The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize. The 2008 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology includes poems from the exceptional books shortlisted by judges George Bowering, James Lasdun, and Pura Lopez Colome. The poems in the 2008 anthology are selected and introduced by …

Two Tragedies in 429 Breaths is a book-length series of poems written from the perspective of a daughter who reads Chekhov obsessively while spending a spring and summer caring for her mother, who is dying from pulmonary fibrosis. Through the prism of the relationships in Chekho's work and life emerges an honest, intimate, and even occasionally hum …

In her first collection of short fiction, dee Hobsbawn-Smith creates protagonists struggling to navigate the troubles common to life everywhere, including children attempting to make their parents proud, the collapse of romantic relationships, and dealing with death and loss. Her stories are rife with the disasters of homelessness, domestic violenc …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured in June of each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary prizes.

The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology 2006: A Selection of the Shortlist includes poems from the seven exceptional books shortlisted for the 2006 pr …

House Dreams, Deanna Young's haunted and haunting third collection, is at once a core sample of the life we all live underground, and a view beneath the foundations of the various eras and places that make up one woman's life story. These poems have the plainspoken power, surreal shifting, uncanny logic and transformed everyday imagery of our most …

Experience all the thrills and suspense of chasing down the world’s highest-profile criminals.

What does it take to catch a criminal? Not just any criminal, but one of the world’s most wanted? In Outlaws, Spies, and Gangsters, Laura Scandiffo chronicles eight of history’s most famous manhunts, from searches for drug dealers to dictators, hacke …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured annually with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary awards. The 2010 edition of the anthology includes poems from all the books to be shortlisted this year by judges Anne Carson, Kathleen Jamie, and Carl Phillips. Th …

These urban, commuter-friendly stories capture quirky events in satisfying ways. Their dark undertones and sharp-witted ironies employ familiar settings such as apartments, lofts, studios and city streets , but use unusual and unexpected urban moments as backdrops to outré characters and their given idiosyncrasies. Some of Hayes’ characters are …

Kate Cayley’s is a mind both studious and curious, deeply attuned to the question “what if?” What if Nick Drake and Emily Dickinson met in the afterlife? What if a respected physician suddenly shrank to the size of a pea? What if the blind twins in a Victorian photograph could speak to us? What if we found another Earth orbiting another sun?

C …

A man seeking the high life realizes too late that he has destroyed his possibilities for happiness. Four junkies wait anxiously for a drug dealer who seems to have forgotten their existence. A gang leader attempts to navigate racism, greed, and mutiny within the ranks. An aspiring writer assesses and obsesses over a crime close to home as a young …

Provisional, roaming, obsessed with remnants and deferrals, the poems in Charmaine Cadeau’s second collection navigate flexible and shifting terrains where the speaker’s emotional directness tethers us as we dare to read on. Though Cadeau is capable of some stunning acrobatics—somersaulting mid-line, the imagery defying gravity, the language …

A Doctor Pedalled Her Bicycle Over the River Arno carries within it all the technique, vision, imaginative labour, and razor-sharp precision of Matt Rader’s first two collections, Living Things and Miraculous Hours. But it also ascends to a new and luminous, demanding, particularized realm of the human.

Wildflowers and weeds, newspaper archives a …

Following an unprecedented explosion of literary talent in Newfoundland over the past twenty years, The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Short Fiction assembles the very best work by the island’s most accomplished fiction writers. Featuring selections by Michael Crummey, Jessica Grant, Lisa Moore, and Michael Winter, among others, thi …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured annually with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world’s richest and most prestigious literary awards. This edition of the anthology includes poems from each of the books shortlisted in both the Canadian and international categories for 2011, and are select …

Orient is the third collection from one of Western Canada's most accomplished poets. Composed mainly of three long poems—an extended meditation on the connection between man and fish, the lament of a big-souled cowboy poet looking up from rock bottom, and a historical envisioning of an intimate relationship between a pioneer and a powerful crone� …

This groundbreaking collection of writing brings vital and refreshing insights into current discussions about queer parenting, blending narrative and academic voices from Canada, the United States, England and Australia. The contributors are parents, prospective parents, writers, academics, lawyers, activists, health care professionals and—most s …

In arresting, but harrowing, prose, James Daschuk examines the roles that Old World diseases, climate, and, most disturbingly, Canadian politics--the politics of ethnocide--played in the deaths and subjugation of thousands of aboriginal people in the realization of Sir John A. Macdonald’s "National Dream."

