Drawing big

>> The annual Expozine small press fair beefs up

PUSHING INDIE LIT:
Expozine co-founders Billy Mavreas (l) and Louis Rastelli

by PATRICK LEJTENYI

Sitting behind a large desk last Friday night in his cluttered kitsch shop Monastiraki on St-Laurent, beer in hand, Billy Mavreas is thinking small. Small presses, small zines, small budgets. The co-founder of the annual Expozine fair—this weekend marks the sixth edition—is sitting next to the other co-founder, author and artist Louis Rastelli, also cradling a beer, and both are looking relatively even-tempered as they prepare for the biggest version yet. The beer might be helping, of course, but as the two talk, there is a sense of harried, electrified excitement sizzling between them.

The fair, says Mavreas, can be “overwhelming.” With somewhere between 250 and 300 exhibitors setting up shop in a 10,000-square-foot church basement this year, stuffed with all manner of printed works, and visitors from around the world expected, he says the experience is like “a whirlwind. You just wait for the dust cloud to settle and think, ‘What just happened?’” Rastelli says keeping on top of Expozine business is “like trying to keep up with a runaway horse.”

For two days—Saturday, Nov. 24 and Sunday, Nov. 25—the basement of the Saint-Enfant Jésus church (5035 St-Dominique, near Laurier) will be ground zero for indie writers, artists, poets and illustrators. But what the pair find most exciting is affording creative types, many of them local, the space from which to emerge. The concentration of talent acts as much as a showcase and networking opportunity for individual participants as it does for exposing their works to the general public, they say. “We like to think of it as, this is where the scene sees itself,” says Mavreas. “Like a convention,” adds Rastelli.

All this on a small budget, and with media attention to match. The two agree that the Expozine, coming only a week after the much bigger, much better funded and much more mainstream Salon du livre de Montréal, may suffer from book-buying burnout. But they say that regardless of the timing, mainstream cultural institutions like the Canada Council and the Bibliothèque nationale will be present with tables of their own. “The Bibliothèque wants this stuff,” says Mavreas. “They want this punk rock shit.”

Financially, the fair, now an incorporated non-profit, is always on a shoestring budget. Monetary restraints mean it keeps its distinct DIY flavour, but can be irksome. After six years of running the fair out of apartments, bars and Mavreas’s store, Rastelli says they do receive a modest grant from the Canada Council, but most sponsorship money comes from independent Canadian publishing houses and cultural institutions. He says additional funds would be welcome, so he could afford extravagances like “an office, a phone and an Internet connection,” but he shies away from aspiring to grow into a major corporate-style event. The grassroots feeling, he says, is key to the Expozine’s continuation as a funnel of local talent.

Another important and ongoing project is outreach, not just to the francophone community (whose presence at the fair is growing—Rastelli says an estimated 40 per cent of the exhibitors this year are French-speaking) but also to kids. Mavreas says he always talks Expozine to curious customers who wander into his store, and encourages the younger ones to get involved.

“The potential for this is enormous,” says Rastelli. “And we’re only touching a part of the potential, because there’s no shortage of creative people in this city.”