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All Books in this Collection
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What Stirs
$16.95Shortlisted for the 2009 Pat Lowther Award
Surreptitious breasts of the brain’s inside, crammed with
reptilian lights, uv or incandescent, zoom lens for the purpose of
petalled heights. Sherry-Mary saw him hunkered and hiding, grasping
leapable bells in his greasy palms. Smarmy knots.Where does the fragile, robust self reside when ‘personal’voice is sent out online into an ironic masquerade ball of alias identity and wanton proxy? What stirs us? Can there be anything authentic about feeling anything anymore?
In What Stirs, Margaret Christakos looks at our primal appetite for attachment through the modern norms of codependency and co-existence, understanding that the postmodern digital era has created an atmosphere where the vulnerability and tenderness of the individual are both profanely exposed and brazenly reinvented with the arrival of virtual identity.
Often playful but never trifling, Christakos’s work layers the ecstatic possibilities of lyric poetry, the mundane and intimate extremes of motherhood, and her continued curiosity with experimental poetics in a thoughtful collection of sensual, language-focused, and wonderfully aural poems. Weighing lyric and anti-lyric inclinations, What Stirs pulls readers toward the music of poetry, and then again pulls them to dissonance, a desire for the otherness of music’s sundering.
Praise for What Stirs:
‘Stirring both emotionally and in a bold experimentalism.’
– Winnipeg Free Press
‘What Stirs is the first poetry book to capture perfectly this bewilderment brought about by the intersection of life and the impact of the Internet, the feeling that thereis a language being spoken that is not communicating what we wish it to … Christakos offers us a ladder out of this tower of Babel by reminding us of human relations of the most intimate and tactile sort … Beautiful and disturbing, poetry naming the world we are creating.’
– The Danforth Review
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What the Bear Said
$19.00A land of volcanoes, geothermal pools, and barren wilderness, Iceland is full of mists and mystery. For a thousand years, its inhabitants passed down oral histories that included fantastical fables as a way to understand their strange land. For settlers escaping starvation in the wake of volcanic eruptions and economic hardship, Manitoba’s Interlake held further mystery.
35 years after Turnstone Press published its first book of poetry, The Gutting Shed, W. D. Valgardson returns with a collection full of fantastic tales and colourful characters. Bears, wolves, fish, forests, swamps, harsh winters, insect-infested summers, the unpredictable waters of an inland sea, and people claimed by the forces of nature, provide a wealth of material from which Turnstone Press’s first published author draws his inspiration.
Ancient sturgeon who rescues a fair maid from drowning, a fisherman who can “speak” with a bear, and mischievous Christmas sprites who protect a poor girl from a nightmarish marriage: these and more tales combine a canon of Icelandic folklore with the landscape and wildlife of Canada for a truly absorbing reading experience.
Blurring lines between reality and fantasy, W. D. Valgardson continues to be one of Canada’s foremost storytellers. -
What the Mouth Wants
$22.95The redefinition of family values as seen from the eyes of a polyamorous, queer Italian Canadian obsessed with food.
This mouthwatering, intimate, and sensual memoir traces Monica Meneghetti’s unique life journey through her relationship with food, family and love. As the youngest child of a traditional Italian-Catholic immigrant family, Monica learns the intimacy of the dinner table and the ritual of meals, along with the requirements of conformity both at the table and in life. Monica is thirteen when her mother is diagnosed with breast cancer and undergoes a mastectomy. When her mother dies three years later, Monica considers the existence of her own breasts and her emerging sexuality in the context of grief and the disintegration of her sense of family.
As Monica becomes an adult, she discovers a part of her self that rebels against the rigours of her traditional upbringing. And as the layers of her sexuality are revealed she begins to understand that like herbs infusing a sauce with flavour; her differences add a delicious complexity to her life.
But in coming to terms with her place in the margins of the margins, Monica must also face the challenge of coming out while living in a small town, years before same-sex marriage and amendments to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms created safer spaces for queers. Through risk, courage and heartbreak, she ultimately redefines and recreates family and identity according to her own alternative vision.
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What the Poets Are Doing
$22.95In 2002, Nightwood published Where the Words Come From: Canadian Poets in Conversation, a successful first-of-its-kind collection of interviews with literary luminaries like Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Margaret Avison, Patrick Lane, Lorna Crozier and P.K. Page, conducted by “the younger generation” of poets of the day. Sixteen years later, What the Poets Are Doing brings together two younger generations of poets to engage in conversations with their peers on modern-day poetics, politics and more. Together they explore the world of Canadian poetry in the new millennium: what’s changed, what’s endured and what’s next. An exciting “turn of the century” has evolved into a century characterized by social and digital media, the Donald Trump presidency, #MeToo empowerment and scandal, and Indigenous Truth and Reconciliation.Should we look to our poets as our most articulate analysts and critics of these times? Are they competing with social media or at one with social media?Poets in Conversation:Elizabeth Bachinsky and Kayla CzagaTim Bowling and Raoul FernandesDionne Brand and Souvankham ThammavongsaMarilyn Dumont and Katherena VermetteSue Goyette and Linda BesnerSteven Heighton and Ben LadouceurSina Queyras and Canisia LubrinArmand Garnet Ruffo and Liz HowardKaren Solie and Amanda JerniganRussell Thornton and Phoebe WangAfterword co-written by Nick Thran and Sue Sinclair
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What The World Said
$17.00When not-very-religious Montreal poet Jason Camlot’s father died, he decided to practice the strict one-year period of mourning of the religious Jew, which included attending synagogue every single day. What The World Said, Camlot’s fourth full poetry collection, is an updated Kaddish for the post-google age, exploring the meaning of ignorance in the face of deathÑignorance of how to practice sadness and rituals of mourning, and of how properly to experience longing and loss. Camlot manipulates a wide range of forms to mine the relationship between the most intimate kinds of grief and the impersonal flood of discourse that the world pours upon us.
