Today, we’re sharing Jess Taylor’s playlist for her debut novel Play! Paul (Paulina) Hayes loves her cousin Adrian. Inseparable from a young age, they play The Lighted City, an imaginary world where they pretend to live together and can escape a childhood that seems both too sad and too grown-up. But The Lighted City isn’t without danger. Jess shares her playlist below and walks us through the presence of music in her novel, as well as in her writing process. We hope you enjoy! Play comes out on April 23, and is available from our online shop or your favourite independent bookstore. When ..read more

Today, Kate Cayley is taking us behind “The Summer the Neighbours Were Nazis,” a story from How You Were Born! I’m fond of the background of this story because I think it illustrates how most stories are cobbled together, a weird mixture of overheard conversations, small scraps, memories and of course pure imagination. But I’m not sure it’s possible to create a story that’s truly from your own brain. We just aren’t that inventive. Yet we do invent. I think I like best the line in Seamus Heaney poem “You are neither here nor there/A hurry through which known and strange things pass.” It describ ..read more

The final title in our Winter/Spring 2024 Fiction Preview is Elevator in Saigon by Thuận, translated by Nguyễn An Lý! From the author of Chinatown comes a personal and political, tragic and bitingly satirical, ethereal journey through Hanoi, Saigon, Paris, Pyongyang, and Seoul. A Vietnamese woman living in Paris travels back to Saigon for her estranged mother’s funeral. Her brother had recently built a new house in Saigon, and staged a grotesquely lavish ceremony for their mother to inaugurate what was rumoured to be the first elevator in a private home in the country. But shortly a ..read more

Next up in our “Poetic Inspiration” series is Kate Hargreaves, author of tend!  B*: Please share up to three poetry books or poets that are important to you, and helped influence the writing of tend. Please also share how they influenced your book. KH: Brute by Emily Skaja – I picked this collection up on a whim while in New Orleans just before the pandemic lockdowns in 2020, and when I was in the early stages of writing tend. I remember reading it on the plane home and being struck by the timeless quality of Skaja’s poems, in which people and settings seemed unanchored by spec ..read more

We’re back with another “Poetic Inspiration” feature! Joining us today is Sandra Ridley, author of Vixen! B*: Please share up to three poetry books or poets that are important to you, and helped influence the writing of Vixen. Please also share how they influenced your book. SR: Christine McNair’s Charm (Book*hug Press). I always go to McNair’s books for her fearlessness and unyielding intensity. If Vixen has some of this, I’d like to think it comes from McNair. Phil Hall’s The Ash Bell (Beautiful Outlaw Press). Hall’s writing has shaped mine for years. From him I keep learning ..read more

Next up in our “Poetic Inspiration” series is Johanna Skibsrud, author of Medium!  B*: Please share up to three poetry books or poets that are important to you, and helped influence the writing of Medium. Please also share how they influenced your book. JS: It occurs to me—in thinking about what poets and works of poetry influenced the writing of Medium—that as much as a work of poetry the book is a kind of love song to the genre of poetry and all its possibilities. In the book’s preface, I cite cultural historian Johan Huizinga’s observation that, of all modes of linguistic ex ..read more

We are so excited to share another Author Spotlight Q&A! Today we are spotlighting Kate Hargreaves, author of tend and Leak. B*: What does being part of the Book*hug author family mean to you? KH: As someone who has been part of the Book*hug family both as an author and on the other side of the industry as a book designer, I feel particularly privileged. Not only did Jay and Hazel take a chance on publishing Leak, my first poetry book, but in between Leak and my second collection tend, I got to be part of so many other titles from a design perspective. Across the board, I was abl ..read more

Next up in our “Poetic Inspiration” series is Hasan Namir, author of Umbilical Cord!  B*: Please share up to three poetry books or poets that are important to you, and helped influence the writing of Umbilical Cord. Please also share how they influenced your book. HN: One of my favourite poets who influenced my poetics is Fred Wah. I remember reading Diamond Grill and I related to it so much as an immigrant. Like Wah, I also felt like I was languageless, my tongue stuck between Arabic and English. Another favourite poet of mine who helped me find my own poetic voice is my mentor and frien ..read more

Today, Shani Mootoo sits down with Shazia Hafiz Ramji, who worked with Shani on her newest collection of poetry, Oh Witness Dey! SM: Thanks Shazia for these great questions. Before I respond, I’d like to say that the process of editing with you was exciting, as you knew, for the most part, the material I was working with. More than knowing it, you felt it. Out of that process came a book, and a friendship. I am grateful for all of it. SHR: Shani, tell us what “witness” means for you? SM: I first came across the notion of the enlightened witness in the writings of the Jewish-Polish-Swiss psycho ..read more

Introducing our “Poetic Inspiration” series! In honour of National Poetry Month, we’ve invited eight authors to share some poetic inspiration and advice. First up is an interview with Michael V. Smith, author of Queers Like Me. B*: Please share up to three poetry books or poets that are important to you, and helped influence the writing of Queers Like Me. Please also share how they influenced your book. MVS: Bronwen Wallace has long been a huge influence on my writing, from the way she stacks and turns her lines to her colloquial voice and her embodied feminism. Stephen Dobyns writes the  ..read more