Lisa Alward at the Frye Festival
2025-04-27 13:00 - 14:30 (America/Moncton) | Aberdeen Cultural Centre, 140 rue Botsford, Moncton, NB, Canada
Come on out to this year’s Frye Festival, where Lisa Alward, author of Cocktail, will be doing a Flash Frye reading of the collection for the panel ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ The panel, which features books that wrestle with bodily autonomy and the impossible expectations that come with being a woman, will be moderated by Alisa Arsenault and features a discussion between Shashi Bhat and Siobhan Gallagher.
The event will take place at the Aberdeen Cultural Centre on Sunday, April 27 at 1PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Grab Cocktail here!
ABOUT COCKTAIL
Winner of the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award • Longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction • Winner of the New Brunswick 2023 Mrs. Dunster’s Award for Fiction • One of the Globe and Mail’s “Sixty-Two Books to Read This Fall” • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • A Miramichi Reader Best Book of 2023 • A Tyee Best Book of 2023
A girl receives a bedtime visit from a drunken party guest, who will haunt her fantasies for years. A young mother discovers underneath the wallpaper a striking portrait that awakens inconvenient desires. A divorced man distracts himself from the mess he’s made by flirting with a stranger. These intimate, immersive stories explore life’s watershed moments, in which seemingly insignificant details—a pot of hyacinths, a freshly painted yellow wall—and the most chance of encounters come to exert a tidal pull. Set in the swinging sixties and each decade since, Cocktail reveals the schism between the lives we build up around us and our deepest hidden selves.
ABOUT LISA ALWARD
Lisa Alward’s short fiction has appeared in The Journey Prize and twice in Best Canadian Stories. She has won the Fiddlehead Prize as well as the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award, has been a finalist for The Malahat Review’s Open Season Award, an honourable mention in the Peter Hinchcliffe Award, and been featured on numerous other long lists, including for the CBC Story Prize and Prism International’s Jacob Zilber Prize (three times). She was born and grew up in Halifax and completed an English degree at the University of Toronto and an MA at Queen Mary College in London, England. In the eighties and early nineties, she worked in book publishing in Toronto, before moving with her young family to Vancouver and ultimately to Fredericton, New Brunswick, where at fifty she began to write stories. Cocktail (Biblioasis), which received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews, is her debut collection.

Best Canadian Poetry 2025: Toronto Launch
2025-04-29 18:30 - 20:00 (America/Toronto) | Queen Books, 914 Queen St E, Toronto, ON, M4M 1J5, Canada
Join us at the end of National Poetry Month to celebrate Best Canadian Poetry 2025! This reading will feature a number of poets from the anthology, including Cassidy McFadzean, Molly Peacock, Shannon Quinn, Ronna Bloom, Pauline Peters, and Fareh Malik, and will be hosted by longtime series editor Anita Lahey. Books will be available for sale and signing from Queen Books.
The event will take place on Tuesday, April 29 at 6:30PM.
Grab a copy of Best Canadian Poetry 2025 here!
Check out the full series, with Essays and Stories, here!
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

On Oil: Don Gillmor at Words Festival
2025-04-29 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | BC
Join Don Gillmor as he speaks about his new book On Oil, a searching reconsideration of our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil, in this virtual event with the Words Festival. Don will be in conversation with host and Words Director Josh Lambier.
This free virtual event will take place on Tuesday, April 29 at 7pm EST over Zoom.
More details and event link here.
Grab On Oil here!
ABOUT ON OIL
A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.
Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.
In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.
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 three novels, 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, The Walrus, 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.

Baldwin, Styron, and Me: Montreal Launch
2025-05-02 17:00 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | Librairie Bertrand, 430 Rue St. Pierre, Montreal, QC, H2Y 2M5, Canada
Join us in Montreal to celebrate the launch of Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc! Mélikah will be reading from her new book at the event, and copies will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place at Librairie Bertrand on Friday, May 2 at 5PM.
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).

