Baldwin, Styron, and Me: Ottawa Launch
2025-05-16 20:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0N4, Canada
Join author Mélikah Abdelmoumen and translator Catherine Khordoc for the Ottawa launch of Baldwin, Styron, and Me, in partnership with the Ottawa Writers Fest. Host Peter Schneider will sit down with Mélikah and Catherine for a discussion on their acclaimed book. Copies will be available for sale and signing from Perfect Books.
The launch will take place at Library and Archives Canada on Friday, May 16 at 8PM.
Free tickets are required to attend in person. The event will live-stream from this page. No ticket required to watch online.
Grab Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!
ABOUT BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME
An unlikely literary friendship from the past sheds light on the radicalization of public debate around identity, race, and censorship.
In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.
Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.
ABOUT MÉLIKAH ABDELMOUMEN
Mélikah Abdelmoumen was born in Chicoutimi in 1972. She lived in Lyon, France, from 2005 to 2017. She holds a PhD in literary studies from the Université de Montréal and has published many articles, short stories, novels, and essays, including Les désastrées (2013), Douze ans en France (2018), and Petite-Ville (2024). She worked as an editor with the Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature in Montreal until 2021. She was the editor-in-chief of Lettres québécoises, a Québec literary magazine, from 2021 to 2024. Baldwin, Styron, and Me is her tenth book (and the first to be translated).

We're Somewhere Else Now: Montreal Launch!
2025-09-18 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Librairie Bertrand, 430 Rue St. Pierre, Montreal, QC, H2Y 2M5, Canada
Come celebrate the publication of Robyn Sarah’s new poetry collection We’re Somewhere Else Now! Robyn will be reading from her new collection at Librairie Bertrand Bookstore, where copies will also be for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Thursday, September 18 at 5PM.
More details here.
Get a copy of We’re Somewhere Else Now here!
ABOUT WE’RE SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW
In her first collection of new poems in a decade, Robyn Sarah chronicles the pandemic years with quiet wisdom and her flair for meshing the familiar with the numinous.
We’re Somewhere Else Now moves with ease from the particular to the abstract. These are poems of grief and unexpected change, of quiet awe at the human experience. Each poem is a window for the reader to look into, “lit room to lit room,” tracking desultory days of isolation and uncertainty, while also highlighting reasons to pay attention: playing with a grandchild, the rarity of a leap year, the calls of birds.
Three poems from the collection, originally published in The New Quarterly, were nominated for a 2025 National Magazine Award in Poetry.
ABOUT ROBYN SARAH
Poet, writer, literary editor, and musician, Robyn Sarah has lived in Montreal since early childhood. Her writing began to appear in Canadian literary magazines in the 1970s while she completed studies at McGill University and the Conservatoire de musique du Québec. Her tenth poetry collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award in 2015. As well, she has published two collections of short stories, a book of essays on poetry, and a memoir, Music, Late and Soon (2021), that interweaves her youth as a professional-track clarinetist with her return at fifty-nine (after a lapse of thirty-five years) to the piano teacher who was her life mentor. From 2010 until 2020 she served as poetry editor for Cormorant Books.

Self Care: Toronto Launch
2025-09-18 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | The Society Clubhouse, 967 College Street, Toronto, ON, M6H 1A6, Canada
Join us in celebrating the Toronto launch of Russell Smith’s new novel, Self Care! Russell will be in conversation with Lydia Perovic and reading from the book, and copies will be made available for sale and signing by Another Story bookshop.
The launch will take place at the Society Clubhouse on Thursday, September 18 at 7PM.
More details here.
Order a copy of Self Care here!
ABOUT SELF CARE
An electric examination of women and men, sex and love, self-loathing and twenty-first century loneliness.
Between writing a weekly column for The Hype Report and managing her mood stabilizers, Gloria navigates a series of quasi-relationships while commiserating with her best friend about dating apps and dick pics, married men and questionable boundaries. But when she makes a glib pass at Daryn, a stranger on a subway platform crowded with young anti-immigration protesters, and finds him waiting for her outside her health club a couple of days later, a surprising curiosity leads her not to consider a restraining order, but to talk to him.
Claiming she wants to interview him for an article on the incel movement, Gloria meets Daryn for coffee and soon invites him back to her apartment—where his earnestness and painfully restrained desire inspire her to dominate him sexually. As their physical relationship intensifies, so does their emotional connection, and Gloria can’t shake the sense that she’s headed in a dangerous direction.
An electric examination of sex and love, self-loathing, and twenty-first century loneliness, Self Care is a devastating novel about women and men, what they want and what they say they want, and the violent tension between the two.
ABOUT RUSSELL SMITH
Russell Smith is the author of twelve previous books of fiction, nonfiction, and translation. His fiction has been nominated for every major Canadian award, including the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Amazon First Novel Award. A journalist and cultural commentator, his nonfiction has appeared in the New York Review of Books, the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, and elsewhere. An acquiring editor at Dundurn Press, Smith lives in Toronto.

Booktoberfest: Biblioasis Bash in Toronto!
2025-10-01 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | The Supermarket, 268 Augusta Ave, Toronto, ON, M5T 2L9, Canada
Join us in Toronto as we celebrate with six of our authors and their 2025 releases! Mélikah Abdelmoumen (Baldwin, Styron, and Me), stephanie roberts (UNMET), Don Gillmor (On Oil), Ira Wells (On Book Banning), Elise Levine (Big of You: Stories), and Russell Smith (Self Care) will all be reading from their new books, along with an audience Q&A and discussion. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The event will take place at The Supermarket on Wednesday, October 1 at 7PM. More details here!
Get Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!
Get UNMET here!
Get On Oil here!
Get On Book Banning here!
Get Big of You here!
Get Self Care here!

Booktoberfest: Biblioasis Bash in Windsor!
2025-10-02 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | WindsorEats, 400 Erie St E Unit 3, Windsor, ON, N9A 3X4, Canada
Join us in Windsor as we celebrate with four of our authors and their 2025 releases! Mélikah Abdelmoumen (Baldwin, Styron, and Me), stephanie roberts (UNMET), Don Gillmor (On Oil), and Russell Smith (Self Care) will all be reading from their new books, along with an audience Q&A and discussion. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The event will take place at Windsor Eats on Thursday, October 2 at 7PM. More details here.
Get Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!
Get UNMET here!
Get On Oil here!
Get Self Care here!

