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Spat Ryan has demons. They haunt him by day and share his drink at night. Raised in Montreal by a bagman for the Irish mob, Spat has fictionalized or ignored chunks of his life too painful to recall. A chance meeting with an old friend of his father's in a bar on the Main exposes the dark secret they've both been harbouring, the secret that has shaped and defined Spat's tumultuous life. Newly divorced and out of control, his decision to tell all and release himself from the past unleashes a storm of change in both his internal and external life.Spat the Dummy is a confession-raw and unrestrained, a modern-day Hero's journey to the Underworld and back, a novel about changing history by confronting it.Praise for Spat the Dummy:"e;This novel is unforgettable both for its subject matter and its form of narration. The style is electrifying and there are images that will burn in the reader's mind forever. Ed Macdonald is a gripping writer."e; (Alistair MacLeod, author of No Great Mischief, winner of the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award)"e;This excellent debut novel combines gutsy language and a relentless, engaging plot with one of the most chaotic but loveable protagonists in recent CanLit. this satisfying book leaves the reader feeling grateful to be alive."e; (Quill & Quire)"e;Here is a writer who knows how to put people together on the page and let the sparks fly: passages between Spat and an older, fellow alcoholic he encounters at a recovery meeting are drawn with the delicacy and barbed wit of a good inner-city vignette from The Wire."e; (Montreal Review of Books)

From the author of Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit and Foozlers comes another tale of madcap human folly.Louella Debra Poule is doing an eighteen-month stint on a weapons charge at a minimum-security institution up the Fraser Valley. Her drug-dealing, sometime-boyfriend Jimmy Flood and his sidekick, Blacky Harbottle, should have taken the rap, but their list of ?priors? would have put them in the slammer for quite a little stay. Louella ?did the right thing? and took the fall.Six months into Louella?s sentence, her mother, whom she hasn?t seen in years, dies suddenly. After Louella?s early release, she discovers she has inherited a fair bit of money and a nice condo in a treed and quiet suburb of Vancouver. It is here that Louella sits in relative safety and obscurity, here that she decides to take some time away from the influence of her prior associates, reassess her life, tend her mother?s garden, and work through the agonizing steps from addiction back to the world of ?normal? living.But, needless to say, her past comes a-callin? ?Praise for Budge:?Budge is one of the more quirky, unconventional, picaresque novels to come along in a while. ? To fully appreciate Budge, we must relinquish our trust to Osborne, a somewhat loopy shaman. ? Tom Osborne warrants a great deal of praise for freshness of content, viewpoint, and plot. He knows how to use language with skill and verve. ?? (Foreword Reviews)"e;Writer's latest entry full of grit. Tom Osborne?s new novel explores friendship, betrayal, rehabilitation, and addiction. Tom Osborne?s third novel Budge centers around a female character who took the fall for her sometimes-boyfriend, and ended up doing an 18-month stint in a Fraser Valley prison. A few of the central characters in Tom Osborne?s latest novel Budge are so gritty, readers may feel the need to wash their hands after leafing through a few chapters. That may just be the desired effect of Budge, an unabashed fictional effort that draws you in and then smashes you square in the mush. The story explores Vancouver and the Fraser Valley?s seedy drug and crime."e; (The Maple Ridge Times)Praise for Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit by Tom Osborne:??Only connect? was E.M. Forster?s advice to writers, and Osborne connects like a mad electrician in a power plant.? (The Vancouver Sun)

Finalist, ReLit Award Finalist, McNally Robinson Book of the Year (Manitoba Book Awards) Finalist, Bisexual Book Award (USA)Whitetail Shooting Gallery, a new novel from award-winning author and Giller Prize nominee, Annette Lapointe, is set in the outer urban, often desolate, landscape of the Saskatchewan prairie.Cousins Jennifer and Jason live close together as small kids, exploring their rural home. They live in adjacent, sometimes overlapping, households. But one act of family violence begets another, and the cousins drift apart. By adolescence, the two are estranged. Jennifer grows closer to her best friend, Donna, an evangelical minister?s daughter who rebels against her family by immersing herself in a world of vectors, fractals, perfect math, and porn.Jason?s world is hockey. Donna likes his street-hockey bruises. Jason?s also interested in Gordon, a semi-recluse ex-teacher who lives on the periphery of town and constructs art installations from leather, tamarack, animal skulls, and other found items.Horses, bears, kissing cousins, and other human animals conspire in a series of conflicts that result in accidental gunfire and scarring--both physical and emotional--that takes many years to heal.Praise for Whitetail Shooting Gallery:BC Books for BC Schools Pick?Imagine Alissa York?s Fauna but in rural Saskatchewan and with all the sentimentality stripped away. Imagine lots of sex, kissing cousins, a gunshot to the face, and a set of teeth that get kicked in over and over again. Imagine a family farmhouse, country roads, the kind of place you might want to move to raise your kids if you don?t look too closely. The hockey player, the pastor?s daughter, how he?s giving blow jobs to his teammates, and she?s having sex with her best friend. ? Whitetail Shooting Gallery baffled me thoughout, disturbed and troubled me, but it also intrigued me, continually surprised me, never stopped me wondering what would happen next. It?s an anti-pastoral, a complicated portrayal of rural life. ? Annette Lapointe?s literary reputation was established with Stolen, which was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2006. And here in her second book, she?s turning Can-Lit on its head, challenging not only her readers? sensibilities, but also ideas about what a novel should be. And the latter seems to be a requirement for the kind of book that I like best.? (Pickle Me This)?Wintry, notably offbeat, written with an elegant precision, and at times slyly funny ? Lapointe?s beautiful treatment of po?te maudit subject matter never fails to impress.? (The Vancouver Sun )?In Whitetail Shooting Gallery, Lapointe gives us an animalistic view of the teen world. This is not small-town rural life as idyllic or pastoral. Lapointe?s world reflects the turmoil, raging emotions and hormones brewing inside adolescents. ? the plot is almost secondary to Lapointe?s vivid, powerful voice and her beautifully savage view of rural prairie life.? (Winnipeg Free Press )Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2012 Pick, 49th Shelf

