Hello. My name is Simon Crowley and this is simoncrowley.net.


Welcome

Introduction

I’m a professional writer based in Edmonton, Alberta and a veteran of the MacEwan School of Communications.

I’m an occasional poet and amateur photographer. I maintain the official website of Toronto musician Vivek Shraya. Sometimes I design for web and print.

I have strong feelings about Canadian English, etymological rigour, and the serial comma.

Recently

Mike Young and I will be following up 2009’s sold-out Captain Hook vs. The Zombies with Smoke & Mirrors, a new play debuting this summer at the 29th Edmonton International Fringe Festival. Stay tuned for details.


Writing

Captain Hook vs. The Zombies

Captain Hook vs. The Zombies playbill

In 2009, the first play I wrote with Mike Young—featuring the heroic Captain Hook and swashbuckling Peter Pan battling the evil Dr. Crocodile’s army of undead—sold out four shows at the 28th Edmonton International Fringe Festival.

SEE Magazine called it “fast and furious… full of twists and turns,” and Vue Weekly praised its “subtle charm.”

The Space Project: “Interstices”

For the 2008 Works Art and Design Festival, I contributed six photos and a poem to a collaborative exhibit curated by my friend and mentor Jannie Edwards.

Desire Lines

Desire Lines cover

My first self-published collection of poetry sold enough copies to break even; submitted for extra credit, it earned me the only A+ grade of my post-secondary career. As far as I’m concerned, an unqualified success.

Desire lines are the foot-worn paths pedestrians create across spaces with no man-made walkways. Though they represent the most direct route from origin to destination, they are never perfectly straight.

Twig

Twig cover

In 2007, I contributed to, designed, and served as consulting editor for Twig, a collection of student poetry.

Summer Things

Summer Things cover

More immediate and less polished than Desire Lines, the chapbook I released in the fall of ’07 was a small handful of poems about drugs, disappointment, and desperation. The edition was very limited.

Unreal City: Palimpsest

Three of my poems appeared in an exhibit of student work at the 2007 Works Art and Design Festival.

Freelance work

I’ve been a professional writer for eight years, with training and experience in sundry acts of wordsmithery, including technical, business, and promotional writing, proofreading and copyediting, in print and on the web. If you have words you don’t want to smith yourself, I might be your man. Get in touch and we’ll work something out.


Photos

The Space Project: “Interstices”

I contributed six photos and a poem to a collaborative exhibit at the 2008 Works Art and Design Festival: nine other poets, one other photographer, and I explored notions of interstices—liminal spaces, charged emotional gaps—through word and image.

The Space Project was called “the most uplifting exhibit I saw affiliated with The Works this year.… just on the fringe and the only exhibit that made any sense.”

  • door
  • Narrow alley
  • tunnel
  • transit
  • watching
  • cogs

Other photography

Selections from my Flickr account will be featured soon.

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Design

Captain Hook vs. The Zombies

A tight budget and tighter schedule had me preparing posters, programmes, and press kits for Apocalypse Arts’ action-comedy-horror.

Captain Hook vs. The Zombies promotional materials

Vivek Shraya

I’ve been responsible for designing and maintaining the official website of Toronto musician Vivek Shraya since 2003, most recently overhauling it in autumn 2009 for the release of his fifth album, Keys & Machines.

vivekshraya.com screenshot

I also designed the promotional site for God Loves Hair, Vivek’s first collection of short stories. The book—and the site—feature illustrations by Toronto artist Juliana Neufeld

godloveshair.com screenshot

Twig

In addition to serving as contributor to and editor of the 2007 student poetry collection Twig, I also designed the cover and interior layout.

Twig design

A Composite of Straight Lines

In 2005, I designed the packaging for Vivek Shraya’s third album.

A Composite of Straight Lines design



Contact

Email

Email remains the most effective way to reach me: .

Mailing address

303–10547 83 Ave NW
Edmonton AB  T6E 2E1
Canada

Phone/SMS

Available upon request.

Colophon

This site is presented in HTML 5, with help from Faruk Ateş’s Modernizr, and was crafted using Coda and CSSEdit.