Burnham's poetry works at the edges of meaning, propriety, and the commodification of language. Combining elements of found text-the overheard, the over-read-he recasts his findings in various combinations that are unique to their presentation on the page. The essentials of language, how people use it-and how it uses them-is Burnham's main concern. …

'I Cut My Finger' is Stuart Ross's first full-length poetry collection since his acclaimed 'Hey, Crumbling Balcony! Poems New & Selected' (2003). The poems here show Ross's ever-expanding breadth, from his trademark humour and surrealism, to pointedly experimental works and poems of human anguish. Here, a poet includes a letter threatening suicide …

'At Home with History' is a collection of real life stories that bring to life the glamorous and not-so-glamorous social histories of selected heritage homes in Greater Vancouver-stories of brothels and bootleggers, secret rooms, and Shakespearean-style murders. An Italian family survives the depression by selling booze and sandwiches from their ea …

Fiction Pick, Broken Pencil Magazine

Suburban Pornography is contemporary literature, which documents Canadian urban life in a raw and naked manner. The prose is stripped--minimalist, direct, urgent, unflinching. The stories revolve around ordinary characters and problems--people stuck in bad relationships or jobs. Some yearn for something just beyo …

Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007)

Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design

The stories in Sugar Bush & Other Stories deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by …

Rooted in the back alleys, squats and psychiatric wards of contemporary Vancouver and Montreal, these unyielding poems enter the intersecting tensions and intensities in characters such as Mike, a panhandler on Vancouver's Commercial Drive, Matthew, a runaway punk, and Dara, a single mother. 'Cusp''s central sequence, however, concerns the tragic l …

The Dreamlife of Bridges is the debut novel from Vancouver writer Robert Strandquist. Leo is a middle-aged, divorced handyman capable of mending almost anything outside of himself. The denial of his son’s death, and his inability to deal with his own pain, has rendered his life fractured and untenable. June is a single mom struggling in the bottl …

Longlisted for the ReLit Award

Best Fiction 2006, Ottawa Xpress

Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is a singularly Canadian novel featuring crime, culture, and sports. Written in the vein of John Kennedy Toole (Confederacy of Dunces) and JP Donleavy, Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit is set in Vancouver during an early 80s Grey Cup weekend. Tourists and sport …

'Signs of the Times' reunites the poetry of Bud Osborn and the woodprints of Vancouver printmaker and painter Richard Tetrault. As with their first collaboration, 'Oppenheimer Park', 'Signs of the Times' is both an unflinching look at Vancouver's Downtown Eastside and a beautiful object in its own right.

"The linocut and woodcut prints that constitu …

Following the success of his novel, 'The Dreamlife of Bridges', Robert Strandquist makes a much-awaited return to the short story form. As always, Strandquist's works explores relationships both familial and sexual, and plumbs the unspoken communications where things go haywire. This collection is more eclectic than his first collection, 'The Inani …

“Reading the Riot Act” is a phrase that has entered the popular lexicon, meaning the action taken by authority figures when they perceive that their “charges” are getting out of hand. The act itself is a seldom-used piece of legislation actually designed to prevent a riot from taking place. Supposedly, the mere mention of the Riot Act is en …

'Bizarre Winery Tragedy' is a book of lyric poems about country folk, city folk, alcohol and urbanism. These poems continue Neff's quest to explore the modern-day juxtaposition of urban and rural landscapes, and the lines of power between the countryside and the metropolis-firewood, dams and the WiFi-enabled grid. Deeper insights emerge in this, th …

'Toy Gun' continues the exploration of character and fate on the streets of Vancouver that began with the novel 'Stupid Crimes' (1992) and continued in 'Krekshuns' (1995). Written in the style of the "hard-boiled" detective thriller, 'Toy Gun' is very much a literary treatment of contemporary life in one of the world's most densely populated urban …

Best Books of 2005, Ottawa Xpress

Writer's Trust of Canada's "Warm Weather Reads Recommended by Writers" list (recommended by Robert Hough)

Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer is equal parts literary memoir, advice for the emerging writer, and reckless tirade. Ross has been active in the Canadian literary underground for a quarter of a century: he …

Painted Lives & Shifting Landscapes showcases the artwork of Vancouver painter, printmaker and muralist Richard Tetrault. Tetrault's work explores universal themes of the figure and the urban landscape. From Berlin to Bangkok to Vancouver, his artwork revisits these themes over thirty years. His imagery is at its most direct in street drawings and …

'Singer, An Elegy' is a long poem memorializing the author's father and, equally, the now-obsolete industrial culture that shaped him. 'Singer, An Elegy' has rhetorical lightning flashes but aspires to much greater straightforwardness than Fetherling's previous poetry.

" 'Singer, An Elegy' possesses all the fine qualities of Fetherling's prose and i …

'Unravel' addresses our universal experiences of time and place, and how those places shape who and what we are. 'Unravel' challenges our sometimes-complacent perceptions and justifies what we all hold dear: an address and an identity.

"Armstrong pushes the potential of the lyric into darker places, inside the seams of bar booths, where things get l …

'Viral Suite' explores our relationship with self, other, environment, space, and time. The sensual and the cerebral. How the we/here/now is evolving and mutating with each downloaded packet.

"Viral Suite" is a poetic, narrative-driven science lesson. The book is unapologetically cerebral, and it takes risks." - Malahat Review

Longlisted for the ReLit Award (2006)

Going to New Orleans is the story of Lewis King, a jazz trumpet player who lands a gig in the Big Easy. King is a genius on cornet, but his private life is emotionally, morally, and financially bankrupt. He’s a heavy drinker and compulsive sexual manipulator, prone to paranoid fits of violent rage. His girlfri …

'Honeymoon in Berlin' examines the extremes of human desire, and investigates the human fascination with limits, the line between courage and fear, life and death.