On Oil: Don Gillmor at Ottawa Writers Festival
2025-05-03 16:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | Library and Archives Canada, 395 Wellington Street, Ottawa, ON, K1A 0N4, Canada
Join Don Gillmor as he speaks at the Ottawa Writers Festival about his new book On Oil, in which the journalist and former roughneck considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.
This event, hosted by Jennifer Baker, will take place on Saturday, May 3 at 4PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Grab On Oil here!
ABOUT ON OIL
A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.
Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.
In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.
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 four novels, 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, The Walrus, 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.

On Book Banning: Ira Wells at Ottawa Writers Festival
2025-05-04 02:30 - 03:30 (America/New_York) | BC
Join Ira Wells as he speaks about his new book On Book Banning, a lively, accessible survey of the pressing question of literary censorship in our times of crisis and change, with host Adrian Harewood at the Ottawa Writers Festival. Book will be available for purchase from Perfect Books.
This event will take place on Sunday, May 4 at 2:30PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Grab On Book Banning here!
ABOUT ON BOOK BANNING
The freedom to read is under attack.
From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today’s state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today’s conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children’s relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.
ABOUT IRA WELLS
Ira Wells is a critic, essayist, and an associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

UNMET: Montreal Launch
2025-05-06 17:30 - 19:00 (America/New_York) | L’Euguelionne, 1426 Rue Beaudry, Montreal, QC, H2L 3E5, Canada
Come out and celebrate the launch of stephanie roberts new poetry collection UNMET! stephanie will be reading from her collection at L’Euguelionne, with additional readings by poets Sarah Burgoyne and Leslie Roach. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place on Tuesday, May 6 at 5:30PM.
Get a copy of UNMET here!
ABOUT UNMET
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren’t caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET explores frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Diane Seuss, roberts’s musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what-could-be, negotiating with the past without losing hope for the future.
ABOUT STEPHANIE ROBERTS
stephanie roberts is the author of rushes from the river disappointment, a Quebec Writers’ Federation finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018, a recipient of the Sage Hill Writing award for Black Excellence, and a Canada Council of the Arts grantee. Her work has been critically praised and featured in well over one hundred periodicals and anthologies, in print and online, throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a citizen of Canada, Panama, and the US, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.

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).

UNMET: stephanie roberts at the Halifax Public Library
2025-05-18 14:00 - 15:30 (America/Halifax) | Halifax Public Library, 5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax, NS, B3J 1E9, Canada
Come out for an afternoon of poetry with stephanie roberts, who will be reading from her new poetry collection UNMET! Local poet Annick MacAskill will join the event. Books will be available for sale and signing by King’s Co-op.
The event will take place at the Halifax Central Library on Sunday, May 18 at 2PM.
More details here.
Get a copy of UNMET here!
ABOUT UNMET
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren’t caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET explores frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Diane Seuss, roberts’s musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what-could-be, negotiating with the past without losing hope for the future.
ABOUT STEPHANIE ROBERTS
stephanie roberts is the author of rushes from the river disappointment, a Quebec Writers’ Federation finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018, a recipient of the Sage Hill Writing award for Black Excellence, and a Canada Council of the Arts grantee. Her work has been critically praised and featured in well over one hundred periodicals and anthologies, in print and online, throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a citizen of Canada, Panama, and the US, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.

Lazer Lederhendler at the French-American Translation Awards Ceremony!
2025-06-25 18:00 - 22:00 (America/New_York) | New York Society Library, 53 E 79th St, New York, NY, 10075, United States
Lazer Lederhendler, whose translation of Christophe Bernard’s The Hollow Beast won the French-American Translation Prize for Fiction will be honored at the annual Awards Ceremony in New York, along with Nonfiction winner John Lambert and the finalists. Following an opening cocktail hour, the event will begin with a special conversation featuring keynote speaker Paul LeClerc.
The spotlight will then turn to the winners, who will receive their awards from members of the jury, present their translations, and take questions from the audience. Join this a lively evening and raise a glass to the art of translation, and the channels of French-American cultural exchange it serves to open!
This event, which will take place on June 25 at 6PM at the New York Society Library, is free with RSVP. Seating is limited and first-come, first-served.
More details and RSVP here.
Grab The Hollow Beast here!

