Happy Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! This annual event unites readers, writers, illustrators, publishers, and others to champion independent businesses and support a thriving bookselling community across Canada. In this blog post, we’re highlighting five of our favorite indie bookstores to visit. Octopus Books Located in Ottawa, this Woman-owned independent bookstore has been selling books to make change since 1969. Their selection of books covers a broad range of social awareness, history, poetry, Canadian and Indigenous and international fiction, feminism and gender, and more. Web ..read more

This Earth Day, we’ve compiled a list of essential Environmental Studies titles worth exploring, especially for those interested in the effects of climate change. Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis By David Miller Foreword by Bill McKibben Afterword by Anne Hidalgo If our planet is going to survive the climate crisis, we need to act rapidly. Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small but significant changes tha ..read more

Greening Social Work Education examines how social work educators can best incorporate sustainability content into social work curricula, integrate green teaching methods, and mobilize students and colleagues towards climate action, justice, and leadership. Read the full Q&A about Greening Social Work Education by the editor, Susan Hillock. Tell us about when the idea for writing this book first came to fruition.   Despite urgent calls for global action, growth in international sustainable social work practice, and a solid “green” theoretical knowledge base, North American ..read more

April is recognized as Poetry Month, a time to celebrate poetry across various cultures. Celebrate National Poetry Month with UTP by browsing some of our Poetry titles: The Complete Poems of Michelangelo: Joseph Tusiani’s Classic Translation By Michelangelo Buonarroti Edited by Gianluca Rizzo Translated by Joseph Tusiani Though known primarily as a sculptor and painter, Michelangelo was also a poet. In his lifetime, Michelangelo wrote over 300 poems, many of which were works of devotion and love poems of a spiritual and mystical nature. In 1961, Joseph Tusiani offered the ..read more

Keenly observed and full of heart, Sugar is an intimate portrayal of grief, friendship, and culture clash that will prompt new ways of thinking about the world. Read the full Q&A about Sugar by the authors Edward Narain and Tarryn Phillips. Tell us about when the idea for writing this book first came to fruition. Is there a story behind it? How did this topic get fleshed out?  With a background in film and audio production, Edward always had a desire to create an ethnographic documentary portraying the cultural and racial dynamics of Fiji, where he grew up. Central to the s ..read more

Beyond the Sage on the Stage provides practical, evidence-based communication lessons and debunks often-repeated communication myths. Read the full blog post by author S.L. Seethaler, here. “You know it’s love when it clicks.  Buckle up.” “Texting and driving?  Say it: I’m the problem.  It’s me.”   “Camp in the woods not the left lane.”  “Drive hammered.  Get nailed.”    “Get your head out of your apps.”  “Visiting In-laws?  Slow down.  Get there late.”  You may have chuckled over electronic traffic signs with messages like ..read more

Medieval Eastern Europe, 500–1300 offers a selection of fascinating primary sources pertaining to the history of East Central, Southeastern, and Eastern Europe in the Middle Ages. Read the full Q&A by editor Florin Curta, here. What was your process for selecting sources for this important new collection? In attempting to cover eight hundred years of history, how did you choose what to include? I have taught a course on the medieval history of Eastern Europe for many years at the University of Florida. In the absence of a reader, I began to look for ready-made translations of primary sour ..read more

Happy International Women’s Day! In this blog post, University of Toronto Press (UTP) rounds up some of our titles in the field of Women’s studies and Women’s history. Plus, check out some UTP journal’s collections that are #FreeToRead until the end of March, here. Charm Offensive: Commodifying Femininity in Postwar France By Kelly Ricciardi Colvin Charm Offensive explores how this elevation of French femininity created problems on both sides of the equation: the pressure on French women to conform to an exacting physical standard was immense, while the inability of anyone els ..read more

Examining the emergence of the versified love story as a genre of New Persian literature in the early eleventh century, Love at a Crux situates this literary movement within the broader global history of romance. Read the full Q&A by author Cameron Cross, here. As Love at a Crux is your first book, tell us about when the idea for writing this book first came to fruition. Is there a story behind it? How did this topic get fleshed out? There is indeed a story behind this work! My initial interest in Iran and the Persian language formed when I was about twelve, but there was no direct way to ..read more

In this blog post, University of Toronto Press rounds up some of our titles in the field of Food Studies. Food Mobilities: Making World Cuisines Edited by Daniel E. Bender and Simone Cinotto Bringing together multidisciplinary scholars from the growing discipline of food studies, Food Mobilities examines food provisioning and the food cultures of the world, historically and in contemporary times. The collection offers a range of fascinating case studies, including explorations of Italian food in colonial Ethiopia, traditional Cornish pasties in Mexico, migrant c ..read more