Dickinson after her death: the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows Grieving the loss of her sister and alone in a big house, Lavinia goes through Emily’s things and wonders what to do with her sister’s poems. She enlists the help of Susan, Emily’s best friend and brother Austin’s wife, who rouses herself from a deep depression to put the poems into some order to approach a publisher. Lavinia also brings Austin’s mistress, Mabel, into the project for her worldliness and connections. In the wings, there is Millicent, Mabel’s daughter, a little girl like Emily in spirit, wise and strong-willed, and fascinated by things big and small in the world around her. Delicate like lacework with dark threads running through it, Pale Shadows picks up the story of Emily Dickinson where Paper Houses left off, to explore the place of women in history, their creativity, and the enduring power of Dickinson’s poetry.
Dickinson after her death: the story of the trio of women who brought the first collection of Emily Dickinson’s poems out of the shadows Grieving the loss of her sister and alone…
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
The Sleeping Car Porter brings to life an important part of Black history in North America, from the perspective of a queer man living in a culture that renders him invisible in two ways. Affecting, imaginative, and visceral enough that you’ll feel the rocking of the train, The Sleeping Car Porter is a stunning accomplishment.
Baxter’s name isn’t George. But it’s 1929, and Baxter is lucky enough, as a Black man, to have a job as a sleeping car porter on a train that crisscrosses the country. So when the passengers call him George, he has to just smile and nod and act invisible. What he really wants is to go to dentistry school, but he’ll have to save up a lot of nickel and dime tips to get there, so he puts up with “George.”
On this particular trip out west, the passengers are more unruly than usual, especially when the train is stalled for two extra days; their secrets start to leak out and blur with the sleep-deprivation hallucinations Baxter is having. When he finds a naughty postcard of two queer men, Baxter’s memories and longings are reawakened; keeping it puts his job in peril, but he can’t part with the postcard or his thoughts of Edwin Drew, Porter Instructor.
When a mudslide strands a train, Baxter, a queer Black sleeping car porter, must contend with the perils of white passengers, ghosts, and his secret love affair
Rich and diverse narratives of Indigenous Toronto, past and present
Beneath many major North American cities rests a deep foundation of Indigenous history that has been colonized, paved over, and, too often, silenced. Few of its current inhabitants know that Toronto has seen twelve thousand years of uninterrupted Indigenous presence and nationhood in this region, along with a vibrant culture and history that thrives to this day.
With contributions by Indigenous Elders, scholars, journalists, artists, and historians, this unique anthology explores the poles of cultural continuity and settler colonialism that have come to define Toronto as a significant cultural hub and intersection that was also known as a Meeting Place long before European settlers arrived.
This book is a reflection of endurance and a helpful corrective to settler fantasies. It tells a more balanced account of our communities, then and now. It offers the space for us to reclaim our ancestors' language and legacy, rewriting ourselves back into a landscape from which non Indigenous historians have worked hard to erase us. But we are there in the skyline and throughout the GTA, along the coast and in all directions. -- from the introduction by Hayden King
Rich and diverse narratives of Indigenous Toronto, past and present
Beneath many major North American cities rests a deep foundation of Indigenous history that has been…
In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm—as long as you're beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the foundational myths of our culture, how can a girl with a disability ever think she'll have a happy ending?
By examining the ways that fairy tales have shaped our expectations of disability, Disfigured will point the way toward a new world where disability is no longer a punishment or impediment but operates, instead, as a way of centering a protagonist and helping them to cement their own place in a story, and from there, the world. Through the book, Leduc ruminates on the connections we make between fairy tale archetypes—the beautiful princess, the glass slipper, the maiden with long hair lost in the tower—and tries to make sense of them through a twenty-first-century disablist lens. From examinations of disability in tales from the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen through to modern interpretations ranging from Disney to Angela Carter, and the fight for disabled representation in today's media, Leduc connects the fight for disability justice to the growth of modern, magical stories, and argues for increased awareness and acceptance of that which is other—helping us to see and celebrate the magic inherent in different bodies
In fairy tales, happy endings are the norm—as long as you're beautiful and walk on two legs. After all, the ogre never gets the princess. And since fairy tales are the…
Emily Dickinson is as famous for being a recluse as she is for her poetry. In this stunning novel, we see her struggling to reconcile spirit and flesh, preferring letters and reflecting that the only way to have books and life is to live through one’s own writing. Dominique Fortier brings Dickinson vividly to life, as if reanimating a flower that had been pressed in a book, through her reflections on language and what it feels like to be home.
