Böcker utgivna av Anvil Press

Literary Nonfiction. Poetry. Essays. AGAINST DEATH is an anthology of creative non-fiction exploring the psychological shifts that occur when we prematurely or unexpectedly confront death. AGAINST DEATH is a natural outgrowth of the editor's experience of surviving a vertebral artery dissection and stroke and the subsequent writing of a long poem memoir about the event. To be against something can mean two different things at the same time. Against can mean pressed up close to something, yet it can also signify refusal. These texts deal with the affects of this proximity, taking into account any meaning of the word. Rather than showcase only extreme survival stories or difficult biological situations, the pieces in AGAINST DEATH consider the ways we make sense of death on a personal level and how we integrate that thinking as we continue forward. AGAINST DEATH articulates the personal experiences of each author's near-deathness, utilizing fresh and inventive language to represent what magical thinking proposes. These pieces are incisive and articulate, avoiding the usual platitudes, feel-good bromides, and pep talks associated with near-death encounters. The writing moves past the sob story and confronts the tough circumstance of facing death with truth and compassion, no matter how ugly or (in)convenient. Contributors include: angela rawlings, Joe Average, Aislinn Hunter, Jennifer van Evra, Maureen Medved, Fiona Tinwei Lam, Bruce Meyer, and many others.

Poetry. In MOTEL OF THE OPPOSABLE THUMBS, Stuart Ross continues to ignore trends in Canadian poetry, further following the journey he began over four decades ago with his discoveries of the works of Stephen Crane, E. E. Cummings, Nelson Ball, Ron Padgett, Victor Coleman, Tom Clark, Nicanor Parra, Joe Rosenblatt, and David McFadden. Over the years, his influences have snowballed: Lisa Jarnot, Alice Burdick, Richard Huttel, Opal Louis Nations, Joanne Kyger, Bill Knott, Max Jacob, Larry Fagin, Heather Christle, Charles North, Emily Petit, Paul Guest, James Tate, Valéry Larbaud, Joe Brainard, Matthew Zapruder, Harryette Mullen, Dara Wier, Dag T. Straumsvåg, Mark Strand, Wislawa Szymborska, Mary Ruefle, John Ashbery, Sommer Browning, Jim Smith, Benjamin Peret, Renee Gladman, and more. In this eclectic, pleasurable gathering of poems and sequences, Mr. Ross unapologetically leaps from howls of grief and despair to zany incursions into surrealism and the absurd. He embraces this panoply of approaches to respond to our cantankerous existential dilemma. All that, and it's structured after Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 4! Get a room and enjoy.

Poetry. In language that twists together hobo slang and flights of troubadourish diction, HEARTS AMOK scrutinizes the history of the love sonnet in Surrey, England and simultaneously celebrates the tickings and tollings of one love-struck heart in Surrey, British Columbia. Examining the underpinnings of love, this book journeys from the Middle Ages to the present where Spenst dates his way through Vancouver to finally find the love of his life.

Part travelogue, part autofiction, part record of living under Western regimes that torture, kidnap, and murder its own citizens and those who wish to cross its borders, WHITE LIE is a collection of super-short fictions. Written to be read in a book, but written on a phone, about that technology, about how our stories today blend into factual-seeming fictions and lying propaganda. Repressed memories of living in repressive societies. Like Tierra Whack's album of one-minute rap songs or Stan Douglas' Monodramas. Shorter than a stand-up comic's joke and longer than a criminal tyrannical president's tweet. A museum room full of paintings you zoom thru in thirty seconds or Thirty Two Short Films about Glenn Gould.Clint Burnham's WHITE LIE is a series of quick bursts--'hilarious, tragic, and thoughtful in turn. You won't forget these paragraph-length stories because you will read them again and again.'Fiction.

Poetry. ON THE COUNT OF NONE is the first full-length poetry collection by Kingston poet Allison Chisholm. The surprising poems in this audacious debut explore the relationship between the serious and the absurd, the formal and the illogical, whimsy and threat, and meaning and tone. Chisholm's poems, whose content is often inspired by guidebooks, podcasts, birth notices, and other unlikely sources, are pretty sneaky: they seem to always be trying to get away with something. Sometimes they try to get away with sneaking in invented words and idioms and facts. These are poems whose language looks both ways before licking the envelope.

Poetry. Spanning more than 25 years, I COULD HAVE PRETENDED TO BE BETTER THAN YOU gathers work from three distinct eras of Jay Millar's development as a poet: the wonder years of the 1990s culled from a variety of self-published micropress publications, most of which are hiding in special collections; poems from his trade books issued between 2000 and 2015; and new poems that have emerged during his present condition as one of Canada's most progressive co-publishers. The broad view that this collection offers enables an appreciation of Millar's work as both an idiosyncratic, herkyjerk chronicle of small press culture and a multifaceted mode of questioning how we judge sensations, failures, affections, and relationships. However irreverent he may seem, Jay Millar possesses a disarmingly honest, inventive sensibility closely attuned to the everyday, the overlooked, the transient. Be careful where on your bookshelf of Canadian poetry you place this volume: it might very well set others askew.

