Read the Provinces: Authors Across Canada

* * * BRITISH COLUMBIA * * *SH:LAM (The Doctor) by Joseph Dandurand (Mawenzi House)

We’ll never not recommend reading Joseph Dandurand, and his newest poetry collection is no exception. In SH:LAM (The Doctor), he sets out to tell “the truth of what has happened to my people. The Kwantlen people used to number in the thousands but like all river tribes, eighty percent of our people were wiped out by smallpox and now there are only 200 of us. As a Kwantlen man, father, fisherman, poet and playwright I believe the gift of words was given to me so I can retell our stories?”* * * ALBERTA * * *The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning by Audrey J. Whitson (NeWest Press)

Set in the farm town of Majestic, Alberta, this stunningly written novel is centred on the death of Annie after she — you guessed it — is struck by lightning while divining water for a well. Gathering for her funeral are the townspeople and Annie herself who float around stories of the town’s past, revealing Majestic to be a quite the character on its own. Author Jennifer Quist puts it well: The Death of Annie the Water Witcher by Lightning “[…] reads as if it has come out of translation, out of a language created and shared within a community formed by geography, memory, and its own expedient, indefinable spirituality. It’s a funeral story told in forks of lightning, dozen of voices, flashing in and out of transfiguration. Like a good translation, it’s unafraid to leave in shadows what it can assume everyone already knows, rushing instead to throw light on what—until now—has been unknowable.”* * * SASKATCHEWAN * * *Few and Far by Allison Kydd (Stonehouse Publishing)

In 2008, author Allison Kydd returned to country living in southeast Saskatchewan where she wrote Few and Far, a novel in which Florence Southam, a jilted British woman, travels to the Saskatchewan Prairies for a wedding. Armchair travel to the town of Cannington, a Victorian settlement that’s trying hard to be society life in England: Canadians, British expatriates and would-be aristocrats are everywhere. There, Florence learns that social optics give way to survival, that bucking the conventions of her upbringing brings her closer to new possibilities.* * * MANITOBA * * *Fanonymousby M.C. Joudrey (At Bay Press)

Described by Hugo Award Finalist Daniel Haeusser as a “Chuck Palahniuk adaptation of a Guy Maddin film directed under the best brain-freeze intensity imaginable” M.C. Joudrey’s Fanonymous is nothing but a wild ride. Set in Winnipeg, the novel follows infamous guerilla street artist, Jack as he navigates the quirks of the city, looking for anonymity. There’s escaped bison, international authorities, blackmail, and, of course, the Peg — we said wild ride for a reason.* * * ONTARIO * * *The Nap-Away Motel by Nadja Lubiw-Hazard (Palimpsest Press)

A debut novel from Nadja Lubiw-Hazard, The Nap-Away Motel places us in the heart of Scarborough, Ontario where three people reside: Suleiman who is searching for a way back to his family, Tiffany who relies on escapist fantasy to avoid her real life, and Ori who plans a search for their runaway twin. Within the motel walls, these three characters develop a friendship over a litter of stray cats, finding hope amidst grim circumstances. * * * QUEBEC * * *The Pineapples of Wrath by Cathon (Pow Pow Press)

In her newest Montrealer Cathon paints a vivid and darkly funny Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery featuring amateur detective/bookworm/bartender Marie Pomme, piña coladas, tikis, and the mean streets of Trois-Rivieres. A tribute to tiki kitsch and old school exotica, The Pineapples of Wrath is a whip-smart, sleuth-y good time to its final satisfying sip. * * * NOVA SCOTIA * * *Following the River: Traces of Red River Women by Lorri Neilsen Glenn (Wolsak and Wynn)

Former poet laureate of Halifax and essayist, Lorri Neilsen Glenn attempts to unearth women’s stories – specifically Indigenous women’s stories – in her latest book. In prose and poetry Following the River unravels the effects of colonialism, racism, and sexism, reflecting on the women who have been erased from our collective history. * * * NEW BRUNSWICK * * *Our Latest in Folktales by Matthew Gwathmey (Brick Books)

Just like its cover, this debut from New Brunswick poet Matthew Gwathmey is a fun, bright collection of poems of wordplay about the everyday spectacles of life. There are superheroes, Mars colonies, psych wards, Radiohead, 80s comic book beetles, and other eclectic subjects making appearances in Gwathmey’s poems.* * *  NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR * * *This is Agatha Falling by Heather Nolan (Pedlar Press)

A short but mighty read from St. John’s-based author, musician, and CBC Poetry Prize longlister Heather Nolan awaits in This is Agatha Falling. Wander through a dreamlike downtown St. John’s with an unreliable narrator, where past and present collide and memory is fragmented. Journey Prize-winner Sharon Bala calls this novella “a confident and lyrical debut [that] weaves past and present, memory and action into an elegant tapestry that cleverly conceals its full picture until the very end.”* * * PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND * * * What Your Hands Have Done by Chris Bailey (Nightwood Editions)

Rooted in PEI with a pitstop in Toronto, Chris Bailey’s poetry collection What Your Hands Have Done explores in visceral and graceful language how the life of a close-knit fishing family in rural PEI shapes a person. George Elliot Clarke says it best: “Chris Bailey canvasses easily–adroitly–that difficult, East Coast world of hardscrabble, hard-luck ports and hard-living, hard-drinking fishers, the epicureans of cynicism and the aesthetes of brutalism. This dominion’s one where funerals are festive and the clear-eyed must enjoy adultery and the clear-headed must tolerate suicide. Think E.J. Pratt meets Charles Bukowski.”