I started law school two thousand kilometres away from my home territory, when I was eighteen years old. Far from home and navigating these spaces as the only openly Indigenous person in my law school class, I chose survival by invisibility. I found spaces outside the law school, such as the Indigenous Students’ Association, where I was safe enough to weep in between classes and visit with kin, but within the four walls of the law school, I put my head down and said nothing. This option was a privilege grounded in my white-coded appearance, and while it was objectively the safest course of ac ..read more

Patrick Grace is an author and teacher who divides his time between Vancouver and Victoria, BC. His poems have been published widely in Canadian literary magazines, including Arc Poetry Magazine, Best Canadian Poetry, Columba, EVENT, The Ex-Puritan, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Prairie Fire, and more. His work has been a finalist for literary contests with CV2 and PRISM international, and in 2020, his poem "A Violence" won The Malahat Review's Open Season Award for poetry. He has published two chapbooks: a blurred wind swirls back for you (2023), and Dastardly (2021), both of which expl ..read more

In The Shadows that Rush Past: A Collection of Frightening Inuit Folktales, storyteller Rachel A. Qitsualik writes, “It is amazing to think that an elder, ten or more centuries ago, would have felt a personal connection to these (thousand year old) tales.” Her introduction also explains that folktales empower the Inuit by linking them to their heritage. Sketches of characters in the endpapers set the tone for all four stories in this book. Using their smarts to defeat unsightly creatures, three of the protagonists are victorious, with one “hero” succumbing to his ego and perishing becaus ..read more

Bestselling author Anne Lamott says "This new book by David Roche, like all his work, is brilliant, illuminated, painful, wise, encouraging and funny. The stories in Standing at the Back Door of Happiness, about his facial deformity side by side with his rich inner beauty and joy in living, filled my heart and soul with a deep compassion for myself, and for you, whoever you are." David Roche has taken his one-man show, The Church of 80% Sincerity, on tour across the world, performing from Sydney to Moscow, London to Los Angeles, and even at the White House. He has also had several roles in fil ..read more

Maia Caron, the Métis, Vancouver Island-based author of the critically acclaimed novel Song of Batoche, is back with a brilliant, page-turning, historical espionage thriller. Described as “extraordinarily powerful” (Genevieve Graham, #1 bestselling author of The Secret Keeper) and “a tense and thrilling ride of a story” (Janie Chang, bestselling author of The Porcelain Moon), The Last Secret is a dazzling and impossible-to-forget dual-timeline story of love, hope, and the unwavering resilience of women. Inspired by true events and real-life historical figures, Th ..read more

We've got copies of The Art of Floating up for giveaway throughout April. Head over to our giveaways page for your chance to win, and to check out everything else we have on offer. ***** I am a speculative writer and a pagan spiritualist at heart. I’m also an autist and an avid dogwalker. My own work reflects the natural world and the surreal collisions of science and spirituality. Though my own journeys have been limited and few, I’m attracted to the fiction and poetry of those who travel far, physically or metaphysically, and are transformed by the journey. Join me with the following books ..read more

Picture Books Every great adventure needs a hero—or two—in The Book That Almost Rhymed (March), by Omar Abed, illustrated by Hatem Aly, a playful take on storytelling and equity that proves how two tellers can make a rhyming tale twice as nice. Our Woolly Bear (March), by Katie Arthur, is a fresh and quirky take on a caterpillar’s familiar journey encouraging kids to approach nature with curiosity and kinship. Once again Saumiya Balasubramaniam explores the challenges of cross-cultural and intergenerational relationships in When I Visited Grandma (April), a sweet story with vivid illustration ..read more

Books of adventure about cycling, horse-back riding, canoeing and, of course, hiking crowd my bookshelf. I can’t get enough of these stories. I even read bad ones—of which there are many! Fortunately, there are lots of wonderful ones too. They inspire me to explore, to write and, most recently, to learn to draw. I’ve made progress on this front; my newest book (#12), 40 Days & 40 Hikes: Loving the Bruce Trail One Loop at a Time, includes 40 of my sketches. It’s a step along another sort of journey: to publish an illustrated journal of one of my long-distance hikes. Here (in no partic ..read more

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees oneself of the chains that shackle the spirit. — Igor Stravinksy Many writers and artists would take in the quote from famed composer Igor Stravinsky with a certain amount of horror. After all, art is supposed to be about freedom and seeking ways to unleash the imagination, so how can limits and constraints act as an opportunity for creation? Nevertheless, a number of writers have claimed that by imposing restrictions on how they create their literary work, they can in fact unlock hidden potentials and ideas that would have ordinarily gone ..read more

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