Your cart is currently empty!
Author: ALU Editor
-
Under the Cover: Imagining new worlds in Mirror’s Edge
Alex Passey’s novel Mirror’s Edge (At Bay Press) is a philosophical trip through two polarized worlds — a hyper-capitalist, burgeoning transhumanist society and a community-minded, woodland paradise — and the fallout when those ways of living collide. Below, Alex tells us about the politics explored in his novel and what good speculative fiction is for him.
-
In Review: The Week of October 19th
This week we went punk rock, reflected on Frankfurt Book Fair 2020, welcomed an author in the Indie Reading Room, and more!
-
Where in Canada: Walpole Island First Nation, Ontario, Canada
This edition of Where in Canada takes us to Ontario’s Walpole Island—home to 150 residential school survivors, 13 of whom share their stories within author Theresa Turmel’s new book Mnidoo Bemaasing Bemaadiziwin: Reclaiming, Reconnecting, and Demystifying Resiliency as Life Force Energy for Residential School Survivors (ARP). Through Turmel’s deep listening studies, the life experiences of these survivors are…
-
Indie Reading Room: P.C. Vandall
This week in the Indie Reading Room is B.C.-based poet P.C. Vandall whose fourth collection of poetry The Blue Moth of Morning (The Porcupine’s Quill) shines a light on female relationships: embracing and subverting clichés of female connection, the poems in this collection expose the inner tumult women often try to conceal under a thin veneer of…
-
Field Trip: A Novice’s Ode to the Frankfurt Book Fair
It’s easy to believe—from their perch on your bookshelves and on bedside tables – that books live a quiet little life, keeping time and company with the sunbeams, shadows, and dust motes. The truth is they have a very full life before they make it into your hands and your home—not least of which is…
-
Mixtape: Fake It So Real
Guest DJ-ing this edition of Mixtape is author Susan Sanford Blades who made us a bangin’ playlist to pair with her debut novel Fake it so Real (Nightwood Editions), about the fallout from a punk-rock lifestyle and its effect on the subsequent generations of one family. Scroll on for Susan’s rad soundtrack — “a musical tour of the novel” — and…
-
In Review: The Week of October 12th
This week’s roundup includes a spooky Read Harder Challenge, a look at poetry and collage, a tasty vegan recipe, and more.
-
An excerpt and recipe from County Heirlooms for World Food Day
For World Food Day we’re serving up County Heirlooms (Invisible Publishing), a cookbook and celebration of food and the food producers making their mark in Prince Edward County. Each contributor offers a glimpse into what fuels their love for food, and what keeps them doing what they do—from cultivating honeybees and growing heirloom tomatoes to cooking…
-
Indie Reading Room: Richard Van Camp
One of Canada’s revered and award-winning Indigenous authors, Richard Van Camp is this week’s Indie Reading Room author with his 20th anniversary special edition of Angel Wing Splash Pattern (Kegedonce Press)—a playful and haunting collection of stories grounded in the territory of Canada’s North, and especially that of the Tlicho Dene people, that depicts contemporary Indigenous life.Read on for…
-
Beautiful Books: The Bones Are There
Kate Sutherland’s newest The Bones Are There (Book*hug Press) is a collection of inventive collage poems sourced from travel journals, ships’ logs, and other exploration literature that draw connections between various animal extinctions and human legacies of imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, and misogyny to both lament humanity’s disastrous effects on the world and celebrate the creatures lost. Linked…
-
Read Harder Challenge 15
Throughout 2020, All Lit Up-er Tan Light has been participating in BookRiot’s Read Harder Challenge—a reading task designed to expand readerly boundaries—and doing so with an indie twist. Each entry in this series will highlight one or two completed challenges along with a list of books from All Lit Up to have you reading harder, too! Scroll…
-
In Review: The Week of October 5th
This week was a sweet one on the blog: we baked a French Apple Cake to pair with a fell-good book, two artists had an endearing conversation about depictions of queer love, translator Katia Grubisic shared an adorable moment from her childhood, and more.
-
Test Kitchen: French Apple Cake
We’re back in the kitchen again with a new dessert recipe, thanks to our pals at Book*hug Press! This time we’re getting fall cozy with a tasty French apple cake, inspired by the traditional French Apple Cake from a sweet moment in Anne Cathrine Bomann’s charming novel Agatha, translated by Caroline Waight. Scroll on for…
-
Indie Reading Room: Peter Dubé
Montreal-based poet and surrealist Peter Dubé is this week’s Indie Reading Room author with his newest The Headless Man (Anvil Press), a gothic, picaresque prose poem, laced with horror and humour, that concerns itself with queer challenges to identity and sexual boundaries. Scroll down for our Q&A with Peter where he tells us about the intriguing impetus behind his…
-
Beautiful Books: Acha Bacha
Debut playwright Bilal Baig of the emotional heavy-hitter Acha Bacha (Playwrights Canada Press) — a play about the intersections between queerness, gender identity and Islamic culture in the Pakistani diaspora — sits down with cover designer Harmeet Rehal to talk about how they captured the essence of a “sacred queer relationship at the forefront of this cover” and the weight…