Author: ALU Editor
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Where in Canada: The Everyday Heroes of Nova Scotia
The 1998 Swissair 111 crash was a disaster of immense proportions, and Gina Leola Woolsey’s documented its aftermath in her new book Fifteen Thousand Pieces (Guernica Editions), about examiner Dr. John Butt. What rose to meet the disaster was the caring community of Peggy’s Cove, NS, and beyond.
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Beautiful Books: Nipugtug
We chat with Métis and settler illustrator and interdisciplinary designer Natalie Laurin about her hopes to inspire Indigenous youth to feel “proud of who they are” through the art she creates—most recently her work on Nipugtug (Kegedonce Press), a gorgeous children’s story about a spirited young Mi’gmaw woman, as she snowshoes through the forest during…
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Character Study: Bounty
Writer, journalist, and climate researcher Jason Pchajek dons our casting director’s cap to cast the film version of his cli-fi debut novel Bounty (Turnstone Press), where bounty hunter Nikos Wulf uncovers a dark plot in futuristic Winnipeg.
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Refresh Your Shelf: New Kids & YA
Our final Refresh Your Shelf picks are for the littles and young adult readers. Add these recently-released kids and YA titles to your reading lists: four books with themes of diversity, friendship and self-acceptance, and a handy guide for enhancing communication skills.
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Refresh Your Shelf: New Poetry
Every time a new year rolls around we resolve to read more poetry (not in an “eating our vegetables” kind of way, either – it’s just great and we want to make the space!). If you’re like us, read on for five fresh poetry collections to help set the tone for ’24.
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Refresh Your Shelf: New Fiction
If your fiction shelves need a little sprucing up this new year, we’ve pulled together five new reads – four novels and one fiction anthology – that will look right at home. From the first book in a sweeping tetralogy, to an anthology of disabled superhero tales, to an account of the women who brought…
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Refresh Your Shelf: New Non-Fiction
We put together a list of five non-fiction books to refresh your shelves with in 2024—from the existential threat of AI, to the soothing stitch of fibre arts, to inspiring personal stories, these books offer a variety of topics for all kinds of readerly tastes.
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Stories as Roadmaps: How Settings Shape Us (and Our Characters) by Emily Pohl-Weary
I’m sitting on my couch, posting nice reviews that have been written about my new young adult novel How to Be Found. Meanwhile, my social feed is crammed with horror. Israel indiscriminately bombs residential areas, hospitals, and refugee camps in Palestine. There were more mass shootings in the U.S. than days in 2023, but Americans…
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2024 ALU Bookish Resolutions
New year, same us: books, books, and more books. Check out our reading intentions for the year.
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What is the ALU Team Reading for the Holidays?
In Iceland, they observe a tradition on Christmas Eve called the Jólabókaflóðið, where everyone receives a new book, and then reads it in silence. What more can we say: we love it, let’s do it! Here are the books our staffers will be reading in our quiet downtime this holiday season.
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Cozy Fest: Mary-Colin Chisholm + Half-Cracked
Playwright Mary-Colin Chisholm joins us from a cozy nook in her kitchen to read some scenes about the power of folklore storytelling from her play Half-Cracked (Playwrights Canada Press).
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Cozy Fest: Kristen Da Silva + Where You Are
Closing out Cozy Fest is playwright and actor Kristen Da Silva with a steamy scene from her play Where You Are (J. Gordon Shillingford/Scirocco).
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Cozy Fest: Rona Maynard + Starter Dog
We can think of nothing cozier than a memoir about an adorable dog where, as author Rona Maynard puts it before her reading: “the doggie doesn’t die.” Listen to Rona read from her memoir Starter Dog: My Path to Joy, Belonging, and Loving this World (ECW Press) below.
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Cozy Fest: Gary Barwin + Imagining Imagining
Poet, novelist, and multidisiplinary artist Gary Barwin introduces his new collection of essays Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity, and Infinity (Wolsak & Wynn), from an unorthodox, yet aptly cozy place in his home.
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Cozy Fest: Markus Harwood-Jones + The Haunting of Adrian Yates
There are several types of warm and fuzzy readings at Cozy Fest: you bet a paranormal queer romance is one of them. Author of The Haunting of Adrian Yates (Metonymy Press) shares a cozy reading from his book in which its titular character spends time at a local graveyard providing comfort and friendship to the…