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What to Feel, How to Feel
$21.95What to Feel, How to Feel
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What Was I Thinking?
$22.95A lifetime of engagement with religion, philosophy, and activism in a series of fascinating reflections.
Brilliant, fractious, mordantly funny, playwright/novelist/essayist Rick Salutin has been Canadian journalism’s agent provocateur for over three decades. Whether needling governments and politicians, holding public policy to account, or decrying the shortfalls of activist thought and action, he has been one of the most outspoken commentators of his generation.
In What Was I Thinking?, Salutin reveals his curiosity about both the world of the mind and the world of the here and now. His life has been graced with contact with extraordinary people from Hannah Arendt to Holocaust theologian Emil Fackenheim to goalkeeper-politician Ken Dryden, and we discover the profound influence their thought has had on his. but he has also had encounters with Conrad Black and Peter Worthington, joined his fellow coffee-drinkers in the infamous fight to save the west-end institution Dooney’s from displacement by Starbucks, and taken furious potshots at the political pandering of the nation’s media outlets.
This is classic Salutin and most of it hasn’t been published before — including a lengthy personal and historical essay on the world of therapy. It’s a wonderful roller-coaster ride of thought and opinion. Step on!
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What We All Want
$19.00Michelle Berry’s brilliant first novel, What We All Want, is as touching as it is mirthful. Siblings Hilary, Thomas and Billy have been thrown together after a long estrangement to plan their mother’s funeral. For Thomas and Billy, the prospect of being back in their childhood home is far from ideal. Even more unsettling is their sister, who has developed a few disturbing attachments to dolls, preserves, and pebbles underfoot. For Hilary, the sight of her brothers is a sign of hope and a new life. As they argue over the funeral arrangements, Hilary, Billy, and Thomas struggle to contain their secret hopes, desires, fears, and shame. Witty and insightful, What We All Want shows just how beautiful and tragic family can be.
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What We Miss
$17.95These narrative poems are coloured with both curiosity and nostalgia and framed in a personal montage. Sorestad’s free verse captures the flora and fauna, the natural rhythms and colour of Saskatchewan. Occasionally they are descriptions of urban and rural landscapes, other times they are evoked memories of people and places who have left marked imprints upon him. Celebrating the ordinary and seeing the mystery in all moments of life remains part of his poetic priority. The neighbourhood parks he walks in, the way the seasons change, how family life evolves, how parents think, and a wide array of how past events claim permanence in our lives – all are set to inviting narrative tones.
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What We Once Believed
$22.95A coming-of-age novel contrasting a daughter’s disappointment in her mother’s abandonment with the generational differences around feminist values. Summer 1971. While women demand equality, protests erupt over the Vietnam War, and peace activists march, adolescent Maybe Collins’ life in quiet Oak Bay is upended by the appearance of her mother, who disappeared nine years earlier.
And with her return comes another surprise: she’s written a best-selling memoir called The Other Mother, about motherhood and Women’s Liberation, which gives only passing reference to Maybe’s existence. Camille, now an acclaimed author, is distant and confounding, and Maybe tries to piece together her mother’s life-why she left, the truth behind her famous memoir, and the future of their fractured relationship.
As Maybe searches for her place, so do the other women in her life: her independent and unchangeable grandmother, Gigi; her best friend’s mother, Robin, who struggles with her roles as wife and stay-at-home mother; and Mary Quinn, a successful artist new to Lear Street, who seems to live only by her own rules. Their stories and struggles define how Maybe sees her choices as a woman and how she’ll navigate a world that is dramatically shifting every day.
But when Maybe discovers that her mother is writing another book-a book about her return-the betrayal is fierce and painful, and Maybe resolves to teach Camille a lesson that will change them all forever.
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What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings
$23.95Featured on “The Sunday Magazine” on CBC Radio
SHORTLISTED FOR THE 2023 TASTE CANADA AWARD FOR CULINARY NARRATIVES
Nearly every culture has a variation on the dumpling: histories, treatises, family legends, and recipes about the world’s favourite lump of carbs
If the world’s cuisines share one common food, it might be the dumpling, a dish that can be found on every continent and in every culinary tradition, from Asia to Central Europe to Latin America. Originally from China, they evolved into ravioli, samosas, momos, gyozas, tamales, pierogies, matzo balls, wontons, empanadas, potato chops, and many more.
