Winner of the 2004 Archibald Lampman Award (National Capital Region -- Ottawa) and shortlisted for the 2004 Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the 2004 ReLit Awards

In The Vicinity David O'Meara gives us a new kind of cityscape, one that brings its unseen, and usually unsung, materials to the foreground. Brick, concrete (that "not-so-silver screen / …

Tuning a fine ear to Lawrence’s letters from 1906 until his death in 1930, Barry Dempster’s poems uncover the man within the myth and give voice to Lawrence’s passionate mortality. Dempster’s act is one of imagination and homage, a kind of lyrical readership which traces the life-and-death line in a great writer’s life, with its constant …

Two stories run together as both Jabba and his father, Philani, seek to find their footing far from the lives they know. A collective collaboration, Ubuntu is a play in which humanity and cross-cultural barriers are revealed through the play's text and rich imagery. The play is written in beautiful and unique prose, the result of a series of worksh …

Teresa is sexy, seductive, and mentally challenged. Worshipped by her boyfriend, she turns tricks at $5, is addicted to Tim Hortons' doughnuts, lies without thinking, and overflows with endless kindness, but she continues to hold on to her limitless innocence. The Crackwalker captures the music, the dialect, and the unpretty realities of the inner …

A love affair chronicled--from obsession to heartbreak, foolhardiness to faith. In Love Outlandish, Barry Dempster undoes all the clichés that have barnacled our love lives and, with the zest and courage typical of his work, explores their torrents and eddies afresh. As in his previous books, Dempster responds to D.H. Lawrence's plea that we shoul …

In Hard Light Michael Crummey retells and reinvents his father’s stories of outport Newfoundland and the Labrador fishery of a half century ago. Speaking through generations of storytellers, he conjures a world of hard toil and heavy weather, shot through with stoicism, grim humour, endurance, and love. This is writing that is supple and charged …

It would be difficult to exaggerate the worldwide impact of postmodernism on the fields of cultural production and the social sciences over the last quarter century—even if the concept has been understood in various, even contradictory, ways. An interest in postmodernism and postmodernity has been especially strong in Canada, in part thanks to th …

First-wave feminist, activist, and social reformer, Nellie McClung ranked as one of the most popular Canadian authors and among the liveliest critics of Canada's male-dominated society. Well ahead of her time, McClung was known as a writer who dared to discuss taboo topics, and for her inimitable humour, which rivals that of Stephen Leacock. This s …

In the last thirty years of the twentieth century, Canadian federal governments offered varying degrees of support for literary and other artistic endeavour. A corollary of this patronage of culture at home was an effort to make the resulting works available for audiences elsewhere in the world. Current developments in the study of translation and …

More than fifty years after the publication of Anatomy of Criticism, Northrop Frye remains one of Canada's most influential intellectuals. This reappraisal reasserts the relevance of his work to the study of literature and illuminates its fruitful intersection with a variety of other fields, including film, cultural studies, linguistics, and femini …

Forest and other Gleanings reclaims for the contemporary reader a number of stories and sketches written by Catharine Parr Traill after her emigration to Canada in 1832. While most pieces collected here appeared in magazines in Britain, the United States, and Canada, a few have been drawn from archival holdings and make their first appearance here. …

Bertram Brooker won the country's first Governor General's Award for literature in 1936 for his novel Think of the Earth, and his explosive, experimental paintings hang in every major gallery in the country. He was Canada's first multidisciplinary avantgardist, successfully experimenting in literature, visual arts, film, and theatre. Brooker broug …

If one poet can be said to be the Canadian poet, that poet is Al Purdy (1918–2000). Numerous eminent scholars and writers have attested to this pre-eminent status. George Bowering described him as “the world’s most Canadian poet” (1970), while Sam Solecki titled his book-length study of Purdy The Last Canadian Poet (1999). In The Ivory Thou …

Susanna Moodie is, of course, best known for her books Roughing It in the Bush and Life in the Clearings, which are largely comprised of short sketches that she had previously published. What is not widely known, however, is that Moodie had a long and prolific literary career in which short sketches and tales were among her favoured genres. This bo …

Canadian critics and scholars, along with a growing number from around the world, have long recognized the achievements of Canadian short story writers. However, these critics have tended to view the Canadian short story as a historically recent phenomenon. This reappraisal corrects this mistaken view by exploring the literary and cultural antecede …

Other Selves: Animals in the Canadian Literary Imagination begins with the premise, first suggested by Margaret Atwood in The Animals in That Country (1968), that animals have occupied a peculiarly central position in the Canadian imagination. Unlike the longer-settled countries of Europe or the more densely-populated United States, in Canada anima …

The Canadian Modernists Meet is a collection of new critical essays on major and rediscovered Canadian writers of the early to mid-twentieth century. F.R. Scott's well-known poem 'The Canadian Authors Meet' sets the theme for the volume: a revisiting of English Canada's formative movements in modernist poetry, fiction, and drama. As did Scott's poe …

