From the Introduction by Brian Fawcett "A first clue to how this book is going to work lies in the book's title: Topic Sentence. In the title story, written in 1970, Persky took on the two questions that dog every artist in the post-modern: What is the subject matter, and how can it be articulated? Since both questions are unanswerable, Persky twis …

John Armstrong has worked as a paperboy, a caddy, and a Bible camp counsellor; as a janitor at the Regal Theatre, a shipper of video porn, and a real live punk rock star. As if those jobs weren't punishment enough, at the tender age of thirty he entered the trenches of journalism. Armstrong's first job — a slave-labour gig shovelling rabbit shit …

For many years, archaeologists were unaware of the ancient clam terraces at Waiatt Bay, on Quadra Island. Author Judith Williams knew no differently until she was advised of their existence by a Klahoose elder named Elizabeth Harry (Keekus). By liaising with other observers of clam gardens in the Broughton Archipelago and conducting her own survey …

The basking shark, a fish the size of a London bus, used to appear off the BC coast every spring. During World War II, the fish became a nuisance to commercial nets and fishing trollers. Gliding just below the surface, the basking shark was an easy target for a new pest eradication program that touted killing one of the "plankton-eating monsters" a …

Social workers choosing to work in smaller towns or rural communities face a different set of conditions and concerns from their city colleagues. Ken Collier wrote his now-classic text Social Work with Rural Peoples, for those social workers, whether they are just starting out or already in the field. The gist of Collier's genuinely radical book is …

Backup to Babylon collects three shorter works by Maxine Gadd, a writer who has based her life and her work in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside for more than two decades. The first section, "Greenstone," follows an arc between rural life, shaped by idealism, and the city. Feminism, activism, and utopianism are among Gadd's concerns. "Backup to Babylon …

In a volume inspired by Czeslaw Milosz, Stan Persky appropriates the format of the alphabet book as a springboard for musings both personal and philosophical. The Short Version — which, at 300-plus pages is the author's longest book — is a literal ABC: Persky covers only topics that begin with those three letters, though he can't resist tweakin …

Most North Americans are overspent, overtired, overweight, and overworked and believe that more money, more stuff, more time, more of everything will lead to more happiness. In this anti-retirement guide for the boomer generation, Bruce O'Hara dismisses this idea and offers seven keys to happiness in the second half of life. Instead of working too …

Often, the way a story is told is as important as the story itself. This is true of the most recent novel by Gerry William, The Woman in the Trees.

Set during the time of first contact, The Woman in the Trees takes place around what is now Vernon, BC. The novel moves effortlessly from myth to dream time to narrative real time. Spanning the historic …

Evicted from his Tofino pyramid for the last time, writer Andrew Struthers has the solution: buy an old fishing boat going cheap via the federal government's Mifflin Plan. He takes up residence onboard with his nine-year-old daughter Pasheabel, and his perennial housing problems are solved. Or are they? The Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan picks up whe …

Welcome to BC's frontier days, when loggers and laundresses penned poetry, and entertainment consisted of reciting verse 'round the fire. The Old Red Shirt is a rollicking collection of old-fashioned pioneer poetry. Selected by longtime amateur BC historian, Yvonne Klan, the poems address the social issues of the day, teach moral lessons, and refle …

Could a horde of American miners have delivered British Columbia into the hands of the United States in 1859? In McGowan's War, Donald J. Hauka argues that the new colony was a rifle shot away from war and annexation during the fateful winter of 1859, when the British Crown could barely control 30,000 politically divided American miners camped the …

Does institutionalizing our children for six hours a day, five days a week, really bring out the best in them? In this provocative book, Matt Hern argues that there are effective alternatives to school as we know it. Hern believes that local communities are in the best position to decide what kind of schooling their children need. In suggesting way …

In sixteen extended talks with Alternative Radio's David Barsamian, Noam Chomsky explains why the "war on drugs" is really a war on poor people; how attacks on political correctness are attacks on independent thought; how historical revisionism has recast the United States as the victim in the Vietnam War. Widely recognized as one of the most origi …

Some of the questions that Chomsky answers in this second volume of interviews with David Barsamian include: why do nightly newscasts increasingly feature violent crimes?; how does the American political economy supercede gender and race?; when do "family values" equal increasing numbers of children in poverty?

Chomsky tackles the shibboleths of our …

With Hammertown, Peter Culley establishes himself as a stylistic virtuoso utilizing a startlingly broad range of reference to result in a body of work at once intimate and prophetic. It is above all a portrait of a town. Caught by a passing reference in George Perec's Life: A User's Manual to a "village on Vancouver Island," Culley began to re-imag …

Surf's up! But don't bother to put on your bikini. This is BC's WET coast, where the water temperature never goes above eleven degrees Celsius. BC surfers have been paddling out to catch waves at Sombrio Beach, Tofino, Ucluelet, and Jordan River for over forty years. Today, a mixture of Vancouver Island's first families of surfing and newcomers to …

Exercises in Lip Pointing is a new collection of poems by respected First Nations writer, Annharte. She uses oral sounds and written signs to probe and prod the reader, to ask the right questions, to lay bare the contradictions and delights in the serendipities of her experience. She makes us laugh, cry, and learn.