Fiction. The city of Fontainebleau, situated on the banks of the Detroit River, is undergoing growing pains and strange things are happening. There's something poisonous in the water, something menacing in the sky, and the soil, laced with an ancient curse, is yielding up unidentified bones along with corn. In this collection of linked stories-part surreal picaresque, part dark comedy, and part murder mystery-magic meets the mundane as misfits and miscreants struggle to free themselves from untenable situations. A girl with mermaid syndrome disappears into a field, a fugitive boy dreams of finding anonymity in Toronto while his abandoned pregnant girlfriend hallucinates his second coming, and a nostalgic chambermaid finds her memories vanish when she puts on a stranger's wig. There's a rash of killings in the city that attract a lovesick police officer. No one knows who's responsible for the crimes, but the city has plenty of candidates, like the crazy son of a judge who murdered a man in Disney World and the grieving vandal who's obsessed with the idea of cutting a woman in half. Then there are the abusive husbands, snuff film producers, inconspicuous con women, and pederasts who live secret double lives. Are the characters in this oddly probable world masters or victims of their own fate? How do their lives intersect? Is it likely that destruction will ultimately prevail over this desolate land, or will consciousness, like a flaming firebird, lead at least some of the cityâ (TM)s inhabitants to self-acceptance, redemption, or escape?

Literary Nonfiction. Film. Cinematic film, the art form that came into its own in the 20th Century, is not only familiar to all of us, but is likely the form that lodges most clearly in memory. Like music--and the music employed in a film--scenes come back, often carrying emotion as well as remembrance. One such film is Harold and Maude, the 1971 production that brought Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon to what are possibly their most memorable roles, and the film that locked so many Cat Stevens songs in mind. A cockeyed love story that stretches the definition of a May/December romance, it reveals the fact that love can indeed be blind to matters of age or appearance.This book takes us back half a century to when this one-of-a-kind film was released--a time with its own kind of turmoil, but a time as well of a different kind of innocence--one worth exploring again. Fifty years, traditionally a golden anniversary, is surely an appropriate time to celebrate.

Poetry. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is rooted in the mind and its disorders. This collection explores moods, medications and side effects, capturing the flatness of depression while still making the language sing. It also probes the landscape of mid-life in all its manifestations: physical changes, psychological upheaval, the notion of becoming invisible, aging and loss, mortality, and the haunting of family and cultural history. PINEAPPLE EXPRESS is Evelyn Lau's eighth collection of poetry and marks an important contribution to the literature on depression.

Literary Nonfiction. Canadian History. Photography. Finalist, Bill Duthie Booksellers' Choice Award (BC Book Prizes). Runaway bestseller, in its second printing mere days after its release! BC Books for Everybody selection. Recommended by Brian Lynch of the Georgia Straight: "Glossy Books for Holiday Giving." Recommended by Peter Darbyshire for Non-Fiction of 2014 (on Corey Redekop's blog). The City of Vancouver has been through a lot in its first 125 years. It's a city that has played host to the likes of Mark Twain, Alice Cooper, Elvis Presley, Winston Churchill, The Beatles, Louis Armstrong, Howard Hughes, Expo '86, and the 2010 Olympic Winter Games. It's the birthplace of Canada's first female member of the legislative assembly, the country's first (and largest) clothing-optional beach, and the reason for the first nationwide prohibition legislation. It was the final resting place of Errol Flynn, and the city where two of his genital warts were briefly (and posthumously) kidnapped. It has been a hotbed of political activism, technological innovation, and bitter racial tension. It is the site of the West Coast's first electric light, and the nation's first female police officers, as well as home to world-renowned actors, deadly snipers, twisted serial killers, UFOs, the founders of Greenpeace, an official Town Fool, and even the headquarters for the Canadian Ku Klux Klan. It's a city on a journey; a journey that has taken it from being an unrefined, out-of-the- way, frontier logging village, to its current position as one of the most livable cities in the world. THIS DAY IN VANCOUVER is the story of that 125- year journey, one day at a time. Adapted from The Dependent magazine's highly successful online column of the same name, and drawn from more than 13 months of research, each of the book's pages is dedicated to a day of the calendar year, featuring a noteworthy event, historical curiosity, or ridiculous headline from Vancouver's past. Seeking to capitalize on renewed interest in the city's history an interest fostered by recent 125th anniversary celebrations each entry seeks to relate the day's events to the history and development of the city as a whole, thus providing not only a historical snapshot, but a broader understanding of many of the individuals and locations that have contributed to the creation of Vancouver's unique cultural identity. In addition, many of the entries are accompanied by a relevant full-sized historical photograph on the facing page, selected from the thousands of images available in the city archives. "Jesse Donaldson is one of the most entertaining non-fiction writers working in the city today. THIS DAY, his first book, shines a light on the historical and contemporary events that shaped Vancouver for each of the 365 days of the year. From the moment John 'Gassy Jack' Deighton arrived on the shores of the Burrard Inlet to eventually and 'inadvertently contribute to the beginnings of the city of Vancouver, ' to that one time in 1925 a terrifying man in Ku Klux Klan regalia stood proudly in front of the mansion that would later become Canuck Place, the book is studded with gems. Donaldson hilariously captures undersung moments in Vancouver history and reminds us of the enduring and endearing humanity that runs across decades." The Tyee "All of the stories are reminders that we should never forget the past, but also that the past is not as far back as wed sometimes like to think." Westender "Donaldson's collection covers 356 days' worth of events (sorry, no accommodation for leap years) and is driven by what dominated talk around the figurative watercooler. If it made it to the front page, it had a good chance of making it into THIS DAY. Which is fair enough. These were the issues that stirred public interest, at least on the local level, and we certainly get a sense of what newspaper editors felt would excite their readership and expand their sales. Whether Vancouverites obligingly joined in with a chorus of applause or jeers is seldom stated. That's not the point. Stories like these, when they happen, become the people's property and shape their sense of the city and their place within it." John Belshaw, author and historian, in a review for BC Studies"