Poetry. Finalist, ReLit Award. BC Books in BC Schools selection. Twenty-first century metalheads; twelfth century troubadours and their female counterparts, the TROBAIRITZ--what could they possibly have in common? The creation of an often misunderstood and at times reviled genre for one; for another, a kin preoccupation with the questioning of structures set up by class, gender, and religion. In this subtle but gripping blend of time and place and sexualities, Catherine Owen has created a modern epic in which a contemporary female voice from the metal scene reclaims the troubadour tradition, imagining the equality of the sexes in even these most heavily male- dominated musical worlds. Part love story, part musical proclamation of independence, Owen moves us through time and space to explore how women who 'go first' may struggle, but are not alone and in fact, are part of a long, long tradition.--Kate Braid Owen pounds out sombre love, transcendent rhythms, and gender- bending boldness...TROBAIRITZ starts the heart like the thud of a bass line and opens the mind like a scream, poem after poem.--Quill & Quire Describing metal fans as 'raw birds, eyes banged out of their heads, ' Owen's loving scorn allows her to walk a fine line between paying homage to the subculture and dissecting its darkness.-- Jonathan Ball, Winnipeg Free Press (Recommended read for 2012)

Literary Nonfiction. Photography. Alcuin Citation for Design. Best of 2010 Non-Fiction selection, Uptown Magazine. Foreword by Gabor Maté. A ROOM IN THE CITY presents Gasztonyi's five- year project of photographing the residents of the Cobalt, Balmoral, Regent, and Sunrise Hotels in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, the poorest postal code in the country. They are represented in private moments, with respect and dignity--in their rooms and on the streets--as they wish to be seen. Gasztonyi's style continues in the great documentation tradition of Anders Petersen and Josef Koudelka. A ROOM IN THE CITY is a haunting collection of photographs by Gabor Gasztonyi... There's more here than prostitution and crack pipes, although they're in evidence. Whether confronting the lens or averting their gaze, the subjects expose their vulnerability but also their attachment to another human being or a cosseted pet. In the book's foreword, addiction expert Gabor Maté notes that for many of these people, mental illness or substance abuse is a response to trauma. 'Their entire life, ' he adds, 'has been one of survival against odds.' We're left wondering how people have to live this way in Canada.--Uptown Magazine Gabor Gasztonyi spent five years photographing and talking to the men and women of Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, and A ROOM IN THE CITY is the mesmerizing result. The black-and- white images, and Gasztonyi's diary entries, forcefully and unforgettably capture the desperation--and the unexpected glints of dignity and joy--of lives ravaged by poverty, drugs, mental illness and social dislocation.--The National Post A ROOM IN THE CITY is a remarkable collection that, when coupled with the insights from Maté and the other tidbits of personal poetry and journal entries that Gasztonyi injects into the pages, initiates a great deal of personal reflection. There is little joy between the covers of this book, but that doesn't mean it is not worth owning... I had a friend from out of town visit last week, and on her first night in Vancouver, she followed her GPS through Hastings and was terrified by the scene made more surreal by a body under a white sheet that was rolled out of an SRO while she waited for the traffic light to change. A couple days later, she saw my copy of Gasztonyi's book on my coffee table where I'd left it, and so she picked it up and started to read it. At first she was frightened, and then she had questions, but by the end of it she felt that she understood the situation much better and she was no longer scared. Now that's a powerful book!--Geist

