Part long poem, part investigation, this true story begins with a whale encounter and then dives into the affair of the École en bateau, a French countercultural school aboard a boat. The École was based on the ideals of ’68, but also twisted ideas about child psychology, Foucault’s philosophy and an abolition of the separation between adults …

It’s summer 2017 in Vancouver, BC, where economic imperatives are making space less and less accessible to low-income residents. The rental crisis is intensifying, ravenous real-estate development is thriving and there is a province-wide forest fire emergency blanketing the city in smoke.

Notice is the Kafkaesque story of a man under threat of ren …

“Deep in the thickest part of a cedar forest there lived a young Sasquatch. He was over nine feet tall and his feet were about size twenty. He had long brown hair that covered all of his body. His hands were so big and his arms so long he could wrap them around the biggest of the cedar trees. He had been born here many years ago and he did not kn …

Born on the twin backs of torpidity and obsession, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation is a voyage into the mind of one of the Canadian literary underground’s most unruly writers. Equal parts tribute to the historical genesis of the novel and the well-trodden subject of love, the exercises of imitation contained in this collection offer a brief su …

In this vital début, Kyla Jamieson sifts through the raw material of her life before and after a disabling concussion in search of new understandings of self and worth. Energized by the tensions between embodiment and dissociation, Body Count flickers between Vancouver and New York, passing through dreamscapes and pain states. Both earnest and irr …

There are too many stories about Indigenous women who go missing or are murdered, and it doesn’t seem as though official sources such as government, police or the courts respond in a way that works toward finding justice or even solutions. At least that is the way Wren StrongEagle sees it.

Wren is devastated when her twin sister, Raven, mysterious …

Patricia Sorbara has been a political operative for more than forty years—a mainstay in the background of both federal and provincial politics in Ontario, dedicating her career to the Liberal Party. She’s worked for and with Liberal Opposition Leaders, Premiers, Members of Parliament, Members of Provincial Parliament and more candidates than an …

An anonymous writer stays up late into the night penning personal and inappropriate letters to a local public official. A new father and cook at a Montreal café chronicles the tyrannical rise of a new manager. An eccentric young student, in trying to carve out a space for herself, deals an existential blow to her roommate. Dead Flowers is a collec …

Take the Torch is a compelling memoir from one of BC’s most widely accomplished and animated politicians, Ian Waddell, QC. Waddell takes us on a journey through his life and career as a storefront lawyer, an NDP Member of Parliament, a Minister of Culture, a writer, a teacher, a film producer and more—delivering a smart, humorous, endearing and …

Among the strip malls, industrial parks and overpasses of Southwestern Ontario, Tim is a young misfit with an overactive imagination and a heavy-drinking father, surrounded by bullies at school and wondering if he’ll ever be normal. He experiences first love with another high school student, Sherrie, and at the same time he meets his first friend …

Manipulators, liars, egomaniacs, bullies, interrupters, condescenders, ice queens, backstabbers, hypocrites, withholders, belligerents, self-deceivers, whiners, know-it-alls, nitpickers: these are some of the characters you’ll encounter in the collection of stories, Difficult People.
As these characters fumble through their quests for freediving …

A genre-bending retelling of The Odyssey, Army of the Brave and Accidental is a modern fable: a story about relationships, parenthood, and trying to have an impact on the world told from the shifting perspectives of ten characters. A hundred years after James Joyce stitched together a version of the epic tale, Canadian writer and essayist Alex Boyd …

Cop House is a short story collection about people desperately trying to recapture--or replace--the things they've lost. There are secret vacations, library book fetishes, women who participate in "fully-clothed, free-form touching and explorative play experiences" in exchange for protection from teenage vandals, and a doomsday cult operating out o …

The Clothesline Swing is a journey through the troublesome aftermath of the Arab Spring. A former Syrian refugee himself, Ramadan unveils an enthralling tale of courage that weaves through the mountains of Syria, the valleys of Lebanon, the encircling seas of Turkey, the heat of Egypt and finally, the hope of a new home in Canada.

Inspired by One …

Nobody knows bad ideas quite like Michael V. Smith. In his new collection of poetry, he speaks to an intangibility of sense, or a sense beyond the rational. Bad Ideas explores the inevitability of loss and triumph with characteristic irony and tenderness. Through this dazzling collection of a remembered life, hung out to ogle like laundry on the li …

Robert Burns' "Belle of Mauchline" is given a voice in this lyrical and intimate depiction of the life of Jean Armour, known simply as the wife of the infamous poet and mother of nine of his children. Melanie Murray's biographical Should Auld Acquaintance reveals the historical tale of the talented farmer, a forbidden affair, and the tumultuous lif …

Witness, I Am is divided into three gripping sections of new poetry from one of Canada's most recognized poets. The first part of the book, "Dangerous Sound," contains contemporary themed poems about identity and belonging, undone and rendered into modern sound poetry. "Muskrat Woman," the middle part of the book, is a breathtaking epic poem that c …

"Amber McMillan's writing balances an eye for the unusual and resiliently beautiful with a sympathy for the frailties common to all her islanders."
-Kevin Chong, author of Baroque-a-Nova, Neil Young Nation and Beauty Plus Pity

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The Woods: A Year on Protection Island is a personal memoir that probes the unique and sometimes unsettling tenor of life …

This debut poetry collection from Lisa Bird-Wilson reflects on the legacy of the residential school system: the fragmentation of families and histories, with blows that resonate through the generations.

