Oliver is an elusive new addition to the dysfunctional small town of Dalbegie, Scotland. Unaware of his dangerous side, divorcee Lauren is charmed by Oliver's brief yet charismatic appearances. Lauren has become the latest victim of Oliver's exclusive, secret club, nondescriptrambunctious.com. After Lauren's disappearance, her only daughter Lizzy i …

'Galaxy' is about a wounded family, a prairie place, love that is queer and conventional, longing and loss, and a light shone into dark corners. ' Galaxy' is "emotional biography", as Margaret Laurence called it, where the facts are fabricated, but the feelings are authentic.

"A truly wonderful collection of poems. Wonderful and clear imagery as wel …

Unmarried and pregnant in 1968 Winnipeg, teenager Myrl Coulter found herself at a loss. Unable (and perhaps unwilling) to support her child, Myrl's parents forced her to give the baby up for adoption. After being sent to a home for unwed mothers, Myrl gave birth in a desolate hospital room and then found herself at the mercy of the closed adoption …

'The Mountie at Niagara Falls' is an astonishingly absurd and humorous collection of brief stories from Toronto author Salvatore Difalco. Ranging in length from 125 to 500 words, these vital and sudden fictional forays transport the reader to worlds both big and small:; a land where green goats roam, voodoo dolls inflict crushing migraine headaches …

Tony Burgess has been experimenting with apocalypse fiction in numerous earlier works: the language/speech virus in 'Pontypool', the enigmatic small world in the big world of Caesarea, and other less elaborate speculations. News coverage of the fall of Baghdad and its aftermath were the inspiration for 'Ravenna,' especially the smaller stories of p …

Best of 2010 Pick, Uptown Magazine

Meet Walter Finch, an ungainly kid who survives his cloying suburban childhood to make it only as far as the local mall, where he rises through the ranks to become manager of a shoe store. Unlike his other childhood friends who either flee suburbia or remain as resigned fixtures, Walter is content with his lot and …

Spat Ryan has demons. They haunt him by day and share his drink at night. Raised in Montreal by a bagman for the Irish mob, Spat has fictionalized or ignored chunks of his life too painful to recall. A chance meeting with an old friend of his father’s in a bar on the Main exposes the dark secret they’ve both been harbouring, the secret that has …

'Vs.' is a collection of poems chronicling the author's foray into the world of amateur boxing. A shy, bookish woman you'd never expect could hit someone in the face, Ryan was soon hooked on the physical and mental challenge of the sport, as well as the camaraderie of the club's members and volunteers. When the club announced an upcoming white coll …

Distinguished in part by its attention to language of place, natural science, local flora and fauna, land and seascapes, and receptivity to aboriginal forebears, much of the literature from British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest region of the US is increasingly informed by cross-border and multicultural perspectives. Within the context of the r …

Some waterbirds can live away from land for months at a time, taking all of their food and rest from the ocean. However, these birds are not true creatures of the sea, and their relationship to the water is a superficial one. It is only when the bird dives down to catch its prey that it breaks the surface, and even then, it penetrates only a fracti …

'A Room in the City' is a self-revelatory journey into a world of darkness and light, a place of blatant lies and transcendent truths. Photographer Gabor Gasztonyi presents a Vancouver with deep roots in an otherwise forgotten past, and an East End populated by people seeking shelter, safety, and love in extreme social conditions. 'A Room in the Ci …

'The Devil You Know' is the follow-up volume to Farrell's acclaimed debut collection, 'Sugar Bush & Other Stories'. The stories in 'The Devil You Know' deal with the familiar, yet ever-engrossing, territories of sex, love, work, birth, and death. Life's defining moments are explored through the eyes of female characters, from children to teens to a …

'Wombat' is a cartoon strip from Vancouver artist Rod Filbrandt and the precursor to his long-lived and much loved strip, 'Dry Shave'. In 'Wombat: The Collected Comic Strip' the reader witnesses the development of a cartoon strip and the characters that fill its frames, from its nascent, raw stages, when it first ran in Discorder-a UBC Campus paper …

