Alex Pugsley at Lit Live

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Alex Pugsley (Shimmer, Aubrey McKee) will be reading for Lit Live at The Staircase! Alex will be joined by fellow authors Kelly Jo Burke, Nancy Jo Cullen, Ayaz Pirani, Gary Barwin, Lillian Necakov, and Mari-Lou Rowley for an evening celebrating fiction, poetry, and nonfiction hosted by Brent van Staalduinen. The event will take place on Thursday, May 4 at 7PM. Tickets are PWYC/$5-10.

Grab your copy of Shimmer here!

Get your copy of Aubrey McKee here!

ABOUT ALEX PUGLSEY

As a screenwriter and story editor, Alex Pugsley has worked on over 185 produced episodes of television, writing for performers such as Lauren Ash, Scott Thompson, Jenn Whalen, Ennis Esmer, Mark McKinney, Dan Aykroyd, and Michael Cera, and for such series as Hudson & Rex, The Eleventh Hour, Life With Derek, Baxter, Heartland, G-Spot, I Was a Sixth Grade Alien, and The Gavin Crawford Show. Recently, he wrote and directed the feature film Dirty Singles which won for him the Irving Avrich Emerging Filmmaker Award at TIFF. Following the publication of his first novel, Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC’s 2020 Writers to Watch.  His first story collection, Shimmer, was published by Biblioasis.

ABOUT SHIMMER

In ten vividly told stories, Shimmer follows characters through relationships, within social norms, and across boundaries of all kinds as they shimmer into and out of each other’s lives.

Outside a 7-Eleven, teen boys Veeper and Wendell try to decide what to do with their night, though the thought of the rest of their lives doesn’t seem to have occurred to them. In Laurel Canyon, two movie stars try to decide if the affair they’re having might mean they like each other. When Byron, trying to figure out the chords of a song he likes, posts a question on a guitar website, he ends up meeting Jessica as well, a woman with her own difficult music. And when the snide and sharp-tongued Twyla agrees to try therapy, not even she would have imagined the results.

ABOUT AUBREY MCKEE

I am from Halifax, salt-water city, a place of silted genius, sudden women, figures floating in all waters. “People from Halifax are all famous,” my sister Faith has said. “Because everyone in Halifax knows each other’s business.” 

From basement rec rooms to midnight railway tracks, Action Transfers to Smarties boxes crammed with joints, from Paul McCartney on the kitchen radio to their furious teenaged cover of The Ramones, Aubrey McKee and his familiars navigate late adolescence amidst the old-monied decadence of Halifax. An arcana of oddball angels, Alex Pugsley’s long-awaited debut novel follows rich-kid drug dealers and junior tennis brats, émigré heart surgeons and small-time thugs, renegade private school girls and runaway children as they try to make sense of the city into which they’ve been born. Part coming-of-age-story, part social chronicle, and part study of the myths that define our growing up, Aubrey McKee introduces a breathtakingly original new voice.

The World at My Back: Ottawa Launch!

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Join us in Ottawa for the launch of The World at My Back by Thomas Melle, translated by Luise von Flotow! The launch, hosted by Luise von Flotow, will take place on Sunday, May 7 at 6PM.

More details TBA.

Grab your copy of The World at My Back here!

ABOUT THE WORLD AT MY BACK

A FINALIST FOR THE GERMAN BOOK PRIZE • TRANSLATED INTO EIGHTEEN LANGUAGES

Addicted to culture, author Thomas Melle has built up an impressive personal library. His heart is in these books, and he loves to feel them at his back, their promise and challenge, as he writes. But in the middle of a violent dissociative episode, when they become ballast to his increasingly manic self, he disperses almost overnight what had taken decades to gather. Nor is this all he loses: descending further into an incomprehensible madness, he loses friendships and his career as a novelist and celebrated playwright, but the most savage cruelty is that he no longer either knows or understands himself.

Vulnerable and claustrophobic, shattering and profoundly moving, Thomas Melle’s The World at My Back is a book dedicated to the impossibility of reclaiming what has been lost, its lines both a prayer and reminder that, on the other side of madness, other possibilities await.

