Float Like a Butterfly, Drink Mint Tea
A wildly disarming memoir by comedian Alex Wood on how he overcame his multiple addictions.
As an alcoholic, drug-addicted comedian with tendencies to over-indulge and under-achieve since he was a teenager, Alex Wood was on track for to achieve his greatest goals: to die young and drunk. At the age of twenty-eight, feeling desperate in the face of a …
How to Fail as a Popstar
The first play by multi-media artist Vivek Shraya, about fame and personal transformation.
Described as "cultural rocket fuel" by Vanity Fair, Vivek Shraya is a multi-media artist whose art, music, novels, and poetry and children's books explore the beauty and the power of personal and cultural transformation. How to Fail as a Popstar is Vivek's deb …
nedi nezu (Good Medicine)
Indigenous Voices Award finalist
A celebratory, slyly funny, and bluntly honest take on sex and romance in NDN Country.
nedi nezu (Good Medicine) explores the beautiful space that being a sensual Indigenous woman creates - not only as a partner, a fantasy, a heartbreak waiting to happen but also as an auntie, a role model, a voice that connects to ot …
You Suck, Sir
By the creator/co-creator of the podcasts The Black Tapes and The Big Loop: reading between the lines of the hilarious conversations between a teacher and his students.
Before he became a famous stand-up comedian and podcast creator, Paul Bae taught English in Vancouver's largest public school. One day during his student-teaching practicum, he assig …
My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems
Finalist, Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes
In her novels, poetry, and prose, Amber Dawn has written eloquently on queer femme sexuality, individual and systemic trauma, and sex work justice, themes drawn from her own lived experience and revealed most notably in her award-winning memoir How Poetry Saved My Life.
In this, her second poetry col …
Vancouver After Dark
BC Book Prize winner (Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Prize)
In his latest book, bestselling author, musician, and cultural historian Aaron Chapman looks back at the most famous music entertainment venues in Vancouver, a city that's transforming so fast it has somehow lost some of its favourite nightspots along the way. These are the places locals a …
Yarn Bombing
When Yarn Bombing was first published in 2009, the idea that knitted and crocheted objects could be used as a political act of resistance was brand new. Ten years and thousands of public acts of yarnarchy later, the art of knit and crochet graffiti has entered the public zeitgeist, from the "pussyhat" making the cover of Time to OLEK's crocheted bu …
So You're a Little Sad, So What?
With her just-right combination of sensitivity, vulnerability, and hilarity, comedian and podcaster Alicia Tobin has won fans among the biggest names in contemporary comedy, from Paul F. Tompkins to Rob Delaney. In her prose debut, the host of Retail Nightmares and Super! Sick! Podcast! takes readers through the funniest parts of sadness and the sa …
Major Misconduct
Every night in hockey arenas across Canada and the United States, modern-day gladiators drop their gloves and exchange bare-fisted blows to the bloodthirsty roars of the paying public. Tens of millions of people a year, including children, watch and cheer on the fighters. Some players are paid handsomely; others barely a living wage. But either way …
There Has to Be a Knife
For readers of Brother by David Chariandy and Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez, Adnan Khan's blistering debut novel investigates themes of race, class, masculinity, and contemporary relationships.