Best of 2010 Pick, Uptown MagazineMeet Walter Finch, an ungainly kid who survives his cloying suburban childhood to make it only as far as the local mall, where he rises through the ranks to become manager of a shoe store. Unlike his other childhood friends who either flee suburbia or remain as resigned fixtures, Walter is content with his lot and finds the shoe store an ideal environment in which to pursue his grand ambition: designing the perfect woman's shoe.As he delves further into his passion, alone in his apartment at night, Walter comes to believe that his path will ultimately lead him to the perfect foot to fit his creation. On an all-consuming mission to find his princess, Walter is plunged into a separate reality, his own fairytale. As things spin steadily out of control, Walter's eventual salvation arrives in an unlikely form, should he choose to recognize and accept it.Praise for Spaz:"e;Spaz really is terrific. Bowman demystifies the aberrant. As in her debut novel, Skin (which I loved when I read it a decade ago), her themes are ugliness and beauty and how the body is the engine for desire. If that makes Spaz seem too serious, don't worry. It's jolly fun."e;(Uptown Magazine)"e;Shoes have played a pivotal role in many lives, from Achilles' poorly considered open-back sandals to O.J.'s Bruno Maglis, and so it is with Walter Finch-two pairs set his life spinning (or more precisely, rolling and bobbing) on its strange and hugely readable path: a pair of orthopedic brogues as a youth, and a pair of red satin pumps with ice pick heels somewhat later. Deformity and fetishism: Bonnie Bowman has a keen eye for the weird within the everyday, and her fondly satirical characterizations are of a piece with those of David Foster Wallace, John Kennedy Toole, Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut."e; (John Armstrong author of Guilty of Everything and Wages)"e;In this sly story of a misfit visionary, Bowman assembles a beguiling cast of characters, striking a perfect balance between the completely outrageous and the completely true-to-life. This is a novel that never stops entertaining."e; (Lynn Coady, author of Mean Boy and Strange Heaven)

Poetry. Winner, SFU Writer's Studio's First Book Competition. GALAXY is about a wounded family (Anger brimming until it overflows / into rage in the dark living room, / his undershirt soaked through / up the back to his collar), a prairie place (Ochre River girls / have a one-room school, / walk through fields of wheat, / play in silos, storing grain dust / in their lungs, / later to exhale it / like cloudy fire), love that is queer and conventional, about longing and loss (tempus fugit / my father emails, / now or never, / and I can't I don't / wish to speak to my mother. / I don't believe the mere flight of time / is reason enough) and a light shone into dark corners. A truly wonderful collection of poems. Wonderful and clear imagery as well as a 'real' and 'true' sense of place, love, longing, family, and the constant struggle and re-negotiation of self and experience. GALAXY possesses a simple but sensual approach to language and tone.--Michael Dennis Ms. Thompson gets the emotional centre right, dead on in fact. These poems avoid the screaming siren of the gender wars and get on about their business. Thompson's GALAXY is familiar territory emotionally, it is wonderfully authentic poetry.--Gregory Scofield, author of kipocihkan: Poems New & Selected ...a coming-of-age collection full of memorable strikes of pleasure and pain... GALAXY is a book of extremes: the poems rocket between childhood / adulthood, rural / urban and desire / love. And although Thompson traffics in strong images and abrupt juxtapositions, she also allows room for doubt and ambivalence. Which is to say: Very nice! (More poems, please!)--The Winnipeg Free Press

Drama. Most of the plays in this collection were first produced by The Drilling Company in New York. In MUTANT SEX PARTY & OTHER PLAYS, Ed Macdonald eviscerates the high and mighty, the hypocritical, and those who abuse power in late-Capitalism America. He expertly peels back the tattered facade of corporate respectability and reveals the hypocrisy that is brokered and sold under the guise of doing business in America. These plays dig deep at the rot that lies at the base of a free-rein, unregulated, capitalist market system. As well as the title piece, the collection includes The Escape Artist, Erratica, Gemini, Smoke & Blood, Hot Meat and Titus Lucretius Carus. Ain't no party like a Mutant Sex Party 'cause a Mutant Sex Party don't stop! Okay--now that's out of my system. For the characters in these plays, however, nothing ever gets out of their system. They are all stuck, bottled up, locked in constant struggles of domination--legally, politically and sexually. That said, Macdonald is such a good writer that he makes you care about these characters... ancient Romans and Hipsters, Crazy Ladies and Cops--everyone's been invited to this MUTANT SEX PARTY, including you. Will you accept Macdonald's invitation?--A.G.Pasquella, Broken Pencil On the play Gemini: ...a crisp and clear loony toon takes over an asylum to carry out his dreams of becoming a 'moderate fascist dictator'... an enjoyable and illuminating experience--The Village Voice It's all a weighty, symbolic, lyrical tale of postmodern alienation, packaged in a hysterical tirade delivered by a crazy person. Kindly pass the dopamine... It's a hilarious trip to a brave new world...--Leonard Jacob, Backstage On the play MUTANT SEX PARTY: The audience is constantly on the edge of their seats wondering, 'What's real? What's a fantasy?'... a complex and challenging play that is very political in nature. Don't let the title fool you; this is about mutant politics as much as sex. We are reminded that while lying and cheating are accepted in politics a blowjob can ruin a career... a dynamic roller coaster of a theatrical experience.--Karl Wilder, ONOFFOFF

