Come on down to LaHave Books, where poet Luke Hathaway will be reading from his latest collection, The Affirmations. Luke will be joined in reading and conversation by fellow poets Lisa McCabe and Michael Goodfellow. The event will take place on Saturday, April 8 at 4PM ADT.
Get your copy of The Affirmations here!
Winner of the 2021 Confederation Poets Prize • One of The Times’ Best Poetry Books of 2022 • A CBC Best Poetry Book of 2022
“…a trans-mystical work of love and change…”—Ali Blythe, author of Hymnswitch
The mystics who coined the phrase ‘the way of affirmation’ understood the apocalyptic nature of the word yes, the way it can lead out of one life and into another. Moving among the languages of Christian conversion, Classical metamorphosis, seasonal transformation, and gender transition, Luke Hathaway tells the story of the love that rewired his being, asking each of us to experience the transfiguration that can follow upon saying yes—with all one’s heart, with all one’s soul, with all one’s mind, with all one’s strength … and with all one’s body, too.
Luke Hathaway is a trans poet who teaches English and Creative Writing at Saint Mary’s University in Kjipuktuk/Halifax. He has been before now at some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea. His book Years, Months, and Days was named a best book of 2018 in The New York Times. He mentors new librettists as a faculty member in the Amadeus Choir’s Choral Composition Lab, and makes music with Daniel Cabena as part of the metamorphosing ensemble ANIMA.
Jorge Carrión (Against Amazon, Bookshops) will be speaking at Book Culture! The event, hosted by fellow author Casey Plett (On Community, Nov 2023), will take place on Tuesday, April 25 at 7PM.
Get your copy of Against Amazon here.
Get your copy of Bookshops here.
ABOUT JORGE CARRION
Jorge Carrión is a writer and literary critic. He studied at the University of Pompeu Fabra, where he now teaches literature and creative writing. His published works include essays, novellas, novels and travel writing, and his articles have appeared in National Geographic and Lonely Planet Magazine. Bookshops was a finalist in the Premio Anagrama de Ensayo, 2013.
ABOUT AGAINST AMAZON AND OTHER ESSAYS
A history of bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter—and, most urgently, a manifesto.
Good bookshops are questions without answers. They are places that provoke you intellectually, encode riddles, surprise and offer challenges … A pleasing labyrinth where you can’t get lost: that comes later, at home, when you immerse yourself in the books you have bought; lose yourself in new questions, knowing you will find answers.
Picking up where the widely praised Bookshops: A Reader’s History left off, Against Amazon and Other Essays explores the increasing pressures of Amazon and other new technologies on bookshops and libraries. In essays on these vital social, cultural, and intellectual spaces, Jorge Carrión travels from London to Geneva, from Miami’s Little Havana to Argentina, from his own well-loved childhood library to the rosewood shelves of Jules Verne’s Nautilus and the innovative spaces that characterize South Korea’s bookshop renaissance. Including interviews with writers and librarians—including Alberto Manguel, Iain Sinclair, Luigi Amara, and Han Kang, among others—Against Amazon is equal parts a celebration of books and bookshops, an autobiography of a reader, a travelogue, a love letter—and, most urgently, a manifesto against the corrosive influence of late capitalism.
ABOUT BOOKSHOPS: A READER’S HISTORY
Jorge Carrión collects bookshops: from Gotham Book Mart and the Strand Bookstore in New York City to City Lights Bookshop and Green Apple Books in San Francisco and all the bright spots in between (Prairie Lights, Tattered Cover, and countless others). In this thought-provoking, vivid, and entertaining essay, Carrión meditates on the importance of the bookshop as a cultural and intellectual space. Filled with anecdotes from the histories of some of the famous (and not-so-famous) shops he visits on his travels, thoughtful considerations of challenges faced by bookstores, and fascinating digressions on their political and social impact, Bookshops is both a manifesto and a love letter to these spaces that transform readers’ lives.
You are invited to join Biblioasis Publishing at Supermarket Bar Toronto to celebrate the launch some of our spring 2023 books: On Writing and Failure by Stephen Marche, Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton, Way to Go by Richard Sanger, Pascal’s Fire by Kristina Bresnen, Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs, On Class by Deborah Dundas and All Things Move by Jeannie Marshall.