We've all read about Hollywood Babylon — the dark side of Tinseltown — but very little about Hollywood Utopia. In her new book, Justine Brown recovers the artistic and idealistic origins of the world's movie capital and its playful and imaginative pioneers. Hollywood Utopia examines the individual lives of the Theosophists (proto-New Agers), th …

The Kootenays, a region of rivers, lakes and mountains in southeastern British Columbia, is home to the kokanee. This landlocked sibling of the sockeye salmon is an extravagant gift from the Pacific Ocean, an elusive flash of molten silver, a lustful reproductive torrent of fire-engine red, a marvel of interior adaptation, an icon of regional cultu …

1978: a non-stop carnival of debauchery begins as the first shock of punk hits Vancouver, with John Armstrong at the centre of it all. As Buck Cherry, lead singer/guitarist for the Modernettes, Armstrong tours us pell-mell through his misspent youth when he met and made music with I Braineater, Joey Shithead, Dimwit, Chuck Biscuits, Mary Jo Kopechn …

In 1998, Dzawada'enuxw artist Marianne Nicholson scaled a vertical rock face in Kingcome Inlet to paint a massive pictograph to mark the continued vitality of her ancestral village of Gwa'yi. Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time is the story of that painting, of earlier politically defiant rock art, and of "coppers," ceremonial shields that are a central …

On the edge of adulthood, self-discovery, coming out; in university towns, Europe, Vancouver, Toronto, Sydney, the protagonists of Calendar Boy unravel cultural heritage, community, identity on the road to — they hope — love, happiness, and self-acceptance. Set around the globe, sixteen adventurous stories weave fiction with real-life smarts, g …

"One of Canada's best poets ... Robertson's language is sparkling and sharp, and builds momentum through its rhythmic motion motion to produce a dense and difficult, but enjoyable and readable book ... The Weather rewrites the pastoral with confidence and cunning."
— Prairie Fire
"Hip, cerebral, streamlined, and dense, The Weather is about many …

The South Nahanni, one of North America's wildest and most spectacular rivers, rushes through this park in the southwest corner of the Northwest Territories. John Harris and his partner, climber extraordinaire Vivien Lougheed, mount an expedition to this glorious but dangerous region. Harris's conversational account builds momentum as the party fol …

Cathedral, cash crop, the Earth's respiratory system: the rainforest is all this and more. Larry Pynn, award?winning environment writer, plunges into coastal forests from California to Alaska to awaken us to this unique ecosystem and to the complex factors that threaten it. Talking with forestry workers, hunters, rangers, Natives, and environmental …

Since the mid 1980s, the Kootenay School of Writing, a writer–run centre in Vancouver, has been the site of some of the most innovative poetry coming out of North America. Leaving behind conventional ideas about syntax and lyricism, the KSW poets have produced a body of work that is jarring, troubling, provocative, funny, and beautiful.

In their in …

First issued by Tsunami Editions in 1993, XEclogue is an exploration of the pleasures of the pastoral poetry from a late-twentieth-century feminist perspective. Robertson, the Governor General's Award finalist, plays in a neo-classical landscape with equal doses of iconoclasm and erudition. This new and revised edition is sure to win new devotees f …

Joan Givner engages the heart and mind in this refreshing and readable collection of short stories and essays. Nineteen pieces demonstrate, with the author's trademark acuity, how biography — and autobiography — finds its way into fiction.

Implicitly feminist, Givner's compassionate yet unflinching eye vividly renders each secret pain and joy of …

Caring For Profit traces how Canada's $77 billion a year health care industry is turning away from its original mandate of providing the best possible medical care to Canadians, and how multinational capital is forcing its way into our non?profit health care system.

In Caring For Profit, Colleen Fuller traces alliances that were struck between priva …

Skookum, cultus, hyack, saltchuck, klahowya, tillicum: It is in words like these that the last vestiges of a lost British Columbian language remain. It was known as "Chinook." Its use today is mainly confined to colloquialisms, and place names like Boston Bar, Canim Lake, Illahee Mountain, Snass Creek, and Skookumchuck. It began as a trading jargon …

In this groundbreaking portrait of the uneasy state of the province, Terry Glavin's lyrical narratives reveal the fibre of a British Columbia rarely glimpsed. With journalistic acumen, he surveys a landscape of inexorable suburban sprawl, dismantled railway lines, scapegoating of Native fisheries, and strange goings?on at Gustafsen Lake. A new bree …

On December 11, 1997, the Supreme Court of Canada rendered its decision in the historical aboriginal title action known a Delgamuukw versus The Queen. The decision vindicated the fifty-two Gitkan and We'suwe'en chiefs named as the plaintiffs in the court case, and completely rewrites the rules for resolving Native title in Canada. Epic battles with …

Autobiography of a Tattoo is an investigative literary work about the education and pursuit of homosexual desire. Its mixture of serial stories and modernist meditations invites readers on a journey that rangers from post?Wall Berlin to Plato's Athens. Stan Persky, the author of Buddy's and Then We Take Breaks, here breaks through the current impas …

Now in its third edition, and with new material on Tatshenshini Provincial Park, The Kluane National Park Hiking Guide remains the backpacker's official source on the hundreds of kilometres of trails and routes along the edge of the St. Elias range.

Challenging terrain, pristine mountain lakes, rare plant species, grizzlies galore — Kluane has it …

Ken Collier draws upon the world'system theory developed by Fernand Braudel and Immanuel Wallerstein to shed light on the welfare state and its apparent demise. The welfare state, Collier argues, grew up in the heyday of the anti'state to meet the needs of both capital and labour. The role of the state is changing, and the nation'state itself is he …

Lisa Robertson has applied her rhetorical skills to the epic, and what emerges is a spectacular, subversive vision of the world through female eyes. This is an act of sheer writerly bravado, taking and tweaking the form, enlarging the world between the covers of a book. The language is lush, the concept superactivated, growing over the page at an a …