When I’m working on a manuscript I like to read authors who have a unique style of writing that somehow relates to the tone and style I’m cultivating in the manuscript. I read widely: literary journals featuring flash and micro, international authors in translation, whether it’s prose, poetry, or some other hybrid that activates my brain. Here is a glimpse of some of the books by Canadian writers who helped keep me on track while writing Little Fortified Stories. * Quarrels, by Eve Joseph This is a gem of a book. Sixty-six prose poems, compressed and slightly surreal, in a small format with ..read more

We've got copies of Deborah Kimmett's memoir Window Shopping for God up for giveaway until the end of May. Don't miss your chance to enter to win over at our Giveaways page, where you can check out everything we've currently got up for grabs. ***** “Do you believe in God?” The first day I met the man called Preacherman, I was sitting in front of the scone place at St. Clair and Christie as he preached the word of God. That’s if God was having a really bad day. He stood on his crate, impeccably groomed. He wore a beige cashmere coat—quite fancy for a street preacher—and a fedora with a bl ..read more

We've got copies of Erin Brubacher's debut novel These Songs I Know By Heart up for giveaway until the end of May! Head over to our giveaways page for your chance to win it, and to check out everything else we have on offer! ***** Anything and everything, by Miriam Toews I couldn’t pick just one. Couldn’t do it. I love every one of Miriam Toews’ books. I think what I love most about them is that while they are full of the hardest things, they are somehow joyous even in the darkness. They also feel incredibly true. I learn about people from her books. A Complicated Kindness forever changed my ..read more

Our Children's Librarian columnist, Julie Booker, brings us a new view from the stacks every month. ***** I Found Hope in a Cherry Tree, by Jean E. Pendziwol, with illustrator Nathalie Dion, shows the cherry tree blossoms on the final page of this poem about winter. It begins with a little girl playing with the shadows as sunlight streams in the windows until they disappear. She knows the sun always comes back. The girl walks in the snow listening to stories in the wind, which sometimes howl like wolves, but she knows how to tame them. And even though the snowflakes can sometimes sting “…the ..read more

I’ve always been attracted to coming-of-age stories and so it's not surprising that both of my novels have been described as bildungsroman. My new novel, The Celestial Wife is about a young girl facing a forced marriage who escapes her strict polygamist community and comes of age in the tumultuous 1960’s. I’m attracted to the format because the possibilities for the character, or individual in the case of a memoir, seem limitless to the reader. The central theme of a bildungsroman centres on how someone changes in an environment that is continually challenging them as they grow and develop. H ..read more

Giller Prize winner Suzette Mayr calls the novel “funny, artful, infuriating, and endearing, a poignant meditation on what it means to offer - and accept - the "gift" of love.” Greg Kearney is the author of the story collections Mommy Daddy Baby (2004) and Pretty (2011), which won a ReLit Award, and the novel The Desperates (2013), a Lambda Literary Award finalist. His plays have been mounted at Theatre Passe Muraille and Buddies in Bad Times Theatre. He lives in Toronto and Winnipeg. ** An Evening with Birdy O’Day follows the six-decade relationship between Roland and his estranged friend/ o ..read more

In Rabbit Rabbit Rabbit, the young protagonist, Millicent, makes a lot of questionable decisions. She moves to the Yukon with an open heart to find adventure, and as the northern winter grows cold and dark and she falls into a toxic relationship with a much older man who lives on a renovated school bus, she begins to lose her sense of self, her confidence and her inner compass. I’m drawn to coming-of-age stories about young women who stumble and fall into dark places and find a way to claw their way back out. All too often young women are still shamed for navigating a difficult path in life ..read more

We used to think the Earth was the divine centre of the universe. It turned out to be a speck of dust orbiting a massive burning star. That star turned out to be a speck of dust among hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, and that galaxy turned out to be a speck of dust among two trillion galaxies in the observable universe. Our whole universe might be a speck of dust too, but we can’t know for sure. Humanity, which for most of our history seemed so special and superior to all other life forms, turned out to have the same soupy origin as every one of the 8.7 million other species on ou ..read more

We've got Greg Rhyno's Who By Fire up for giveaway until the end of April.  If you head over to our giveaways page, you'll find your chance to win—and be sure to check out everything else we've got on offer.  ***** Thumps DreadfulWater in DreadfulWater, by Thomas King Thomas King is a renowned academic, celebrated raconteur, Member of the Order of Canada, and yet, he still finds time to crank out the occasional whodunnit. His series gumshoe, Thumps DreadfulWater, is a world-weary and whip-smart ex-cop who’s traded policing for photography, and who’s reluctantly drawn ..read more

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