ISBN-10: 1926639057
ISBN-13: 9781926639055
Price: $18.95
Pub Date: 2009

Compiled from dozens of Canadian magazines by two award winning authors, this collection of essays covers a diverse range of topics by Canadian writers.

By turns these essays move and excite the reader and help shape Canadian cultural consciousness.

Featuring work from Alex Boyd, Carmine Starnino, Kalam Al-solaylee, Katherine Ashenburg, Kris Demeanor, Jessa Gamble, Nicholas Hune-Brown, Chris Kontges, Anita Lahey, Alison Lee, Nick Mount, Denis Seguin, Chris Turner, Lori Theresa Waller, Nathan Whitlock, and Chris Wood.

Click to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Essays 2009.

Carmine Starnino has published four books of poetry, the most recent of which is This Way Out (Gaspereau Press) nominated for the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. His poems have won the F.G. Bressani Literary Prize, the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the Canadian Authors Association Poetry Award. He the author of A Lover’s Quarrel, a collection of essays on Canadian poetry, and the editor of The New Canon: An Anthology of Canadian Poetry. A new collection of his poetry criticism is forthcoming from Biblioasis in 2011. He lives in Montreal, where he edits Maisonneuve magazine.

Alex Boydis the author of poems, fiction, reviews and essays and has work published in magazines and newspapers such as Taddle Creek, dig, Books in Canada, The Globe and Mail, Quill & Quire and on various sites such as the late Danforth Review. He was the host of the IV Lounge Reading Series from 2003 to 2008 when the series closed its doors. He’s co-editor of the online jouirnal Northern Poetry Review, and his first book of poems Making Bones Walk was published in 2007 by Luna press, winning the Gerald Lampert Award.

ISBN-10: 0978335104
ISBN-13: 9780978335106
Price: $18.95
Pub Date: 2007

In this gritty first novel by Stacey May Fowles, a group of Canadian twenty-somethings wrestle with sex, love, and lies. Each character has a distinct persona made of secrets and deceptions, which is shattered by the end of the book.

Set against the acutely drawn urban landscapes of Montreal and Vancouver, Morgan and Hannah struggle to navigate the maze of love affairs, failed relationships, obsessions, and departures from the familiar.

Deftly shifting perspective from the innocent and idealistic Hannah to the streetwise and damaged Morgan, to their friends and the men in their lives, Be Good eloquently exposes the lies we tell ourselves and others in order to cope with life and reveals the ongoing alienation and isolation of a world where the only reliable narrator is the future.

Click to read an excerpt from Be Good.

Stacey May Fowles‘ written work has been published in various magazines and journals, including Shameless Magazine, Kiss Machine, and subTERRAIN . Her non-fiction writing has been anthologized in the widely acclaimed Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity and First Person Queer. Be Good is her first novel.

ISBN-10: 0978335120
ISBN-13: 9780978335120
Price: $18.95
Pub Date: 2008

The stories in After the Fires light the dark places where reality burns away to reveal something fantastical.

In these stories Ursula Pflugs worlds unfold like waking dreams where what was forgotten is remembered. Her narrators accept these shadow worlds as their truth and the reader is seduced into following along to see what has been refashioned and lies waiting to be discovered among the ashes that remain after the fires.

Click to read an excerpt from After the Fires.

Ursula Pflug is author of the novel Green Music (Tesseract Books, 2002.) She is also an award winning short story writer, professionally produced playwright, book reviewer and creative writing instructor.

ISBN-10: 0978335171
ISBN-13: 9780978335175
Price: $18.95
Pub Date: 2008

From a long list of one hundred poems drawn from Canadian literary journals magazines, this year’s guest editor, award winning poet Stephanie Bolster, has chosen fifty of the best Canadian poems published in 2007.

With this anthology readers, baffled by proliferating poems and poets, can for the first time tap into the remarkable and vibrant Canadian poetry scene.

Readers are invited to explore the currents and cross-currents of poetry in a distinguished volume distilled by a round robin of esteemed editorial taste.

Featuring work from Maleea Acker, James Arthur, Leanne Averbach, Margaret Avison, Ken Babstock, John Wall Barger, Brian Bartlett, John Barton, Yvonne Blomer, Tim Bowling, Heather Cadsby, Anne Compton, Kevin Connolly, Meira Cook, Dani Couture, Sadiqa de Meijer, Barry Dempster, Jeramy Dodds, Jeffery Donaldson, Susan Elmslie, Jason Guriel, Aurian Haller, Jason Heroux, Iain Higgins, Bill Howell, Helen Humphreys, Amanda Lamarche, Tim Lilburn, Michael Lista, Keith Maillard, Don McKay, AF Moritz, Jim Nason, Peter Norman, Alison Pick, E Alex Pierce, Craig Poile, Matt Rader, Michael Eden Reynolds, Shane Rhodes, Joy Russell, Heather Sellers, David Seymour, J Mark Smith, Adam Sol, Carmine Starnino, Anna Swanson, Todd Swift, JR Toriseva, and Leif E Vaage.

Click to read an excerpt from The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2008.

About the editors:

Molly Peacock is the author of five volumes of poetry, including Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems. She is the Poetry Editor of the Literary Review of Canada. Before she emigrated to Canada in1992, she was one of the creators of Poetry in Motion in New York City, and she served as an early advisor to Poetry On The Way. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Globe and Mail, and her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and the TLS. She lives in Toronto.

Stephanie Bolster’s first book, White Stone: The Alice Poems, won the Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award in 1998. She has also published Two Bowls of Milk, which won the Archibald Lampman Award and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. Her work has appeared in literary journals internationally and has also garnered her the Bronwen Wallace Award, the Norma Epstein Award, and The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize. Her several chapbooks include, most recently, Biodme and Past the Roman Arena. Raised in Burnaby, B.C., she now lives in Montreal, where she teaches in the creative writing programme at Concordia University.

ISBN-10: 0973864567
ISBN-13: 9780973864564
Price: $14.95
Pub Date: 2007

In the fantastical world of Sandra Kasturi’s poetry, myth intersects with reality resulting in a unique dream world that even those who generally shy away from poetry find irresistible.

Filled with instances of role reversal, shapeshifting and gender bending, the feminist streak running through these poems becomes a bedtime story whose ending is suspect, unexpected and filled with dark humour.

Whether running with the wolves, or sleeping with them, Kasturi uses her sly words to turn everyday conventions inside out.

With an introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Click to read an excerpt from The Animal Bridegroom.

Sandra Kasturi is a poet, writer and editor. She is currently working on an animated children’s TV series, a novel and another poetry collection. In 2005 she won ARC magazine’s coveted annual Poem of the Year award for her poem “Old Men, Smoking.” She has also received several Toronto Arts Council grants, and a Bram Stoker Award for her editorial work at the on-line magazine, ChiZine. Sandra has three poetry chapbooks published, as well as the well-received SF poetry anthology, The Stars As Seen from this Particular Angle of Night, which she edited. Her poetry has appeared in various magazines and anthologies, including Prairie Fire, On Spec, several of the Tesseracts series, 2001: A Science Fiction Poetry Anthology, and Northern Frights 4. Her cultural essay, “Divine Secrets of the Yaga Sisterhood” appeared in the anthology Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Slayers, Mutants and Freaks. Sandra is a founding member of the Algonquin Square Table poetry workshop and runs her own imprint, Kelp Queen Press. The Animal Bridegroom is her first full-length poetry collection.