Precarious: Calgary Launch!
2025-10-08 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Edmonton) | Patricia A Whelan Performance Hall, Central Library 800 3 St. SE, Calgary, AB, Canada
Join us for an evening celebrating the launch of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Calgary-based author Marcello Di Cintio. Hosted by Paul Haavardsrud, this event is presented by Shelf Life Books in partnership with the Calgary Public Library.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, October 8 at 6PM. The event is free, but RSVP is required on Eventbrite.
More details here.
Grab a copy of Precarious here!
ABOUT PRECARIOUS
A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.
In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don’t see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.
ABOUT MARCELLO DI CINTIO
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary.

Big of You: Baltimore Launch!
2025-10-16 18:00 - 20:00 (America/New_York) | Bird in Hand, 11 E 33rd St, Baltimore, MD, 21218, United States
Come out and celebrate the launch of Elise Levine’s latest short story collection, Big of You! Elise will be joined in conversation by Dora Malech at Bird in Hand, and will be reading from the collection. The event will be hosted by Nate Brown. Books will be available for sale and signing from the Ivy Bookshop.
The launch will take place on Thursday, October 16 at 6PM.
Grab a copy of Big of You here!
ABOUT BIG OF YOU
In these nine stories, Elise Levine illuminates the aspirations of women and men (and one sassy millennia-old being) as they sift through the midden of their regrets, friendships, and marriages, and seek fresher ways of inhabiting older selves.
Two young women hitchhike around Europe, a lurid secret between them. A team in space is left reeling after a colleague’s unexpected death. Ambitious brothers take to the skies in an aerostat in 19th-century Paris. Big of You contains stories of real and fantastical life, each with its own distinctive voice and wild vocabulary.
At turns playful, blistering, unabashed, these stories examine the nuanced, kaleidoscopic dimensions of character, of people driven by ambition yet contending with the hauntings of the past. Spanning various settings and time periods, Big of You captures the everyday and the extraordinary in collisions soaring and earthy, exuberant and visceral.
ABOUT ELISE LEVINE
Elise Levine is the author, most recently, of Say This: Two Novellas, the story collection This Wicked Tongue, and the novel Blue Field. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Blackbird, The Walrus, and five times in Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

Big of You: Washington DC Launch!
2025-10-21 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Lost City Books, 2467 18th St NW, Washington, DC, 20009, United States
Come out and celebrate the launch of Elise Levine’s latest short story collection, Big of You! Elise will be joined in conversation by Jeannie Vanasco at Lost City Bookstore, and will be reading from the collection. The event will be hosted by Philip Dean Walker. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Tuesday, October 21 at 7PM.
More details here.
Grab a copy of Big of You here!
ABOUT BIG OF YOU
In these nine stories, Elise Levine illuminates the aspirations of women and men (and one sassy millennia-old being) as they sift through the midden of their regrets, friendships, and marriages, and seek fresher ways of inhabiting older selves.
Two young women hitchhike around Europe, a lurid secret between them. A team in space is left reeling after a colleague’s unexpected death. Ambitious brothers take to the skies in an aerostat in 19th-century Paris. Big of You contains stories of real and fantastical life, each with its own distinctive voice and wild vocabulary.
At turns playful, blistering, unabashed, these stories examine the nuanced, kaleidoscopic dimensions of character, of people driven by ambition yet contending with the hauntings of the past. Spanning various settings and time periods, Big of You captures the everyday and the extraordinary in collisions soaring and earthy, exuberant and visceral.
ABOUT ELISE LEVINE
Elise Levine is the author, most recently, of Say This: Two Novellas, the story collection This Wicked Tongue, and the novel Blue Field. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Blackbird, The Walrus, and five times in Best Canadian Stories. She lives in Baltimore, where she teaches in the MA in Writing program at Johns Hopkins University.

We're Somewhere Else Now: Toronto Launch!
2025-10-22 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Toronto) | Ben McNally Books, 108 Queen St E, Toronto, ON, M5C 1S4, Canada
Come celebrate the Toronto launch of Robyn Sarah’s new poetry collection We’re Somewhere Else Now! Robyn will be reading from her new collection at Ben McNally Books, where copies will also be for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, October 22 at 5PM.
More details here.
Get a copy of We’re Somewhere Else Now here!
ABOUT WE’RE SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW
In her first collection of new poems in a decade, Robyn Sarah chronicles the pandemic years with quiet wisdom and her flair for meshing the familiar with the numinous.
We’re Somewhere Else Now moves with ease from the particular to the abstract. These are poems of grief and unexpected change, of quiet awe at the human experience. Each poem is a window for the reader to look into, “lit room to lit room,” tracking desultory days of isolation and uncertainty, while also highlighting reasons to pay attention: playing with a grandchild, the rarity of a leap year, the calls of birds.
Three poems from the collection, originally published in The New Quarterly, were nominated for a 2025 National Magazine Award in Poetry.
ABOUT ROBYN SARAH
Poet, writer, literary editor, and musician, Robyn Sarah has lived in Montreal since early childhood. Her writing began to appear in Canadian literary magazines in the 1970s while she completed studies at McGill University and the Conservatoire de musique du Québec. Her tenth poetry collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award in 2015. As well, she has published two collections of short stories, a book of essays on poetry, and a memoir, Music, Late and Soon (2021), that interweaves her youth as a professional-track clarinetist with her return at fifty-nine (after a lapse of thirty-five years) to the piano teacher who was her life mentor. From 2010 until 2020 she served as poetry editor for Cormorant Books.