It was a dream that came at great expense …

Governor General's Literary Award finalist and bestselling author Steven Heighton's considerable dramatic lyric powers reach a new sophistication and intensity in his astonishing collection Patient Frame. From the court of Medici to the My Lai massacre; from love for a daughter and mother, through nightmare and displacement, to moments of painful a …

Sometimes tragic, sometimes uproariously funny, This Place a Stranger is a diverse collection of Canadian women writing about their experiences of travelling alone. From the deceptiveness of the everyday to the extremes of geography, weather and violence, these stories go beyond the usual tales of intrepid male explorers and reveal the varied and u …

Atomic Storybook is a novel about a young painter named Owen who is regularly abducted by beings he calls “the space pricks.” These otherworldly visitors perform experiments on him, befuddle him with an absurd riddle about the moon, and show him scenes from his previous lives — one as a 12th century English monk; in another he shares the ward …

A collection of true stories from 54 racialized immigrant and refugee women create an eclectic mix of three generations of voices. Women in their 20s to those in their 70s provide snapshots that begin in the 1960s and go to the present. Together these vividly recounted entries capture historical and everyday moments that reveal striking similaritie …

The fishery, the seal cull, the settlement, the culture—the history of Newfoundland and Labrador has been shaped and witnessed from the deck of sea-going vessels, and those vessels were sparred with local timbers, planked and rigged by the hands of our master shipbuilders. In this companion volume to its highly successful predecessor, author Calv …

Sorbonne-educated and the author of almost 30 books, Ramin Jahanbegloo, a philosopher of non-violence in the tradition of Tolstoy and Gandhi, was arrested and detained in Iran's notorious Evin Prison in 2006.

A petition against his imprisonment was initiated, with Umberto Eco, Jurgen Habermas, and Noam Chomsky among the signatories. International or …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured each year with the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the world's richest and most prestigious literary awards.

The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology: A Selection of the 2007 Shortlist includes poems from the exceptional books shortlisted by jurors John Burnside, Charles …

A stunning collection of poetry by one of our most beloved and renowned poets, Yesno is a companion volume to the much-praised Un (Anansi, 2003), and continues Dennis Lee's urgent poetic project, which is to grapple with the question of the earth's and humankind's future. But where the earlier book concentrated on the deadly impasse to which we hum …

In a series of reflections focused on his hard-working Mennonite family and touching on childhood exploits from shoplifting and go-kart racing to the fear of dying (which arises during the rehearsal for a school Christmas concert), Lloyd Ratzlaff takes readers on a journey from youth to philosophical maturity. Combining elegy and joyful nostalgia i …

In this Lenten devotional, author Debbie McMillan remixes familiar biblical stories so readers are meeting Jesus in contexts that turn the tough questions on them. Readers will be challenged, comforted, and changed. Confronted by Jesus is a multi-functional devotional that can be used for individual and group reflection throughout the year, as well …

The essays in this inaugural volume were commissioned from a number of outstanding writers (many of them national prize winners). Some are professional naturalists, others are poets, filmmakers, dancers, philosophers, activists. All write with passion, originality and humour about the natural world, our place within it, and our impact upon it. The …

Governor General's Award-finalist Steven Heighton employs his signature blend of emotional fierceness and linguistic beauty to tap into "This whim / against what drifts to dark." The Address Book is a collection of remarkably well-crafted love letters, letters of loss, and lyrical moments of complaint and redress where music and intelligence are th …

What is the meaning of grace, of sin, of the sacraments? How are we to understand our dependence on God or relate to the person of Jesus? What roles do the Bible and the church play in our life of faith? Talking about theology needn't be boring or stuffy, the authors argue. Rather, it is exhilarating to explore the why of our faith. Each of 13 key …

The fourth volume of The Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology includes selections from the books shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Poetry Prizes, chosen by the jurors Billy Collins (U.S. Poet Laureate 2001-2003); Bill Manhire (New Zealand Poet Laureate); and Phyllis Webb (recipient of the Governor General's Award for poetry), who also provide an introduct …

The best books of poetry published in English internationally and in Canada are honoured annually with the Griffin Poetry Prize. The 2009 edition of the anthology includes poems from all the books to be shortlisted this year by judges Michael Redhill, Saskia Hamilton, and Dennis O'Driscoll. The poems in the anthology are selected and introduced by …

In this deeply moving and elegantly written book, Halfdan W. Freihow takes Gabriel, his young autistic son, on a journey through the full spectrum of human experience. With great love, profound tenderness, and gentle wit, Freihow captures Gabriel's triumphs and disappointments, his joy and frustration, while struggling to help him make sense of a w …

A Kirkus Reviews Best Book About the Past, and selected as an Honor Book by the Society of School Librarians International

Teddy can't believe how fast his life has changed in just two years. When he was twelve, his father took off, and then his mother married Henry, a man Teddy despises. But Teddy has no control over his life, and adults make all t …