stephanie roberts at the LOGOS Lecture Reading Series
2025-09-08 19:00 - 21:30 (America/New_York) | Lectures LOGOS Readings, 2741 Notre-Dame West, Montreal, QC, H3J 1N9, Canada
stephanie roberts, author of the poetry collection UNMET, will be a guest at the LOGOS Lecture Reading Series! stephanie will be joined by fellow guest readers Chanel Sutherland, Kelly Nora Drukker, Marlihan Lopez, Nathalie Batraville, Laura Doyle Péan and Uchenna Dike. There will be an open-mic session as well, with spaces for eight readers.
The event, hosted by H. Nigel Thomas, will take place on Sunday, September 8 at 7PM.
More details here.
Grab a copy of UNMET here!
ABOUT UNMET
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren’t caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET explores frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Diane Seuss, roberts’s musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what-could-be, negotiating with the past without losing hope for the future.
ABOUT STEPHANIE ROBERTS
stephanie roberts is the author of rushes from the river disappointment, a Quebec Writers’ Federation finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018, a recipient of the Sage Hill Writing award for Black Excellence, and a Canada Council of the Arts grantee. Her work has been critically praised and featured in well over one hundred periodicals and anthologies, in print and online, throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a citizen of Canada, Panama, and the US, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.

Colleen Coco Collins at the Antler River Poetry Series
2025-09-17 19:00 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Landon Branch London Public Library, 167 Wortley Road, London, ON, Canada
Colleen Coco Collins, author of the poetry collection Sorry About the Fire, will be a guest reader at the Antler River Poetry Series! Coco will be joined by fellow poets Erín Moure and Chantel Neveu.
The event takes place at the Landon Branch of the London Public Library on Wednesday, September 17 at 7PM.
Grab Sorry About the Fire here!
ABOUT SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE
A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024 • 3rd Prize Alcuin Award for Book Design in Poetry
I wanted a good bewildering, / down deep, / as the keep of a castle.
With a voice as ungovernable and determined as Prometheus—who stole fire from Zeus only to face dire consequences—Colleen Coco Collins’ debut poems are daring dispatches from beyond the margins: light-filled flares sent up from the edge of language, sentience, land, and story. Drawing on all of her multidisciplinary enamorations and rendered through the triple vision of her Irish, French, and Odawa heritage, Sorry About the Fire introduces not just a poet, but a stunningly original sensibility.
ABOUT COLLEEN COCO COLLINS
Colleen Coco Collins [she/they] is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French, and Odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. She’s worked as a gallery director, in forestry, fossil preparation, and renovation; as an autism support worker, teacher, and women’s shelter counsellor. Her writing, music, and art practice centers on temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, geographies, biophonies, frequencies, the ouroboric, the peripatetic, love and the polyglottic. Hailing from Antler River/Deshkan Ziibiing/London, Ontario, Coco has studied at universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Zealand, and Ireland. She lives litorally in rural Port Greville, Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox.

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.

