Homegrown 2.0: Even More Locally Produced Reads (September 19)

Find more Homegrown picks here.

Attic Rain by Samantha Jones (NeWest Press)

Calgary, AB

All Lit Up: Do you have a favourite spot to visit in your hometown/where you live? Tell us about it.

Samantha Jones: I like to bring a mug of coffee to the bluffs that overlook the Bow River valley and downtown Calgary to watch the sunrise. The accompanying photo of me and my book is at one such place. My favourite time of year for this is in the fall and winter, when the prairie morning skies can be filled with spectacular pinks, oranges, reds, and yellows as the day begins (and you don’t have to be there at 5:30 am to see it!). We have an atmospheric phenomenon called Chinooks in southern Alberta caused by dry air rapidly increasing in temperature as it descends the eastern side of the Rockies. Chinooks bring warm, sometimes very strong, winds to Calgary in the winter and produce a beautiful arch of clouds over the landscape and the city signalling a big change is about to occur. Lingering in this spot brings calm and often gives me space to work through organizing my day, solving a problem, or calling a friend or a family member to start the day with someone I love.

Click here to learn more about Attic Rain + purchasing options.

Sugar Kids by Taslim Burkowicz (Fernwood Publishing)

Vancouver, BC

All Lit Up: Does your community feature in your book in some way? How?

Taslim Burkowicz: The Book Warehouse on Main in Vancouver currently features signed copies of my book. A quaint, independent bookstore, we held a “rave themed” book launch there a few months ago. At the event, DJ Peter Brown spun iconic 90s warehouse bangers, and patrons were encouraged to wear colourful clothing to the event, promptly dusted with glitter upon arrival. Also present were ’90s lollipops, party foods, and cocktails that brought people back to the days of underground clubbing to house music under rainbow strobe lights. I read a passage from the book and did a question and answer period both with Fazeela Jiwa and the audience. I am grateful for small bookstores like The Book Warehouse, which do a huge part in representing local authors. They regularly host book launches and if you are a book enthusiast like myself, it is worthwhile to follow The Book Warehouse on social media. Or just pop by! Main Street is an artsy district full of vintage shops, pop-up galleries, urban eateries, and coffee shops that allow you to spectate ongoing foot traffic. It’s definitely an area where artists and writers congregate, and I am thankful that Sugar Kids has found its way to a shelf there!

Click here to learn more about Sugar Kids + purchasing options.

Other Maps by Rebecca Morris (Linda Leith Publishing)

Guelph, ON

All Lit Up: Is there any literary lore in your hometown?

Rebecca Morris: My hometown of Guelph is an extremely literary place! Growing up, I attended readings by local authors Bob Munsch and Jean Little at the public library, then took school trips to the John McCrae House when studying “In Flanders Fields.” Whenever I’m back in Guelph I also stop by the Bookshelf, an iconic indie bookstore/cafe/cinema that’s been a community hub since 1973.

Click here to learn more about Other Maps + purchasing options.

Secrets of Stone by Coltrane Seesequasis (Kegedonce Press)

Gatineau, QC

All Lit Up: Do you have a favourite spot to visit in your hometown/where you live? Tell us about it.

Coltrane Seesequasis: When I think about a favourite spot to visit in my hometown, there’s really only one place that comes to mind, and that’s Gatineau Park. No matter the season, its sights and sounds are medicine for the mind, and walking under those proud trees never fails to inspire a sense of wonder. Hiking along the park’s many trails, you’ll find that the air feels cleaner and more free if that makes sense. The constant noise of the city is gone. There’s no more growling of cars. No more cacophony of hundreds of voices speaking at once. No more troubles that stress you out in your day-to-day life. You’re now free as the air you breathe for as long as you’re there.

Ever since I was very young, that place has stimulated my imagination and has remained one of the main reasons for my love of nature. When I describe forests in my writing, I try to capture how it feels to walk among those trees, how it feels to run freely on those trails, how it feels to look out over a vista and realize that there’s still a certain primal beauty to this world that deserves more appreciation.

Click here to learn more about Secrets of Stone + purchasing options.

Unwashed by Daniel Maluka (Mawenzi House)

Toronto, ON

All Lit Up: What do you love about the arts and culture community where you live? 

Daniel Maluka: The thing I love most about the arts and culture community here in Toronto is its sheer variety. In poetry specifically, there are so many readings and open mics that give people a way to express themselves. All of these spaces are welcoming to writers and performers of all levels and genres. It enriches each individual’s work to be exposed to new styles and approaches to poetic expression. I’ve spoken about this with others in the community, and we all feel that we are in a very special moment artistically. To capture this moment, my friend Sheldon and I created the “Summer Break Poetry Mixtape,” an audio documentary recorded on cassette, where various writers and artists read their work and provide commentary on the current poetic moment.

Click here to learn more about Unwashed + purchasing options.

Chandelier by David O’Meara (Nightwood Editions)

Ottawa, ON

All Lit Up: Is there any literary lore where you live?

David O’Meara: At various stages in my Ottawa life, I have lived in Lowertown, the area south and west of the Ottawa River that includes the Byward Market, one of the oldest settled area of the city. Its immigrant history is working class, mostly Irish, Jewish and French Canadian. When I walk or cycle around, I am often reminded of Norman Levine, one of Canada’s greatest short story writers, who one blogger has called “one of Ottawa’s most celebrated forgotten authors.” True, he is often referred to as a “writer’s writer,” which is both a compliment and conviction of literary obscurity.

A Jew, born in Minsk (Poland), his family came to Canada in the 1920s to escape antisemitic persecution. Though his childhood and early adulthood was spent in Ottawa, he became disgruntled with the nascent literary scene in the 1950s and early ’60s, and moved to Cornwall, England where he lived until his death in 2005. But his stories lean heavily on his Lowertown childhood, or his returns to the area to visit ailing parents and raise lost connections. Many of the landmarks he inhabited and describes—his home on Murray Street, Rideau Bakery, his mother’s long-term care home at MacDonald Manor on Cobourg Street—are gone or altered, but the spirit of the neighbourhood is evoked through his wonderful sentences.

His stories, to me, rate as high as Mavis Gallant and Alice Munro. “Levine’s restraint and ambiguity,” I have written “is a product of his careful, unadorned prose, a style of orderly diction and disaffected narratives shaped into a literature of astonishing, enduring immediacy.” You can read my review of I Don’t Want to Know Anyone Too Well, his collected stories published by Biblioasis Books here.

Click here to learn more about Chandelier + purchasing options.