ABOUT THOMAS MELLE

Born in Bonn, Germany, Thomas Melle studied at the University of Tübingen, the University of Texas at Austin, and the Free University of Berlin. His novels Sickster and 3000 Euros were finalists for German Book Prize in 2011 and 2014 respectively. Melle is also a prolific playwright and translator. His translations from English to German have ranged from plays by William Shakespeare to novels by William T. Vollmann. The World at My Back, also a finalist for the German Book Prize, was a bestseller in Germany. It was made into a highly successful stage play, and has been translated into eighteen languages. Thomas Melle lives in Berlin.

ABOUT LUISE VON FLOTOW

Luise von Flotow teaches translation studies at the University of Ottawa School of Translation and Interpretation. Her recent translations include, from German, They Divided the Sky by Christa Wolf, and Everyone Talks About the Weather…We Don’t by Ulrike Meinhof; and, from French, The Four Roads Hotel by France Théoret. She has twice been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Literary Translation.

Deborah Dundas at Another Story Bookshop

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Join Deborah Dundas, author of On Class (May 9, 2023) at Another Story Bookshop for Independent Bookstore Day! Deborah will be reading alongside eight other authors, including Nancy Cooper, Jillian Tamaki, and Kris Purdy. The event will take place on Saturday, April 29 starting at 12PM, with Deborah reading at 2:30PM.

More details here.

Order your copy of On Class here!

ABOUT ON CLASS

Deborah Dundas is a journalist who grew up poor and almost didn’t make it to university. In On Class, she talks to writers, activists, those who work with the poor and those who are poor about what happens when we don’t talk about poverty or class—and what will happen when we do.

Stories about poor people are rarely written by the poor—and when they are written they tend to fit into a hero narrative. Through hard work, smarts, and temerity, the hero pulls themselves up by their bootstraps in a narrative that simply provides an easy exception: look, we don’t have to give you more, you just have to work harder. On Class is an exploration of the ways we talk about class: of who tells the stories and who doesn’t, and why that has to change. It asks the question: What don’t we talk about when we don’t talk about class? We don’t talk about luck, or privilege, or entitlement. We don’t talk about the trauma that goes along with being poor.

ABOUT DEBORAH DUNDAS

Deborah Dundas grew up poor in the west end of Toronto. She is now a writer and journalist, has worked as a television producer and is currently an editor at the Toronto Star. Her work has appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the UK and Ireland including Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Canadian Notes and Queries, The Belfast Telegraph and The Sunday Independent. She attended York University for English and Political Science and has an MFA in Creative Non-fiction from the University of King’s College. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter and their loving, grumpy cat Jumper.

Accessing Authors: Dale Jacobs and Andrew Forbes

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Come spend the afternoon with Dale Jacobs, co-author of 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer, in conversation with Andrew Forbes (The Only Way is the Steady Way) at the John Muir Branch of the Windsor Public Library. The two will discuss their recent baseball books, and light refreshments will be available. The event will take place on Saturday, May 27 at 3PM (ET).

Grab your copy of 100 Miles of Baseball here!

ABOUT 100 MILES OF BASEBALL

From sandlots to major league stands, two fans set out to recapture their love of the game.

For most of their lives together Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs couldn’t imagine a spring without baseball. Their season tickets renewal package always seemed to arrive on the bleakest day of winter, offering reassurance that sunnier times were around the corner. Baseball was woven into the fabric of their lives, connecting them not only to each other but also to their families and histories. But by 2017 it was obvious something was amiss: the allure of another Sunday watching their Detroit Tigers had devolved to obligation. Not entirely sure what they were missing, they did have an idea on where it might be found: in their own backyard. Drawing a radius of one hundred miles around their home in Windsor, Ontario, Dale and Heidi set a goal of seeing fifty games at all levels of competition over the following summer. From bleachers behind high schools, to manicured university turf, to the steep concrete stands of major league parks, 100 Miles of Baseball tells the story of how two fans rediscovered their love of the game—and with it their relationships and the region they call home.

ABOUT DALE JACOBS

Dale Jacobs is the author of Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). He is the editor of Sunday with the Tigers: Eleven Ways to Watch a Game (Black Moss Press, 2015) and The Myles Horton Reader (University of Tennessee Press, 2003), and co-editor (with Laura Micciche) of A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies (Boynton Cook/Heinemann, 2003). His academic/creative nonfiction book, The 1976 Project: On Comics and Grief, is forthcoming from Wilfred Laurier University Press. He is the editor of The Windsor Review and teaches in the English Department at the University of Windsor.