Further Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer takes up where Stuart Ross's Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer left off in 2005. Memoir, tirade, unsolicited advice - this new volume is drawn largely from Stuart's notorious "e;Hunkamooga"e; column that ran in subTerrain, but also includes pieces from his blog as well as previously unpublished work.Here they are together in their offbeat brilliance: snarky, provocative, funny, outlandish, and self-deprecating, these "e;confessions"e; are urgent dispatches that disrupt the too often polite conversation concerning Canadian literary matters. In these pages, Ross says what so many others only think.Praise for Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer:"e;For a quick and dirty breath of fresh air, it's difficult to beat renegade urban poet Stuart Ross's latest effort. Ross has the battle scars and knows poetry isn't about flowers and meadows, it's about blood and guts."e; (Steven Knight, Quill & Quire)"e; a wonderful book-funny, outrageous, and acute. I'll even say it's the best short-essay collection about the writing life that I've read in ages. Every aspiring writer should read Confessions of a Small Press Racketeer, just to find inspiration. And so should every established writer-just to keep humble."e; (Lynne Van Luven, Malahat Review)"e;Of greatest interest are the postscripts that follow many of Ross' essays. Of particular note are those endnotes which deal with the results of his publishing certain columns-such as losing his publisher, or losing friends from the writing community. This fallout, however, may have been expected as Ross is frequently acerbic and trenchant in his criticism, but no less witty or correct for being so."e; (Stephen Cain, Canadian Literature)

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes)Winner, CNFC Readers' Choice Award for "e;Threshold"e;In this debut collection of personal essays, Silcott looks at the tangle of midlife, the long look back, the shorter look forward, and the moments right now that shimmer and rustle around her. Here is love, grief, uncertainty, longing, joy, desire, fury, and fear. Also wandering bears, marauding llamas, light and laundry rooms.Praise for Everything Rustles:Staff Pick, BC BookWorld"e;Jane Silcott writes crisp and compelling narratives; as their import emerges, small epiphanies wink into consciousness, and we are taken up into everyday life. Reading this collection of her work we glimpse layers of the real that seem so often to conceal the world from us. A wonderful book, a book of wonders."e; (Stephen Osborne, Publisher, Geist Magazine)"e;Silcott has a strong voice, and like Didion's it is one that draws the reader in, page after page. In Everything Rustles, the Vancouver-based author examines that slow onset of fears, which are increasingly more pronounced as we age. This collection of short essays is written in an eloquent, poetic and deeply personal manner."e; (Vancouver Sun)"e;Read these wonderful essays slowly; savour their lively intelligence, their thoughtfulness, their cheek. Silcott takes the personal essay right back to its most productive origins and purpose: to explore (essayer) our world's mysteries with amazement and humility."e; (Andreas Schroeder, author of Renovating Heaven)One of the season's "e;Ten Most Anticipated Books,"e; Himalayan Walking Shoes Journal

ADel Hanks is on the verge of academic tenure, but at forty she's also perched on the precipice of either the beginning or the end of the rest of her life.Black Star is a dark comedy, both bitingly funny and transgressive, an unflinching and unsentimental exploration of the female experience, academia, and the idea of power that burns in the mind as white as acid.Medved's new novel is a searing critique of a world we all know too well - one of sexual exploitation, manipulation, and the subtle machinations of power that Black Star filters through the lens of academia. It is at once poetic, tragic, disturbing and funny.