We're Somewhere Else Now: Kingston Launch!
2025-10-23 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Novel Idea, 156 Princess St., Kingston, ON, K7L 1B1, Canada
Come celebrate the Kingston launch of Robyn Sarah’s new poetry collection We’re Somewhere Else Now! Robyn will be reading from her new collection at Novel Idea Bookstore, where copies will also be for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Thursday, October 23 at 7PM.
Get a copy of We’re Somewhere Else Now here!
ABOUT WE’RE SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW
In her first collection of new poems in a decade, Robyn Sarah chronicles the pandemic years with quiet wisdom and her flair for meshing the familiar with the numinous.
We’re Somewhere Else Now moves with ease from the particular to the abstract. These are poems of grief and unexpected change, of quiet awe at the human experience. Each poem is a window for the reader to look into, “lit room to lit room,” tracking desultory days of isolation and uncertainty, while also highlighting reasons to pay attention: playing with a grandchild, the rarity of a leap year, the calls of birds.
Three poems from the collection, originally published in The New Quarterly, were nominated for a 2025 National Magazine Award in Poetry.
ABOUT ROBYN SARAH
Poet, writer, literary editor, and musician, Robyn Sarah has lived in Montreal since early childhood. Her writing began to appear in Canadian literary magazines in the 1970s while she completed studies at McGill University and the Conservatoire de musique du Québec. Her tenth poetry collection, My Shoes Are Killing Me, won the Governor General’s Award in 2015. As well, she has published two collections of short stories, a book of essays on poetry, and a memoir, Music, Late and Soon (2021), that interweaves her youth as a professional-track clarinetist with her return at fifty-nine (after a lapse of thirty-five years) to the piano teacher who was her life mentor. From 2010 until 2020 she served as poetry editor for Cormorant Books.

Precarious: Victoria Launch!
2025-10-25 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | University of Victoria, 3800 Finnerty Rd, Victoria, BC, V8P 5C2, Canada
Join us in celebrating the Victoria launch of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Marcello Di Cintio. Marcello will be in conversation with host Seb Bonet. Books will be provided for sale and signing by the University of Victoria Bookstore.
The launch will take place on October 25 at 7PM.
More details TK.
Grab a copy of Precarious here!
ABOUT PRECARIOUS
A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.
In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don’t see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.
ABOUT MARCELLO DI CINTIO
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary.

Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way: New York Launch!
2025-10-30 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | Glucksman Ireland House, 1 Washington Mews, New York, NY, 10003, United States
Elaine Feeney will be launching her new novel Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way at the NYU Glucksman Ireland House in New York! Books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of NYU Bookstore.
The launch will take place on Thursday, October 30 at 7PM.
More details here.
Order Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way here!
ABOUT LET ME GO MAD IN MY OWN WAY
An Observer, Irish Times, and Sunday Times Ireland Preview Selection
Claire O’Connor is a promising writer who left the family’s struggling farmstead in western Ireland for London, swearing never to return. But after the unexpected death of her mother, she is racked with grief, and when her father is diagnosed with cancer, she decides to return home to care for him, destroying everything she’d so carefully built up in the process. The pandemic follows, and Claire falls into a comfortable routine, one increasingly shaped by a growing obsession: the lives of the 20-something trad wives she discovers on social media. When Tom, her lost London love, unexpectedly shows up the next town over, her anxieties and obsessions collide, the resulting conflict forcing Claire and her brothers to finally deal with their family’s historic trauma—a trauma whose evidence is carved into the beams of the family home and the stone floors upon which their ancestors bled.
Ranging through recent Irish history, Let Me Go Mad in My Own Way is Elaine Feeney’s most ambitious novel to date, a work of literary and cultural exorcism and a profound exploration of family, history, violence, and hope.
ABOUT ELAINE FEENEY
Elaine Feeney is a writer from the west of Ireland. Her 2020 debut novel, As You Were, was shortlisted for the Rathbones Folio Prize and the Irish Novel of the Year Award and won the Kate O’Brien Award, the McKitterick Prize, and the Dalkey Festival Emerging Writer Award. Feeney has published three collections of poetry including The Radio Was Gospel and Rise, and her short story “Sojourn” was included in The Art of The Glimpse: 100 Irish Short Stories, edited by Sinéad Gleeson. Her work appears widely in The Moth, The Paris Review, The Stinging Fly, Poetry Review, and elsewhere. Feeney lectures at the University of Galway.

Precarious: Windsor Launch!
2025-11-04 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Biblioasis Bookshop, 1520 Wyandotte St E, Windsor, ON, N9A 3L2, Canada
Join us in celebrating the Windsor launch of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Marcello Di Cintio. Marcello will be reading from his latest book followed by an audience Q&A at Biblioasis Bookshop, where books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Tuesday, November 4 at 7PM.
Grab a copy of Precarious here!
ABOUT PRECARIOUS
A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.
In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don’t see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.
ABOUT MARCELLO DI CINTIO
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary.

Precarious: Toronto Launch!
2025-11-05 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Workers Action Centre, 720 Spadina Avenue, Toronto, ON, M5S 2T9, Canada
Join us in celebrating the Toronto launch of Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Marcello Di Cintio. Marcello will be in conversation with Zoë Newman and Vannina Sztainbok. The event is presented by Another Story Bookshop, Talking Precarity Podcast, and Biblioasis; and sponsored by the Workers Action Centre.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, November 5 at 7PM. The event is free, and you can RSVP on Eventbrite.
More details here.
Grab a copy of Precarious here!
ABOUT PRECARIOUS
A series of profiles of foreign workers illuminates the precarity of global systems of migrant labor and the vulnerability of their most disenfranchised agents.
In 2023, after weeks of investigation, United Nations Special Rapporteur Tomoyo Obokata came to a scathing conclusion: Canada’s Temporary Foreign Worker program is “a breeding ground for contemporary forms of slavery.” Workers complained of excessive hours and unpaid overtime; of being forced to perform dangerous tasks or ones not specified in their contracts; of being physically abused, intimidated, and sexually harassed; and of overcrowded, unsanitary living conditions that deprived them of their privacy and dignity.
In Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers, Marcello Di Cintio ranges across the country speaking to those who have come from elsewhere to till our fields, bathe our elderly, and serve us our Double Doubles, uncovering stories of tremendous perseverance, resilience, and humanity, but also of precarity and vulnerability. He shows that vast swathes of our economy depend on the work of people we don’t see, while expanding our awareness of what migrant work now entails, and revealing that our mistreatment of the most vulnerable among us diminishes our own dignity.
ABOUT MARCELLO DI CINTIO
Marcello Di Cintio is the author of six books, including Walls: Travels Along the Barricades, Pay No Heed to the Rockets: Palestine in the Present Tense, and Driven: The Secret Lives of Taxi Drivers. He has also written for the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, The International New York Times, and Canadian Geographic, among others. He lives in Calgary.

Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Toronto Launch!
2025-11-06 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Toronto) | The Mezz, 1546 Queen St W, Toronto, ON, M6R 1A6, Canada
Toronto friends, join us for the launch of Ray Robertson’s Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)! Ray will be reading from his new book, followed by a performance from Toronto-based musical duo Staig and Billings. The event will be moderated by Alan Zweig.
The launch will take place at The Mezz on Thursday, November 6 at 7PM.
Preorder Dust here!
ABOUT DUST: MORE LIVES OF THE POETS (WITH GUITARS)
“Robertson offers the whole picture, warts and all. In doing so, he honors the music of artists who have enriched his life—and opens the door for his readers to experience the same magic.”—Blues Blast Magazine
In Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars), Ray Robertson digs deep, offering up an eclectic gathering of a dozen biographical and critical portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most innovative, influential, and fascinating musicians. From rock to folk, blues to gospel, country to the unclassifiable; from the famous, to the forgotten, to the barely known, Ray Robertson combines a novelist’s eye for dramatic detail with an unapologetic fanboy’s obsession with the lives and lasting artistic achievements of twelve of his musical heroes.
ABOUT RAY ROBERTSON
Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, six collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed liner notes to three Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave’s Picks #45, the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 boxed set, and the From the Mars Hotel 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Hamilton Launch!
2025-11-13 20:00 - 22:00 (America/Toronto) | The Capitol, 973 King St E, Hamilton, ON, L8M 1C3, Canada
Join us in Hamilton for the launch of Ray Robertson’s Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)! Ray will be reading from his new book, followed by a performance from Toronto-based musical duo Staig and Billings. The event will be hosted by bookstore owner Tim Hanna, and books will be available for sale and signing courtesy of The City & The City Bookstore.
The event will take place at The Capitol on Thursday, November 13 at 8PM. More details TK.
Preorder Dust here!
ABOUT DUST: MORE LIVES OF THE POETS (WITH GUITARS)
“Robertson offers the whole picture, warts and all. In doing so, he honors the music of artists who have enriched his life—and opens the door for his readers to experience the same magic.”—Blues Blast Magazine
In Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars), Ray Robertson digs deep, offering up an eclectic gathering of a dozen biographical and critical portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most innovative, influential, and fascinating musicians. From rock to folk, blues to gospel, country to the unclassifiable; from the famous, to the forgotten, to the barely known, Ray Robertson combines a novelist’s eye for dramatic detail with an unapologetic fanboy’s obsession with the lives and lasting artistic achievements of twelve of his musical heroes.
ABOUT RAY ROBERTSON
Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, six collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed liner notes to three Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave’s Picks #45, the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 boxed set, and the From the Mars Hotel 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

Voices of Resistance: Toronto Launch
2025-11-17 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | It’s Ok* Studios, 468 Queen Street W, Toronto, ON, M5V 2B2, Canada
Toronto friends, don’t miss the launch of Voices of Resistance: Diaries of Genocide by Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala’a Obaid. The book will be co-launching with Leila Marshy’s Razing Palestine in this event hosted by Samira Mohyeddin. Books will be for sale and signing from Another Story.
The double launch is free to attend and will take place at It’s Ok* Studios on Monday, November 17 at 6:30PM.
More details here.
Order a copy of Voices of Resistance here!
ABOUT VOICES OF RESISTANCE
For two years, the world has witnessed image after devastating image of Israel’s genocide in Gaza: videos, photos, and Instagram reels showing blanket bombardment, cities in ruin, and entire families pulled from the rubble of their homes. Such enormity can be difficult to process, but behind each image lie ordinary lives full of hope, love, and community.
In these diaries, four Gazan women—Batool Abu Akleen, Sondos Sabra, Nahil Mohana, and Ala’a Obaid—offer first-hand accounts of Israeli airstrikes, forced displacement, and engineered famine. These atrocities are documented alongside the everyday resilience of Palestinians: from the neighbour who fashions an ashtray from the shrapnel of an Israeli missile, to the street vendor who donates his last egg for a child’s birthday cake, to the community of displaced people who pool their resources to stage a traditional wedding. Even when homeless, under fire, forced to bury loved ones, or thrown at the mercy of a devastated health system, the writers of these diaries never abandon their humanity, their individuality, or their belief in the future of Gaza.
All proceeds from the sale of this book will go directly to the writers and their families.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Batool Abu Akleen is a twenty-year-old Palestinian poet and translator, born and raised in Gaza City. She is a student of English Literature and Translation at the Islamic University of Gaza. At the age of fifteen, Abu Akleen won the Parjeel Poetry Prize for her poem ‘I Did Not Steal the Cloud’, which was also translated and published as part of the anthology Di acqua e di tempo. Her poem ‘I Want a Grave’ was published in Penguin’s Letters from Gaza (2025). She was the 2024 Poet-in-Residence with Modern Poetry in Translation, for whom she collected and translated Sea Shells: An Anthology of Emerging Poets from Gaza (edited by Cristina Viti). Her poem ‘Gunpowder’ was among the winners of The London Magazine Poetry Prize 2025. Her debut bilingual poetry collection 48Kg was published by Tenement Press in June 2025. Extracts from her diaries have been performed by Leila Herandi at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.
Nahil Mohana is the author of the novel No Men Allowed, the short story collection Life in a Square Metre and six plays including High Pressure, which received the 2008 Abdul Mohsin Al-Qattan Prize; Ghoson, which received the 2008 Children’s Culture Award; and Lipstick, which was produced by the Royal Court Theatre, London. Her writing has appeared in AGNI Online, Literary Hub, and The Washington Post. Extracts from her diaries have been performed by Maxine Peake at the Barbican Theatre, London, and Julie-Yara Atz at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.
Ala’a Obaid is a writer and a mother of three children. She has held a number of positions in various NGOs and cultural institutions in Gaza, including Education Officer, Creative Writing Teacher and Culture Centre Coordinator. Ala’a co-authored the books Writing Behind the Lines and Disturbing Flashbacks, both of which document the experiences of Palestinians living through the current genocide. She has published several articles in The New Arab. Excerpts from her diaries have been performed by Hind Shoufani at the Barbican Theatre, London, and by Zarah Sultana MP at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry.
Sondos Sabra, 25, holds a bachelor’s degree in English Literature from the Islamic University of Gaza and is a founding member of the Shaghaf Youth Initiative, which organises discussions of literary works. She is a translator and writer. Her writing has appeared in Mondoweiss, The New Statesman, and ArabLit Quarterly. Extracts from her diaries have been performed by Yusra Warsama at the Barbican Theatre, London, and Sama Rantisi at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry. Her piece ‘We Kill Terrorism’ was read by Maxine Peake to a crowd of 15,000 protesters outside the 2024 Labour Party Conference in Liverpool.