Inspired by family and archival sources, Bird-Wilson assembles scraps of a history torn apart by colonial violence. The collection takes its name f …

"a great writer" -Daniel Lanois

"one of the finest songwriters on the planet... his lyrics [are] every bit as powerful as the best Dylan, Cohen and Lennon combined." -Ron Sexsmith

"a national treasure" -Michael Barclay, Exclaim

"he's a stone genius" -CBC

"Kyp Harness scrapes at the backdrop of reality to reveal the tired, the broken, the lost and d …

Debut talent Raoul Fernandes's first offering is Transmitter and Receiver, a masterful and carefully depicted exploration of one's relationships with oneself, friends, memories, strangers and technology.

The three parts of this collection are variations building on a theme--at times lonely, sometimes adoring, but always honest. Wider areas of contem …

What I Want to Tell Goes Like This is an intensely original first short story collection from acclaimed poet Matt Rader. The last story, "All This Was a Long Time Ago," is the 2014 winner of the Jack Hodgins Founders' Award for fiction from The Malahat Review, and other offerings from the collection have appeared in Event, The New Quarterly, Grain, …

Shortlisted for the 2014 Robert Kroetsch award for innovative poetry, The things I heard about you is an exploration of precision and the unspoken, executing a process whereby vignettes and scenes break apart into fragments, rumours or suggestions of the original story. When stories decompose or self-destruct, the results vary, producing an effect …

There Are No Solid Gold Dancers Anymore explores the manipulative pull of self-mythology and how it informs the telling of story--whether by a fan worshipping her idol, or an old vaudevillian star reminiscing about a glamorous past. Intimate glances into the lives of the famous bring back points of reflection on their relation to the everyday. Poem …

Building on the success of the Journey Prize-shortlisted title story, the stories of How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun? present an updated and whimsical new take on what it means to be Canadian. Lau alludes to the personal and political histories of a number of young Asian Canadian characters to explain their unique perspectives of the …

In Kerosene, her debut book of poetry, Jamella Hagen weaves individual memories into a narrative that charts the process of orientation and growing maturity within shifting geographical locations.

Patterned on the author's own experience, the collection follows the story of a young woman's life, encompassing the beauty and harshness of a childhood s …

Joe Denham's debut novel The Year of Broken Glass follows struggling crab fisherman Francis "Ferris" Wichbaun's journey across the Pacific Ocean to deliver a legendary glass fishing float to an enigmatic, high-paying collector. Against a backdrop of worldwide seismic devastation, Ferris is forced to confront increasing concern for his two families- …

Kevin McNeilly's debut poetry collection, Embouchure, compiles the intertwined lineages of trumpet players who came to prominence in the States during the "pre-bop" era, loosely defined as the period between 1890 and 1939. This series of vignettes betrays a broad and detailed knowledge of the players' lives and work, yet reads like a collection of …

What would you do if your child was a furry feral creature or your new love interest a potential serial killer (or worse, a fictitious cliché)? In The Odious Child, Carolyn Black invents her own blend of urban fantasy, crafting a unique storyscape that she populates with a series of mostly nameless figures who are trapped in social roles that they …

Christian McPherson's debut novel The Cube People pokes fun at government cubicle culture through the life and times of a struggling computer programmer/novelist wannabe. McPherson surrounds his protagonist, Colin MacDonald, with a cast of screwball characters while he toils away at his government job, struggles with fertility and dreams of becomin …

How do we reconcile story with fact? What must one lose for the other to exist? In this debut collection, Rowe explores the nature of mythology and how it morphs in time to retain cultural and personal significance. Folk tales, supernatural creatures, family histories and personal elegies come together to expose the cohabitation of the dead and the …

Like his attempts to swim over the dark water of the river that lies between him and the object of his affections, twelve-year-old Dougaldo Montmigny struggles against oppression, homophobia and racism to realise his love for Tomahawk Clark, a thirteen-year-old Metis boy, during a summer destined to become a painful lesson on love and desire.