Poetry. Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes). Poetry in Transit selection (poem from the book displayed on Vancouver city buses). Favourite Poetry of 2013, 49th Shelf (Kerry Clare). The Canadian Mad Men Reading List pick, 49th Shelf. On Our Radar pick, 49th Shelf. Most Anticipated Books of Fall 2013: Poetry, 49th Shelf. A selection from WOOD, The Sally Draper Poems, has been featured in Slate. WOOD is a pop-culture meditation on parenthood and all its complexities and complications. In her third collection, Harper deftly inhabits the lives of sons and daughters, fathers and mothers--the real, the mythical, and the surrogate. Pinocchio tries to make his father proud in a tempting world of sex and vice. A young caregiver to a special needs child ponders her romantic future alongside the true meaning of Crimson & Clover. Bess Houdini, married to the world's greatest magician, conjures the children she'll never have. Mad Men's Sally Draper, daughter of a philandering genius, grows up desperately trying to both defy her father and become him. Harper accesses these imagined lives in order to get at ugly, funny, profound truths about parenthood: not being the child a parent hoped for; the horror of becoming like one's parents; the terrifying uncertainty about whether one should have children, yet also the loneliness of childlessness. The poems in WOOD are playful, surprising, tender, brave...and universal in their emotional resonance. A selection from WOOD, The Sally Draper Poems, has been featured in Slate. ...drills to the core of the familiar and the fictional in a nuanced exploration of the makings of a person...Harper fills WOOD with questions of fertility and family, growth and failure, turning over in tensile language what it means to be real. Rooted, economical, and sharp, Harper's poems blur the line between dramatic monologue and memoir, WOOD hammering out what it is we reach for, what it is we lack.--Poetry is Dead WOOD is meticulously packaged, the trunk-ring design from the cover repeated on the endpapers.The package is important, first because it's beautiful, but also because WOOD is a project of parts rather than strictly a whole and how these parts fit together is a huge part of the book's appeal....WOOD appears to have emerged from several different projects whose connections were secondary, and yet how these connections function--how these poems speak to one another, echo one another, underline and overwrite--is the book's most compelling quality. It's a kind of puzzle to discern how these pieces fit together, and each reread will unearth a new layer of understanding (or perhaps another ring in the grain?). Which is good reason then to stay up reading late into the night. --Pickle Me This (blog) While the longings and fears of parents are captured in Wood, it is in the pain and perils of children--wanted or rejected, living up to expectations or running away from their parents--that Harper finds her most powerful voice. In allowing these characters to be glibly, gloriously fictionalized, their narratives become even more authentic.--Quill & Quire

Poetry. Finalist, Acorn-Plantos Award for People's Poetry. Recommended Read, 49th Shelf. Edmonton Journal's Favourite Book List selection. BC Books for BC Schools pick. GLOSSOLALIA is an unflinching exploration of sisterhood, motherhood, and sexuality as told in a series of poetic monologues spoken by the thirty-four polygamous wives of Joseph Smith, founder of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. In Marita Dachsel's second full-length collection, the self-avowed agnostic feminist uses mid-nineteenth century Mormon America as a microcosm for the universal emotions of love, jealousy, loneliness, pride, despair, and passion. GLOSSOLALIA is an extraordinary, often funny, and deeply human examination of what it means to be a wife and a woman through the lens of religion and history. GLOSSOLALIA is a curious, wonderful book, in which a 'self- avowed agnostic feminist uses mid-nineteenth century Mormon America as a microcosm for... universal emotions'... Dachsel's wives are less a chorus than a cacophony, a crowd of dissonant voices, each shouting to be heard above the others... But hear them, we do. The wives each emerge as distinct, aware, embodied, and it is the smallness and closeness of poetry (as well as their poet's talent) that brings them so to life.--Pickle Me This Michael Ondaatje's Collected Works of Billy the Kid did it. Randall Maggs did it with NIGHT WORK: THE SAWCHUCK POEMS and now Marita Dachsel does it with GLOSSOLALIA. Dachsel so inhabits the characters and time of her story as to make it hyper real... Dachsel brings the same sort of vivid, intimate focus, you think you can hear the quiet breathing of these women... GLOSSOLALIA is simply riveting, it is hauntingly sad, it is a clear and articulate indictment of patriarchy and religion... If I had a rating system this book would get all my stars.--Michael Dennis' Poetry Blog ... a series of monologues from the thirty-four polygamous wives of Joseph Smith... Through poems whose form varies as much as the personalities of the women, we're let in on a myriad of secrets and insights into sisterhood, motherhood and sexuality in mid- nineteenth century Mormon America... Avoiding sentimentality Dachsel gives us a haunting collection that illuminates lives that were behind- the-scenes until now. This book is a jewel-like union of unique voices. Together they create a stunning stained glass piece soldered together into a choir of glass and light.--Canadian Poetries