"A book of bold contrasts, 'Honeymoon in Berlin' is simultaneously beautiful and ugly, alluring and repulsive. It's an achievement. It's art." - Front & Centre

Back with more, 'Exact Fare Only 2' is the follow-up collection of the weird, the wild and the wonderful of commuter literature. Whether by land, sea or air, public transit around the world says more about the human condition than many want to admit. These real-life tales, reflections, poems, and rants are required reading for commuters everywhere. …

Finalist, ReLit Award

Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection

First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, Salvage King, Ya! is a novel firmly rooted in Canada’s favourite national pastime—hockey. Critics have called Salvage King, Ya! “the great Canadian novel,” and a “postmodern Canadian classic.” Drinkwater, Jarman’s n …

Meet Finnigan Heller, drifter: reclusive, abrasive, and clairvoyant. He's also been struck by lightning more times than you've had hot dinners. It happens in every town he passes through. But is he following the weather or is the weather following him? Heller's bizarre "gift" has him on the run from a scientist, a Canadian Intelligence agent, and a …

When jazz musicians of the “30s and “40s were gettin” down, when things were really cookin” they—d say, Yeah, make it tight like that. It meant things were good, as good as they could get. It's a good thing in fiction, too. The stories in Jim Christy's latest collection span time and space, taking us from the depression-era Deep South to …

A debut collection, these stories are set in the corporeal world of adult endeavour: the mall, the office, the subdivision. It's these settings that W. Mark Giles exploits: locking his sights on eerily familiar characters, excavating their fears, intimacies, and the dark machinery behind their actions. He taps into our collective longing for moment …

With a thousand members throughout the province, the Federation of BC Writers is one of the most active and vigorous writers' organizations in the country. 'The Fed Anthology', edited by Susan Musgrave on the occasion of the group's 25th anniversary, is a colourful bazaar of previously unpublished fiction and poetry by nearly 50 of those members. L …

Heather Haley's poetry is tough, irreverent, and in-your-face. She asks all the questions that a nice girl's not supposed to ask. Down back roads and highways, her characters long to possess the past and harness the future. Cowboys, car accidents, broken hearts, dead lovers-and potential violence-hover like heat on the horizon. Whether theyre gangs …

One night in April, after a Sunday soccer game, Alan Twigg couldn't remember the names of his two sons or his wife-and he couldn't hold a pen. An emergency CAT scan revealed a large brain tumour squeezed against his motor cortex. 'Intensive Care' tells the story of why this was a good thing. 'Intensive Care' isn't a medical survival story; it's a y …

Whether considering the simplicity of a butterfly in flight or the terror of a cancer diagnosis, Heidi Greco confronts the world head-on, yet always with the fresh eyes of the stranger in our midst. The issues she addresses belong to the world; the settings she employs are international. At times funny and irreverent, these are pieces that dissect …

Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award

The Heroines Series is an epic photographic documentary of the addicted women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. In 1997, fashion and portrait photographer Lincoln Clarkes turned his lens away from the world of glamour and began documenting the dire circumstances being endured by the marginalized women livin …

'Socket' tells the gripping tale of Ronald Percy, an international aid worker who travels to Ethiopia to assist with an irrigation project for the African Development Organization. Upon arrival, he is unable to locate his agents or company representatives, and soon finds himself enmeshed in a web of bureaucracy and state corruption. 'Socket' was se …

'A Toilet Paper' is a humorous examination, from a historical linguistic viewpoint, of four commonly used words relating to our posterior orifice and that which comes out of it.

We've all had good, bad, and sometimes ugly experiences on public transit. 'Exact Fare Only' is an anthology of real life stories about heading out, heading back, and everything that happened in between, whether the trip was across the country or just across town.

"This book should be sold in bus terminals and train stations from coast to coast to c …

'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 the consequences of having lived an unexamined life.

Fin …

'Bogman's Music' is a debut collection of poetry that is both elegiac and sensitive in its exploration of family dynamics, the enduring power of childhood experience, and the healing ability of faith and love.

"It's gritty and quirky, and at times almost spins out of but for a formality that always tends to rein in thing." - The Georgia Straight

Gove …

Second Prize Winner, Canada's National One-Act Playwriting Competition (1994)

Shylock is an award-winning play about a Jewish actor who finds himself condemned by his own community for his portrayal of Shakespeare’s notorious Jew. Shylock has provided much fuel for the fiery debates surrounding censorship, historical revisionism, political correct …

'Swing In the Hollow' is a debut collection that struggles with the service and spoil of lyrical attention. In quirky and precise turns, Knighton's language teases a sense of phenomena from the rubbish and rubble of atrophied urban experience.

"It is wonderfully subtle and witty, with the title setting a tone for the poems to follow." - Winnipeg Fre …

'Articles of Faith' is a play designed to promote understanding of the controversial subject of the blessing of same-sex unions. The play is based on a series of interviews conducted by the author in a Pacific Northwest community where the issue of formal condoning and blessing of same-sex unions divided and eventually split an Anglican parish.

"Int …

'The Door Is Open' is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver's downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country's "very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 posta …

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)

Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize

Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015

The Door Is Open is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in centre in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its …

'The Inanimate World' is an affecting suite of stories, with a novella-length piece at its core. The stories within 'The Inanimate World' traverse both rural and urban landscapes, exploring the terrain of the personal as much as the geographic. They span the time period of 1980 to the present, providing relevant insights into the private lives of p …

'Full Magpie Dodge' is about the shiny brightness of modern urban life, its pressures and joys. More-or-less artful dodgers populate its pages, along with office workers, crows, exhausted junkies and jubilant lovers. Intertwined with all their lives is the unforgotten rural past and the still turbulent North: in short, it's a book that takes Canadi …