Best Canadian Stories: Vancouver Launch
2025-11-18 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | Upstart & Crow, 1387 Railspur Alley, Granville Island
Vancouver friends: come on out for a night of literary fun, as we celebrate the launch of Best Canadian Stories 2026! Guest editor Zsuzsi Gartner, along with several writers featured in the anthology, will be reading from their work. Copies will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Upstart & Crow.
The launch will take place on Tuesday, November 18 at 7PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Stories 2026 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN STORIES 2026
“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book
Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.
Featuring:
Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

Best Canadian Poetry: Toronto Launch
2025-11-19 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | Queen Books, 914 Queen St E, Toronto, ON, M4M 1J5, Canada
Come on out for a night of poetry and fun, as we celebrate the launch of Best Canadian Poetry 2026! Series editor Anita Lahey, along with several local poets featured in the anthology—Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, Steve McOrmond, Emily Kedar, Richard Greene, Susan Glickman, Ronna Bloom, and Puneet Dutt—will be reading from their work at Queen Books. Copies will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, November 19 at 6:30PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Poetry 2026 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2026
Selected by editor Mary Dalton, the 2026 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in the past year.
Featuring introductions by Mary Dalton and series editor Anita Lahey, Best Canadian Poetry 2026 offers a collection of brief but impactful glimpses into our current literary landscape, that expands our worldview and continues in the series tradition of asking: What constitutes a great poem?
Featuring:
John Wall Barger • Ronna Bloom • Nicholas Bradley • Petra Chambers • Carolina Corcoran • Kayla Czaga • Danielle Devereaux • Irina Dumitrescu • Puneet Dutt • Darrell Epp • Susan Glickman • Ariel Gordon • Jennifer Gossoo • Sue Goyette • Richard Greene • Glenn Hayes • Henry Heavyshield • Dave Hickey • Nancy Huggett • Kevin Irie • Emily Kedar • Conor Kerr • Evelyn Lau • Sylvia Legris • Steve McOrmond • Estlin McPhee • M.W. Miller • Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi • George Moore • Paul Moorehead • A.F. Moritz • Megan Morrison • Erín Moure • Cassandra Myers • Shane Neilson • Nofel • David O’Meara • John O’Neill • Michael Ondaatje • Craig Francis Power • John Reibetanz • Ozayr Saloojee • Vivek Sharma • Sue Sinclair • Karen Solie • Misha Solomon • Susan White • Erin Wilson • Jaeyun Yoo • Patricia Young

Best Canadian Stories: Montreal Launch
2025-11-24 19:00 - 21:00 (America/New_York) | De Stiil, 351 Avenue Duluth E, Montreal, QC, H2W 1J3, Canada
Montreal readers: come on out for a night of short fiction, as we celebrate the launch of Best Canadian Stories 2026! Guest editor Zsuzsi Gartner, along with several local writers featured in the anthology, will be reading from their work. Copies will be available for sale and signing courtesy of De Stiil.
The launch will take place on Monday, November 24 at 7PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Stories 2026 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN STORIES 2026
“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book
Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.
Featuring:
Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

Best Canadian Stories: Toronto Launch
2025-11-26 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Queen Books, 914 Queen St E, Toronto, ON, M4M 1J5, Canada
Toronto friends: come on out for a night of short fiction, as we celebrate the launch of Best Canadian Stories 2026! Guest editor Zsuzsi Gartner, along with several writers featured in the anthology, will be reading from their work. Copies will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Queen Books.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, November 26 at 7PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Stories 2026 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN STORIES 2026
“Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country.”—Open Book
Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature.
Featuring:
Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Windsor Launch
2025-11-27 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Biblioasis Bookshop, 1520 Wyandotte St E, Windsor, ON, N9A 3L2, Canada
Join us in Windsor for the launch of Ray Robertson’s Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)! Ray will be reading from his new book, followed by a performance from Toronto-based musical duo Staig and Billings.
The launch will take place at Biblioasis Bookshop on Thursday, November 27 at 7PM.
Preorder Dust here!
ABOUT DUST: MORE LIVES OF THE POETS (WITH GUITARS)
“Robertson offers the whole picture, warts and all. In doing so, he honors the music of artists who have enriched his life—and opens the door for his readers to experience the same magic.”—Blues Blast Magazine
In Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars), Ray Robertson digs deep, offering up an eclectic gathering of a dozen biographical and critical portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most innovative, influential, and fascinating musicians. From rock to folk, blues to gospel, country to the unclassifiable; from the famous, to the forgotten, to the barely known, Ray Robertson combines a novelist’s eye for dramatic detail with an unapologetic fanboy’s obsession with the lives and lasting artistic achievements of twelve of his musical heroes.
ABOUT RAY ROBERTSON
Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, six collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed liner notes to three Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave’s Picks #45, the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 boxed set, and the From the Mars Hotel 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars): Chatham Launch!
2025-11-28 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Studio One, 75 William St N, Chatham, ON, N7M 4L4, Canada
Join us in Chatham for the launch of Ray Robertson’s Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars)! Ray will be reading from his new book, followed by a performance from Toronto-based musical duo Staig and Billings. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The event will take place at Studio One (Chatham Cultural Centre) on Friday, November 28 at 7PM.
Preorder Dust here!
ABOUT DUST: MORE LIVES OF THE POETS (WITH GUITARS)
“Robertson offers the whole picture, warts and all. In doing so, he honors the music of artists who have enriched his life—and opens the door for his readers to experience the same magic.”—Blues Blast Magazine
In Dust: More Lives of the Poets (with Guitars), Ray Robertson digs deep, offering up an eclectic gathering of a dozen biographical and critical portraits of some of the twentieth century’s most innovative, influential, and fascinating musicians. From rock to folk, blues to gospel, country to the unclassifiable; from the famous, to the forgotten, to the barely known, Ray Robertson combines a novelist’s eye for dramatic detail with an unapologetic fanboy’s obsession with the lives and lasting artistic achievements of twelve of his musical heroes.
ABOUT RAY ROBERTSON
Ray Robertson is the author of nine novels, six collections of non-fiction, and a book of poetry. His work has been translated into several languages. He contributed liner notes to three Grateful Dead archival releases: Dave’s Picks #45, the Here Comes Sunshine 1973 boxed set, and the From the Mars Hotel 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. Born and raised in Chatham, Ontario, he lives in Toronto.