Rodrigo Rey Rosa at NYU

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Rodrigo Rey Rosa, author of the forthcoming The Country of Toó, will be speaking at the Remarque Institute at NYU! Rey Rosa will be in conversation with Merve Emre and Rachel Nolan. The event will take place both in-person in Room 150 and virtually via Zoom on Tuesday, May 2 at 5PM.

More details and Zoom registration here.

Preorder The Country of Toó here!

ABOUT THE COUNTRY OF TOO

This sumptuously written thriller asks probing questions about how we live with each other and with our planet.

Raised on his wits on the streets of Central America, the Cobra, a young debt collector and gang enforcer, has never had the chance to discern between right and wrong, until he’s assigned the murder of Polo, a prominent human rights activist—and his friend. When his conscience gives him pause and his patrón catches on, a remote Mayan community offers the Cobra a potential refuge, but the people there are up against predatory mining companies. With danger encroaching, the Cobra is forced to confront his violent past and make a decision about what he’s willing to risk in the future, and who it will be for.

Following the Cobra, Polo, a faction of drug-dealing oligarchs, and Jacobo, a child caught in the crosshairs, Rey Rosa maps an extensive web of corruption upheld by decades of political oppression. A scathing indictment of exploitation in all its forms, The Country of Toó is a gripping account of what it means to consider societal change under the constant threat of violence.

ABOUT RODRIGO REY ROSA

Born and raised in Guatemala City, Rodrigo Rey Rosa is the author of five collections of short stories and more than a dozen novels that have been published in sixteen languages. Among his works available in English are The Beggar’s Knife, The Pelcari Project (both translated by expatriate American author Paul Bowles), The Good Cripple, The African Shore, Human Matter, and Chaos: A Fable. Rey Rosa has been awarded Guatemala’s national literature prize, China’s Best Foreign Book Award, and, for his life’s work, the prestigious José Donoso Prize in Chile.

Jason Guriel at GritLit

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Jason Guriel, author of On Browsing and the forthcoming The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles, will be appearing at GritLit in Hamilton! This in-person event will take place on Saturday, April 22 at 3:30PM (ET).

Details and tickets here.

Grab a copy of On Browsing here!

Preorder The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles here!

ABOUT JASON GURIEL

Jason Guriel is the author of several books, including the verse novel Forgotten Work (Biblioasis 2020). His writing has appeared in Air Mail, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Yale Review, The Walrus, Poetry, and elsewhere. He lives in Toronto.

ABOUT ON BROWSING

A defense of the dying art of losing an afternoon—and gaining new appreciation—amidst the bins and shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops.

Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens, On Browsing’s essays chronicle what we’ve lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitization of culture. The latest in the Field Notes series, On Browsing is an elegy for physical media, a polemic in defense of perusing the world in person, and a love letter to the dying practice of scanning bookshelves, combing CD bins, and losing yourself in the stacks.

ABOUT THE FULL-MOON WHALING CHRONICLES

The follow-up to Guriel’s NYT New & Noteworthy Forgotten Work is a mashup of Moby-Dick, The Lord of the Rings, Byron, cyberpunk, Swamp Thing, Teen Wolf … and more.

It’s 2070. Newfoundland has vanished, Tokyo is a new Venice, and many people have retreated to “bonsai housing”: hives that compress matter in a world that’s losing ground to rising tides. Enter Kaye, an English literature student searching for the reclusive author of a YA classic—a beloved novel about teenage werewolves sailing to a fabled sea monster’s nest. Kaye’s quest will intersect with obsessive fan subcultures, corporate conspiracies, flying gondolas, an anthropomorphic stove, and the molecular limits of reality itself. Set in the same world as Jason Guriel’s critically acclaimed verse novel Forgotten Work, which the New York Times called “unlikely, audacious, and ingenious,” and written in virtuosic rhyming couplets, The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles cuts between Kaye’s quest, chapters from the YA novel, and guerilla works of fanfic in a genetically modified monsterpiece: a visionary verse novel destined to draw its own cult-following.

