Join us on Tuesday, March 10th, for the first instalment of the 2026 Lorenzo Society Reading Series!
Essayist, poet, and now novelist, Danny Jacobs will join us in Oland Hall room 104 at 7 p.m. for an in-conversation and reading.
Books will be available for purchase and light refreshments will be provided; as always, admission is free and all are welcome!
1913: After an incident of familial violence, budding arsonist Cotton Steeves is left with burn scars on his back that show an oddly mirrored geometry. Burdened by his would-be magician uncle, who grows obsessed with the scars’ properties, Cotton looks for a way out from under his increasingly erratic influence. It’s time for his next fire.
1993: Ten-year-old Morton Lounsbury collects things. His prized possession is The Ignis Psalter—an anonymous book of pyromaniacal spiritualism addressed to an initiate of flame. And someone or something—ghost, rumour, urban legend—is connected to the book. A meeting with an ageless recluse named Cotton Steeves will change everything Mort knew about his hometown.
Welcome to Petitcodiac, New Brunswick. Welcome to The Village of Fire. In this village of outsiders, moonshiners, fox farmers, and conjurors, a fire-haunted place where the next blaze never seems far away, Cotton must contend with his family’s legacy of burning. and with the help of young Mort Lounsbury, confront his uncle’s shadow once and for all.
Part lyric fairy tale, part small town gothic, The Ignis Psalter is the bizarre and pulpy debut novel from poet and essayist Danny Jacobs.
Danny Jacobs’s poems, fiction, reviews, and essays have been published in a variety of journals across Canada.
His book of nonfiction, Sourcebooks for Our Drawings: Essays and Remnants (Gordon Hill Press, 2019), won the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick Book Award for Nonfiction.
His debut novel, The Ignis Psalter (The Porcupine’s Quill), came out in 2025. Danny lives in Riverview, NB.