'The Skeleton Dance' takes place on th emean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millenium. The story follows Robert Walker, a musician, and his fried, Klin Abrams, a criminal lawyer, as external forces threaten and strain their long-term friendship and lead, eventually, to horrific conequences. The writin …

Pacific Cinematheque Monograph Series #2 features Nettie Wild, one of the leading documentarians working in Western Canadian cinema today. Her work and her interests span the globe and also encompass issues of regional interest to the broader Western Canadian/British Columbian community. She is best known for her feature length documentary films, ' …

'Kaspoit!' is a novel of our times, told in the language of our times. It's set in the Lower Mainland of Vancouver. The time is now and gangland crime is rampant. Seemingly random murders and takedowns are exploding at a disturbing rate. Criminals are brazen, the cops are jaded, and someone is trying to lay the blame for the disappearance of dozens …

'Private Grief, Public Mourning' is an historical investigation of mourning sites and practices within the context of the province of British Columbia. The authors are concerned, primarily, with the rise of the roadside death memorial in the late twentieth century. They argue that RDMs are not a marginal, quirky phenomenon but part of a longer and …

In Greek mythology the muses preside over the arts and inspire writers and artists to produce works of genius. In 'Frenzy', Catherine Owen pays homage to the muses in a six-part compilation of muse-quests, some the author's, some those of others. In "Flood-Ghazals," she takes the leaping form of the Persian ghazal and makes it fluid, out of entirel …

The Pacific Cinematheque Monograph Series was initiated to explore the spectrum of contributions and innovations of Western Canadian filmmakers, videomakers, and fringe media artists. Monograph Number One focuses, fittingly, on David Rimmer, one of Canada's foremost experimental filmmakers.

There is no better way to start off Pacific Cinémathèque' …

'Inventory' is a collection of 58 object poems. Taking as a starting point the reciprocal relation between subjects and objects, the book explores the unique way that objects appear in an individual consciousness. Each object in this inventory exists on its own and also reflects the author's experience, from the mundane stapler and tea bag, to the …

In a style reminiscent of Raymond Carver, the stories contained in 'Animal' depict people on the brink of major life change. They stand at crossroads they are often oblivious to; they suck thick air in rooms filled with palpable tension. Leggat's characters often seem captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroi …

Finalist, Books in Canada/Amazon.ca First Novel Award

The Beautiful Dead End is a visceral crime thriller that takes the reader on an existential journey to the “other side” and almost back again. In a bizarre, shadowy interzone populated by disturbing characters, our anti-hero confronts the dark secrets of his past, and comes face to face with …

Drinkin’ rye and water with Grandma. Guns in False Creek. Frat boy homies from the North Delta ghetto. Samuel L. Jackson. Phantom Lord & Metallica. A kid who’s got the hots for his mom…

Hunh?

That’s right. It’s all here in this collection of immediate, lean and visceral short fiction from Clint Burnham.

Praise for Airborne Photo:

"A stack of …

Four disparate people confront each other--their memory and their responsibility--at the emergency room of a hospital when brought together by the crisis of a teenager suffering a psychiatric episode.

Tortoise Boy is a “chamber play,” four monologues, or mon-dialogues, if you will. Through these four voices, four instruments--a quartet--these ch …

Dodging down back-alleys in bomb-torn Beirut. Wheeling past God and traffic in Mombassa, Kenya. Slipping around the edges of Alzheimer's disease, the Gulf War, and the eternity of CNN.

Set somewhere between here and the heat-death of the universe, Jim Oaten's debut collection serves up random samples of literal and literary truth scooped up at top s …

Longlisted for the ReLit Award (2005)

Foozlers is a 24-hour “Odyssey” that runs a juggernaut through the high- and lowlands of Vancouver. Jerry Lowe is the reluctant driver of a getaway car for two sketchy junkies on the make. A pair of cops spend a shift wobbling on the cusp of total breakdown. The groom-to-be in an Indian arranged marriage see …

In these pages you will encounter gamblers and adventurers, conmen and conwomen, rodomontades and ragamuffins, outright fools and outrageous liars. Scalawags, the lot of them. But you can be an adventurer, a conman or conwoman, a fool, liar, gambler, rodomontade or ragamuffin and not be a scalawag. Many adventurers are not even interesting, come to …

What It Feels Like for a Girl is a series of poems following the intense friendship between two teenagers as they explore pop icons, pornography, and the big, strange world of sex. They soon learn just how complicated sexuality is--and how confusing desire can be.