Having developed an impressive reputation for his many novels and non-fiction works, Richard Wagamese now presents a collection of stunning poems ranging over a broad landscape. He begins with an immersion in the unforgettable world where “the ancient ones stand at your shoulder . . . making you a circle / containing everything.” These are Medi …

In the summer of 2012, the Supreme Court of Canada issued rulings on five copyright cases in a single day. The cases represent a seismic shift in Canadian copyright law, with the Court providing an unequivocal affirmation that copyright exceptions such as fair dealing should be treated as users’ rights, while emphasizing the need for a technolog …

The Story of Dunbar: Voices of a Vancouver Neighbourhood draws on interviews with more than 350 local residents, including recent arrivals, descendants of pioneer settlers and the aboriginal inhabitants. Their personal accounts are woven together with information from diaries, records in the City of Vancouver Archives and carefully chosen published …

From Franz Boas to Alice Munro: welcome to an unprecedented panorama of the most significant authors and books of British Columbia culled from Alan Twigg's unrivalled knowledge of more than two centuries of B.C. literary history. The Essentials is the new bible of who wrote what, and why, in B.C., produced with the cooperation of Simon Fraser Unive …

Best of 2010 Pick, Uptown Magazine

Meet Walter Finch, an ungainly kid who survives his cloying suburban childhood to make it only as far as the local mall, where he rises through the ranks to become manager of a shoe store. Unlike his other childhood friends who either flee suburbia or remain as resigned fixtures, Walter is content with his lot and …

The Dreamlife of Bridges is the debut novel from Vancouver writer Robert Strandquist. Leo is a middle-aged, divorced handyman capable of mending almost anything outside of himself. The denial of his son’s death, and his inability to deal with his own pain, has rendered his life fractured and untenable. June is a single mom struggling in the bottl …

Finalist, ReLit Award

Amazon.ca's 50 Essential Canadian Books selection

First published in 1997 to much critical acclaim, Salvage King, Ya! is a novel firmly rooted in Canada’s favourite national pastime—hockey. Critics have called Salvage King, Ya! “the great Canadian novel,” and a “postmodern Canadian classic.” Drinkwater, Jarman’s n …

It's 1998 and Antony Williams is about to meet his match. A native of Windsor, Ontario, Antony is the child of a demanding single mother and an absconding Vietnam War resister who got too used to leaving home, country, and family. With a keen eye on the hybrid Windsor-Detroit landscape, backhanded affection for his hometown, and a growing understan …

Turn Us Again powerfully, painstakingly, and painfully explores a difficult theme, effectively shifting perspectives to show multiple sides of a shattered family history. Readers will find themselves pulled into the darker side of love, partnership and family, the part that usually comes after the movie ends. The writing here is well crafted, devel …

From the author of Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit and Foozlers comes another tale of madcap human folly.

Louella Debra Poule is doing an eighteen-month stint on a weapons charge at a minimum-security institution up the Fraser Valley. Her drug-dealing, sometime-boyfriend Jimmy Flood and his sidekick, Blacky Harbottle, should have taken the rap, but th …

At the heart of every story in Audrey Whitson’s collection is a character seeking personal purpose amongst the deep mysteries of self, and a wholeness amid the fractious nature of life. Whitson’s evocative narration guides us effortlessly through these often turbulent journeys, seamlessly taking in a vast range of time and place along the way. …

Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007)

Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design

The stories in Sugar Bush & Other Stories deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by …

Finalist, Trillium Book Award

The stories in Animal depict people on the brink of major life change. Often at a crossroads they are oblivious to, Leggat's characters seem to be captured in a cinematic slo-mo, teetering on the edge of something unknown, heroically resisting the ever-present pull of Fate. It matters little whether the characters take …

From Literature to Biterature is based on the premise that in the foreseeable future computers will become capable of creating works of literature. Among hundreds of other questions, it considers: Under which conditions would machines become capable of creative writing? Given that computer evolution will exceed the pace of natural evolution a milli …

Winner, SFU Writer's Studio's First Book Competition (2010)

Winner, Canadian Authors Association Exporting Alberta Award (2011)

Unmarried and pregnant in 1968 Winnipeg, teenager Myrl Coulter found herself at a loss. Unable (and perhaps unwilling) to support her child, Myrl’s parents forced her to give the baby up for adoption. After being sent to a …

Winner, 2011 ReLit Award

From the author of Pontypool Changes Everything, Ravenna Gets is a new collection of “wheeled” stories that continue the author’s exploration of “apocalypse “ction.”

In a single convulsion of homicide, the population of Ravenna tries to erase the population of Collingwood. The innocent, standing in their living ro …