 

Alexandra Oliver: Re-Birth Live Poetry Reading

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Delta Poets are bringing in featured poet Alexandra Oliver (Hail, the Invisible Watchman) from Canada to join local poets for a live reading at the Glass Factory in Arkansas! Opening music by classical guitarist Adrian Little—while you mingle and enjoy some food and drinks from Urban Organics. The reading will take place on Saturday, April 15 at 6PM (CDT). The live readings start promptly at 7PM (doors will be shut at 6:55; no more entry after this time). This will be a show you do NOT want to miss!

Details and tickets here.

Order your copy of Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

Check out Alexandra Oliver’s previous poetry collections here.

ABOUT HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

The poems in Hail, the Invisible Watchman are as tidy as a picket-fence—and as suggestive. Behind the charms of iambs lurks a dark exploration of domestic and social alienation. Metered rhyme sets the tone like a chilling piano score as insidiousness creeps into the neighbourhood. A spectral narrator surveils social gatherings in the town of Sherbet Lake; community members chime in, each revealing their various troubles and hypocrisies; an eerie reimagining of an Ethel Wilson novel follows a young woman into a taboo friendship with an enigmatic divorcée. In taut poetic structures across three succinct sections, Alexandra Oliver’s conflation of the mundane and the phantasmagoric produces a scintillating portrait of the suburban uncanny.

ABOUT ALEXANDRA OLIVER

Alexandra Oliver was born in Vancouver, BC. She is the author of three collections published through Biblioasis: Meeting the Tormentors in Safeway (2013; recipient of the Pat Lowther Memorial Award), Let the Empire Down ( 2016), and Hail, the Invisible Watchman (2022). Her libretto for From the Diaries of William Lyon Mackenzie King, conceived in conjunction with composer Scott Wilson at the University of Birmingham, was performed by Continuum Music in Toronto in December, 2017. Oliver is a past co-editor of Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters (Everyman’s Library/Random House, 2015) as well as of the formalist journal The Rotary Dial. She has performed her work for CBC Radio and NPR, as well as at The National Poetry Slam and numerous festivals and conferences. Oliver holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast program and a Ph.D. in English from McMaster University. She lives in Burlington, Ontario with her husband and son.

All Things Move: Windsor Launch!

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As part of our Indie Bookstore Day celebrations, join us for a launch and conversation with Jeannie Marshall, as we celebrate her latest book: All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel! The event will take place at Sho Art, Spirit & Performance on Saturday, April 29 at 7PM.

More details here.

Pick up your copy today at Biblioasis Bookshop—15% off for our April book club!

Or, order from Biblioasis Press here.

ABOUT ALL THINGS MOVE

What do we hope to get out of seeing a famous piece of art? Jeannie Marshall asked that question of herself when she started visiting the Sistine Chapel frescoes. She wanted to understand their meaning and context—but in the process, she also found what she didn’t know she was looking for.

All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel tells the story of Marshall’s relationship with one of our most cherished artworks. Interwoven with the history of its making and the Rome of today, it’s an exploration of the past in the present, the street in the museum, and the way a work of art can both terrify and alchemize the soul. An impassioned defence of the role of art in a fractured age, All Things Move is a quietly sublime meditation on how our lives can be changed by art, if only we learn to look.

ABOUT JEANNIE MARSHALL

Jeannie Marshall is a writer who has been living in Italy with her family since 2002. A nonfiction author, journalist, and former staff features writer at the National Post in Toronto, she contributes articles to Maclean’s and the Walrus and has published literary nonfiction in The Common, the Literary Review of Canada, Brick, and elsewhere.

Dreaming Home: Toronto Launch!

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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 at this event hosted by Lee Parpart, also featuring Andrew Smith and Karen Mulhallen. The launch will take place at Queen Books on Thursday, June 1 at 6PM ET.

More details here.

Order your copy of Dreaming Home here!

ABOUT DREAMING HOME

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.

ABOUT LUCIAN CHILDS

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.

Steven Heighton Memorial Event: Toronto

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Join us in celebrating the publication of Instructions for the Drowning and remembering the late Steven Heighton. The event will feature words and readings from Michael Redhill, Michael Holmes, and Michael Ondaatje, along with some of Heighton’s music. Refreshments will be provided. The event will take place at Queen Books in Toronto on Thursday, May 18 at 7PM ET.

More details here.

Order your copy of Instructions for the Drowning, here.

Check out Steven’s previous work, Reaching Mithymna, here.

ABOUT STEVEN HEIGHTON

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.