In this unique anthology, food writers, journalists, culinary historians, and musicians share histories of their culture’s version of the dumpling, family dumpling lore, interesting encounters with these little delights, and even recipes to unwrap the magic of the world’s favourite dish.
With an introduction by Karon Liu.
Illustrations by Meegan Lim.
Contributors include: Michal Stein, Christina Gonzales, Kristen Arnett, David Buchbinder, André Alexis, Miles Morrisseau, Angela Misri, Perry King, Sylvia Putz, Mekhala Chaubal, Arlene Chan, Chantal Braganza, Naomi Duguid, Eric Geringas, Matthew Murtagh-Wu, Monika Warzecha, Bev Katz Rosenbaum, Tatum Taylor Chaubal, Domenica Marchetti, Julie Van Rosendaal, Amy Rosen, Cheryl Thompson, Jennifer Jordan, Marie Campbell and Navneet Alang
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What We Talk About When We Talk About War
$24.95An Amazon.ca Editor’s Pick for 2012 and a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2012
Shortlisted, Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, and John W. Dafoe Book Prize
Longlisted, Charles Taylor Prize for Literary Non-FictionA provocative examination of how communications has shaped the language of the media, and vice versa, and how rhetoric shapes how Canadians thinks of themselves as a nation and Canada’s engagement in peacekeeping, war, and on the international stage.
According to Richler, each phase of engagement in Afghanistan has been shaped not only by rhetoric but an overarching narrative structure. This topic is very much in discussion at the moment. With the withdrawal of Canadian troops (at least in part) from Afghanistan, it becomes clear there had been a rhetorical cycle. Where once Canada wielded the myth of itself as a peacekeeping nation, the past decade has seen a marked shift away from this, emphasizing the Canadian soldier as warrior. Yet now, as the country withdraws, the oratorical language we use steps away from heroes, able warriors, and sacrifice and back towards a more comfortable vision of Canada in a peacekeeping/training role.
In recent years, Canada has made large financial investments in the apparatus of war — in a manner it hasn’t in a very long time — and as the realities of war are brought home (the losses, the tragedies, the atrocities, the lasting repercussions that come home with the soldiers who were on the front lines), Richler contends that it’s crucial we understand our national perspective on war — how we have framed it, how we continue to frame it.
Using recent events to bolster his arguments, including the shooting of American congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and the earthquake in Haiti, Richler argues that very possibly the epic narrative of Canada is winding back down to that of the novel as we slowly regain our peacekeeping agenda.
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What We Think We Know
$22.00Aaron Schneider’s What We Think We Know is a debut collection of short fiction that tests, expands, and sometimes explodes the limits of the short story, setting conventional forms alongside fragmented narratives, playing with perspective, and incorporating the instruments of data analysis (figures, tables, and charts) into literary fiction. Here you’ll find a satirical take on a scientific poster, a triptych of linked pieces that use footnotes, figures, and financial data to unfold the loves, dreams and disappointments of their shared protagonist, an autofiction novella that digs into the author’s fraught relationship with his father, and a lyrical novelette that explores the life of a family through an extended description of their home. At once experimental and deeply human, What We Think We Know is an accomplished exploration of the possibilities of fiction.
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What You Get at Home
$19.00 -
What You Need
$19.95Loyalties collide with long-buried love, a man builds a nuclear bomb in his garage, and children walk up walls. The stories in What You Need beautifully recount the rawness of human experience. Andrew Forbes’s characters struggle to escape the things that hold them in their all-too-ordinary lives, falling victim to fate, to one another, and to self-sabotage. These are stories about failure and yearning, yet they remind us of the humour and humanity in even the worst decisions.
“What You Need is compelling reading.”—The Globe & Mail
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What You Used to Wear
$17.95Charmaine Cadeau’s intensely imagined poems captivate everyone who experiences them. Delving beneath the gleaming surfaces of satellite dishes, wagon-wheels, rain-barrel planters, and suburban sprawl, she reveals a luminous spirituality. The encroachment that turns rural Ontario into cottage country becomes Cadeau’s unsentimental locus of truth and beauty. With skill that even experienced poets seldom possess, Cadeau evokes the intangibility of perception, its flickering contingencies.
In What You Used to Wear, Charmaine Cadeau has achieved what all young poets wish for but almost none attain. Her poetry is so impressive that her first book appears unheralded, untested by journal publication, and with few of the other supports usually so essential to first collections. Ross Leckie, Goose Lane’s poetry editor and Cadeau’s former creative writing professor at the University of New Brunswick, says, “This is very much a surprise book. I threw the manuscript into the mix to fill out packages for the readers, and it kept coming to the top.” Anne Simpson, a finalist for the 2003 Governor General’s Award for poetry and winner of the 2004 Griffin Prize, eagerly edited the book.
With the publication of What You Used to Wear, Goose Lane is proud to launch the first book of a truly remarkable poet.