Winner, Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University's First Book CompetitionNondescript Rambunctious is a genre-busting thriller with a beating, human heart. More than a simple story of a killer and his victims, the novel takes the reader into the life of a family, the days of a community, and the very real possibility that evil is everywhere-maybe even inside us. Woven through this dark tapestry are the glittering threads of humanity, humour, and in the form of one young woman, the promise of redemption.Like a sinister dream, Nondescript Rambunctious pulls you in and doesn't let go. There is no easy way out.Praise for Nondescript Rambunctious:"e;Jackie Bateman's debut novel is very impressive. The writing is taut, controlled, and relentless. Nondescript Rambunctious is a dark, murderous thriller, a winner with a variety of narrators, surprising turns and shifts, and some hard, hard corners."e; (Mark Anthony Jarman, author of My White Planet and 19 Knives)"e; Nondescript Rambunctious, for which Jackie Bateman won the Writer's Studio at Simon Fraser University's First Book Competition in the fiction category, is a thriller that succeeds by nodding politely to the formula, then turning it on its head. The novel has four narrators, but Bateman weaves their voices together effortlessly, and the build-up retains all the suspense and intensity one expects from a crime thriller. Bateman hasn't imagined a world of dogged cops, rumpled detectives, or amateur sleuths. Nondescript Rambunctious is about the heartbreaking consequences of human depravity, not tying up loose ends or piecing together clues. It wouldn't be wrong to label this novel a thriller, but it also confounds the expectations of that label, to great effect."e; (Quill & Quire)"e;Vancouver's Jackie Bateman draws on her Scottish roots for a bewitching first novel that transforms from gentle domestic comedy into gripping suspense. it's a real page-turner, and Bateman takes it to a surprising and satisfying conclusion."e; (Prairie Fire)

Poetry. Finalist, Acorn-Plantos Award. Winner, Exit Through the Giftshop Award (2013). Best Poetry of 2012 selection, Winnipeg Free Press. Each new volume by Stuart Ross is a more confounding grab bag than the last. In YOU EXIST. DETAILS FOLLOW., his seventh full- length collection of poetry, Stuart Ross veers in opposite directions: narrative confessionalism poems, and works that might be considered abstract expressionist, and a lot both in between and beyond those boundaries. Still, each poem breathes with the signature weirdness, the sharp wit and gentle awe that Ross is known for. Here you'll find poems from Ross's ongoing auto-biographical Razovsky series, one-line poems, centos, fractured sonnets, poems composed through surrealist strategies, and more. Ross's absurdism doesn't rely on unconnected sentences, abstract thought, or an unusual, elevated vocabulary: rather, his poetry delights in the silliness of concrete mundanity....The collection thus begins by launching us into a happily disjointed mind, into images connected as though by sparking, duct-taped wires, buzzing weird electrical fires of thought.--Matrix Magazine A voice all his own. Stuart Ross unleashes his refreshing snark in his latest collection of poems...He runs the gamut from his own brand of absurdist expressionism to fond childhood memories and poetic confessions....Ross wisely and parenthetically writes: (Tension is a good thing sometimes. For example, you should stick it in art.) Stuart Ross loves that tension, fortunately for his readers.--Uptown I personally believe Stuart Ross may be Canada's most important poet...Ross could be called a 'narrative surrealist' but that, like most labels, does not adequately capture the gymnastic feats of construction he employs. At his best Ross combines images and emotions with the same alacrity of a Max Ernst or Salvador Dali. The literal is a sheer curtain that surrealists drape like a fabric or a fold in time. Ross gives a master class in almost every poem in the delicate art of balancing truth from fiction, what we imagine from what we know to be real...For me, there is no poet as entertaining as Stuart Ross and very few as smart. Ross builds a new universe with You Exist. Details Follow. and we get to travel in it like explorers entering a new dimension, luckily it comes with instructions and a guide map for home. Stuart Ross looks at the world through a different lens, how extraordinarily lucky we are that he shares that view with us. --Michael Dennis (blog)