Omar Ali is a ticking time bomb. A phone call from his ex-girlfriend Anna's father plunges him into darkness when he learns that she's committed suicide …
Scorpio Rising
The final book in the Queer Film Classics series is R.L. Cagle's take on Scorpio Rising (1963), Kenneth Anger's avant-garde short film that about gay Nazi bikers preparing for a race. The film marked Anger's spectacular return to the US underground cinema scene after an absence of nearly ten years. Scorpio Rising resonates with the thrill and energ …
Double Melancholy
According to Didier Eribon, melancholy is where it all starts and where it also ends: the lifelong process of mourning that each homosexual experiences, and through which they construct their own identity. In this beguiling book, an introverted, anxious, ambitious, artistically gifted queer Filipino-Canadian boy finds solace, inspiration, and a "sy …
The Great NDN Paradox
In an era when talks of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples strive to atone for past wrongs (and tragic injustices that persist to this day), Ryan McMahon's debut story collection takes a sharp, unwavering, and yes, hilarious look at the paradoxical state of Aboriginal-settler relations, and the ironies, pitfalls, and sweet …
Synchro Boy
Sixteen-year-old Bart Lively desperately wants to feel comfortable in his own skin. Being a jock doesn't mean he isn't the target of gay jokes, and the macho culture of his swim team is wearing him down. When he gives in to his curiosity and tries synchronized swimming, he discovers he has a natural talent -- not to mention a spark with one of the …
Sketchtasy
Sketchtasy takes place in that late-night moment when everything comes together, and everything falls apart: it's an urgent, glittering, devastating novel about the perils of queer world-making in the mid-'90s.
This is Boston in 1995, a city defined by a rabid fear of difference. Alexa, an incisive twenty-one-year-old queen, faces everyday brutality …
The Scent of Pomegranates and Rose Water
The traditions of Syrian cooking, which go back hundreds of years, are notable for their sensory components, in which aroma and texture are as important as taste and nutrition. Over the centuries, the unique dishes of Greater Syria (bilaad al-shaam) were preserved by those who cooked them. For cooks in imperial households, family homes, or on simpl …
The Woo-Woo
2019 CANADA READS FINALIST
Shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust of Canada Prize for Nonfiction; Winner, Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize; Longlisted for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour
In this jaw-dropping, darkly comedic memoir, a young woman comes of age in a dysfunctional Asian family who blame their woes on ghosts and demons when t …
Care Work
Finalist, Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
In their new, long-awaited collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime disability justice activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centres the lives and leadership of sick an …
Little Fish
WINNER, Amazon Canada First Novel Award; Lambda Literary Award; Firecracker Award for Fiction
Finalist, Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award
A Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year
It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpect …
The Plague
A modern retelling of the Camus classic that posits its story of infectious disease and quarantine in our contemporary age of social justice and rising inequity.
At first it's the dead rats; they start dying in cataclysmic numbers, followed by other city creatures. Then people begin experiencing flu-like symptoms as well as swellings in their lymph …
Manila by Night
A Queer Film Classic on a controversial 1980 film by queer Filipino filmmaker Ishmael Bernal.
A Queer Film Classic on Ishmael Bernal's 1980 film that follows a dozen characters, all denizens of Manila's sordid yet exuberant underworld, as they pursue life, love, and pleasure. Bernal cited Robert Altman's Nashville as one of the influences on his epi …
Liquor, Lust, and the Law
A new edition of the colourful history of Vancouver's Penthouse Nightclub, which celebrates its seventieth anniversary in 2017.
The after-hours watering hole for the famous and infamous, the Penthouse was opened in 1947 by brothers Joe, Ross, Mickey, and Jimmy Filippone and soon became the place to see and be seen in Vancouver in the 1950s and '60s. …
What I Think Happened
A wickedly funny book in which the author recasts historical events and personalities from her own feminist perspective.
What I Think Happened, the debut book by comedian Evany Rosen, is really two books: a savvy, no-holds-barred romp through the history of the western world, and the personal story of a self-described "failed academic" who recasts …
Tarry This Night
A powerful dystopian novel set during a new American civil war, about a polygamist cult leader and his followers.
In this eerily relevant, cautionary novel, a civil war is brewing in America. Below ground, a cult led by the deluded and narcissistic Father Ernst is ensconced in an underground bunker, waiting out the conflict. When the "Family" runs o …
Scarborough
SHORTLISTED FOR CANADA READS 2022
NOW A MOTION PICTURE directed by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson; screenplay by Catherine Hernandez
Trillium Book Award and City of Toronto Book Award finalist; Edmund White Debut Fiction Award finalist; A Globe 100, National Post and Quill and Quire Best Book of the Year
Scarborough is a low-income, culturally dive …
Home and Away
A cookbook inspired by how food from around the world not only connects us all, but also reminds us of home.
