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HOMEGROWN

Homegrown: Locally Produced Reads (September 21)

We’ve picked some of the highlights and best of the fall season and recently released with weekly batches of fresh new books. Equally stoked to spotlight some of the Canadian indie publishers we know and love—all with their own unique identities—we’ve chosen one exciting book each from over 40 indies. Today’s picks include literary thrillers, fiction, poetry, and a queer YA romance. Read on for more and peek authors showing off their books in their local communities!

The cover of Bottom Rail on Top by D.M. Bradford.

Beautiful Books

Beautiful Books: Bottom Rail on Top

Interview

Remedies for Chiron: Interview with m. patchwork monoceros

Homegrown: Locally Produced Reads

A selection of fall books made with care by Canadian indie presses

Urbane
By: Anna Marie Sewell
Blacklion
By: Luke Francis Beirne
Dark PR
By: Grant Ennis
A Brief Relief from Hunger
By: Spenser Smith
The Abduction of Seven Forgers
By: Sean Dixon

Meet the Books on the Giller Longlist

Congratulations to all the nominees of the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize! We’re toasting these independently-published gems up for one of Canadian Literature’s highest honours:

We Meant Well
By: Erum Shazia Hasan
The Clarion
By: Nina Dunic
The Rooftop Garden
By: Menaka Raman-Wilms
Away from the Dead
By: David Bergen
Wait Softly Brother
By: Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

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Books on the Environment

There’s never been a better time to read up on the Environment; browse some selections below.

Primal Sketches

By: Caroline Wong (CA)

Fueled by our perpetual need to find meaning and purpose in our lives, Primal Sketches is a book that considers how our actions profoundly effect the lives of fellow humans as well as the natural world around us. How our desire to connect, care, and empathize, are constantly interrupted by feelings of insecurity and gr…

Watch Your Head

By:

A warning, a movement, a collection borne of protest. In Watch Your Head, poems, stories, essays, and artwork sound the alarm on the present and future consequences of the climate emergency. Ice caps are melting, wildfires are raging, and species extinction is accelerating. Dire predictions about the climate emergency …

The Imperilled Ocean

By: Laura Trethewey (CA)

A Globe and Mail Top 100 SelectionA Writers’ Trust of Canada Best Book of the YearACBC Books Best Canadian Nonfiction SelectionA Hill Times Top 100 Selection (2020)Silver Medal, Miramichi Reader’s “The Very Best!” Book AwardsAn exploration of the earth’s last wild frontier, filled with high-stakes stories of people and…

A Sure Connection

By: W.M. Herring (CA)

In A Sure Connection the author contemplates the connections that matter, and that confirm we matter–connections with others and with our real or re-imagined selves. Through portraits of faith, family, nature, mortality and ordinary life, the work affirms resilience and resolve with clear, rich language seasoned with …

A Natural History of Unnatural Things

By: Zachari Logan (CA)

A microscopic and intense view of the sometimes invisible and ignored parts of the world we inhabit. Peering into cities and our place within them, the poet searches for meaning after the death of his father, and observes the flora and fauna, which provide beauty and nourish us. This book delights the senses and poses …

The Breathing Hole

By: Colleen Murphy (CA)

Franklin: (to Ařgiaq) Welcome. Oo-noo-coot. Ařgiaq stops in front of Franklin, then slowly extends his hand and touches Franklin—and everyone jumps at the same time. Holloway points his rifle, steps in front of Franklin, fires a warning shot into the air, and the two hunters either cover their ears and run, or duck…

Moving to Climate Change Hours

By: Ross Belot (CA)

Ross Belot’s latest collection is a dark ode to the end of oil. From industrial accidents to frozen highways Belot charts the ends of a life that face a working man in stripped-down lyric poetry. These are poems that have seen it all and acknowledge the darkness that’s coming while still finding beauty in the arched ne…

Overrun

By: Andrew Reeves (CA)

Intelligent investigative writing meets experiential journalism in this important look at one of North America’s most voraciously invasive speciesPoliticians, ecologists, and government wildlife officials are fighting a desperate rearguard action to halt the onward reach of Asian Carp, four troublesome fish now withi…

Watershed

By: Doreen Vanderstoop (CA)

It is 2058, and the glaciers are gone. A catastrophic drought has hit the prairies. Willa Van Bruggen is desperately trying to keep her family goat farm afloat, hoping against hope that the new water pipeline arrives before the bill collectors do. Willa’s son, Daniel, goes to work for the pipeline corporation instead o…

Nothing You Can Carry

By: Susan Alexander (CA)

“Hosanna” Every flower that opens is a hosanna a prayer heard that only needs be answered yes prayer is not asking not supplication prayer is dwelling in the rapture common as weeds …

Fauna

By: Christiane Vadnais (CA)

In a near-future world ravaged by climate change, who will win in the struggle between humanity and nature? A thick fog rolls in over Shivering Heights. The river overflows, the sky is streaked with toxic green, parasites proliferate in torrential rains and once safely classified species – humans included – are evo…

The Bones Are There

By: Kate Sutherland (CA)

Zigzagging across the globe, Kate Sutherland’s fourth book is poetry by way of collage: pieced-together excerpts from travellers’ journals, ships’ logs, textbooks and manuals, individual testimony, and fairy and folk tales that tell stories of the extinction of various species, and of the evolution of human understandi…

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Indigenous Litspace

Discover fiction, nonfiction, poetry, drama, and kids’ books by Indigenous authors and #ReadIndigenous.

Poetry Litspace

We don’t tell you what the poets are doing, we show you with a dedicated home for poetry recordings, interviews, excerpts, and more.

Kids Litspace

The ALU Kids Litspace is a home for the finest in kids lit, for young, middle-grade, and teen readers (and all of those who are young-at-heart).

Meet All Lit Up’s 2023 Booker-Longlisted Books

Congratulations to all of the nominees of the 2023 Booker Prize, including two from All Lit Up publishers: This Other Eden by Paul Harding (Goose Lane Editions) and How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Biblioasis).

How to Build a Boat

By: Elaine Feeney

Longlisted for the 2023 Booker Prize • One of the Globe and Mail’s “Sixty-Two Books to Read This Fall” A funny and deeply moving novel about a boy, his dream, and the people who lend him a hand, by the acclaimed author of As You Were Jamie O’Neill loves the colour red. He also loves tall trees, patterns, rain that co…

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ebooks for everyone

In 2022 All Lit Up launched the ebooks for everyone collection: 600+ books that were converted to fully-accessible epub formats for readers with print disabilities. Browse some handpicks from our collection below.

VIEW ALL accessible EBOOKS