Gift Guide Week: Susan Sanford Blades’ Picks

Picks by Susan Sanford Blades

For your friend who wants to laugh their way to the climate apocalypse:
Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler (Book*hug Press)

This is a book of short fiction, one-act plays, and poetry, all with an eye to the climate crisis, the misogyny, and the capitalist apathy that plague our world and populate our nightmares. It is not a depressing read, though! Mockler writes with a vulnerability and tongue-in-cheek humour that will draw you in and allow her message to land with a loud, self-aware thud. The content of this book ranges from auto-fictive short stories based on Mockler’s childhood and young adulthood, to climate grief–based found poems, to parables featuring The Past, The Present, and The Future. Throughout, Mockler’s voice is unsentimental and nonchalant, which makes the content—she covers childhood bullying, sexual violence, shame, loneliness, climate change, the meaning of the universe—resonate all the more deeply. This book is totally inventive and irreverent, displaying humanity at its vilest, but in the most fun way possible.

For those who did not party like it was 1999 on December 31st, 1999:
Apocalypse Child: Surviving Doomsday and the Search for Identity at the end of the World
by Carly Butler (Caitlin Press)

Since babyhood, Carly Butler’s version of “normal” was living in a cabin with her mother in various secluded locations across the western United States. Together, they worshipped God and learned the skills of self-sufficiency while they waited out what was sure to be the oncoming Y2K apocalypse, followed by World War III. When Carly was still a young girl, her mother decided America was unsafe, and lied her way across the border. The two of them landed in “the middle of nowhere,” near Smithers, BC. This debut memoir covers Carly’s relatively secluded coming of age in BC’s wilderness and how she achieved her high school diploma, became a Canadian citizen, searched for her birth father and attempted to reconnect with her Indigenous roots, found love, and started a family. It’s a fascinating first-person religious cult story but also a story of love, perseverance, and the power of community.

For anyone who is in true, capital-R Romantic love:
Stedfast by Ali Blythe (Goose Lane Editions)

Ali Blythe breaks the fourteen lines of Keats’s “Bright Star” sonnet into titles for the twenty-eight poems that fill this slim volume. It is a beautiful book to behold, from its cover art to its thick, creamy paper, to its graceful font, and, of course, the poems. This is the third in Blythe’s trilogy of trans-poetics, rounding out his first two collections—Hymnswitch and Twoism—though it stands on its own. This book is a love letter, addressed to the poet’s sleeping partner, and takes place throughout the course of one night. It’s the type of poetry I love because it remains accessible to the not-so-frequent reader of poetry while maintaining the care—for every word, every line break, every syllable, every breath—of a poet’s poet. While reading, you’ll become immersed in this poet’s love nest, in his awe for his partner and the world around them, and in his admiration for poetry itself.

For your slightly naïve literary rival:
The Cobra and the Key by Sam Shelstad (TouchWood Editions)

I cannot gush enough about Sam Shelstad’s twisted sense of humour. This book will have you laughing out loud, even if you’re not a writer, but especially if you are. The Cobra and the Key is a satirical book of writing advice, in the form of a novel, told by aspiring—I mean, super-duper successful—writer, “Sam Shelstad.” This Amelia Bedelia–style advice is taken too literally or is distorted in some hilarious way by our hapless protagonist, for instance: “When experimenting with animal characters, however, it’s important to remember that they see the world differently from humans. For instance, a lot of animals can see in the dark.” Through personal examples woven into his advice, the book also follows a narrative—“Sam Shelstad”’s job at Value Village (“They work at Value Village, and I ‘work’ there.”), his ill-fated affair with his mother’s elderly friend Molly, his attempts at publishing his novel manuscript and the pending lawsuit from his prospective publisher—and, despite his absolute reprehensibility, you kind of can’t help but root for him. This book really is full of good writing advice, too, as long as you do the opposite of what “Sam Shelstad” professes.

For that white, Shakespeare-loving guy who needs a cheeky education
before he “talks politics” at Christmas dinner:
William Shakespeare’s As You Like It, A Radical Retelling
by Cliff Cardinal (Playwrights Canada Press)

I’m not really a “theatre” person. I don’t generally read plays—in fact, this is the only one I’ve ever read, except for the mandatory Shakespeare in high school. But when Cliff Cardinal won the 2023 Governor General’s Award for Drama and I heard about his play’s premise, I was compelled to check it out. The idea here is that a bunch of rich, mostly white people go to the theatre expecting to see a Shakespeare play and Cliff Cardinal gets up on stage to do the land acknowledgement. As he goes on, it dawns on the audience that this…this land acknowledgement is the play. It is brilliant, funny, engaging, and real. Cardinal holds a mirror to white settler culture and the false sense of absolution we feel by performing our simple, repetitive land acknowledgements in a way that is not didactic, but that serves as a profound awakening. This play belongs on the required reading list for anyone who lives in this country.

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Susan Sanford Blades lives on the territory of the Lekwungen peoples, also known as the Xwsepsum and Songhees Nations (Victoria, Canada). Her debut novel, Fake It So Real, won the 2021 ReLit Award in the novel category and was a finalist for the 2021 BC and Yukon Book Prizes’ Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. Her short fiction has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Reader: The Best of Canada’s New Writers and has been published in literary magazines across Canada as well as in the United States and Ireland. Her fiction has most recently been published in Gulf Coast, The Malahat Review and The Masters Review. 

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Thanks to Susan Sanford Blades for these most excellent picks. You can order any of these books through All Lit Up, or click the “Shop Local” button on the book listings to discover them at your local indie bookstore.

Missed our other guide guides? Check them out here.