Cooking outside one's comfort zone is now easier than ever: ingredients once considered exotic are available at supermarkets across the country, and we're more open to exploring the far reaches of the world through food. This tantalizing cook …
Conflict Is Not Abuse
From intimate relationships to global politics, Sarah Schulman observes a continuum: that inflated accusations of harm are used to avoid accountability. Illuminating the difference between Conflict and Abuse, Schulman directly addresses our contemporary culture of scapegoating. This deep, brave, and bold work reveals how punishment replaces persona …
The Boy & the Bindi
In this beautiful children's picture book by Vivek Shraya, author of the acclaimed God Loves Hair, a five-year-old boy becomes fascinated with his mother's bindi, the red dot commonly worn by South Asian women to indicate the point at which creation begins, and wishes to have one of his own. Rather than chastise her son, she agrees to it, and teach …
Yves Saint Laurent Coloring Book
Adult colouring books (such as Secret Garden) have exploded in popularity in recent years, embraced for their calming, therapeutic effect. This elegant, imaginative colouring book explores the dynamic, fanciful creations of iconic fashion designer Yves Saint Laurent, who headed the House of Dior at the age of twenty-one before launching his own des …
C.R.A.Z.Y.
QUEER FILM CLASSICS is a critically acclaimed series that launched in 2009, edited by Thomas Waugh and Matthew Hays, covering some of the most important and influential films about and/or by LGBT people made between 1950 and 2005, and written by leading LGBT film scholars and critics.
A Queer Film Classic on the 2005 film by French-Canadian director …
AlliterAsian
A wide-ranging anthology of Asian Canadian literature to celebrate 20 years of Ricepaper.
2015 marks the 20th anniversary of Ricepaper magazine, a pioneering periodical devoted to Asian-Canadian writing. Over the years, Ricepaper's focus has shifted from predominantly arts and culture reporting to the publication of original literature; as such, it …
God in Pink
A Globe 100 Best Book of the Year
Lambda Literary Award winner
The debut book by Hasan Namir is a revelatory novel about being queer and Muslim, set in war-torn Iraq in 2003. Ramy is a closeted university student whose parents have died, and who lives under the close scrutiny of his strict brother and sister-in-law. They exert pressure on him to fin …
Cold Case Vancouver
The untold story behind some of Vancouver's notorious unsolved murder cases.
Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes)
While Vancouver is much loved by tourists and locals alike for its spectacular natural scenery and diverse culture, behind that facade lurks a violent past. Cold Case Vancouver takes a look at the city's disre …
Decolonize Your Diet
A return to indigenous Mexican-American cooking: delicious recipes for physical and spiritual healing.
More than just a cookbook, Decolonize Your Diet redefines what is meant by "traditional" Mexican food by reaching back through centuries of history to reclaim heritage crops as a source of protection from modern diseases. Authors Luz Calvo and Catr …
Snapshots of a Girl
A funny, poignant graphic novel about a young woman's coming out amidst both Islamic and western cultures.
In this fresh, often funny autobiographical graphic novel, Beldan Sezen depicts her coming of age, and her coming out as lesbian, in both western and Islamic cultures (as the daughter of Turkish immigrants in western Europe)?to friends, family, …
Strange Material
The art of storytelling through textiles, exploring the many ways in which narrative can be expressed through cloth and needle.
Strange Material explores the relationship between handmade textiles and storytelling. Through text, the act of weaving a tale or dropping a thread takes on new meaning for those who previously have seen textiles--quilts, b …
Between
Angie Abdou's latest: a novel on the complexities of class, gender, parenthood, and desire.
