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Braiding together personal, collective, and historical explorations of what it means to "go west," Amy Kaler offers deep reflections on the meaning of life, middle age, and climate catastrophe. She explores "ruins" of the human history of the North American settler west--faded hamlets, bunkers, fields of cars, bends in the river--that serve as emblems of hope, generational commitment abandoned by contemporary heirs, faith, hubris, even carelessness. These stops are intertwined with reflections on aging, temporality, and change, making the book feel like a deeply satisfying road trip with a thoughtful friend. Moving from meditative to ardent to sobering in compelling and measured ways, Half-Light shimmers with urgency and suggestion.

Of Canoes and Crocodiles is a story of adventure in the remote and threatened landscapes of Papua New Guinea. In 2018, Tony Robinson-Smith and his wife Nadya Ladouceur bought dugout canoes and paddled down the Sepik, the country's longest river. Traveling with local guides and staying in their villages, Tony and Nadya ate smoked piranha and sago pancakes, heard tales of river gods and sorcerers, marvelled at rainbow bee-eaters and cat-size flying foxes, sank in a tropical storm, got lost in mosquito-infested swamplands, and hid from pirates in mangroves near the sea. As the narrative follows the bends of the river, Robinson-Smith incorporates into its flow descriptions of crocodile initiation rites, village "big men," the barter system, raskolism, and sing-sings. He reflects on clan loyalty, colonization, Christian missionaries, bride price, the environmental impacts of foreign logging and mining, and the joys and fears of following the current down a long, snaky waterway in a volatile Australasian country.

Indie Rock candidly focuses on a queer poet/musician's life in Newfoundland and his personal struggles with addiction, OCD, and trauma. This intelligent and punchy collection is steeped in musicality and the geographies and cadences of Newfoundland. With an astute attention to form, rhythm, and aesthetics, Joe Bishop tells an honest and contemporary coming-of-age story about an artist alienated from, but fascinated by, the world he inhabits. Readers dealing with grief and living through recovery will find solace in these poems, as will those conflicted by faith, curious about the rigid confines of masculinity, or yearning to hear a voice like theirs in verse. At its core, Indie Rock is about keeping records, an artist's compulsion to make art, and the power of love and imagination to overcome death.Sales Tips: - Indie Rock is a lively new collection from a writer at the start of a strong literary career: a rhythmically savvy, modern, and unafraid queer voice.- Joe Bishop tells an honest and contemporary coming-of-age story of a poet/musician from Newfoundland who is an addict struggling to stay clean while coping with a mental illness, a queer man often at odds with his slippery sexuality and torn apart by past traumas. He examines hookup culture quite openly, while also noting the dangers of sexual exploration and genderfluidity in towns bound by rigid religious codes and toxic masculinity.- The poet discusses relationships with both men and women, life with another musician who commits suicide, struggles with mental health and OCD, and the Newfoundland landscape and culture.- Indie Rock is about keeping records, an artist's compulsion to make art, and the power of love and imagination to overcome death.- In the book, we witness a transformation of the bravado of Al Purdy into the raw honesty of Billy-Ray Belcourt. We see a translation of the delicacies of John Barton into the brutalities of early works by Michael Ondaatje. - It's a punchy and intelligent collection steeped in musicality and the geographies and cadences of Newfoundland. - Indie Rock strikingly straddles a variety of divides and binaries and perceived divisions in the CanLit poetry landscape, all in productive ways. The book's poetics, for instance, mix traditional lyric free-verse with the sonic density common in many contemporary books. The text also uses narrative techniques, vernacular voices, and observational description. Similarly, the book engages Newfoundland as a regional site. >Audience: - Readers dealing with grief and living through recovery will find solace in these poems, as will those conflicted by faith, curious about the rigid confines of masculinity, or yearning to hear a voice like theirs in verse.- A contemporary readership interested in queer identity and sexuality; the struggles between addiction and faith; or discussions of OCD, suicide, grief, and the nature of imagination, will find this collection intriguing. - The book will certainly have a strong East Coast readership, due to the explorations of landscape and Newfoundland cadence and slang in the poems.