Emily Dickinson is as famous for being a recluse as she is for her poetry. In this stunning novel, we see her struggling to reconcile spirit and flesh, preferring letters and…
"A mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief, managing to transform its inarticulable and symbolic weight into a finely wrought literary work." -- Quill and Quire
Botanist Alfred Homer, ever hopeful and constantly surprised, is invited on a road trip by his parents' friend, Professor Morgan Bruno, who wants company as he tries to unearth the story of the mysterious poet John Skennen. But this is no ordinary road trip. Alfred and the Professor encounter towns where Black residents speak only in sign language and towns that hold Indigenous Parades; it is a land of house burnings, werewolves, and witches.
Complete with Alfred's drawings of plants both real and implausible, Days by Moonlight is a Dantesque journey taken during the "hour of the wolf," that time of day when the sun is setting and the traveller can't tell the difference between dog and wolf. And it asks that perpetual question: how do we know the things we know are real, and what is real anyway?
Longlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize
"A mash-up that is part fabulism, part faux biography, and part satire, Days by Moonlight conveys the experience of grief,…
Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive.
The Laws of the Skies follows the terrified children as they scatter into the night to escape danger, dressed only in their pajamas. They face their darkest childhood fears and new imaginary threats, like trolls masquerading as boulders and child-eating tree trunks.
A harrowing story of those days in the woods, of illness, poisoning, and accidents; of a love triangle among tots; a pint-sized hero; and a child on a murderous rampage that comes to a grisly end. Part fairy tale, part horror story, this macabre fable takes us through the minds of all the members of this doomed part, murderers and murdered alike.
Twelve six-year-olds and their three adult chaperones head into the woods on a camping trip. None of them make it out alive.
Simon and Marie can't seem to have a baby. And so they flee the city for an idyllic village, where things will certainly be better. But the town is gloomy, even hostile -- things haven't been the same since the factory closed down and a broadcast antenna was erected. Now there are no birds singing, and people have started disappearing.
Simon and Marie can't seem to have a baby. And so they flee the city for an idyllic village, where things will certainly be better. But the town is gloomy, even hostile -- things…
urry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations. By grappling with novels, recipes, travelogues, pop culture, and his own upbringing, Naben Ruthnum depicts how the distinctive taste of curry has often become maladroit shorthand for brown identity. With the sardonic wit of Gita Mehta's Karma Cola and the refined, obsessive palette of Bill Buford's Heat, Ruthnum sinks his teeth into the story of how the beloved flavor calcified into an aesthetic genre that limits the imaginations of writers, readers, and eaters. Following in the footsteps of Salman Rushdie's Imaginary Homelands, Curry cracks open anew the staid narrative of an authentically Indian diasporic experience.
Naben Ruthnum won the Journey Prize for his short fiction, has been a National Post books columnist, and has written books and cultural criticism for the Globe and Mail, Hazlitt, and the Walrus. His crime fiction has appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Joyland, and his pseudonym Nathan Ripley's first novel will appear in 2018. Ruthnum lives in Toronto.
urry is a dish that doesn't quite exist, but, as this wildly funny and sharp essay points out, a dish that doesn't properly exist can have infinite, equally authentic variations.…
A 15th-century portrait painter, grieving the sudden death of his lover, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France. He haunts the halls until a monk assigns him the task of copying a manuscript – though he is illiterate. His work slowly heals him and continues the tradition that had, centuries earlier, grown the monastery’s library into a beautiful city of books, all under the shadow of the invention of the printing press.
A 15th-century portrait painter, grieving the sudden death of his lover, takes refuge at the monastery at Mont Saint-Michel, an island off the coast of France. He haunts the halls…
From accomplished writer Ken Sparling comes a spare verse novel about a girl and a boy and the life they're writing together. But the girl wants a story and the boy wants a poem, and the furniture in the house is stuck in the middle. Meditative and magical, a book as complicated as the ways we love.