What It Feels Like for a Girl is about many things: the friendships girls have at the …

'Suicide Psalms' is both hymn and visceral scream-of loss, despair, hope and ultimately redemption. These poems are drawn out with quick precision, as if they were indeed written in haste, or delirium, before tightening the noose or firing the pistol or jumping off of the ledge. Even though the media has recognized suicide as an epidemic, it is sti …

What It Feels Like for a Girl is a book-length series of poems that tell the story of two teenage girls as they delve into the big, strange world of sex.

What It Feels Like for a Girl is about many things: the friendships girls have at the most intense times in their lives. Pornography and its “lessons” for the young woman who has never experien …

'DAMP: Contemporary Vancouver Media Arts', is a singular effort, a visually exuberant work that is also on the vanguard of theoretical engagement, a symbiosis of form and content, in full-colour throughout, inclusive of extensive imagery, graphic intrigues and typographical accent-a rare and desirable art-infused statement of the city's media art s …

The twenty contemporary writers featured in this anthology have one thing in common: a connection to British Columbia, to a specific time, landscape, or community in BC. Their essays and memoirs have been inspired by, or are in some way affected by, the particular "sense of place" that sets that left-hand corner of the country apart from other prov …

Pamela Stewart is a self-described “literary proctologist,” and her writing often looks into places that people generally don—t want to look. The stories in Elysium are about the difficulties of life we all encounter as human beings, the fragility of life—the physical, mental, and spiritual challenges we must try to overcome. They are about …

Longlisted for the ReLit Award

Editor's Pick, Vancouver Sun

Dirtbags is a novel about reckoning—with one's past, one's choices, and one's expectations for the future. Spider is a scrappy kid growing up in rural B.C., and when a tragic event causes her world to implode she heads to Vancouver for solace, distraction, and experience.

We witness a shift …

'Body Breakdowns' is a collection of true tales about brushes with mortality and the medical establishment. Some are serious, some are funny; all are about illnesses, both minor and major. The pieces are all related to aging and are told in strong, engaging, and authentic voices. They are about people suddenly discovering they're vulnerable and the …

Homelessness is not new to Vancouver. There have been homeless people in Vancouver since it was founded in 1886. As in other major North American cities, until the late '70s and early '80s homelessness in Vancouver followed the economic logic of boom and bust capitalism.

However, since the run-up to the World Exposition of 1986, that logic has no lo …

'Tacones' is a hangout for a subculture of outlaws and rejects-crackhead murderers, transvestite prostitutes, biastogerontophiles, hustler boys, and addicts-all painfully beyond denial, searching for connection, solace, humour, thrills, sex, and the perfect high. A rollicking and caustic romp through the violent and ambivalent world of the Toronto …

The year is 1964 and first-time film director Alan Schneider is about to embark on a project combining the talents of Buster Keaton and Samuel Beckett. When Alan visits the home of Keaton to discuss the project, titled simply Film, he discovers the former star engaged in an imaginary card game with the long-deceased Irving G. Thalberg.

It doesn’t …

Finalist, ReLit Awards (shortlist)

Black Rabbit & Other Stories is a debut collection of great intensity and versatility. The stories range from the fantastic to the gritty, from urban dystopias to worlds of dreamlike possibility. Even in their frequent explorations of brutality, the author remains honest and true to the motivations of his character …

'Black Rabbit & Other Stories' is a debut collection of great intensity and versatility. The stories range from the fantastic to the gritty, from urban dystopias to worlds of dreamlike possibility. Even in their frequent explorations of brutality, the author remains honest and true to the motivations of his characters and the machinations of the wo …