stephanie roberts at the Planet Earth Poetry Series: PEP in the Afternoon
2025-09-19 14:00 - 16:00 (America/Vancouver) | New Horizons Centre, 234 Menzies St., James Bay, BC
stephanie roberts, author of the poetry collection UNMET, will be reading at the Planet Earth Poetry Series! Doors at 1:30pm, with sign-up for open mic.
The event will take place on Friday, September 19 at 2PM.
More details here.
Grab a copy of UNMET here!
ABOUT UNMET
This is what comes of taking dreams / off the horizon. It is the sun / or nothing else, you would scream / if you weren’t caught up in the chorus.
Leaning deliberately on the imagined while scrutinizing reality and hoping for the as-yet-unseen, UNMET explores frustration, justice, and thwarted rescue from a perspective that is Black-Latinx, Canadian, immigrant, and female. Drawing on a wide range of poetics, from Wallace Stevens to Diane Seuss, roberts’s musically-driven narrative surrealism confronts such timely issues as police brutality, respectability politics, intimate partner violence, and ecological crisis, and considers the might-have-been alongside the what-could-be, negotiating with the past without losing hope for the future.
ABOUT STEPHANIE ROBERTS
stephanie roberts is the author of rushes from the river disappointment, a Quebec Writers’ Federation finalist for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the winner of The Sixty-Four: Best Poets of 2018, a recipient of the Sage Hill Writing award for Black Excellence, and a Canada Council of the Arts grantee. Her work has been critically praised and featured in well over one hundred periodicals and anthologies, in print and online, throughout Canada, the US, and Europe. She is a citizen of Canada, Panama, and the US, and has lived most of her life in Quebec.

Steven Heighton's Sacred Rage: Kingston Writers Fest
2025-09-19 19:00 - 20:30 (America/Toronto) | Kingston Marriott, 285 King St E, Kingston, ON, K7L 3B1, Canada
Steven Heighton’s second posthumous story collection, Sacred Rage, will be included in the Kingston Writers Fest event, “Bushwacked by Inspiration: Short Stories.” Excerpts from Sacred Rage will be read by Sarah Tsiang, who will also be joined for the event by Catherine Bush, Deepa Rajagopalan, and Jamal Saeed in a discussion of writing short-form fiction, and its challenges and particular satisfactions.
The event will take place in the Rideau Room (Kingston Marriott) on Friday, September 19 at 7PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Grab Sacred Rage here!
ABOUT SACRED RAGE
“A writer only feels like a writer when in the act. And the will, I said, is never enough . . . Where does inspiration, that sacred rage, originate? Maybe it’s just a matter of stubbornly starting something new and writing your way into the slot.”—Steven Heighton
In the years before his unexpected death, Steven Heighton wrote to his longtime editor John Metcalf to say that he understood that the short story marked his most important contribution to literature, and that “after the novels, rereading and writing short stories again felt like returning home.” In the fifteen stories taken from across his four collections, Sacred Rage offers us Heighton as the moral explorer of the global suburbs, as chronicler of our innermost stories of love and fear, sleeping and waking, of a rebel “unabashedly devoted to the old pursuit,” as he once called it, “of truth and beauty.” These are stories of grace and the lack of it; of elegy and requiem; of hope and care in a world where these seem increasingly alien, stories by one of our most sharp-eyed and generous writers, whether you’re discovering them for the first time, or once again.
ABOUT STEVEN HEIGHTON
Steven Heighton (1961–2022) was a writer and musician. His twenty 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.