Poetry. Latino/Latina Studies. Selected for BC's Poetry in Transit. A DARK BOAT, a new collection of poetry by Patrick Friesen, is heavily inspired by cante jondo (Spanish deep song, or flamenco) and fado (Portuguese songs of longing.) Friesen approaches music as a method of weaving his poems with both Spanish and Portuguese aspects of longing, imagistic leaps, and darkness. The poems in A DARK BOAT try to shake hands with the darkness; the kind of darkness that is rich and necessary for a full human life, the darkness of the soil into which seeds drop and grow, the darkness of the grave into which the body is lowered. These elusive and emotional poems say much, while telling as little as possible. I don't know how Patrick Friesen has found his way into these poems: they seem to spring from the beginning of time. Nothing is held back. The poems--beautiful to read--are as devastatingly real in their drama on an immense stage of sun and shadow, as living bone. The literary haunting is Lorca and the memories are of the stranger, the stray dog, the witness to the wedding on the banks of the river of death. I read these poems with the utter conviction that Friesen had crossed barriers of time, place, and culture to draw forth poems out of the heart of mystery.--Marilyn Bowering ...If you've never heard fado music, you should. It is an intense, raw, emotional music... Or you could just read this book, which is imbued with his reminiscences of his trip and the music of fado... lines that punch you in the gut, leaving you breathless...--Prairie Fire [Friesen's] poems... are both evocative and compelling in their exploration of how loss can connect us across cultural boundaries, yet also make visible the limits of that connectedness.--Canadi an Literature

Five Little Bitches chronicles the rise and fall of the all-woman band, Wet Leather. Each of the women is plagued by her own unique demons, but their devotion to music and the punk lifestyle keeps them pushing on. As the band progresses, they tour Canadian, American and European towns and cities-and all the alleys, gutters, back stages, vans, hotel rooms, highways and airways in between.Part punk rock travelogue, Five Little Bitches is full-throttle grit-lit. The novel is a testimony to a generation of grrrls in revolt.Praise for Five Little Bitches:"e;One glance at this book and you know: It ain't Anne Tyler. Five Little Bitches is funny, outrageous, and startlingly authentic and she delivers what any reader wants-a novel that is vibrantly alive, never dull."e; (Prairie Fire)"e;a raw, punk energy courses through its veins"e; (Georgia Straight)"e; it captures the essence of a sub-culture. The design of the text is as bold as its uncensored language. Every page is coloured with the chaos of punk rock shows, volatile relationships, pain, joy and humour-and illustrated with gritty black lines, graffiti art, band posters, set lists and photos. These are flawed, real women who are unapologetic. But as much as the characters of Five Little Bitches appear hell-bent on being abrasive, this thoroughly modern feminist novel ultimately succeeds because it portrays human vulnerability."e; (BC BookWorld)

Fiction. Longlisted for the ReLit Award (2012). HARD HED is a contemporary retelling of the Johnny Appleseed story. Hoosier Chapman, local historian and apple orchardist, has just been released from a Northwestern Ohio jail after serving two years for planting wild apple trees in a city park. Dropped at the state line by a deputy sheriff, Hoosier treks west, overland and barefoot into Indiana state, recreating history and inventing myth, both public and private, along the way. Ranging in style from realism to fantasy to historical document to speculative fiction to lyric poetry, there is a joy of craft that shows through page after page. HARD HEN is part meta-story, part documentary, and part violent romance. It is an unabashedly original work of fiction that roams in and out of time and place and point of view. Tidler has created an Indiana as Faulkner created a Mississippi and Steinbeck a California. ... a text full of invention, virtuosity, and vitality. Tidler's novel bounces and cartwheels with metafictional asides and lightning shifts of perspective and focus.--The Malahat Review Tidler takes readers on a roller-coaster of a ride, with highs and lows and mighty twists. The history of the Indiana Territory is revealed, along with the brutalizing of its original inhabitants. And the brutality never stops... The language is raw and crude at times, reflecting the violence of the narrative, but it is also eloquent... HARD HED: THE HOOSIER CHAPMAN PAPERS is an impressive achievement, albeit a tricky read. It's definitely worth it to see what's happening beyond the margins of the conventional novel. Way beyond.--Quentin Mills-Fenn, Uptown It's an impressive novel that reminds you what a talented writer can achieve in under 180 pages, one who clearly enjoys taking chances as he pillages narrative and history to lay bare prejudice and hope.--Victoria Times-Colonist

Valery the Great is a crackling, electric collection of dark humour that follows the bizarre and beautiful lives of its protagonists. Sometimes sweet and gentle, sometimes sharply sarcastic, the unique narrative voices in this collection are always powerfully touching.Praise for Valery the Great:"e;15 Finest Book Covers in Spring Fiction This Year"e; selection (Something Daily blog)"e;By turns comic, pathetic, and tenderly tragic, Valery the Great is a charming collection."e; (Quill & Quire)"e;Her voice is scathing, very funny, her stories twisting at the end to leave me a bit stunned. I loved this book, a short story collections whose curation had as much thought put into it as the stories themselves, a fantastic package with a gorgeous design. In addition to considerable talent, there is furious energy at work here, McCluskey giving it her all, and as a result, reading was a pleasure."e; (Pickle Me This)"e;McCluskey is at her finest when she uses sharp humour and skillful, economic description to communicate her fatalistic worldview."e; (The Globe and Mail)