While translation history in Canada is well documented, the history of the translation of Canadian fiction outside the nation remains obscure. Les Belles Étrangères examines the translation of Canadian English-language fiction in France. This book considers the history of this practice, the reasons for the move away from Quebec translators as wel …

A deal has been struck between two men in India—twenty-one hundred rupees in exchange for a young village woman named Rekha. Sent to Calcutta without knowing why, Rekha finds herself in the confines of a brothel with Jamuna, a prostitute and madam, who is resigned to her trade. In these conditions, Rekha must shape her destiny and find inner libe …

She keeps a tight list and doesn't let anything go unchecked, except for one important misplaced item: a favour to her neighbour. With this broken promise, a series of events unfolds that lead to her friend's death. Was the death preventable had the task been completed? A Governor General's Literary Award–winning play, The List is the riveting st …

Single men are hard to come by in 1970s West Germany. So when Karin Maynard, a government secretary, meets the handsome Markus Richter, a single man who pursues her, she can hardly believe her luck. But with Markus continually away on business, thoughts of infidelity begin to consume Karin. Is her insecurity unwarranted, or is she onto something? B …

Humanity is facing extinction, and Penny Plain, elderly and blind, can only sit and wait for the end. After a heartbreaking farewell from her dog, Geoffrey, who leaves to live as a man, Penny faces the inevitable by herself. But she isn't alone for long as a cast of characters, including a serial killer, a cross-dressing banker, and talking dogs ba …

Elsa is a typical fifteen-year-old growing up in the early 1960s. Her world revolves around independence, boys, and being popular at school, despite growing concerns surrounding the Cuban missile crisis. In fact, this is Elsa's opportunity to let loose before the world blows up. Knee-deep in teenage angst, her mission is clear: get drunk for the fi …

This collection of essays studies the cultural and literary contexts of narrative texts produced in English Canada over the last forty years. It takes as its starting point the nationalist movement of the 1960s and 70s, when the supposed absence or weakness of a national sense became the touchstone for official discourses on the cultural identity …

Marjorie Chan's gripping narrative intertwines the past and the present, transporting the reader between Irene and a small group of unlikely heroes caught in the invasion. Scrambling to create a refuge from the horror, the band's struggle to survive binds them in a promise that will span the ages of time, while Irene struggles to reveal the truth d …

Garin was two years old when his mother disappeared from a run-down East Vancouver neighbourhood. And now that the Robert Pickton trials are gaining national attention, Garin wonders if his mother, a First Nations woman, could be one of the unidentified victims. His ailing father isn't forthcoming with answers, and Garin's suspicions are at an all- …

Lately Cathy, a middle-aged comedian, has found very little to laugh about. Everything seems either tragic or frustrating, especially her eighteen-year marriage to Peter, a doctor at a local community clinic. Their list of complaints about one another grows day by day, and their teenage daughter is rarely anything but a handful. Despite a once soli …

From the shore of Ko Phi Phi in Thailand to a suburb in Utah to a mysterious Kafkaesque hole in the ground, carried away on the crest of a wave gives us brief glimpses into the lives of a sphinx-like escort, a grieving father, a conflicted priest, brothers of legend, a felonious housewife, an accountant of time, an orphaned boy, a radio shock jock …

Siblings Josh and Jennifer are coping with the loss of their father, who disappeared in a float plane accident on Christmas Eve one year ago. While Josh scours the Internet for proof that his father is still alive, Jennifer rebels against his denial and their mother Marcia's efforts to return the family to normalcy. When Marcia insists that Josh an …

After suffering a crippling injury during a tour of Afghanistan, Michael has returned home to a Canadian veteran's care facility. The last thing he wanted was to spend his time with a twelve-year-old girl, but Halley, a spirited, physically disabled Pathfinder, is eager to earn her volunteer badge. The pair is at odds from the start, but they find …

Einstein’s Gift follows the life and work of Nobel laureate Dr. Fritz Haber, a man who risked everything for a country that never accepted him. Haber, a chemist who worked hard to enhance life, discovered too late that when his knowledge was put in the hands of the wrong people, millions would die and that his efforts to serve humanity were futil …

The moment Mark meets David his world is thrown off balance. Who could have predicted finding love in a furniture store, or finding it with an unemployed lifeguard? But despite their immediate connection, Mark isn’t sure if David is gay. Mark isn’t even sure if Mark is gay. As he falls deeper in love, Mark works desperately to make David nothin …

David, a successful novelist with writer's block, has received some devastating news he's kept to himself. Lucy, his housekeeper of twenty-eight years, has her own secret that she's afraid to admit. As Lucy is getting ready to end her shift, David invites her to stay and have a drink, curious about the woman who's been tending to his house all thes …

