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Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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CarryOnBooks: Books! In Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport!
Launched on June 1st and running until the end of August, All Lit Up is excited to bring you 30 incredible CanLit titles at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport — in a vending machine! Yep, you read that right; in a few simple taps you can grab new, exciting literature to carry on — see…
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Poetry in Motion: Poem and Prayer in Years, Months, and Days
Bridging secular spirituality and holy reverence with the commonalities of life, death, love, and hope, Amanda Jernigan’s Years, Months, and Days (Biblioasis) explores the connection between hymn and poem, recalling the spare beauty of Marilynne Robinsons’s novels or the poems of Jan Zwicky and Robert Bringhurst. The collection’s plain and tender phrasing is “an offering of words…
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If You Liked x, Read y: Leaving Home Edition
Sharon Bala’s The Boat People, a novel inspired by the 500 Sri Lankan refugees held in detention in Canada, was heavy on the awards-radar this year for good reason. Today Publisher Kelsey Attard of Freehand Books shares the parallels between Bala’s novel and the newly published Homes: A Refugee Story by Winnie Yeung.
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In Review: The Week of May 28th
This week we paired some of our fave podcasts with some of our fave books, got a look at the making of a book cover, capped off our Short Story Month celebration with a final interview, and read some poetry we’re calling “nu-Prairie.”
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First Fiction Friday: Cobra Clutch
From the top ropes of Port Moody, BC comes debut author A.J. Devlin whose first novel Cobra Clutch (NeWest Press) is a fast-paced and funny pro-wrestling adventure mystery that will have you in a literary full nelson.
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Short Story Month: Outside People and Other Stories by Mariam Pirbhai
Our final short story month feature for 2018 is a doozy: Mariam Pirbhai’s debut collection Outside People and Other Stories (Inanna Publications) has already won awards for her evocative writing. We talk with Mariam about how you can have influences for style and others for substance, how she hasn’t left a story behind…yet, and read some of “Air…
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Poetry in Motion: Chelsea Coupal’s Reimagining Prairie Poetry in Sedley
When we think of Prairie writing – specifically Prairie poetry – we generally think of toil, dust, maybe even bonnets. Not so in Chelsea Coupal’s debut collection Sedley (Coteau Books), named after her hometown of Sedley, SK. In her book, Coupal beautifully captures the Prairie vistas and competing urges to leave and stay through both words and…
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If You Liked x, Read y: Promo Code BOOKS (Reads for Podcast Listeners)
Goodness knows we’re readers here at All Lit Up, but we’ve been known to dip into cool podcast waters from time to time. Maybe you share some of our faves? We’ve got three perfect, ad-free books to read while you’re waiting for that next episode.
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Beautiful Books: Ten-Headed Alien
Tune into the decidedly psychedelic, 1970s-album art stylings that are the design elements of David James Brock’s poetry collection Ten-Headed Alien (Wolsak & Wynn). David takes us through some of the prog rock and classic sci-fi inspirations for the cover and interiors and the type choices that convey the voice of the conqueror (the eponymous alien).
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In Review: The Week of May 21st
This week, we celebrated Asian Heritage Month, looked at all kinds of short stories, read some diverse children’s book studies, and welcomed our newest staffer, Will, who has a book recommendation for y’all.
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Jules’ Tools for Social Change: Short Stories from women
Welcome to this month’s edition of Jules’ Tools for Social Change, a column that features a book, author or publisher whose work deals with issues of race, gender, sexuality, ability, colonialism, economic justice, or other social justice topics.
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Short Story Month: The Things She’ll Be Leaving Behind by Vanessa Farnsworth
Vanessa Farnsworth’s The Things She’ll Be Leaving Behind (Thistledown Press) is a collection of twenty-eight stories about women who are brave and flawed; who pick up men; who deal with husbands, sons, and grandfathers, spiteful sisters, and clowns; who struggle to stay sane. For Short Story Month, Vanessa tells us a bit about her collection,…
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Quoted: Peggy Herring’s Anna, Like Thunder
In Anna, Like Thunder (Brindle & Glass Publishing), Peggy Herring blends history and fiction to offer a fresh retelling story of St. Nikolai, the Russian ship that ran aground off the Olympic Peninsula into Indigenous territory in 1808. At its centre is the fascinating story of eighteen-year-old Anna Petrovna Bulygina, one of the ship’s crew…
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Asian Heritage Month: The Many Generations of Lytton’s General Store
This Asian Heritage Month we travel to the village of Lytton, BC featured in Lily Chow’s Blossoms in the Gold Mountains (Caitlin Press) with a snapshot of the Chongs, a Chinese-Canadian family that created and managed the integral Lytton General Store for generations.
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Cover Collage: Crowning Achievements
It’s Victoria Day, and we’re celebrating with these crown-clad covers (especially since some of them subvert those rah-rah Jubilee years).
Got any book recommendations?