Best Canadian Poetry: St John's Launch
2025-11-30 19:30 - 21:00 (America/St_Johns) | The Ship Pub, 265 Duckworth St, St John's, NL, A1C 1G9, Canada
Come on out for a night of poetry and fun, as we celebrate the launch of Best Canadian Poetry 2026! Guest editor Mary Dalton, along with several poets featured in the anthology—Danielle Devereaux, Craig Power, Paul Moorehead, Susan White, and Richard Greene—will be reading from their work at the Ship Pub. Copies will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Riddle Fence.
The launch will take place on Sunday, November 30 at 7:30PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Poetry 2026 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2026
Selected by editor Mary Dalton, the 2026 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in the past year.
Featuring introductions by Mary Dalton and series editor Anita Lahey, Best Canadian Poetry 2026 offers a collection of brief but impactful glimpses into our current literary landscape, that expands our worldview and continues in the series tradition of asking: What constitutes a great poem?
Featuring:
John Wall Barger • Ronna Bloom • Nicholas Bradley • Petra Chambers • Carolina Corcoran • Kayla Czaga • Danielle Devereaux • Irina Dumitrescu • Puneet Dutt • Darrell Epp • Susan Glickman • Ariel Gordon • Jennifer Gossoo • Sue Goyette • Richard Greene • Glenn Hayes • Henry Heavyshield • Dave Hickey • Nancy Huggett • Kevin Irie • Emily Kedar • Conor Kerr • Evelyn Lau • Sylvia Legris • Steve McOrmond • Estlin McPhee • M.W. Miller • Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi • George Moore • Paul Moorehead • A.F. Moritz • Megan Morrison • Erín Moure • Cassandra Myers • Shane Neilson • Nofel • David O’Meara • John O’Neill • Michael Ondaatje • Craig Francis Power • John Reibetanz • Ozayr Saloojee • Vivek Sharma • Sue Sinclair • Karen Solie • Misha Solomon • Susan White • Erin Wilson • Jaeyun Yoo • Patricia Young

Best Canadian Poetry: Combined Vancouver Launch
2025-12-11 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | Upstart & Crow, 1387 Railspur Alley, Granville Island
Come on out for a special combined launch of Best Canadian Poetry 2025 and 2026! Hosted by last year’s 2025 editor Aislinn Hunter, several local poets featured in the anthologies will be reading from their work at Upstart & Crow. Copies will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Wednesday, December 11 at 7PM.
Grab Best Canadian Poetry 2026 here!
Grab Best Canadian Poetry 2025 here!
Check out the full set of Essays, Stories, and Poetry here!
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2026
Selected by editor Mary Dalton, the 2026 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2024.
Featuring introductions by Mary Dalton and series editor Anita Lahey, Best Canadian Poetry 2026 offers a collection of brief but impactful glimpses into our current literary landscape, that expands our worldview and continues in the series tradition of asking: What constitutes a great poem?
Featuring:
John Wall Barger • Ronna Bloom • Nicholas Bradley • Petra Chambers • Carolina Corcoran • Kayla Czaga • Danielle Devereaux • Irina Dumitrescu • Puneet Dutt • Darrell Epp • Susan Glickman • Ariel Gordon • Jennifer Gossoo • Sue Goyette • Richard Greene • Glenn Hayes • Henry Heavyshield • Dave Hickey • Nancy Huggett • Kevin Irie • Emily Kedar • Conor Kerr • Evelyn Lau • Sylvia Legris • Steve McOrmond • Estlin McPhee • M.W. Miller • Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi • George Moore • Paul Moorehead • A.F. Moritz • Megan Morrison • Erín Moure • Cassandra Myers • Shane Neilson • Nofel • David O’Meara • John O’Neill • Michael Ondaatje • Craig Francis Power • John Reibetanz • Ozayr Saloojee • Vivek Sharma • Sue Sinclair • Karen Solie • Misha Solomon • Susan White • Erin Wilson • Jaeyun Yoo • Patricia Young
ABOUT BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2025
Selected by editor Aislinn Hunter, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2023.
Featuring:
Hollie Adams • George Amabile • Erin Bedford • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Bertrand Bickersteth • Elisabeth Blair • Ronna Bloom • Alison Braid-Fernandez • Robert Bringhurst • Emily Cann • Anne Carson • Molly Cross-Blanchard • Lorna Crozier • Kayla Czaga • Evelyna Ekoko-Kay • Kate Genevieve • Susan Gillis • Sue Goyette • Catherine Graham • Henry Heavyshield • Gerald Hill • Alexander Hollenberg • Kim June Johnson • Eve Joseph • Evelyn Lau • Y. S. Lee • D. A. Lockhart • Fareh Malik • David Martin • Domenica Martinello • Cassidy McFadzean • Carmelita McGrath • Erín Moure • Tolu Oloruntoba • Catherine Owen • Molly Peacock • Miranda Pearson • Pauline Peters • Amanda Proctor • Shannon Quinn • Armand Garnet Ruffo • Anne Simpson • Carolyn Smart • Karen Solie • Catherine St. Denis • Owen Torrey • Michael Trussler • Sara Truuvert • Rob Winger • Jaeyun Yoo

