Jean Coulthard demonstrated that a Canadian woman could be a successful professional composer, whose music was, and still is, played extensively in concert halls across Canada and internationally. Through her seven-decade career she composed in every genre of traditional classical music: opera, symphonies, concerti, chamber music, keyboard, voice, …

The late poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) is one of the summits of European poetry in the twentieth century. Completed in 1922, as were T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land and James Joyce's Ulysses, Duino Elegies ranks with them as a classic of literary Modernism and as an inquiry into the spiritual crisis of modernity. The ten long poems grapple w …

The names Cook and Quadra ring a bell for most of us, as do Bering and Vancouver, but how much do we know about the Greek-born navigator, Juan de Fuca or the Machiavelli of the maritime fur trade, John Meares? British Columbia's earliest authors and explorers are skilfully introduced, for the first time collectively, by Alan Twigg. This is a compel …

Reckless women inhabit the spaces of these poems: women who dare to travel without maps or even "a single sign," women who dare the seduction of cliff edge leaps into deadly waters, women who dare the midnight garden to ensure their crop. When Cecelia Frey considers the pain recklessness causes to others, she returns to the source that impels a rec …

The extraordinary story of Michael Smith, a man who rose from humble beginnings in Blackpool, England, to become a revolutionary gene researcher, philanthropist and Nobel Prize winner. A professor at the University of British Columbia, Smith dedicated his talent and energy to science research, and later launched the university's internationally reg …

This compelling biography of Doug Hepburn, the weightlifter who won gold for Canada in Stockholm in 1953 and at the British Empire Games in Vancouver in 1954, delivers fascinating, first-hand information about an unusual Vancouver athlete and the sporting world of the 1950s and 1960s. In this plain-spoken and moving biography of a strength legend, …

Canada's foremost literary critic looks at the politics of irony in modern writing and explains how it relates to imperial history, how it impacts upon personal memories, how it speaks from the margin, and how it indirectly teaches us to resist presumptuous authority. Funny, informed and emotionally engaging, Grandchild of Empire, an extension of t …

Canada's ceramists, tapestry weavers, and other craft artists are recognized amongst the world's finest artisans. Craft Perception and Practice celebrates the excellence of Canadian crafts by bringing together twenty-four essays and critical commentaries by sixteen independent critics and curators, professional artists, art historians, and studio a …

Ann Walsh has selected fourteen captivating stories written by accomplished authors from across Canada for this historical anthology. Each of the stories focuses on a "first-time" historical experience, such as the meeting between natives and Europeans at Fort St. James; the ship carrying filles du roi as brides for the settlers of New France; the …

In this collection of nine short stories and the powerful novella "The Sacred Travellers," Marie-Claire Blais offers an exploration of the major themes of her work: the pain of desire, the fragility and vulnerability of the human spirit, the quest for purity and generosity, and the pitiless search for truth. The characters in this new collection ar …

Each year the League of Canadian Poets sponsors the prestigious National Poetry Contest. From the thousands of entries received, the judges choose three prize winners and a list of honourable mentions. These poems, the finest of the year, are then published in Vintage, the annual anthology.

For the year 2000, First-Prize Winner ($1,000) is Russell T …

Each year the League of Canadian Poets sponsors the prestigious National Poetry Contest. From the thousands of entries received, the judges choose three prize winners and a list of honourable mentions. The annual anthology publishes the finest poetry of the year.

First prize winner is Susan M. Stenson of Victoria, BC, for her poem "When You Say Infi …

Wintersleep (Sommeil d'hiver) is a collection of five short plays by internationally acclaimed Quebecois author, Marie-Claire Blais. Appearing for the first time in an English translation, these plays allow anglophones to appreciate Marie-Claire Blais' range as a dramatist. The plays are known to francophones in their original publication by Les ed …

This collection of essays evolved from a colloquium held at the University of British Columbia in 1995 to honour the eminent political scientist and aphorist W.J. Stankiewicz. A theorist and consultant on political decisions, Stankiewicz has been noted for his ability to bring the classical concepts of political science into the decision-making roo …

A decade in the making, Jaihiun Kim's Modern Korean Verse in Sijo Form offers what will be the twentieth century's definitive collection of sijo. Kim begins with the work of Nam-son Ch'oe in the early 20th century and brings the collection up to date with recent poems from Chi-yob Yi and P'il-gon Kim.

Similar to the Japanese haiku in its brevity and …

Set in the internment camps of the British Columbia interior during World War II, Terry Watada's Daruma Days captures the Japanese Canadian experience of imprisonment. Watada draws on the accounts of people who lived through the camps, often speaking with the voices of the issei and nisei, to portray the camps as haunted by demonic forces, the inha …

Benet Davetian's starkly moving stories portray individuals enmeshed in social and political upheavals not of their own choosing: an innocent Somali farmer struggles to survive famine and war; a Serb sniper faces a bizarre opportunity to redeem himself; a Rwandan Hutu is forced to choose between his own life and those of his Tutsi in-laws; and an i …

"Ron Shaw is the finest new fictioneer I have seen in a long time. Black Light is a superb collection; it displays Shaw's amazing ability to occupy black and white skins and cultures simultaneously." - J. Michael Yates

Worlds in Small comprises the world's first collection of minimalist short stories, with a long preface and brief commentaries by the "master gatherer," John Robert Colombo. Each miniature is less than fifty words. Believe it or not, a few have no words at all. Through the magic of minimalism, we watch as something/everything comes of nothing.

All the characters in this new collection of short stories are "letting down their hair," allowing us to glimpse the extraordinary pains and passions that simmer beneath the surface of so-called ordinary men and women.

Poems that are, in turn, meditative, acerbic and raunchy. These three women lighten the gravity of everyday matters with their sympathetic intelligence.

Robert Zend's eleventh book continues his wonderfully surreal explorations of the mind trapped in the paradoxes of time and space. This posthumous edition includes a Foreword by John Robert Colombo and an Afterword by Northrop Frye.

The companion volume to Torque, Torpor is J. Michael Yates' second masterful collection of prose fiction. These compelling, often surreal works reveal a cryptic yet beautiful world in which nothing can be taken for granted.

This selected edition contains the strongest and most comprehensive collection of Lloyd Abbey's work to date. Writing frequently about animals and insects, Abbey takes us inside their consciousness, allowing us to see anew the world through their eyes. Author of the best-selling novel The Last Whales, Abbey is emerging as a major talent in Canadian …

"I recommend this book to you. It is a book of poetry whose authorship is plural, but I hesitate to call it an anthology because of certain conventions which the mention of the term causes the reader to expect. This is a book whose mythic spectrum is broad. Very. I took on the project as editor because the body of work presented me by publisher and …