Gift Guide Week with Lindsay Zier-Vogel

Picks by Lindsay Zier-Vogel

There’s nothing I love more than finding the perfect book for someone I love. I take my book gift giving very seriously, and start thinking about the books I want to get people for the holidays the minute Halloween is over. Below are a few titles that I’ll be buying for my nearest and dearest this year.

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For your friend who grew up on early ‘00s food blogs, and is trying to figure out the various permutations of what family can mean: Living Expenses by Teri Vlassopoulos, (Invisible Books)

Living Expenses is a smart, moving, and funny novel about the invisible threads that hold families together, and what happens when those threads begin to fray. Centred on two sisters—one in Toronto preparing for IVF, the other in Silicon Valley chasing a tech career—Teri’s story is written with such honesty and nuance, showing how love, distance, ambition, and biology can both connect and complicate. From marriage, to sisterhood, to redefining one’s identity, the book is so rich with complicated and fascinating characters, and has the bonus of being filled with truly inspiring cakes! 

I’ve been on tour with Teri since May and have heard her read the first chapter more times than I can count, and I still laugh every time—it’s that good. 

For that backyard gardener whose love language is making trifle and/or tomato chutney: Hearty by andrea bennett (ECW Press)

Food memoirs are definitely having a moment, but andrea bennett’s Hearty is more than just a food memoir. In a series of vibrant, down-to-earth essays, andrea explores the many ways food connects to care, identity, and everyday life. Drawing on years spent working in kitchens and their personal relationship to cooking shaped by dietary restrictions (raises own hand!), bennett offers a perspective that’s practical, engaging, and unpretentious. 

Blending personal stories, cultural observation, and journalism, Hearty moves from backyard gardens to industrial food systems, ice cream to Shepherd’s pie, seed saving to food media, and the often-messy realities of cooking at home (Note: the macaron essay will have you howling!). andrea’s essays are smart and compassionate, but never precious—grounded in real-life kitchens, and weedy backyards, and trying to find family and belonging through food. 

Generous, funny, and full of delicious recipes, Hearty explores the joy of making food and sharing it. I highly recommend the tomato chutney recipe, and be warned, it’ll be very hard not to want an ice cream maker before you’re done with it. 

Note: Hearty would also pair perfectly with Queers at the Table: An Illustrated Guide to Queer Food (with Recipes), edited by Alex D. Ketchum and Megan J. Elias, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. 

For the artist-turned-new-parent who hasn’t slept in five-an- a-half months and is terrified their artistic career is over: Good Mom On Paper: Writers On Creativity And Motherhood edited by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee (Book*hug Press)

This is the book I wish I’d had in the first bewildering year of my kid’s life. The collection brings together twenty powerful essays that examine the complex intersection of writing and motherhood. These pieces reveal the often-unseen negotiations and sacrifices that come with pursuing a creative life while raising children—balancing deadlines with nap times, reshaping career goals around childcare, and learning to protect both time and identity as a writer and a parent. But it’s not all dire—it also highlights the resilience, community, and unexpected inspiration that motherhood can offer, and the ways in which caregiving and creativity can feed one another. 

The anthology features exceptional writers from Heather O’Neill, to Rachel Giese, to Jael Richardson, to Lee Maracle, and many more. Every essay is a must-read. 

Note: This book of essays would pair perfectly with Gillian Sze’s Quiet Night Think (ECW Press), which is a beautiful, powerful meditation on motherhood. And if you wanted to make it a new parent bundle, I’d add poetry books: Shannon Bramer’s Precious Energy (Book*hug Press) and Adrienne Gruber’s Q&A (Book*hug Press). 

For literally every person on your gift list from now until the end of time: Encampment by Maggie Helwig (Coach House Books)

Maggie Helwig is one of the most compassionate, determined people in the city of Toronto, and in the spring of 2022, several unhoused people began setting up tents beside the Anglican church in Kensington Market where Maggie served as priest. A long-time advocate for justice, Maggie welcomed them, and in Encampment, she records three years of resisting efforts by city officials and church authorities to displace them. 

Encampment traces Maggie’s decades of activism and how it led to this moment of radical hospitality. But it’s not just her story. The book gives voice to the people living in the yard: the Artist, Jeff, Robin—each facing different struggles, each reminding us that homelessness is not an abstract issue, but a human one, and a failure of policy at every level of government. Through these portraits, the book lays bare the cruelty of systems that prioritize optics over care, and challenges us to rethink what it means to offer shelter, solidarity, and dignity in a time of crisis. 

It’s essential reading, now and always. 

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Lindsay Zier-Vogel is a Toronto-based author, educator, grant writer, and the creator of the internationally-acclaimed Love Lettering Project. After studying contemporary dance, she received her MA in Creative Writing from the University of Toronto. She is the author of the acclaimed debut novel Letters to Amelia, and her first picture book, Dear Street was a 2023 Junior Library Guild pick, a Canadian Children’s Book Centre book of the year, and was nominated for a 2024 Forest of Reading Blue Spruce Award (Canada), and a 2025 Magnolia Book Award (Mississippi). Her second novel, The Fun Times Brigade, came out in May 2025, and she is co-editing The Deep End: Reflections on swimming with andrea bennett. Her work has been published widely in Canada and the UK. 

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Thanks to Lindsay 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.

Thank you for joining us for this year’s gift guide! Unsure if you missed any recommendations? Check out the entire gift guide series here!