WHO ELSE IN THE DARK HEADED THERE: Kelowna Launch
2026-04-14 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | Benvoulin Church, 2279 Benvoulin Rd, Kelowna, BC, V1W 2C8, Canada
Join us in Kelowna for the launch of Who Else in the Dark Headed There: Poems by Garth Martens! Garth will be joined by fellow writers Lesley-Anne Evans and Ruth Daniel for the event, hosted by UBC-O professor Emily Murphy. Copies will be available for sale and signing courtesy of Mosaic Books.
The launch will take place at the Benvoulin Church on Tuesday, April 14 at 7PM.
Order a copy of Who Else in the Dark Headed There here!
ABOUT WHO ELSE IN THE DARK HEADED THERE
In his first collection since the Governor General’s–nominated Prologue for the Age of Consequence, Martens adds an autobiographical lens to his concerns about class and labour.
A mother disappears. A son struggles to make sense of the life she left behind. Set against the stark northern Alberta of the 1980s and 90s, Who Else in the Dark Headed There follows a man reaching through time to find the child he was and the father he is becoming.
Beneath this waking world is another world, of the overheard, of the unsaid. To enter is to find a lyricism finely wrought and hallucinatory, a depth of feeling and fidelity to metaphor in all its guises—but most of all an urgent relationship with language. Here, in a reconstruction of childhood’s rooms, Garth Martens approaches the past not as a record but as a pressure, a “muscled concentration” that reorders, resuscitates, and redoubts.
ABOUT GARTH MARTENS
Garth Martens is the author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence and Who Else in the Dark Headed There. For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is also a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poetry appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is also a member of Palabra Flamenco, a literary flamenco ensemble that joins traditional flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria, BC.

SMASH & GRAB: Fredericton Launch
2026-04-16 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Halifax) | Gallery on Queen, 406 Queen St, Fredericton, NB, E3B 1B6, Canada
Join us in Fredericton for the launch of Mark Anthony Jarman’s new story collection, Smash & Grab! The launch will take place at Gallery on Queen, and books will be available for sale and signing from Westminster Bookmark.
The launch will take place on Thursday, April 16 at 6PM.
Grab a copy of Smash & Grab here!
ABOUT SMASH & GRAB
“A Canadian master of the form.”—Gregory Cowles, New York Times
A former military policeman, a veterinarian, and a French poet walk into a bar and debate the Vietnam war. A couple of men who are part of a commune discover two dead bodies while out sailing. An Irish woman hits a boy with her car and contemplates turning herself in. Two paramedics try to live and not burn out while dealing with so much death. A man on holiday in Venice is stalked by a pickpocket. A heartsick astronaut finds love on the moon.
In Smash & Grab Mark Anthony Jarman offers up a mischievous medley of stories that blur the lines between the real and the imagined. Continuing to chronicle the lives of the wayward and unlucky, it confirms its author as one of the most adventurous guides to the absurdity of twenty-first century existence.
ABOUT MARK ANTHONY JARMAN
Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of Burn Man, Touch Anywhere to Begin, Czech Techno, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa, My White Planet, 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland’s Eye. He is co-editor of a new literary journal CAMEL, and edited Best Canadian Stories 2023. His novel Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca’s list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon’s list of best hockey ﬁction. Widely published in Canada, the US, Europe, and Asia, Jarman is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and the University of New Brunswick. Burn Man was a New York Times Editor’s Choice in 2024.

OBLIVIOUS: Toronto Launch
2026-04-29 18:00 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | Massey College, 4 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 2E1, Canada
Join us in Toronto to celebrate the final book—and life’s work—of acclaimed author Elaine Dewar.
Elaine Dewar didn’t live to see the publication of her last book, Oblivious, an investigative masterwork that every Canadian should read. Oblivious examines one of the most shameful chapters in Canadian history: the government-sanctioned medical experiments on an Indigenous population. Elaine Dewar raises unwelcome questions about who knew what and when—and what the obliviousness means for this country’s reconciliation with First Nations and other going forward. Please come and help celebrate Elaine’s lifelong legacy of pursuing uncomfortable truths.
This launch, hosted by Marci McDonald, will take place at Massey College on Wednesday, April 29 at 6PM EST.
RSVP to Dominique at dbechard@biblioasis.com
Grab a copy of Oblivious here.
ABOUT OBLIVIOUS
Over the last thirty years, Canadians have been forced to face their country’s genocidal attempt to destroy its Indigenous populations through segregation, poverty, coerced labour, and infectious diseases. Few have read the statements of claim, academic literature, or multi-volume commission reports setting out exactly what we stole and who we hurt (and how); and the policies and decisions which harmed generations of Indigenous people are still not broadly known.
In Oblivious, investigative journalist Elaine Dewar exposes the governmental and psychological machinery that allowed this to continue for so long. The granddaughter of settlers saved during their first Prairie winter by the generosity of Indigenous neighbours, Dewar explores how even well-meaning Canadians who glimpsed what was being done did nothing to stop it. In the process, she uncovers further evidence of crimes against Indigenous people, including unethical and cruel scientific experiments, a segregated and woefully inadequate health care system, and a callous indifference to Indigenous well-being that has almost entirely eroded the sense of trust true reconciliation must be based on.
Part memoir, part investigation, Oblivious tells the story of a Jewish girl from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, who grew up in a society so segregated—its Indigenous people consigned to an alternate universe—that she, like so many of us, failed to notice their plight for decades.
ABOUT ELAINE DEWAR
Elaine Dewar (1948–2025)—author, journalist, television story editor—has been honoured by nine National Magazine awards, including the prestigious President’s Medal, and the White Award. Her first book, Cloak of Green, delved into the dark side of environmental politics and became an underground classic. Bones: Discovering the First Americans, an investigation of the science and politics regarding the peopling of the Americas, was a national bestseller and earned a special commendation from the Canadian Archaeological Association. The Second Tree: of Clones, Chimeras, and Quests for Immortality won Canada’s premier literary nonfiction prize from the Writers’ Trust. The Handover was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for nonfiction. On The Origin of the Deadliest Pandemic in 100 Years broke front page news in the Globe and Mail with its investigation into the infiltration of Canada’s only level four microbiology institution by leading Chinese military researchers who subsequently fled the country. Called “Canada’s Rachel Carson,” Dewar aspired to be a happy warrior for the public good.