Literary Nonfiction. Biography. History. National Books for Everybody pick (Canada). Never before have as many outrageous and out-sized characters appeared in one place at the same time. Words like rogues, rascals, rapscallions, reprobates and rodomontades don't completely describe these individuals; they are more than each or any combination thereof. They are scalawags. People who claim to push the envelope are stamped, sealed and delivered compared with this bunch. They may be conmen or conwomen, adventurers, fabulists and/or delusional but they all share the extreme passion for life--always more Life! Some are of the modern era, some go way back, but their lust and spirit link them throughout the ages. This book, like its predecessor, SCALAWAGS: ROGUES, ROUSTABOUTS, WAGS & SCAMPS, is devoted to the celebration of that passion that refuses to be stifled by convention. Read about the adventurous lives and wild exploits of Caroline Otero, Andre Malraux, Lord Timothy Dexter, Suzanne Valadon, William Hunt, Mata Hari, Emma Hamilton, Bata Kindai Amgoza, and many more in this second volume of Scalawags! As noble and valorous as our favorite heroes are, many of us can't resist a good tale of villainy. Christy writes about real-life con artists, adventurers, and hedonists that span ages and continents to deliver us juicy stories of skullduggery and debauchery. And if you like this one, it's the sequel to another book that you could also devour--just, try not to break anything if it inspires you to practice swashbuckling in your living room, aye?--Book Riot, 5 Small Press Books to Read in January Words like rogues, rascals, rapscallions, reprobates and rodomontades don't completely describe these individuals. These are stories about con artists, adventurers, fabulists and the delusional--who all share an extreme passion for life. Some are of the modern era, some go way back, but their lust and spirit link them throughout the ages. This book, like Christy's predecessor, Scalawags: Rogues, Roustabouts, Wags and Scamps, published in 2008, is devoted to the celebration of that passion.--Coast Reporter Praise for SCALAWAGS: ROGUES, ROUSTABOUTS, WAGS & SCAMPS: Christy's work reminds us that losers are cool, that the middle-of- the-road might be smoother but the ditches are more interesting, and that every rounder has a good story to to tell.The Globe and Mail

Fiction. THE INCOMPARABLES is the debut novel from the Trillium-nominated author of Animal. Lydia Templar is obsessed with fabric, the texture and weight of cloth. Through fabrics, curtains, costumes, she expresses herself in a way she feels incapable of doing in words. For the past ten years she's apprenticed in the wardrobe department of a small Shakespearean theatre company and has finally been given the opportunity to showcase her designs. When she discovers her husband is having an affair with his leading lady, she seeks revenge the only way she knows how: she weaves her panic, pain, and paranoia into the costumes. It costs her the job. She swears she'll never sew again, packs her things and returns to her mother and the sprawling country estate she left years ago. When a group of counsellors from the city book the family's Bed and Breakfast for the summer to prepare for a special wedding ceremony, Lydia's plans to never thread a needle again are challenged. Through the one thing she cannot live without, the counsellors lure Lydia into a role she did not see coming--the true nature of her self. ...With this novel, [Leggat] takes creativity to a new extreme, while examining heavy themes such as family ties, one's true self and coping with loss... The plot unfolds neatly, taking the reader between present-day Lydia, recovering from her trauma, and Lydia's memories of her experiences in the city. Leggat weaves in plenty of plot twists along the way...The true strength of the novel is lies in the depth that Leggat brings to Lydia and certain other secondary characters with relatively few words and very little description-she would make Hemingway proud... Leggat effortlessly and subtly works in many Shakespearean, Freudian, Grecian and Eastern Mystic references and motifs. Readers will suspect that this is one of those novels that must be read more than once to pick up on all the metaphors and references...--The Winnipeg Free Press This is a dense novel that should not be read quickly. Leggat's attention to detail--particularly tactile detail--is extraordinary, and some sections leap out and come to life only on careful reading... As difficult as it is, the interesting writing and odd plot make THE INCOMPARABLES a worthy read--if you're willing to give it your full attention.--The Other Press

