In Review: The Week of Oct 1st

On the Blog

~ We kicked off READ INDIGENOUS, a month-long celebration of 20 Indigenous authored-books to discover, share, and read. Our first four books included the novels Winter Child by Virginia Pésémapéo Bordeleau (Freehand Books) and Song of Batoche by Maia Caron (Ronsdale Press), and the poetry collections Witness, I Am by Gregory Scofield (Nightwood Editions) and A Really Good Brown Girl by Marilyn Dumont (Brick Books).~ We chatted with Veena Gokhale author of Land for Fatimah and Bombay Wali & other stories from Guernica Editions about books, food, and social change: “I lived in Tanzania from 2005-2007, working for a dynamic, non-profit organization. I had always wanted to use stories in social change communications. It was in Africa that I got to work on two illustrated storybooks that targeted school children with socially relevant messages.”~ We discovered the poetic stylings of Al Rempel in his newest collection Undiscovered Country (Mother Tongue Publishing): “The absence of periods at the end of his poems not only open up each poem to the next, so that the entire book can be read as one long poem, but also shirks off the reader’s temptation to look for finality or a conclusion to each piece.”

Around the Web

~ The announcement of the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Awards nominees included loads of indie books to cheer on.~ These handy tips and tricks for organizing your home library will save you from making mistakes like shelving your books spines inward.~ A former ghostwriter for the Obama administration designed AI that produced a novel over a four-day road trip.

What Else We’re Reading

Mandy’s reading Manjushree Thapa’s All of Us In Our Own Lives (Freehand Books), a deeply engaging novel about the lives of women and girls in Nepal and the ethics of international aid written with tremendous insight and compassion.