Poetry. Poetry in Transit selection (poem from the book displayed on Vancouver city buses). THE SONG COLLIDES takes the reader on a highly personal and internal metaphysical investigation into the state of the natural world--and then back via more lyrical and local enquiries that speak to each and every one of us. Life as an exchange: each of us takes in the world and then expresses it for ourselves and for others. This is a simultaneous and nearly imperceptible process that lasts, we hope, at least until the exit. Calvin Wharton's poems in THE SONG COLLIDES pulse and soar with the sounds of beautiful music. Whether a specific one of THE SONG COLLIDES' lyrics, prose poems, sonnets, or elegies mentions music or not, Wharton's mastery of his art never fails to bring his words to resonant life in the ear and mind. He is a connoisseur of precise details that, transformed through his attention to the musicality of language, ring within the reader's memory like a favorite tune. --Tom Wayman Here is a poetry of gentle surprises, of the enjoyment of 'salt air, sweet water / qualities that feed days / and grow into years, ' of ironies that enrich, 'every answer lost in the question following.' And even when we are reminded of everyday 'skimpy wishes, ' how good to read these nuances so carefully shaped for our pleasure, each reminding us to 'begin wherever you are, / but first look around.'--David Zieroth ...these very good poems are taut and pointed as Wharton ranges through death poems and bicycling poems...Very solid stuff.--Michael Dennis (blog)

Fiction. City of Vancouver Legacy Book. Set in Surrey, British Columbia, circa 1960, A CREDIT TO YOUR RACE is a story about innocent love awakening between a fifteen-year-old black porter's son and the white girl next door. The novel is a disturbing and convincing portrayal of how the full weight of racism and bigotry came to bear on a youthful, interracial couple. A CREDIT TO YOUR RACE was published in 1973 in a press run of only a few hundred copies. We are pleased to be making this lost BC novel available to a new audience of readers as part of the City of Vancouver's Legacy Book Project. If isolation is a key theme of black BC writing, Green's protagonist Billy Robinson is the most fully-drawn expression.--author and social historian Wayde Compton. ...The story gets its power from Truman Green's simple direct, almost dead-pan delivery of what people said and did, almost as if he were telling you about it at the kitchen table. Billy Robinson's acute awareness of what's wrong, here in the hazy pre-dawn of the Civil Rights movement, is compelling and tangled and credible. We can be sorry for what Billy had to endure, and glad that the Legacy Books Project and Anvil Press have brought back his story.--Geist ...the reader sees through [the protagonist] Billy's eyes what it is like to grow up surrounded by massive misinformation about race and miscegenation. Green adds a uniquely small-town Canadian perspective to the topic of interracial romance. Billy's family are the only visible minorities in town, and multiple characters make observations about the large difference between Canada's cultural, political, and juridical environment and the American racial context they glean from television shows and newspaper headlines.--Canadian Literature

New Edition as part City of Vancouver's Legacy Book Project, with foreword by historian Daniel FrancisWho Killed Janet Smith? examines one of the most infamous and still unsolved murder cases in Canadian history: the 1924 murder of twenty-two-year-old Scottish nursemaid Janet Smith. Originally published in 1984, and out of print for over a decade, this tale of intrigue, racism, privilege, and corruption in high places is a true-crime recreation that reads like a complex thriller.We are pleased to be reissuing this title as part of the City of Vancouver's Legacy Book Project. This new edition features a Foreword by historian Daniel Francis.Praise for Who Killed Janet Smith?"e; drug traffic, Roaring Twenties hedonism, official corruption, cutthroat competition among newspapers, a public taste for occultism, etc.-and entrust the whole works to a good storyteller, and you have one terrific political history of Vancouver."e; (Geist Magazine)"e;Starkins has written an engaging and well-crafted popular social history of Vancouver in the ostensibly hopeful, materially buoyant 'flapper era' between the end of the slaughter of the Great War and the onset of the Depression. He reveals the serious fault-lines and profound anxieties of a community emerging in this decade from both its recent frontier past and a costly war into becoming a settled North American city. this is a very worthwhile and informative case study, one that is likely to keep the conundrum in the title alive and encourage further research on the topic. And who did kill Janet Smith and why? Despite the author's attempt to follow up as many leads as he could find, the answer remains elusive. Despite the presence of a smoking gun, whose hand pressed the trigger is still a mystery, although in an updated afterword Starkins warms to one explanation. As with all mysteries, that should remain for now a mystery."e; (BC Studies)"e;Mr. Starkins excavates each layer of the story like an archaeologist with a trowel and camel-hair brush. He misses nothing. The result is one of those unputdownable reads that stays in your memory."e; (Howard Engel)