Vero and her husband Shane have moved out of the sweet suite above his parents' garage and found themselves smack in the middle of adulthood--two kids, two cars, two jobs. They are not coping well. In response to their looming domestic breakdown, Vero and Sha …
Craftivism
Craftivism is a worldwide movement that operates at the intersection of craft and activism; Craftivism the book is full of inspiration for crafters who want to create works that add to the greater good. In these essays, interviews, and images, craftivists from four continents reveal how they are changing the world with their art. Through examples t …
Look Who's Morphing
First published to acclaim in Australia, Look Who's Morphing by Asian-Australian writer Tom Cho is a funny, fantastical, often outlandish collection of stories firmly grounded in pop culture. The book's central character undergoes a series of startling transformations, shape-shifting through figures drawn from film, television, music, books, porn f …
Paris Is Burning
A Queer Film Classic on the stunning 1991 documentary about the drag subculture in 1980s New York.
This latest addition to the Queer Film Classics series is an homage to Paris Is Burning, Jennie Livingston's brilliant and award-winning 1991 documentary that captures the energy, ambition, wit, and struggle of African-American and Latino participants …
Universal Hunks
A lively, wide-ranging visual history of muscular men from around the world.
Over the last 100 years, the image of the muscular man has known no boundaries; it has been the object of envy, admiration, and desire, and used to convey optimal health and fitness, product appeal, political power, and military might. Universal Hunks, David L. Chapman's fo …
Anatomy of a Girl Gang
Winner, Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)
Finalist, Vancouver Book Award
A sharply observed novel told in six voices, Anatomy of a Girl Gang is the powerful exploration of a young girl gang in Vancouver called the Black Roses: Mac, the self-appointed leader and mastermind; Mercy, the Punjabi princess with a skill for theft; Kayos, their fo …
The World Is Moving around Me
On January 12, 2010, novelist Dany Laferriere had just ordered dinner at a Port-au-Prince restaurant with a friend when the earthquake struck. He survived; some 300,000 others did not. The quake caused widespread destruction and left over 1 million homeless; it also revealed flaws in the impoverished nation's infrastructure that will take a generat …
Gorilla Food
Raw food diets have exploded in popularity in recent years; some believe that the cooking process destroys nutrients and even produces dangerous chemicals through the interaction of heat with fat, protein, and carbohydrates.
Enter Aaron Ash, a charismatic chef whose organic raw vegan restaurant Gorilla Food has taken Vancouver by storm for its inven …
Hello, Cutie!
A doe-eyed doll, a smiley-faced cupcake, a sweet plush kitten: they're cute--and cute is at the heart of a growing legion of adult collectors and enthusiasts who live and breathe all things cuddly and adorable.
Pamela Klaffke, author of Spree: A Cultural History of Shopping and herself an avid collector of cute since she was a child, takes readers o …
One Thousand Mustaches
The 'stache is back! After decades of being much maligned in Western culture, the mustache is enjoying a cultural renaissance, thanks to the annual phenomenon of Movember (the international campaign in which men grow facial hair during the month of November to raise funds for prostate cancer research; in 2011, 1.8 million men in fourteen countries …
Impact
Billeh Nickerson is a Vancouver-based poet well-known across Canada for his playful, witty observations on sex and culture. In Impact, his third poetry collection from Arsenal, Billeh turns his attention to a more serious subject that has fascinated him ever since he was a child: the sinking of the Titanic.
Published on the 100th anniversary of the …
The New Granville Island Market Cookbook
Vancouver's Granville Island Public Market, established in 1979, is one of Canada's largest and most popular public markets. Featuring over fifty food retailers and day vendors, the Public Market is the main draw at Granville Island, which also features art galleries, retail shops, a live theatre, a hotel, and an art school as well as a functioning …
V6A
Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Award
"V6A" is the postal prefix for what is often described as "the poorest neighbourhood in Canada"--Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES). Statistics about the area depict conditions related to crime, drugs, sex work, and poverty that overshadow another reality based on self determination.
The anthology V6A refracts …