From accomplished writer Ken Sparling comes a spare verse novel about a girl and a boy and the life they're writing together. But the girl wants a story and the boy wants a…
For his very first parish, Father Christopher Pennant is sent to the sleepy town of Barrow. With more sheep than people, it's very bucolic too much Barrow Brew on Barrow Day is the rowdiest it gets. Bu things aren't so idyllic for Liz Denny, whose fiance doesn't want to decide between Liz and his more worldly mistress Jane, and for Father Pennant himself, who greets some miracles of nature mayors walking on water, talking sheep with a profound crisis of faith.
For his very first parish, Father Christopher Pennant is sent to the sleepy town of Barrow. With more sheep than people, it's very bucolic too much Barrow Brew on Barrow Day is…
"Ken Babstock is a wonderful and spirited poet, his work is full of musicality, syncopation, wit, and formal acuity, it's all good."—Peter Gizzi
"The flavor of this poetry is complex—it will have to be consumed in small amounts like a sipping tequila. It inebriates quickly. It imparts a convivial brilliance to life. And it is not without its sinister edge."—Ange Mlinko
With poems on perfect blue and a sonnet sequence situated on a derelict NSA surveillance station on a Berlin hill, On Malice assembles evacuated forms, polysemy, prayer, and perverse chatter into poems that enact our paranoia. Channeling Walter Benjamin's son, William Hazlitt, John Donne, and Dick Cheney, they are lyric in their sonic and affective register but coldly methodological in their invented structures and illusions.
You finish reading it. You cannot
finish reading it. Ice caught
in the can, later, the well. What
shall I be worried about,
the coward well and the ice does
such a lot. They know nothing
of cantilevered blown-out shells
who feed their worry
like veal barns. The dome's aerial
my lodestar and icon, the squirrel
at dusk in the post-informational gloaming
can never not finish reading it as song
Ken Babstock is the author of Methodist Hatchet, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize. His previous titles, Mean, Days into Flatspin, and Airstream Land Yacht, hold nominations for the Governor General's Award and the Winterset Prize. Poems from this book have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.
"Ken Babstock is a wonderful and spirited poet, his work is full of musicality, syncopation, wit, and formal acuity, it's all good."—Peter Gizzi
"One of the saddest, funniest, strangest, and most romantic books. . . . Brilliant!"—The Bookseller (UK)
All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero, the Perfectionist. But at their wedding, Perf is hypnotized by her ex-boyfriend, Hypno, to believe Tom is invisible. Nothing he does can make her see him. Six months later, the Perfectionist is sure Tom has abandoned her, so she's moving away. With no idea Tom's beside her, she boards a plane. Tom has until they land to make her see him.
This tenth anniversary edition adds short stories, illustrations, and a foreword to the cult classic that has been a bestseller in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.
Andrew Kaufman is the author of The Waterproof Bible and The Tiny Wife.
"One of the saddest, funniest, strangest, and most romantic books. . . . Brilliant!"—The Bookseller (UK)
All Tom's friends really are superheroes. Tom even married a superhero,…
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Invited to a quiet Swiss château by the enigmatic Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann, Anne begins to slowly write a novel in a language that is not hers, a language that makes meaning foreign and keeps her alert to the world and its fiery horizon.
Will the strange intoxication that takes hold of her and her characters – sculptor Charles; his sister Kim, about to leave for the far north; and Laure Ravin, a lawyer obsessed with the Patriot Act – allow her to break through the darkness of the world?
Fences in Breathing, first published and critically lauded in French as La capture du sombre, and now brought into English by the celebrated translator Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, is a disquieting, dexterous and defiant missive, another triumph by one of North America's foremost practitioners of innovative writing.
Shortlisted for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize
Invited to a quiet Swiss château by the enigmatic Tatiana Beaujeu Lehmann, Anne begins to slowly write a novel in a…
Carla Carlson is at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City trying to finish a novel. Nearby, a woman, preoccupied with sadness and infatuated with her boss, catalogues antiquities at the Museum of Civilization. Every night, the two women meet at the hotel bar and talk – about childhood and parents and landscapes, about time and art, about Descartes and Francis Bacon and writing.
When Yesterday, at the Hotel Clarendon appeared in French (as Hier), the media called it the pinnacle of Brossard’s remarkable forty-year literary career. From its intersection of four women emerges a kind of art installation, a lively read in which life and death and the vertigo of ruins tangle themselves together to say something about history and desire and art.
Carla Carlson is at the Hotel Clarendon in Quebec City trying to finish a novel. Nearby, a woman, preoccupied with sadness and infatuated with her boss, catalogues antiquities at…
