In Review: The Week of June 1st

On the Blog

~ From a queer AF YA novel to a good book of spells, Lambda Literary Award-winner Hazel Jane Plante recommends six choice books for #PrideMonth reading~ Dani Spinosa tells us about the process of creating the poems in her new collection OO: Typewriter Poems (Invisible Publishing) — a book of vispo — and what her teenage notebooks had to do with it: OO: Typewriter Poems~ Jean Marc Ah-Sen chats with us about his new collection In the Beggarly Style of Imitation (Nightwood Editions), writing, race, and why short stories are so liberating: “It was liberating to know that I would be abandoning most of the characters after introducing them; it forces you to make them more dramatic, and hopefully memorable; it keeps the momentum of action propulsive too.”~ Our ALU mixologist is back for the summer with a refreshing cocktail and mocktail recipe to try this weekend with a side of new poetry: fall in love with Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Beatriz Hausner (Book*hug Press) while sipping on a Morning Star.

Around the Web

~ CBC Books released a list of 25 books about being Black in Canada. (And here is our own list for more books by Black authors.)~ Publisher Don Gorman created a handy list of Black-owned/Black-focussed bookstores to support in the US.~ Windsor, Ontario-based author Heidi L. M. Jacobs won the 2020 Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour for her debut novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press). 

ICYMI (last week) 

Cooking with Off/Kilter

Off/Kilter headed into the kitchen to bring you the tasty ingredients for FIVE books that’ll make your quarantine a little more digestible.”Pflug’s Seeds and Other Stories is the equivalent of comfort food – a collection with a magic that will bring you hope in these difficult times. Like a good pot pie or a Sunday roast made with a surprising little twist of a new ingredient to elevate it, these stories will open you up to new worlds and possibilities.

Key ingredients:

– Seers and vagabonds

– Addicts and gardeners

– Dream-seeds that can grow new worlds

– Communities formed against apocalyptic backdrops”