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In Holy Wild (Book*hug), award-winning poet Gwen Benaway lays bare her experiences as a trans woman of Anishinaabe and Métis descent. She charts sexual intimacy and self- and other-love but also transphobia and settler colonialism through gorgeous, expansive poems, like the title poem we’ve featured below.
In his posthumously published story collection Candies (Kegedonce Press) Anishinaabe writer and storyteller Basil Johnston tells comedic stories about life in Residential School without diminishing its devastating impact. First Nations writer Maurice Switzerof Anishinabek News says of the collection “There could not be a more resonating testament than Candies to the reslience of Indian Residential…
A finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award, Carleigh Baker’s short story collection Bad Endings (Anvil Press) is an evocative, darkly humourous debut that explores endings of all kinds: unexpected, timely, messy, fulfilling. The Globe and Mail says “[…] Baker pushes readers to reconsider their desire for…
October 16th is World Food Day, and it’s also usually a pretty chilly day in Canada. We’re celebrating with a sneak-peek into Andrew Coppolino’s Farm to Table: Celebrating Stratford Chefs School Alumni, Recipes & Perth County Producers from Blue Moon Publishers, and warming up with an unbelievably-good, making-shopping-lists-now recipe for mac and Blyth Farm cheese from chef…
You have the IKEA Home Planner open in another tab and you’re dreaming up ways to reconfigure your living room to make more space for books. The protagonist in Barbara Langhorst’s Want(Palimpsest Press) is on the same page – except she’s just accidentally ordered a kitchen online. Read on to find out why this novel…
This week was full of more than just Thanksgiving leftovers: we shared a list of books for World Mental Health Day, read more Indigenous, learned a new word, and much more.
Josephine “Jo” Caplin’s biography Not My Fate: The Story of a Nisga’a Survivor (Caitlin Press) is told with love by author and close friend Janet Romain. Born into abandonment, instability, and substance abuse, Jo is a survivor of intergenerational trauma and the foster care system, and her story of survival told with sensitivity and care in this book.
Edited by David Brundage and Canada Reads Finalist Tracey Lindberg, Daniel David Moses: Spoken and Written Explorations of His Work (Guernica Editions) is a collection of engaging and thoughtful analytical essays, narratives, and dialogues about the work of the storied playwright, poet, editor, and essayist’s career. Moses also contributes work to the book.
A play written in both Cree and English, Curtis Peeteetuce’s Popcorn Elder (Scirocco Drama/Shilingford Publishing) tackles the troubled relationship between a man, Darren, forced by the courts to return to his father’s home on the rez and his father, Wally, a recently-reformed alcoholic. When Wally insists his sobriety is thanks to returning to ceremony and he…
In her play In Spirit (Playwrights Canada Press), director, playwright, and actor Tara Beagan takes on the painful reality that is thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. She imbues her murdered protagonist – a twelve-year-old girl, Molly – with familial love, courage, and strength, as she transforms into a spirit that pieces together her…
Sex, death, drugs, depression: the stuff of literature, the stuff of life, immortalized and romanticized, but what happens when the veneer of cinematic danger sloughs off to reveal a too-real vulnerability that is serious, sad, and sincere? Earlier this month, I launched my first book of poems, Port of Being (Invisible Publishing), in Vancouver, and…
The origin story of GG-winning author Julie Bruck’s newest How to Avoid Huge Ships (Brick Books) begins with its title. Below, Julie tells us how a mysterious book with an underground following aka “The Worst Book Ever” became the title of her fourth collection.
In honour of the Thanksgiving long weekend, we’ve let be-chickened and -turkeyed covers free run all over this Cover Collage. And good news for all of you vegetarians out there: these books are meat- and egg-free.
This week we celebrated Indigenous-authored books with READ INDIGENOUS, whooped and hollered for the Governor General’s Literary Awards nominees, discovered new poetry, and more.
Al Rempel’s Undiscovered Country (Mother Tongue Publishing) is a journey through the grieving process after the loss of a loved one. Filtered through the geographical lens of northern BC, its seasons, and its colours, the collection offers a variety of lyrical modes, like the long poem, to explore death, loss, and ultimately, hope.
Got any book recommendations?