drive to fit in is overcome by the burning need to stand out – it’s when you laugh at a funeral, when you fall in love with a stranger, when you let loose or break down or brawl for the first time.
It’s coming back to a soul you thought you’d lost; it’s uncovering the truth about a soul you thought you knew. It’s the unbearable pressure of dissatisfaction, and the messy release of indulgence. Set in the darkness of everyday life in the city, Francis and the Animals is a series of urban fables – a surreal bundle of laughable misadventures and tragic missteps on the unavoidable hike for individuality in an unaccommodating environment.
Leaping Lion Books is part of the Book Publishing Practicum taken by fourth-year students in York’s Professional Writing Program, Writing Department, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies.
For more information, contact Nicole Brewer at llbooks@yorku.ca or 416-899-6432.