The Olive and the Dawn is a collection of short stories exploring with tenderness and hilarity the grey zones of life: the psychological non-space people find themselves once the reference points that shaped their existence suddenly become stripped away. This book contains a cast of characters who exploit glitches in the human design, who confront an equally fallible God, asserting, contrary to popular belief, that unwavering self-destruction is the very essence of humanity. Orti reveals a world where even good choices come with bad consequences, childhood sports heroes make more sense than Jesus, and God is no less of a bully than the month of November.

Ian Orti is a Montreal based writer, journalist, and columnist. He writes a music column in Matrix magazine and has also contributed to Vice magazine and Fault magazine. His music articles are also a regular feature on SPINearth, a division of Spin magazine. He is a co-organizer of the Pilot Reading series in Montreal and has read at local festivals and with local bands. He also contributes to an ESL column in the Hanca Times, a Japanese newspaper servicing Japanese-Canadians where he addresses the riddles of the English language.