The Unfinished Worldis a beautiful novel that performs a remarkable trick with history time and memory a brilliant interweaving that is both teasingly cerebral and richly heartfelt Bill Gaston author ofJuliet Was a Surprise and The World| Alllitup.ca
Today's Women Asking Women features cartoonist Joana Mosi (The Mongoose, Pow Pow Press) and debut novelist Miranda Schreiber (Iris and the Dead, Book*hug Press) in conversation about grief, memory, and the porous line between reality and fiction.| Alllitup.ca
Our latest Women Asking Women feature brings together fiction writers Rebecca Morris and Nadia Staikos whose debut novels Other Maps (Linda Leith Publishing) and Until They Sleep (Guernica Editions), respectively, wrestle with the constraints placed on women’s lives. Together, they discuss fairy tale traditions, their writing process, and the pressures women continue to navigate.| Alllitup.ca
Sesenarine Persaud's poetry collection A Scent of India (Mawenzi House) is infused with the sounds, scents, colours, and philosophies of India, reflecting on its subtle and not-so-subtle influence on the Americas, from Guyana and Trinidad to Canada and the United States. Read two poems from the book, below.| Alllitup.ca
Our first Women Asking Women feature brings together poet Ellen Chang-Richardson and fiction multi-genre writer Leila Marshy in conversation. Both of their recent books take on questions of identity, belonging, and the lives of those at the margins: In Blood Belies (Wolsak & Wynn), Ellen explores race, belonging, and the visual possibilities of poetry; and in My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books), Leila captures lives at the margins through stories that span cultures and continents. Below,...| Alllitup.ca
Olga Ravn's The Wax Child (Book*hug Press) reimagines the story of seventeenth-century Danish noblewoman Christenze Kruckow, accused of witchcraft, told through the haunting perspective of a wax doll she creates. Translated by Martin Aitken, this unsettling, dizzying horror story explores brutality and power, nature and witchcraft, set in the fragile communities of pre-modern Europe. Read an excerpt from the book, below.| Alllitup.ca
James Yékú’s second collection A Phial of Passing Memories (Mawenzi House) moves through sceneries that blend the strange and the familiar into a poetic study on memory, journeys, and the nature of things. James tells us about his influences and poetic style, and reads from his book.| Alllitup.ca
Jason Purcell writes about the slow and difficult rhythms of living with chronic illness and how those experiences shaped the poems in Crohnic (Arsenal Pulp Press), a meditation on what it means to live a medicalized life. Charting two years of their treatment for Crohn's disease, the collection moves between hospital rooms and the river valley outside their window, tracing the mix of pain and relief, stillness and change, that defines a life lived with ongoing care.| Alllitup.ca
All Lit Up: Tell us about your new book. What can readers expect?| Alllitup.ca
Antanas Sileika is a born storyteller He turns the postwar Vilnius caf of the title with the Soviet menace all around it and even in it into an oasis of civility good food good music good wit good poetry and above allhopehope for better days to come Stories flow through the caf even if they are sad or tragic like a cleansing river The author succeeds in making us want both to visit and to flee his fictional establishment in equal measure that alone is an achievement to be enjoyed and celebrated| Alllitup.ca
In her new collection Notes from the Ward (Gordon Hill Press), poet Steffi Tad-y delves into the raw realities of bipolar disorder and psychotic break shaped by lived experience and sharpened by a poet’s eye. These poems cut through the medicalized and sensationalized narratives that too often surround mental health, revealing a voice that is both intimate and unflinching. Read two poems from the book, below.| Alllitup.ca
Joanna Streetly's new collection All of Us Hidden (Caitlin Press) begins from a place of deep personal loss when her two stepsons and their boat disappeared into the ocean on an eerily calm night on the west coast of Vancouver Island, BC. Joanna's poems ripple out to explore how time continually changes communities, the land, and our sense of self. Today, Joanna reflects on how poetry, like music, carries us through transition and reads two poems from her book.| Alllitup.ca
Jen Winsor's Ship Moms (Breakwater Books) takes on a fascinating subject: true stories about the relationships between cruise ship crew members and the women who became pregnant while working at sea (Jen herself among them). In this feature, Jen reflects on how journaling helped her find her voice, ultimately leading to Ship Moms, and to confronting the imposter syndrome that surfaced while writing it.| Alllitup.ca
We chat with Gail Sidonie Šobat about her new book Songs From This and That Country (Great Plains Press), the teacher who first called her a writer, and which Canadian literary icon she'd like to collaborate with most.| Alllitup.ca
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Fables and fairytales collide with virtual reality, artificial intelligence, and monstrous myths in a world where no one knows what to believe. In his eighth book of poems, Paul Vermeersch responds to the increasing difficulty of knowing what is real and what isn’t, what is our genuine experience and what is constructed for us by The Algorithm. In a “post-truth” society rife with simulations, misinformation, and computer-generated hallucinations, these poems explore the relationship bet...| Alllitup.ca
In his debut collection The Character Actor Convention (The Porcupine's Quill), Guy Elston offers a playful, surreal chorus of voices—from a pumpkin that pens a letter to a sheep recalls a revolution—to explore shifting identities and the fluidity of authenticity. Guy tells us more about his poetic style, with a nod to Emily Dickinson, and reads from his book.| Alllitup.ca
Bradley Somer, author of the queer coming-of-age novel We Are All of Us Left Behind (Freehand Books), reflects on the making of his book and the representation of queer life in literature. Drawing on the Vito Russo Test, he considers how his novel resists reducing characters to their sexuality, instead presenting a story where queerness is part of life rather than its defining plot device.| Alllitup.ca
Skeuomorph, Ritual, Synesthesia, Mutation, and the Protean Well of Language: Fragments of a Poetics| Alllitup.ca
Beaver Hills Forever is full of raunch and riot Conor Kerrs ability to gravitate around the embodied truths of institutional whiteness class settler colonization and the Indigenous Metis experience in the moraine of amiskwaciy is rebellious in its desire to not pathologize or rationalize the violent backdrops of its animate setting With his skilled hand Kerr makes sure there is room for all in the digital economy of the Future Joshua Whitehead author of Jonny Appleseed| Alllitup.ca
I started working at Renegade Arts Entertainment in January as an assistant publisher after graduating UBC with a bachelor’s degree in psychology—not exactly the first job I was expecting to go into. Renegade Arts Entertainment is a small press publishing company founded by my father, Alexander Finbow, and my grandfather, primarily publishing graphic novels, comics, and illustrated children’s books. Joining the family business was not something I intended on doing; I have never been a b...| Alllitup.ca
The ALU Team discusses our August Book Club Pick| alllitup.ca
Malcolm Sutton on the design of Hélène Doiron’s Not Even the Sound of a River:| Alllitup.ca
Find more Homegrown picks here.| Alllitup.ca
All Lit Up: Tell us about Barbara. What can readers expect?| Alllitup.ca