Fiction. Most Anticipated Poetry selection, 49th Shelf. Finalist, Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize (BC Book Prizes), 2016. FOREIGN PARK situates itself in an epoch where prior assurances of the natural world's solidity begin to slip. Poisons enter the Fraser River Basin. An oil slick approaches by night engulfing a fishing vessel, leaving its captain in open waters. Page after page, FOREIGN PARK makes strange with its inhabitants. As it unfolds, it plots itself along the Fraser River overlaying myth and historicity with present day. These calm poems detail the effects of destruction on land and simultaneously explore family and community in Vancouver's coastal cityscape. FOREIGN PARK guides through subtle shifts in temperature and elevation in order to engage with questions on death, ageing, family and fidelity. Jeff Steudel's FOREIGN PARK measures an immediate world through the palpable juxtapositions of the local, what's close to hand, organic flashes of the day's objects that can be touched. The 'foreignicity' of his poetic park reveals the paradox of where and how we live, that in-between margin in the world where we 'don't need to know everything' and 'Every five minutes together [is] a new world.' These poems shimmer in their aliveness.--Fred Wah, former Canadian Parliamentary Poet Laureate and recipient of the Governor General's Award for Poetry ... In Jeff Steudel's FOREIGN PARK, cityscapes become landscapes become environmental wastelands become personal metaphors, leaping from page to page and moment to moment with a calm, intense thoughtfulness like the morning after a hard night's drunk. Careful and poised, yet possessed of a certain self-effacing charm and a genuine warmth, FOREIGN PARK is surprisingly complete and mature for a first book...Fans of naturalist poetry will enjoy FOREIGN PARK, as will readers looking for a more modern take on the style. Steudel brings a fresh, modern and deeply personal perspective to the Canadian landscape through careful craftsmanship, deeply thought out observations and gentle imagery which sees the everyday and calls out new meaning from within it.--Arc Poetry Magazine

Poetry. Most Anticipated Poetry Selection, 49th Shelf (2015). Kevin Spenst's much- anticipated debut collection of poetry opens as a coming-of-age narrative of lower-middle class life in Vancouver's suburb of Surrey, embroidered within a myriad of pop- culture and post-Mennonitism. JABBERING WITH BONG BONG interrogates memory and makes its way into the urban energies of Vancouver. Language is at play with sit-com sonnets and soundscapes of noise; videogame goombas and an Old-Testament God; teenage longing within the power chords of heavy metal and the complicated loss of a father to schizophrenia. JABBERING WITH BONG BONG, chronicles the heartbreaking and slapstick pursuit of truth in the realms of religion, mental health, and poetic form itself. The poems in JABBERING WITH BONG BONG are formally inventive, emotionally charged, and teeming with ideas. Belief and disbelief rub up against each other in this startling and flawless debut collection by Kevin Spenst. JABBERING WITH BONG BONG's urban and suburban-scapes vibrate with a controlled hysteria; a music at turns ebullient, ribald, somber. These important poems do not redeem so much as allow the possibility of redemption: `Sometimes words/mean nothing and everything. Open your mouth and see.'--Jen Currin ...JABBERING WITH BING BONG is a keen and courageous first outing. Spenst attacks his narrative with intelligence, compassion and wit; his is a voice that would lure even the most cautious character home--a voice which one would be well-advised to listen for in the future.--Arc Poetry Magazine Each of these powerful poems is a facet of the surreal. It's not bad either that they're witty, tough and funny. Surrey and its many locales has arrived as literary territory. Fleetwood. Cloverdale. Guildford Mall. Surrey Place. Johnston Heights. The Port Mann. Coast Meridian Road... The work here is in a variety of forms, including a few prose poems. The tone varies but the situation is the same. Here are 24 more reasons for jabbering with Kevin Spenst.--The Vancouver Sun

Literary Nonfiction. Music. Photography by Derek von Essen. The music scene in the mid-eighties was in transition, just as the entire music business was, unaware that it was all about to change in 1991 when Nirvana's watershed release, Nevermind would unexpectedly hit number one on the Billboard chart. But that explosion didn't happen over night. It was the product of years of music scenes like Toronto's developing, clubs seeking original music and communities of musicians, artists and fans supporting them. NO FLASH, PLEASE! documents an important period in Toronto's music community. As seen and heard by two journalists covering it for a number of monthly independent magazines, not only did they experience the local bands they knew and loved becoming famous, they also witnessed soon-to-be legends, come through those same clubs and concert halls. Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry Rollins, all played Toronto during this period and von Essen's camera and Saunders' ears were there to witness their performances in crowds that varied in size from 20 to 500. NO FLASH, PLEASE! doesn't just focus on the music, it also captures the crowds and the community that spawned one of the richest periods in Toronto's music history.

