Birding in the Glass Age of Isolation explores the experience and greater social implications of mental illness, specifically OCD and Hallucinogen Persisting Perception Disorder. It asks the questions: How does anxiety inform both how we act and how we interpret those actions afterwards? How does the fear of retribution from one’s own mind lead t …

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 …

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 …

After the Hatching Oven explores chickens: their evolution as a domesticated species; their place in history, pop culture and industrial agriculture; their exploitation and their liberation. Alexander takes us deep into the world of this common species, examining every conceivable angle: chicken politics, antics, pretenses and pleasures. These poem …

Acclaimed singer-songwriter Rodney DeCroo's second poetry collection, Next Door to the Butcher Shop, explores the permeability of memory and uncovers heart-wrenching beauty from shadowy grit.

How quickly age

descends on us. Our memories are maps

to places that don't exist. I was an emperor

on a green lawn wearing a white sheet

and a paper crown. Th …

In her lyrical memoir The Death of Small Creatures, Trisha Cull lays bare her struggles with bulimia, bipolar disorder and substance abuse. Interspersing snatches of conversations, letters, blog entries and clinical notes with intimate poetic narrative, Cull evokes an accessible experience of mental illness.

In The Death of Small Creatures, Cull str …

Cycling with the Dragon is a personal investigation of family,love, culture, self, and the helpless feeling of "smallness." Elaine Woo's poems take the form of the words that they speak: she forms an "o" for the buoy that is a child's safety-raft (found in the solitude of a notebook and Harriet the Spy), and weaves a poem about fearing snakes and d …

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 …

Pluck is a series of poems taking on issues of sexuality, female vulnerability and parenthood with delicacy and intent. In turn, Rosnau employs words that give way to feelings of both solid surety and waning doubts. From the harsh realities of sexual assault to the routine heaviness of child-rearing, Pluck's sharp portrayals evoke how "beyond the s …

Old Hat is the third book of poetry and first collection of occasional poems by the author of the 2007 Globe 100 book, Muybridge's Horse: Governor General and Trillium Awards nominee, Rob Winger. Driven by an attempt to understand how to reorder common experience, the book's transitional sections - "Set," "Re/Set," and "Lect" - all intertwine and o …

John Rottam is on a journey back in time and place. Fleeing a private stripping engagement turned violent, he reflects on a time in his life when he was burdened with a broken heart, self-doubt and a floundering dance career. A few clumsy steps in the corps de ballet of a prestigious Canadian ballet company sends John fleeing to join a psychotic an …

In his third poetry collection, A Brief History of the Short-Lived, Chris Hutchinson brings the full force of his linguistic dexterity to bear on the elusive subject of literature itself.

With his restless intellectual curiosity tempered by a dash of witty self-deprecation, Hutchinson deftly manoeuvres through hallowed halls of academia with humour …

"I grew up in a blue-collar town ten minutes down the road from a white-collar town. And I've spent most of my life uncomfortable in both places."

With these opening words, accomplished poet Tim Bowling outlines the central tension that acts as a vital force in his newest book, Tenderman—the dichotomy between the sensitive poetic observer and the …

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 …

Triny Finlay's debut collection of poetry is a meditation on the self's negotiation with the material world. Finlay pushes poetic form and language, creating images of love and loss that are at once playful and profoundly disturbing. The poems in this collection are rife with metaphorical leaps and unexpected associations: the troubled self as conj …

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 …

Billie Livingston's poems drive straight for the sharp edges--from the rough, self-assured and brash voice of a woman who poses nude at seventeen while considering the 40-year-old photographer as her guinea pig, to the confidante of relatives and friends grappling with the torturing frustration of love, sexuality, adultery and death.

These jagged re …