This exciting multi-book event will take place on Wednesday, April 26 at 7PM ET. RSVP on Facebook here!
Check out On Writing and Failure here!
Check out Instructions for the Drowning here!
Check out Way to Go here!
Check out Pascal’s Fire here!
Check out Dreaming Home here!
Check out On Class here!
Check out All Things Move here!
Join us in remembering the late Steven Heighton. The memorial event will take place at Queen Books in Toronto on Thursday, May 18 at 7PM ET.
More details TBA.
Order your copy of Steven’s posthumous collection, Instructions for the Drowning, here.
Check out Steven’s previous work, Reaching Mithymna, here.
Steven Heighton (1961–2022) was a writer and musician. His nineteen previous books include the novels Afterlands, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and the bestselling The Shadow Boxer; the Writers’ Trust Hilary Weston Prize finalist memoir Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos; and The Waking Comes Late, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DROWNING
“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient … As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”—National Post
A man recalls his father’s advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
On this Sunday afternoon you will get to know Steven Heighton: the thoughtful writer, poet, musician and spontaneous giver who passed away in April 2022. Rhonda Douglas, along with Steven’s friends and fellow authors Angie Abdou, Wayne Grady and Dave O’Meara, will steer a conversation about this gifted creative architect of language and story.
Steven’s legacy endures through his poems, novels, short stories, memoir and songs, and in the hearts and memories of those he touched through his capacity to love, listen and empathize. Personal tributes will be given by Ginger Pharand, Steven’s editor and life partner, and Hugh Christopher Brown, his friend and music producer. Also a musical retrospective, Chris and Ginger will perform some of Steve’s songs from his 2021 album The Devil’s Share, along with newer works soon to be produced.
The memorial will take place at the Motel Chelsea on Sunday, May 28 at 4PM, with tickets available beginning April 4.
More details here.
Order your copy of Steven’s posthumous collection, Instructions for the Drowning, here.
Check out Steven’s previous work, Reaching Mithymna, here.
Steven Heighton (1961–2022) was a writer and musician. His nineteen previous books include the novels Afterlands, a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, and the bestselling The Shadow Boxer; the Writers’ Trust Hilary Weston Prize finalist memoir Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos; and The Waking Comes Late, winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
ABOUT INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DROWNING
“To say Heighton is an immensely talented writer is true enough but insufficient … As good a writer as Canada has ever produced.”—National Post
A man recalls his father’s advice on how to save a drowning person, but struggles when the time comes to use it. A wife’s good deed leaves a couple vulnerable at the moment when they’re most in need of security—the birth of their first child. Newly in love, a man preoccupied by accounts of freak accidents is befallen by one himself. In stories about love and fear, idealisms and illusions, failures of muscle and mind and all the ways we try to care for one another, Steven Heighton’s Instructions for the Drowning is an indelible last collection by a writer working at the height of his powers.
Join us in Toronto for the launch of Lucian Childs‘s debut, Dreaming Home! Lucian will be reading from his new book, followed by a Q&A and book signing. The launch will take place at Queen Books on Thursday, June 1 at 6PM ET.
Order your copy of Dreaming Home here!
A queer coming-of-age—and coming-to-terms—follows the after-effects of betrayal and poignantly explores the ways we search for home.
When a sister’s casual act of betrayal awakens their father’s demons—ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps—the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ripple out over the course of forty years, from Lubbock, to San Francisco, to Fort Lauderdale. Swept up in this arc, the members of this family and their loved ones tell their tales. A queer coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms, and a poignant exploration of all the ways we search for home, Dreaming Home is the unforgettable story of the fragmenting of an American family.
Lucian Childs has been a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop. He is a co-editor of Lambda Literary finalist Building Fires in the Snow: A Collection of Alaska LGBTQ Short Fiction and Poetry. Born in Dallas, Texas, he has lived in Toronto, Ontario, for fifteen years, since 2015 on a permanent basis.
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