Fiction. Translated from the French by Jacob Homel. From birth, the child was locked away in a minuscule cell, at #804 of level 5969 of the Edifice. Around him... only concrete, without a view of the outside world. And two people: the tyrannical father, slowly killing himself; and the mother, fearing eviction. Unmoving in his roost, the child's life will be disrupted by a transformation that will reveal an unexpected horizon. A unique literary exercise that can't be solely described as a traditional dystopian novel. Indeed, a disturbing strangeness worms its way throughout, a strangeness that could be at home in a fantasy novel, a realist psychological work, a poetic experience. Perhaps Karoline Georges has in fact created a new genre, the claustrophobic novel, but she demonstrates that despite whatever constraints are put on her work, a writer can create the most peculiar worlds through the singular strength of her imagination.--Chantal Guy, La Presse Echoes of George Orwell's 1984 are heard throughout this excellent novel with its style as cold and dark as whatever lies under the stone...--Lisanne Rhéault-Leblanc, 7 jours

Rose Dubois and Julie O'Brien find themselves on the roof of a Montreal apartment building on a scorching summer's day, and from that moment on their fates are intertwined. Worldwide climate change and dramatic shifts in weather patterns foreshadow their predestined suffering.As is soon revealed, the two women share a submissive love for the same man, Charles. Their mutual desire creates an arms race of artificial beauty and debasement; they have a common obsession for plastic surgery and strive to be avatars of the perfect female.As they compete for the love and attention of Charles, both women come to realize that to accept being nothing more than an object, to kneel and grovel before your persecutor, you ultimately become his executioner. In the end, Charles' own obsessions and desires-which he loathes-are ultimately his undoing and downfall.Praise for Breakneck:"e;... With the publication of Breakneck this month (A Ciel ouvert, 2007), the small Canadian publisher Anvil Press concludes its project of publishing all of Arcan's novels in translation. ...Fantastically intelligent, always trying to second-guess how a woman should be, Arcan finds death the only answer to her predicament. In style and emotion-and honesty-her work is a much closer cousin to Edouard Leve's Suicide than to the archness of Belle de Jour or Catherine Millet. The best way to absorb Arcan's work is to read it in chronological order, and then to lament that the titles of her work-Whore, Hysteric, Breakneck, Exit-so succinctly and poignantly summarize the short life and hard-won philosophy of this exceptional writer."e; (The Times Literary Supplement)"e;Breakneck is above all else an anxious novel, swimming in an excess of intoxicants and physical extremes, bouncing back and forth between personal improvement and destruction. It is 'troubling and filled with pleasure'-a phrase one of the women uses to describe her developing romance with Charles. Arcan's frenetic, even disturbing prose- here in translation by Jacob Homel-mimics the book's title, strong-arming its reader into an intense philosophical examination of vanity and excess. What risks coming across as a shallow narrative benefits from the incredibly thoughtful introspection that has come to define Arcan's unique world. The late Quebec writer readily understood the all-consuming depths of what we often wrongly deem as superficial."e; (Quill & Quire)"e;Breakneck, Nelly Arcan's newly translated third novel (originally published in 2007 in French as ciel ouvert), secures the late author's singular place in Canadian letters as a writer who punctures the platitudes of sex. Composed in Arcan's trademark fiery style, Breakneck sets up a struggle between Rose and Julie, two successful, artistic women who want the same man. Breakneck is an unflinching, often outlandish look at female extremity in the matters of the heart, exposing how female rivals often share the same flaws. This is sisterhood, in Arcan's formation, 'at the bottom of the barrel.'"e; (The National Post)One of 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated Fiction Titles, 2015

"e;Literary escapades enlighten and entertain in this boundary-pushing collection."e; (Foreword Reviews)"e;The maestro is at it again"e; (The Vancouver Sun)Ten Women is a new collection of short fiction from one of Canada's preeminent writers. Each of these stories offers us a portrait of a woman with whom the author may or may not have had either an intimate and/or a meaningful relationship. You can't really tell for sure. Depending on your proclivities, some of them might even seem pretty hot, like the lurid fantasies that illustrate the covers of pulp fiction novels, the ethereal intellectual beauties that emanate from poetic fields of asphodels, or the petit bourgeois housewives that litter Alice Munro stories, these ten characters remind us that for every fetish there's a partner.