Like s …

Shortlisted for the 2009 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry

Shortlisted for the Relit Award for Poetry

Philip Kevin Paul's first book, Taking the Names Down from the Hill won the 2004 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry. In Little Hunger, his second book for the WSÁ,NEC (Saanich) Nation of Vancouver Island, Paul continues to draw upon the ric …

Longlisted for the 2009 Relit Award for the novel

Jarod Palmer is a 32-year-old Toronto writer waiting for his big break--though a small one will do. Haunted by his story of tragic teenage sweethearts in smalltown Nova Scotia--featuring the unforgettable Lana Banana--Jarod is infected by the ancient mariner's curse on all young unpublished novelists …

Somewhere between joyous affirmation of British Columbia's splendour and momentous grief for the destruction of a once thriving salmon culture comes the newest work from acclaimed poet and novelist Tim Bowling. The Lost Coast is a lyrical, impassioned lament for the home Bowling once knew and for the river and creatures that continue to haunt his i …

2008 Winner of the Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry

The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder is an unusual collection of poems that combines craft, innovation, humour and down-to-earth insight in a focused and riveting read that will charm poetry buffs of every stripe.

The poems in The Love Song of Laura Ingalls Wilder subversively and imaginativ …

Shortlisted for the 2008 Relit Award for Fiction

Dirty pool halls, greasy restaurants, suburban skateboarder showdowns, and dangerous drug dens--some things in life just aren't very subtle.

And neither are the short stories in Six Ways to Sunday. In fact, they brashly make out with subtlety's teenage crush, beat subtlety into the sidewalk, take a dum …

Shortlisted for the 2007 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award

"Satisfying and resonant... John Degen has written a very fine book—rarely is an uninvited guest so enjoyable."
— Steven Galloway, The Globe and Mail

"The Uninvited Guest offers a fictional and philosophical lens on a wide range of subjects from the lives of professional hockey …

Amanda Lamarche's debut collection of poetry is a work of imaginative grace and power.

These poems topple the normal hierarchy of everyday concerns, promoting fears unlikely in the "normal" state of being--the fear of buttons, of dying to the wrong song, of houses built on corners--to the same stage and emotional impact as the more common (perhaps …

2006 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD NOMINEE & NATIONAL BESTSELLER
"A deeply humane, deeply human book."
- Michael Crummey
"Moving, funny, full of hard truths."
- Jim Bartley, The Globe and Mail

What's left of us when we're gone? In When I Was Young and In My Prime, a young woman watches her grandparents begin to decline. As she sorts through the couple's belon …

In this book, 19 of Canada's most acclaimed storytellers contribute the narrative pieces that together compose a humorously accurate national reflection. Each author was commissioned by the Ottawa International Writers Festival to write a chapter, set in their local community, in a serial story moving across the country from East to West. Started b …

Johnston skillfully follows the twentieth-century realist tradition of stripping stories down to details and everyday conversations that represent accurate snippets of life, and he explores perception - our ability to discern between conclusions and reality, between misplaced trust and mirror-pane truth. In his unique stories, Jeff and Beth clumsil …

Head Full of Sun celebrates poetry and language's rich spiritual heritage by weaving together the biblical and the personal. Carla Funk uses biblical forms and stories to explore the human condition and give blood and bone to the spiritual. These poems lament, question and sing praise as they wrestle with the divine.

In the main component of this co …

We are mesmerized, enthralled. A young, armless girl, tangled in the brutal arrowhead wire of glistening ivy, stares with dead eyes. If I had arms, I would embrace my shaking body. I would lift my hands to my face, cover my eyes, hold the aching scream in my mouth.

Combining Wiccan ritual magic, Gnosticism, alchemy and of course Madeline Sonik's daz …

In Salmon Boy: A Legend of the Sechelt People, a young boy is captured by a Chum salmon and brought to the country of the salmon people-a dry land beneath water where "the salmon people walked about the same as people do above the sea." The boy lived with them for one year, and his captivity becomes a source of learning that will ensure the surviva …

Alarming - edgy, often disturbing, and superbly written - these short stories illuminate the dark, troubled heart of human existence.

A young girl escapes the bonds of her abusive adopted mother. A woman does not leave her rotting apartment for over a month. A widower passes through his wife's garden for the first time. A cosmetician slowly destroys …

Skeptical and feminist, funny and disturbing, Barbara Parkin's stories expose the truth about her characters' lives: some rugged, some pastoral, all humming with danger and beauty. Philipa struggles to define herself outside her mother's fantasy that she will marry royalty; Lena confronts the women who tormented her when they were girls; Joy looks …

Beautifully illustrated by BC folk hero Bus Griffiths who wrote and illustrated the popular comic book Now You're Logging, Patrick and the Backhoe is a classic story of decency and guts triumphing over arrogance and greed.

Patrick lives in a little town on the side of a high mountain. Patrick's mother and father own the town bookstore, and his broth …