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Author: ALU Editor

  • Under the Cover: The Shade Tree

    Under the Cover: The Shade Tree

    It wasn’t until adulthood that author Theresa Shea learned that as a child she had attend the March on Washington with her mother and been present for Martin Luther King Jr.’s iconic speech “I Have a Dream.” Out of this moment comes Shea’s novel The Shade Tree (Guernica Editions), the story of two white sisters…

  • All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 6

    All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 6

    All Queued Up is a weekly roundup of new indie books for your fall TBR. Discover new titles, add them to your All Lit Up wishlist or buy them here, or find them at your local indie bookseller with our Shop Local* feature. Get ready to unplug with some bookish entertainment.*Click the Shop Local button, found on…

  • Reflections from the Contributors of Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language

    Reflections from the Contributors of Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language

    Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language (Book*hug Press)—edited by Leonarda Carranza, Eufemia Fantetti, and Ayelet Tsabari—is a vital anthology that opens a compelling dialogue about language diversity and probes the importance of language in our identity and the ways in which it shapes us. We had the opportunity to hear from the contributors of Tongues about language, favourite expressions, and inspirations…

  • Poetry in Motion: Don Domanski + Fetishes of the Floating World

    Poetry in Motion: Don Domanski + Fetishes of the Floating World

    In his posthumously published collection Fetishes of the Floating World (Brick Books), Governor General’s Literary Award-winning poet Don Domanski offers perception-expanding environmental poetry and metaphysics as a moving, lyric whole. Continuing Don’s lifelong exploration of mystical ecology, the book is an invitation to experience the sacred dimensions of what-is and to become more intimate with the strangeness that haunts our lively,…

  • Women’s Work and Fashion: The Living History of Women

    Women’s Work and Fashion: The Living History of Women

    I often run across memes about obscure women who once made big contributions to important fields without anyone knowing so. An overlooked WWII pilot. An actor who was also secretly a mathematician. These women are marvellous. But the posts about them reek of desperation. As if women’s history were so thin, so puny, it needed…

  • Writer’s Block: Tara McGowan-Ross

    Writer’s Block: Tara McGowan-Ross

    Multidisciplinary artist and writer Tara McGowan-Ross—whose coming-of-age memoir Nothing Will Be Different was recently published by Dundurn Press—sits down with us Q&A-style to talk about pomodoros as writing rituals, how being an author is a dual job, and what makes a repulsive character like Hannibal Lecter so compelling.  

  • All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 5

    All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 5

    All Queued Up is a weekly roundup of new indie books for your fall TBR. Discover new titles, add them to your All Lit Up wishlist or buy them here, or find them at your local indie bookseller with our Shop Local* feature. Get ready to unplug with some bookish entertainment.*Click the Shop Local button, found on…

  • Lit Locale: This Strange Visible Air

    Lit Locale: This Strange Visible Air

    Freehand Books books gives us the perfect lit locale for Sharon Butala’s newly published collection of essays on women and aging, The Strange Visible Air—recommending this to be read before or after a long walk outdoors as a way to challenge the ways in which we see the natural world.

  • First Fiction Friday: Mona Høvring’s Because Venus Crossed an Alpine Violet on the Day that I Was Born

    First Fiction Friday: Mona Høvring’s Because Venus Crossed an Alpine Violet on the Day that I Was Born

    Acclaimed Norwegian author Mona Høvring’s Because Venus Crossed an Alpine Violet on the Day that I Was Born (Book*hug Press) has won multiple awards in Norway, and now for the first time, the novel (and the first of Høvring’s books) has been translated into English by Kari Dickson and Rachel Rankin. An ethereal, moving story of two sisters, Because Venus is…

  • Intergenerational Trauma, Persian Carpets, and Belonging in Stella’s Carpet: An Interview with Lucy E.M. Black

    Intergenerational Trauma, Persian Carpets, and Belonging in Stella’s Carpet: An Interview with Lucy E.M. Black

    When she began writing Stella’s Carpet (Now or Never Publishing), author Lucy E.M. Black started by recording remembered stories from her parents who had lived through the ravages of World War II. With this as her point of reference, she draws the immigrant experience through the fictional character of Fatima who escapes to Canada during…

  • All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 4

    All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup, Week 4

    All Queued Up is a weekly roundup of new indie books for your fall TBR. Discover new titles, add them to your All Lit Up wishlist or buy them here, or find them at your local indie bookseller with our Shop Local* feature. Get ready to unplug with some bookish entertainment.*Click the Shop Local button, found on…

  • Where in Canada: A Magical Romance in Toronto—André Alexis’s Ring

    Where in Canada: A Magical Romance in Toronto—André Alexis’s Ring

    André Alexis’s genre-bending novel Ring (Coach House) is a literary love letter, a magical romance that takes readers on a tour of Toronto—from Rosedale to Parkdale, the Gardiner Ceramics Museum to Nathan Phillips Square, the novel follows Gwenhwyfar and Tancred as they navigate a budding romance.

  • First Fiction Friday: Olivia Robinson’s The Blue Moth Motel

    First Fiction Friday: Olivia Robinson’s The Blue Moth Motel

    With all the nostalgia of the 90’s comes Olivia Robinson’s debut novel The Blue Moth Motel (Breakwater Books). Set against the backdrop of beautiful Prince Edward Island, the story follows one family’s struggle to to make the best of an unconventional life.

  • Under the Cover: Lesley Krueger on Women’s History Month and her novel Time-Squared

    Under the Cover: Lesley Krueger on Women’s History Month and her novel Time-Squared

    Taking us under the cover of her latest novel Time Squared (ECW Press)—”a time travel book centring on the role of women over the centuries”—Lesley Krueger discusses the perpetual seesawing of women’s progress towards equality through history to present day, from corsets to Spanx.

  • All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup Week 3

    All Queued Up: Your Bookish Fall Lineup Week 3

    All Queued Up is a weekly roundup of new indie books for your fall TBR. Discover new titles, add them to your All Lit Up wishlist or buy them here, or find them at your local indie bookseller with our Shop Local* feature. Get ready to unplug with some bookish entertainment.*Click the Shop Local button, found on…