Gift Guide Week with Kirti Bhadresa

Picks by Kirti Bhadresa

These four authors live on the Prairies and expand what it means to write from here. Their work is international, other-worldly even. Their books show the kind of engaging, far-reaching art that can happen under our enormous prairie sky. And these recommended reads will indubitably broaden the scope of anyone’s staid holiday conversations.

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For the person in your life who craves visual storytelling and is curious to dive into a story of survival across generations: All Our Ordinary Stories by Teresa Wong (Arsenal Pulp Press) 

Teresa Wong’s most recent graphic memoir is rich in emotion, deep in meaning, generous with her reader. Wong uses light and darkness so astutely to convey visceral feelings: from devastation to tenderness. This work considers what it really means to leave a life, to build a new one somewhere new. So often the stories of immigrants and refugees are lost, at great cost to later generations. Wong has created this book from a place of longing, which her audience feels profoundly with her.  

Some of the images from All Our Ordinary Stories that most stay with me are on the pages that depict a terrifying swim from mainland China to Hong Kong. Wong’s mother traverses frigid waters in the dark, held afloat only by the rubber liner of a basketball. One frame shows the overwhelming blackness of the water at night, the smallness of two swimmers. The image is arresting.  

I love, and highly recommend, this stunning book that centres survival, familial relationships, and the impact of history on the present. I have a running list of people I plan to buy copies of All Our Ordinary Stories for this season.  

Teresa Wong lives in Calgary, Alberta. 

For the person in your life who is most content when reading a rich book of poems exploring the complexity of emotion: Contraband Bodies by Jide Salawu (NeWest Press) 

“I wanted to write about home 
without haunting memories of the road.” 

– from the poem “The Postcolony” 

These are beautiful, richly described poems. Each one is alive with movement, shifting time, rooted in history. Jide Salawu does not shy away from emotion: love that lasts through geographic shifts, myths that endure.  

Arriving at a new place is bittersweet and the author does not gloss over complex feelings. Salawu describes places he has been, lived in, departed. Family members are left behind. Others appear to him in unlikely places, like in the poem “My Blind Grandfather Theorizes Home.” In this poem, the older relative appears “just before I crossed the bridge / into downtown Edmonton.” Voices of loved ones are never far in Salawu’s work. 

Each poem feels like a wave—some are wild, pummelling, and others lapping, quieter. Salawu is a bold writer with a mighty voice and a clear connection to his own roots. Contraband Bodies is epic, unsettling (in the best way), and concise.  

Jide Salawu lives in Edmonton, Alberta.  

For the person in your life who embraces the bold (and likes their books to do the same): The World So Wide by Zilla Jones (Cormorant Books) 

I am a huge fan of Jones’ fiction. Her acclaimed short stories are distinct and uncompromising, with main characters who are wonderfully confident and complex. I had looked forward to reading her debut novel with great anticipation. The book was as thrilling as I had hoped. 

I was immediately pulled in by bold characters and dramatic plot. The protagonist of this story, Felicity Alexander, faces intense racism growing up as a mixed-race person in Winnipeg. As an adult, Felicity establishes herself as an opera star whose at times reckless spirit lands her in the middle of an armed coup in Grenada. Jones’ central character consistently follows her heart, as she has been compelled to do since childhood. The bitter reality of racism and its lifelong impact is clear in this book. The story is political and highly researched, while also managing to be romantic, seductive, smart, and exciting to read.  

Zilla Jones lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba. 

For the person in your life who craves stories that stretch across centuries while tackling the biggest issues the present day: The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits by Ben Berman Ghan (Wolsak and Wynn) 

This speculative novel takes place over centuries, telling a story of humanity’s decline and spectacular revival. Ben Berman Ghan is a magician with words. He takes the ordinary, the familiar and recognizable, and reimagines it. The world he creates is kaleidoscopic, alive with colour and movement. The details of The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits are stunning, with otherworldly locations so precisely described.  

Ghan addresses the overwhelming issues of our time—including ecological destruction, technology, and AI—with care. Humanity is at the core of the entire novel and remains intact throughout. The novel left me, despite the great upheaval within it, feeling hopeful. 

Ghan is a wonderful, smart, sentence weaver, a sharp writer of dialogue, and a fantastic other-worldly story teller. As a fellow author, I greatly admire his ability to braid together such a complex, detail-driven plot in a way that remains engaging to the reader. This is a book for anyone who longs to lose themselves in an oceanic story.  

Ben Berman Ghan lives in Calgary, Alberta.  

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Kirti Bhadresa lives in Calgary, Alberta on Treaty 7 territory. Kirti has fiction and non-fiction writing in many publications including The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire and Room magazine. Her first book, a short story collection entitled An Astonishment of Stars was published in October 2024 by ECW Press. The book was on several most anticipated lists pre-publication and went on to become an indie bestseller. It was a 2025 Writers’ Guild of Alberta Fiction Finalist and was longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize. Kirti’s writing engages with themes of visibility, belonging, and love, with protagonists who are quietly determined but rarely nostalgic. 

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Thanks to Kirti for these four incredible book recommendations. You can order any of these books through All Lit Up, or click the “Shop Local” button on the book listings to discover them at your local indie bookstore.

Keep up with this year’s gift guide here, and stay tuned for picks from Greg Rhyno, next!