Being a teenager is hard, especially if you're questioning your sexuality and growing up in rural Ontario in the mid '90s. Add to that a temperamental, homophobic father and a tenacious love for Madonna, and it's almost unbearable. Despite it all, Luke loves working on the family farm, and at least he has the support of a group of local outsiders w …

The Drowning Girls

Bessie, Alice, and Margaret have two things in common: they are married to George Joseph Smith, and they are dead. Surfacing from the bathtubs they were drowned in, the three breathless brides gather evidence against their womanizing, murderous husband by reliving the shocking events leading up to their deaths. Reflecting on the m …

Black Teeth is a compelling collection of linked stories that explore growing up in Winnipeg's famously multicultural North End through its 1960s Golden Age and beyond, examining the strange dual legacy of that experience. While urban ethnic mixes and immigrant populations shift over time and place, every city has its foreign part, that transition …

Life Experience Coolant is a collection of four long poems informed by artistic isolation, directionless reading, and the avoidance mechanisms that make poetry simultaneously possible and impossible at our current cultural velocity. Using methodologies of textual appropriation, collage, rehistoricization and self-sufficent rhetoricality, Life Exper …

The value of Theseus is as much about its pedigree as the writing itself. The collaboration for this new book began in the autumn of 1966. bpNichol and Wayne Clifford had worked together early in their literary careers; in fact, Clifford had been the editor of Nichol's first trade book, published with Coach House Press. To begin, Nichol had also wa …

MxT, or ‘Memory x Time,’ is one of the formulas acclaimed poet Sina Queyras posits as a way to measure grief. These poems mourn the dead by turning memories over and over like an old coin, by invoking other poets, by appropriating the language of technology, of instruction, of diagram, of electrical engineering, and of elegy itself. Devastating …

Tessa, Damon, and Keegan share the same band class and the same passion: their pets. When Tessa loses her beloved dog Joey, the event challenges and transforms not only the three children, but the adults in their lives as well.

Heartwarming and humorous, Kindness sensitively captures the reality of children's feelings as they navigate the small and …

Sparking a series of further revelations, the sudden reappearance of David exposes suppressed emotions and desires in everyone and the family must renegotiate their relationships with each other and, ultimately, redefine their family. In sharp, non-stop dialogue, Brad Fraser brings each of his characters to life with a depth, humour, and emotion th …

Stephen Bett's 12th book, Sound Off: a book of jazz, is loosely, a "serial" poem, a book of 76 linked poems, each responding (himself as a jazz fan) to the work of 76 very current jazz musicians. These "jazzers", as he calls them, are not the old tried & true names we all know—they fall, very roughly, into three general camps: the "sons of Miles" …

As a young man in the midst of World War II, Jacob fell in love with an older woman and began a rapturous affair, until she seemingly vanished. As strange things start to happen around him, a familiar young woman appears at Jacob's house with a mysterious notebook. The past doesn't stay buried and the mystery of Maddy Heisler is reveled. With secre …

Speaking a language we understand, Rona Shaffran's poems tell the story of remarkable things that can happen in a broken relationship. These poems inhabit the sharp edges and rich depths of a union too long untended. Ignite begins in wintry suburbia with a man and woman who have lost emotional and physical connection. A magic-realist plunge into th …

bpNichol (1944-1988) has attained iconic status in Canadian literature in recent years, particularly through his lifelong poem The Martyrology and his work in visual and sound poetry. Numerous early "fugitive" sequences of Nichol's are often referred to in critical studies, but are long out of print and only available in library special collections …

In Skin Like Mine Garry Gottfriedson offers a suite of poems on what it feels like to be inside the skin of many contemporary native individuals. He pulls no punches as he reflects on the challenges facing native people today. He speaks of minds full of anticipation yet with tongues pointing arrowheads. He tells of how so many native young people a …

Chaos Inside Thunderstorms draws the audience into the centre of the tumultuous political, socio/economical and historical reality of the First Nations experience in Canada today. It is poetic expression that examines leadership, resilience, honour, shame, and love. It examines the issues implicit in the Idle No More Movement and the Truth and Reco …

Sixteen-year-old Dane and his mom have relocated to Nova Scotia hoping to flee an abusive relationship with Dane’s father. In the midst of this, Dane has been getting into trouble with the law. He’s been caught breaking into and vandalizing an elderly woman’s home and is about to be charged with a host of serious offences unless he participat …

Seventeen years ago, Isobel was murdered at the tender age of nine. Now she finds herself back in her previous life as a ghost searching for the person responsible for her untimely death. But this time she’s powerful, having the ability to watch over the living, observe them, and sometimes interact with them. Isobel has been paying attention to h …

George Littlechild: The Spirit Giggles Within is a stunning retrospective of a career that has spanned nearly four decades. Featuring more than 150 of the Plains Cree artist’s mixed-media works, this sumptuous collection showcases the bold swaths of colour and subtle textures of Littlechild’s work.

Littlechild has never shied away from political …