Fiction. Winner, ReLit Award (Novel). CBC Books' Writers to Watch pick. Nate has chosen wrestler Randy Savage as his hero. As he finishes high school and Savage's popularity starts to wane, Nate begins to see the wrestler's downfall mirrored in his own life. SAVAGE: 1986-2011 chronicles the middle-class implosion of Nate's nuclear family. The novel is about the blurred lines between child and adult roles and the ever-changing landscape of interior heroism. Moore revisits, remasters, and repackages a twenty-five year family odyssey with guts, honesty, and love. ...SAVAGE 1986-2011 is a reminder that no love is easy, and scars might never fade, but they can heal. Better, they may even end up transformed, like so many blue Mondays made into art.--The National Post Writing in 2009 for The National Post, Mark Medley dubbed author Nathaniel G. Moore 'a writer so far removed from the CanLit conversation that he might as well be writing in another language'--an honour that may at first glance sound like baffled, even backhanded praise, but trust me: if you've got your head screwed on right, this is the best of compliments. So it is with Moore's latest, SAVAGE 1986-2011, a novel released this month from Vancouver's Anvil Press, and which continues to defy the narrative and stylistic clichés of our award-winning tomes while still (somehow) remaining utterly Canadian, utterly Torontonian, and utterly of its time. We read for so many reasons, but if 'social change' is yours, then SAVAGE is a must, boasting a sweeping tour of nostalgia, melancholy, and private, pop-addled history, ranging from the Cold War Reagonomics of 1980s Leaside to the Post-Sacred haunts of late-2000s Bloorcourt. Twinning the crumbling mausoleums of our collective spectacles to a private coming-of-age story like you've never read, SAVAGE judders with vitality, mourning a life lived in the spotlight of art, beneath the menace of family, and ravaged by the forever-cuts of love.--Spencer Gordon

Fiction. Everything is just a little more difficult for poor thirty-something Margaret Rudge. Adjusting to single life after her no- good husband Tommy leaves her for a shrink, Margaret manages to snag a job slinging coffee on the street. Everyone hooks up waiting for their latte, her sometimes-fabulous friend Cindy advises. And maybe it's good advice because it's while working at Frank's coffee cart that she meets a handsome young dancer and is drawn into the exhilarating and slightly unhinged world of a NYC modern dance company. Margaret is stuck in a jack-in-the-box, and author Mark Wagstaff expertly mans the crank, turning the lever over and over, letting eerie circus music slowly fill your head. Will she find what she's looking for? Is it hiding in the strangely lit aisles of her downstairs grocery store? Maybe it's avoiding her calls, holed up with a new girlfriend, the cognitive psychology graduate, in a condo in Phoenix. Or maybe, just maybe, it's coffee-stained and unexpectedly expected. In ATTACK OF THE LONELY HEARTS, each character is broken in their own forlorn way. A master of the dark and witty one-liner, Wagstaff manages to spin a hilarious and off- kilter story about what can happen when lonely hearts discover they're attached to even lonelier bodies.

Finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. Winner of the City of Vancouver Book Award. Top 100 of 2017, Globe and Mail."e; Baker pushes readers to reconsider their desire for resolution. Eschewing the easy, the neat, the smoothed over, allows us to consider the things about ourselves we might not like. There's a political dimension to this. One thread running through this book is the threat of environmental collapse - drought, massive bee death, dwindling salmon stock - and humans' awkward interventions. "e; (The Globe and Mail)"e;Her characters possess an abundance of hard-luck stories, true, but she writes them as sometimes wrong and sometimes foolish and hence eminently human in their fallibility."e; (The Georgia Straight)"e;Baker is a skillful, sensitive writer with an uncanny gift for subtle, dark humor There is no judgment or condemnation in these stories, but a tender, deep savoring of the quirks that make us human."e; (Foreword Magazine)Carleigh Baker likes to make light in the dark. Whether plumbing family ties, the end of a marriage, or death itself, she never lets go of the witty, the ironic, and perhaps most notably, the awkward. Despite the title, the resolution in these stories isn't always tragic, but it's often uncomfortable, unexpected, or just plain strange. Character digressions, bad decisions, and misconceptions abound.While steadfastly local in her choice of setting, Baker's deep appreciation for nature takes a lot of these stories out of Vancouver and into the wild. Salmon and bees play reoccurring roles in these tales, as do rivers. Occasionally, characters blend with their animal counterparts, adding a touch of magic realism. Nature is a place of escape and attempted convalescence for characters suffering from urban burnout. Even if things get weird along the way, as Hunter S. Thompson said, "e;When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro."e; In Bad Endings, Baker takes troubled characters to a moment of realization or self-revelation, but the results aren't always pretty.

Poetry. Music. Finalist, Raymond Souster Award League of Canadian Poets. [B]eautiful debut collection...too many great poems inside to quote...Gardiner's lush, piercing collection is layered with climatological subtext and personal history, sure enough of its voice to thaw the coldest of hearts.--BUST, Amber Tamblyn's Poetry Corner Writers, like skaters, score the blank sheet and test the edge of inclusion and exclusion. Most of these poems begin with a word from skating and push off to another topic. Others revisit ideas of femininity, control and language as pattern, or visit the past through movement, or enact principles from the rink such as symmetry, joy, endurance, crescendo and accent, revolution, response. The blade melts ice via friction and pressure. I drifted away from skating but the language is imprinted in me, too, a tracing, a line extending beyond the margins. (from SERPENTINE LOOP) These are engaging and poignant poems about life on and off the ice.