WHO ELSE IN THE DARK HEADED THERE: Victoria Launch
2026-04-30 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Vancouver) | Caffe Fantastico, 965 Kings Rd, Victoria, BC, V8T 0C4, Canada
Join us in Victoria for the launch of Who Else in the Dark Headed There: Poems by Garth Martens!
The launch will take place at Caffe Fantastico on Thursday, April 30 at 7PM.
Order a copy of Who Else in the Dark Headed There here!
ABOUT WHO ELSE IN THE DARK HEADED THERE
In his first collection since the Governor General’s–nominated Prologue for the Age of Consequence, Martens adds an autobiographical lens to his concerns about class and labour.
A mother disappears. A son struggles to make sense of the life she left behind. Set against the stark northern Alberta of the 1980s and 90s, Who Else in the Dark Headed There follows a man reaching through time to find the child he was and the father he is becoming.
Beneath this waking world is another world, of the overheard, of the unsaid. To enter is to find a lyricism finely wrought and hallucinatory, a depth of feeling and fidelity to metaphor in all its guises—but most of all an urgent relationship with language. Here, in a reconstruction of childhood’s rooms, Garth Martens approaches the past not as a record but as a pressure, a “muscled concentration” that reorders, resuscitates, and redoubts.
ABOUT GARTH MARTENS
Garth Martens is the author of Prologue for the Age of Consequence and Who Else in the Dark Headed There. For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is also a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poetry appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is also a member of Palabra Flamenco, a literary flamenco ensemble that joins traditional flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria, BC.

Biblioasis Spring Launch: Windsor!
2026-05-04 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Biblioasis Bookshop, 1520 Wyandotte St E, Windsor, ON, N9A 3L2, Canada
Join us in celebrating the launches of three Biblioasis spring books: On Sports by David Macfarlane, Cherry Beach by Don Gillmor, and Silver Lake by Alex Pugsley! Hosted by our publisher Dan Wells, the launch will be held at Biblioasis Bookshop and will include readings from each author, a discussion and Q&A, and of course books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Monday, May 4 at 7PM.
Grab On Sports here!
Grab Cherry Beach here!
Grab Silver Lake here, or check out the rest of the Aubrey McKee series here!
ABOUT ON SPORTS
What are sports, really? What do we love about them? And what, in our digital age, have they become?
On Sports reads like a conversation between friends at the ballpark in those golden days before the kiss cam and college co-eds with T-shirt cannons spoiled the fun; a book that feels like the sun on your forehead and the breeze in your hair, beer and laughter on your lips; a book that celebrates communion and friendship and the beauty of these games—whether it be baseball or football or soccer or tennis or cricket—that we’ve designed to distract ourselves from the end of the world. It’s about what 7Up tastes like when drunk from the Grey Cup, how much work it takes for talent to shine, and the near impossibility of language to properly capture athletic excellence. It’s about the beauty of good sports copy, the ephemerality of even the biggest sports story, and how sport remains perpetually powered by the eleven-year-old in all of us. It’s a book about rediscovering the spirit of sport, before online gambling and the manufactured spectacle of today’s professional sports suffocates the last of it; and it’s about where that spirit today is best found.
ABOUT DAVID MACFARLANE
David Macfarlane‘s family memoir, The Danger Tree, was described by Christopher Hitchens as “one of the finest and most intriguing miniature elegies that I have read in many a year.” Macfarlane’s novel, Summer Gone, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Based on The Danger Tree, “The Door You Came In,” a two-man show (co-written and performed with Douglas Cameron) has been produced, to acclaim, from St. John’s, Newfoundland, to Stratford, Ontario. Macfarlane lives in Toronto with his wife, the designer, Janice Lindsay.
ABOUT CHERRY BEACH
A brutal murder exposes secret real estate deals, a corrupt police force, and the dark heart of a city simmering with unrest.
When two girls are found murdered in a rundown Toronto highrise, Jamieson Abel and his partner are first on the scene. Abel is a law school dropout turned police detective chronically at odds with his colleagues and perpetually on the brink of being terminated, and Davis is the department’s only female officer of colour. Both understand their being partnered as a form of banishment, but when the details of the murder go public at the start of an excruciatingly hot summer, they find themselves thrust into the centre of a front page investigation that will bring to a head the city’s long history of shady real estate deals and racist disenfranchisement.
Intricately plotted and brilliantly layered, Cherry Beach is a gripping literary crime novel that examines class, race, and corruption in the most multicultural city in the world.
ABOUT DON GILLMOR
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.
ABOUT SILVER LAKE
It was on a fully dark February night when I went to the Communist’s Daughter to meet a friend who never showed that my life in movies began.
So begins the third installment in a series of standalone novels about the life and travels of Aubrey McKee. Set in Toronto and Silver Lake, a creative neighbourhood in Los Angeles, the novel chronicles with infectious élan Aubrey’s journey from broken-hearted derelict to B-movie production assistant, comedy writer, and science-ﬁction screenwriter, all the way up to feature ﬁlm director. Along the way, he encounters long-ago childhood friends, manic producers, NHL players turned talk show hosts, Victoria’s Secret models, impulsive movie stars . . . and his own rising destiny.
ABOUT ALEX PUGSLEY
Alex Pugsley has worked on over 185 produced episodes of television, writing for performers such as Lauren Ash, Scott Thompson, Dan Aykroyd, and Michael Cera. 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 Writers to Watch. His ﬁrst story collection, Shimmer, was nominated for the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, and his most recent novel, The Education of Aubrey McKee, was long listed for the Toronto Book Awards. His next book, The Hungarian Ballroom, an Aubrey McKee novella, is forthcoming from Biblioasis. More information can be found at www.alexpugsley.com.
