![[Sharps]](/var/ezdemo_site/storage/images/alllitup.ca/books/9/sharps/9780864922045_cover/830587-1-eng-CA/9780864922045_cover1_alu_modalcover.jpg "[Sharps]")
Enlarge Image
To embed a link to this book on your own website, please copy the script below.
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Emergencies, faith, truancy, and poverty intersect in this wry debut that volunteers a transfusion of the unpredictable for those who yearn to transition beyond a muralized Olive Garden world.
Stevie Howell's [Sharps] takes its ... Read more
Shortlisted for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award
Emergencies, faith, truancy, and poverty intersect in this wry debut that volunteers a transfusion of the unpredictable for those who yearn to transition beyond a muralized Olive Garden world.
Stevie Howell's [Sharps] takes its cue from an Egyptian hieroglyph used interchangeably to represent "waters," the letter N, and all prepositions within a sentence. Similarly, [Sharps] alters its structure and functionality from page to page. The Queen launches an advertising campaign to procure our envy. The last unicorn crochets a sweater out of the sisal cords of the books. The falsity of Billy Joel's New York propaganda is grounds for libel. We discover the one thing you can do "With a sawed-off rifle, a low IQ, and curiosity/about human biology. "
From certain angles, [Sharps] embraces the possibilities of poetry — from others, it engages in a protracted street fight with language.
Stevie Howell's poetry and literary criticism has appeared in publications throughout Canada and abroad. She has released two chapbooks, Royal and Ringsend, and a pamphlet entitled Looting the Museum. In 2013 Howell's poem "Brief Review" won the 2013 Arc Poetry Journal Critic's Desk Award. She has also been a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. For her day job, she works as an editor for Spacing magazine. She lives in Victoria.
"These poems are coded emergency and emergent code: hail, cut glass, cathedrals, systems, skeletons, and scorched earth. Stevie Howell has found a fault line underwriting Reality and turned this fissure, this terrible brokenness, into a lens. She sees the queasy, exact particular and can phase from its contours into metaphysics and back before we sense the ground shifting. An astonishing debut. An astonishing collection, full stop. "
— Ken Babstock
"Howell's stunning debut . .. Her ear is impeccable. "
— Michael Lista
Sign Up or Sign In to add your review or comment.
The new year is here, and while it's feeling a lot like a flashback to 2020 chaos right now, we can always rely on a fresh new season of books to keep our spirits afloat. Here are just some of the reads that our All Lit Up staff are living for right now.
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 ... Read more
Renee Sarojini Saklikar’s epic journey, Bramah and the Beggar Boy (Nightwood Editions), is the first in a multi-part fantasy series in verse. This instalment, The Heart of This Journey Bears All Patterns (THOT J BAP) is steeped in the tradition of fairytales where a ... Read more
Poet and editor Conyer Clayton—whose debut collection We Shed Our Skin Like Dynamite (Guernica Editions) was named a finalist for the 2021 ReLit Award for Poetry—shares some of her favourite books by queer and trans writers and those reflecting on queer experiences ... Read more
This genre-bending first collection of stories from author Barbara Black takes readers from the ravaged streets of dystopian cities to the inner battlefields of its characters. Mix the perception-blurring fables of Maria Mutch with a touch of Kafkaesque absurdity and a dash ... Read more
Rahela Nayebzadah's Monster Child (Wolsak & Wynn) is not your typical immigrant story. Through the eyes of three Afghan children, an uncaring world, filled with racism, family secrets and magic unfolds. Readers must squint to see clearly through shape-shifting forms of evil ... Read more
With the inability to travel right now, many of us are looking for ways to escape our current reality. I can promise you this: these five books will take you further than your daily walk ever could—to surreal places ruled by the imagination, where, for better or worse, dream ... Read more
Turning the mystery genre on its head, The Adventures of Isabel (ECW Press) follows a sharp-tongued amateur sleuth as she strikes out to solve the murder of a sex worker alongside her sassy cat and partner in crime fighting. This first novel from author Candas Jane Dorsey ... Read more
Our penultimate 2020 Gift Guide is courtesy of Scotiabank Giller Prize-finalist Francesca Ekwuyasi who recommends four choice titles from Arsenal Pulp Press and Nightwood Editions for everyone from your "future-thinking Aquarius bestie" to "your twenty-something-year-old self." ... Read more
For the giftee who loves a good life-affirming phone sesh with their BFF, today's BINGEMAS picks are just the right kind of reads to remind them of their worth in gold.
We'll send you bi-monthly updates to keep you in the loop on the best of our blog, special campaigns and offers, AND news on the latest in literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry from indie publishers across Canada.
We'll send you bi-monthly updates to keep you in the loop on the best of our blog, special campaigns and offers, AND news on the latest in literary fiction, nonfiction and poetry from indie publishers across Canada.
Copyright © 2022 All Lit Up. All Rights Reserved.
All Lit Up is produced by the Literary Press Group and LitDistCo. LPG and LitDistCo acknowledge the financial support of the Department of Canadian Heritage, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Ontario Arts Council.
All views expressed by bloggers and contributors to the All Lit Up blog are their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of All Lit Up or the Literary Press Group.
All Lit Up acknowledges we are hosted on the lands of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabeg, the Haudenosaunee, and the Wendat. We also recognize the enduring presence of all First Nations, Métis and the Inuit people, and we are grateful to have the opportunity to meet and work on this territory.