Poetry. Finalist, Acorn-Plantos Award. VS. is a collection of poems chronicling a foray into the world of amateur boxing by a shy, bookish woman you'd never expect could hit someone in the face. Throughout these poems the author reflects on what it means to be a woman and a boxer, as well as a poet and a boxer. Part instruction manual, part rationalization, VS. is ultimately about the fights, both mental and physical, we all must confront. Muhammad Ali, keep your guard up. You're being measured by a better boxing poet. Kerry Ryan has the clarity of vision that comes with a boxer's discipline and daring, the grace of a true poet's music of body and mind made one. -- Robert Kroetsch The ultimate, to me, is to do more with less, as Winnipeg poet Kerry Ryan does with this book of verse, smartly titled VS...This narrative suite tells the story of how this poet...decides to step onto the canvas and how she deals with the decision -- physically and emotionally. Her ability to communicate both states at once is sharp...Like boxing in sport, poetry is the sweet science of literature. The mechanics are often invisible to us spectators, but that's okay. As Ryan demonstrates, there's much to describe and to discuss in terms of the action, the feelings one experiences, by witnessing someone render someone else stunned if not knocked out cold by fists alone. --The Telegraph- Journal I rarely review poetry collections (simply because I feel inadequate while writing about them) but Kerry Ryan's VS. was a title I could not ignore. If I had my way, I would be standing on a street corner handing this to every teenage girl, especially those that walk hidden behind walls of hair, dressed in oversized sweatshirts and hunched under overpowering backpacks. I would be looking for the girls who don't want to be seen, so I could dare them to do what Ryan did and share in her personal bravery.--Bookslut

Poetry. BOUNCE HOUSE is a collection of small containers for the uncontainable. Restrained in form but not feeling, Harper's fourth book explores the cyclical nature of grief, imperfect parenting, and our willingness to jump without promise of a safe landing.Measured and meticulously weighted, these poems are playful and poignant as they navigate the strange terrain around losing a loved one: how the past and present blur together, the dead simultaneously here and missing, and how joy moves inevitably forward, as if on wheels.

Literary Nonfiction. From its Coast Mountain skyline to its seedy waterfront tattoo parlors, from the private downtown booze-cans of the city's business elite and the Faux Chateau enclave of Whistler, to the riot-shaken streets of the early Sixties and the history of pipe bomb attacks in the city, Moore has been there, done that. He's been a graveyard shift cabdriver, deckhand, bartender, emergency room security guard, reporter and even sunk to the depths of freelance journalism, without losing his sense of humour. Whether he's writing about delivering the news of imminent Nuclear Armageddon during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the history of umbrellas, (serious topic in RAIN CITY), the vanishing game of Cribbage (a rainy day pastime), X-treme Sports, vintage sports cars or the proliferation of anti-depressant meds, he's still 'that a--hole who's always sticking his nose into other peoples' business.'Part memoir, part polemic, RAIN CITY, is his version of a fat old Sixties rock band's Greatest Hits album.

There are no words for it, the final line states in the poem, If You're Lucky. There are no words for it, for the silence. Yet, it speaks. There are no words for the depth of experience, yet many words are used to suggest what it might be, what moments of happiness, sadness, loss and love--the important things--feel like in lives destined for demise. Whether in longer poems or the briefest, Hav invites a reader to consider along with him the feeling of existence, its inevitable joy, sorrow, noise, silence, not in binary terms but as mixtures. We took up his invitation as translators and now invite you to join us and him to enter the space he has created to ponder the important things.Poetry.

Fiction. From the author of 19 Knives and My White Planet comes a brilliant suite of stories built around music and travel. Whether it's a band coming apart at the ruins of Pompeii, or tours through Napoli's volcanic dust and volcanic drugs and jackal-headed bedlam and mountains of stinking trash; or a nostalgic stroll past the homeless in Victoria's inner harbour while gentle Tunisian techno rides the breeze, where the addicted populate park benches, as weighted as Shakespearean characters... lit rock and tiny chalice hidden under his shirt, get it all, draw every wisp of the wreath and heavy is the head that wears the crown, that lights the lighter. Or it's Steppenwolf or The Youngbloods drifting from a car radio as an ambulance siren and lights fly our street... a flashing mime show of grief's rocket. Or, perhaps they're in Iceland, or Denmark, somewhere seriously lunar and attractive spending wheelbarrows of cash the record execs didn't give them. Or it's the Viper Room, Sunset Boulevard, a bar in Butte, Montana, or Johnny Cash in Tijuana. The five stories that comprise CZECH TECHNO are replete with the sizzle and jump we have come to expect in a Mark Jarman story--those shadowbox anthems of lost icy street corners and vanished republics are on grand display, his herky-jerky emblematic style in full roar. And the quest for love, the matters of the heart, is ever-present, weaving through these stories like a knife blade through sand.

