Books I’m Still Thinking About Two Years Later by Paul Vermeersch    In the publishing business, something called “conventional wisdom” keeps telling us we only have six months or less to sell a book. Even the most ardent readers scarcely have time to discover new titles before the cycle resets, and many brilliant books simply slip through the cracks. If you’ve ever slugged it out in the book promotion trenches – launch parties, readings series, author festivals, award seasons – then you already know that publicity can be a beast. And it’s an extremely fickle one with a violently sho ..read more

by Joe Ollmann    When the book Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton recently won the Canada Reads literary contest televised on CBC, it was the first time a graphic novel had made it past the first elimination and it created a new wave of first-time graphic novel readers. (Also, it’s a crazy and remarkable thing that we have an annual, televised literary contest that is widely anticipated and watched!) The graphic novel has been gaining acceptance in the literary mainstream in recent years with Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2018 and Seth’s Clyd ..read more

   Happy International Women’s Day! The theme for this year’s women’s day is Inspire Inclusion. As per IWD’s official website, “when women themselves are inspired to be included, there's a sense of belonging, relevance, and empowerment.” At Wolsak & Wynn, we strive to publish stories where women belong, are represented, relevant and empowered. Below are nine women-centred books to celebrate International Women’s Day.   A Is for Acholi by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek A Is for Acholi is a sweeping collection exploring diaspora, the marginalization of the Acholi people, the dusty str ..read more

by Joe Ollmann    When the book Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands by Kate Beaton recently won the Canada Reads literary contest televised on CBC, it was the first time a graphic novel had made it past the first elimination and it created a new wave of first-time graphic novel readers. (Also, it’s a crazy and remarkable thing that we have an annual, televised literary contest that is widely anticipated and watched!) The graphic novel has been gaining acceptance in the literary mainstream in recent years with Nick Drnaso’s Sabrina, nominated for the Booker Prize in 2018 and Seth’s Clyd ..read more

  Let’s just dispense with the formalities. CanLit can be sexy, funny and romantic. It’s full of books that are perfect for Valentine’s Day or anytime you want something to warm your heart or raise your temperature in the cold, dark month of February, without even needing to mention Bear. Here are seven splendid independently published books with love in the mix to get you through the shortest month:   Friend Beloved: Marie Stopes, Gordon Hewit and an Ecology of Letters edited by Laura Jean Cameron Friendship, collaboration and tangled emotions between real people, this is a fascina ..read more

by Steven Beattie    Just consider the numbers. According to the Association of Canadian Publishers, more than 10,000 books are published annually across the trade and educational sectors in this country. That’s new titles; there are also backlist titles from previous years that remain in print and available through bookstores and publishers’ websites. And that’s just here at home. In the U.S. as of 2022, one estimate of output from traditional publishers puts the number of new books appearing each year at anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million. Add in self-published titles and the numbe ..read more

or Gold Star Societies Can Blind You to Other Forms of Light by Catherine Owen    As David Orr states in his scintillating and snippy collection of essays and reviews called You, Too, Could Write a Poem, literary reputation is bestowed most randomly and not always on the most deserving. After all, prize committees aren’t made up of Apollos but of “regular old human beings” muddling within the strange public nature of poetry we have defined in contemporary culture as “part profession, part gaggle of coteries, part contest hustle.” And thus, inevitably, amazing books get erased and ess ..read more

  Who doesn’t enjoy a good coming-of-age story? Or perhaps a nice Bildungsroman on a long winter’s night? But where the story is set can be as important as who is telling it. These five fabulous books have a compelling mix of voice and place and story to keep you reading.   Junie by Chelene Knight Hogan’s Alley in Vancouver in the 1930s. A young artist aided by an East End bookstore owner. Families of Black women and girls trying to live fully.   Prairie Ostrich by Tamai Kobayashi An ostrich farm in southern Alberta. A younger sister turning to her older sister for strength an ..read more

  Sometimes in life there are points of no return, moments that we look back on and realize were turning points, times when everything was suddenly different, and we might feel grief for the ways things were before or for something we didn’t know we had until it was gone. Each of these moments is a kind of small death, like the death of the person we were before that moment or the death of something that was once precious to us. No matter which milestone we’re mourning, there is a spooky book prepared to guide us like Charon crossing the river Styx. So read on to find which creepy tome to ..read more

  Not too long ago I was quoted in a (really great) Toronto Star article about how tough it is to be a small press publisher right now. Spoiler, it’s tough. Of course, it’s been that way for a while. When I started out at Wolsak and Wynn the poet Ken Norris put a poem in his collection called “To the Canadian Publishing Industry in Crisis.” My boss at the time, the brilliant Marja Jacobs, was so delighted by this she printed a large broadsheet of the poem and had it framed. Clearly, publishing in Canada has been hard going, off and on, for a long time. However, it’s especially difficult f ..read more