Had Charles Bukowski and Mary Karr birthed a literary bastard child, it could have been Rodney DeCroo. From the banks of the Allegheny River to the west coast of Canada comes a fighter and survivor that has chosen poetry and song as his weapons of defence. These poems show you what happens to the traumatized children of drunken, negligent, and equally traumatized parents. Children and teens living in powder keg homes whose "safe place" is a hiding spot behind the furnace, the streets, abandoned houses, and condemned factories.These pages are stained by people that have done horrible things and had horrible things done to them: neglected Vietnam vets, out-of-work coal miners, desperate and violent men with nothing but rage for a world that used them up like canisters of propane. This is not work about the privileged and entitled, but the trapped wage-earners and broken labourers that make the world of the privileged possible. And it is all anointed with liberal quantities of booze and drugs which, of course, make the situations worse; but they also make the days and nights bearable.These are poems from a writer who has crawled through a mile of broken glass and come out the other side more or less intact."Rodney DeCroo's work reveals again and again that he's as true a poet as any writing today. Like all poets who can lay claim to authenticity, he's a troubled marriage of heaven and hell, and in this collection he has brought forth fierce, finely honed poems that are at once brutal and uniquely beautiful. FISHING FOR LEVIATHAN is a piercing imaginative document and a clear, redemptive revelation of what it is to be alive."--Russell Thornton, author of Answer to Blue"These are tough, devastating, gorgeous poems that speak with nuance and a fiercely independent voice -- the like of which I guarantee you've never heard before. FISHING FOR LEVIATHAN is Rodney DeCroo's best collection yet."--Claire Askew, author of How to burn a womanPoetry.

Poetry. THE HEADLESS MAN awakens into a strange landscape. He must make sense of it through his actions, striving to determine whether there is a place for him in a world not made in his image or whether he must imagine something different in order to be. He cannot speak, see, or hear in the usual ways, so he must learn to do these things using other parts of his body, leading him to a fuller sense of himself. In this gothic, picaresque narrative, laced with horror and humour, Montreal surrealist Peter Dubé addresses his concern with queer challenges to identity and sexual boundaries, exploring questions about insider and outsider, what constitutes the normal and what is relegated to the realm of the monstrous.

Poetry. LOW CENTRE OF GRAVITY finds Michael Dennis in familiar territory. You'll laugh. You'll cry. Dennis' poems continue to be the narratives of movies you'd like to someday see. These poems ask the questions you'd really like answered, sauntering into the room and staking claim. The story-telling continues, the good, the bad and the sadly tragic. With LOW CENTRE OF GRAVITY Dennis remains direct, curious, pissed off and honest.

Poetry. Spanning a quarter century of Friesen's work, the poems in OUTLASTING THE WEATHER speak to what is meant by a life lived in poetry. The poems in this selected are inseparable from the poet. To read them is to enter his thinking and ride his breath: to experience the art of making in as immediate a way as is humanly possible. This collection rejects wisdom; rather it is infused with the kind of knowing that comes from having weathered many seasons yet still remaining open to wonder. Memory, its fallibility, and its insistence on uncovering not one truth, but many, is a thread that runs throughout this book. Sometimes it is unclear whose memories we are reading: those of the poet or our own. These poems are archaeological digs through layers of a life lived without the certainty of belief.

Fiction. Finalist for the 2016 Quebec Booksellers' Prize. Translated by David Homel. You're afraid of spiders, heights, sickness, and the way other people look at you. Afraid you'll be betrayed, abandoned, and that the fortune-teller's predictions will come true. You stop smoking, you avoid insects and medical advice, you stop going on stage, taking the airplane, falling in love, leaning over the balcony rail. You don't take your driving test and you start reading novels from the end, as if putting on a chastity belt. You think you are well protected, you will never be caught off-guard, nothing will surprise you. Then a butterfly is discovered in your chest, and you feel its wings beating. It is too late to ignore the sensation. An autobiographical essay on fear, THE LILY PAD AND THE SPIDER (Le nÃ(c)nuphar et l'araignÃ(c)e) explores the symptoms, sources, and genesis of anxiety, from the most intimate to the most ordinary kind. Using short chapters that are fragments of her life, Claire Legendre breaks down the psychological, physical, and social mechanisms associated with that emotion. Her style is lively, often funny, sometimes dark though never complacent, and the story traces a unique path between France and Canada and the Czech Republic, casting a defiant yet vulnerable gaze upon the world.

Fiction. If faced with reincarnation, would you want to come back as a dog, an eagle, a plant? Most poison ivy is reincarnated ivy. You can see the complexity of second lives, the intrepid narrator-detective declares. For those yet reincarnated, devotion can become muddled. And as the characters in THE SECOND DETECTIVE learn, you can't fight the universe, and regret is terrible company. THE SECOND DETECTIVE is a deliriously entertaining reimagining of the hard-boiled detective novel, featuring a mysterious narrator, a missing husband, and a lascivious mountain goat with interspecies interests. Aging beauty Lilah walks into the narrator's office with a photo of Babe Ruth, a story about a sketchy reincarnation plan, and the hope of finding her husband Glen. Despite misgivings, the narrator takes on her case and soon the two are galloping headfirst into Gorgons, contraband blood and villainous brothers, with a sideways trip to the zoo. There are two things you need to know: Every action is a choice that tells you something more, unless it means nothing at all.