Richard Kelly Kemick at the Attic Owl Reading Series
2025-09-24 17:00 - 19:00 (America/Moncton) | BC
Richard Kelly Kemick, author of Hello, Horse, will be reading at the Attic Owl Reading Series in Moncton! The event is hosted by Kayla Geitzler, and there is an Open Mic Night portion to the event as well.
The event will take place on Wednesday, September 24. Doors open at 5PM and when you arrive, ask for the sign up sheet! Then, feel free to get a tasty meal, beverage or snack from Cafe C’est La Vie. The event will get underway around 5:30PM and continue until everyone has read or 7PM, whichever comes first.
More details here.
Get Hello, Horse here!
ABOUT HELLO, HORSE
Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.
A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.
Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.
ABOUT RICHARD KELLY KEMICK
Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world’s largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Richard Kelly Kemick at 'The Catch-Up' Reading Series
2025-09-28 15:00 - 16:00 (America/Moncton) | Westminster Books, 88 York St, Fredericton, NB, Canada
Richard Kelly Kemick, author of Hello, Horse, will be joining ‘The Catch-Up’ Reading Series hosted by Fawn Parker. Richard will be joined in conversation by Douglas Walbourne-Gough, and will be reading from his collection of short stories.
The event will take place at Westminster Books on Sunday, September 28 at 3PM.
More details here.
Get Hello, Horse here!
ABOUT HELLO, HORSE
Taut, stylish stories take on big moral questions from surprising perspectives.
A teenager’s job mucking stalls at a dog track takes a strange turn when his co-worker finds a new religion at odds with winning streaks. Two brothers set out in search of fame upon the frozen waters of a subarctic lake. After her mother’s death, a high school student tries to make rent by winning the Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition. An incarcerated man considers the nature of justice between shifts with his fellow inmates at Nations at War, the ultimate live-action experience for tourists eager to learn about the Canadian Civil War.
Spanning states and provinces, and featuring an apocalypse, a coterie of ghosts, nuns on ice, and an above-average number of dogs, the stories in Hello, Horse consider the mirage of authenticity and the impact of decisions we make—for better and for worse.
ABOUT RICHARD KELLY KEMICK
Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan. Richard is also the author of I Am Herod (also on audiobook), which takes readers undercover at one of the world’s largest religious events, and Caribou Run, a collection of poetry. He is the recipient of multiple awards including two National Magazine Awards and the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2019 Award for Best Short Story. He lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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!

Colleen Coco Collins at the Fredericton Poetry Weekend
2025-10-05 | UNB Fredericton, Fredericton, NB, E3B 5A3, Canada
Catch Colleen Coco Collins, author of the poetry collection Sorry About the Fire, at the Fredericton Poetry Weekend! Book available for sale by Westminster Bookmark.
The all-day event takes place at UNB’s Memorial Hall on Sunday, October 5.
Grab Sorry About the Fire here!
ABOUT SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE
A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024 • 3rd Prize Alcuin Award for Book Design in Poetry
I wanted a good bewildering, / down deep, / as the keep of a castle.
With a voice as ungovernable and determined as Prometheus—who stole fire from Zeus only to face dire consequences—Colleen Coco Collins’ debut poems are daring dispatches from beyond the margins: light-filled flares sent up from the edge of language, sentience, land, and story. Drawing on all of her multidisciplinary enamorations and rendered through the triple vision of her Irish, French, and Odawa heritage, Sorry About the Fire introduces not just a poet, but a stunningly original sensibility.
ABOUT COLLEEN COCO COLLINS
Colleen Coco Collins [she/they] is an interdisciplinary artist of Irish, French, and Odawa descent, working in songwriting, performance, poetry and visual arts. She’s worked as a gallery director, in forestry, fossil preparation, and renovation; as an autism support worker, teacher, and women’s shelter counsellor. Her writing, music, and art practice centers on temporality, presumptions of sentience, subversion, rhythm, gesture, geographies, biophonies, frequencies, the ouroboric, the peripatetic, love and the polyglottic. Hailing from Antler River/Deshkan Ziibiing/London, Ontario, Coco has studied at universities in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, New Zealand, and Ireland. She lives litorally in rural Port Greville, Mi’kma’ki/Nova Scotia amidst crows, coyotes, grackles, bees, humpback, lichen and fox.

"Lit Up Lunch" at Indigo with Alex Pugsley and Russell Smith
2025-10-20 12:00 - 14:00 (America/Toronto) | Indigo Bay & Bloor, 55 Bloor St W, Toronto, ON, M4W 1A5, Canada
Biblioasis authors Alex Pugsley (Aubrey McKee, The Education of Aubrey McKee) and Russell Smith (Self Care) will be in conversation together at the Indigo on Bay and Bloor in Toronto! The conversation also features author Jean Marc Ah-Sen, and will be hosted by Emily Weedon.
The event will take place on Monday, October 20 at 11:30PM.
Tickets and more details here.
Get Self Care here!
Get Aubrey McKee and The Education of Aubrey McKee here!
ABOUT SELF CARE
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.
ABOUT AUBREY MCKEE
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.
ABOUT THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE
Longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards • A Toronto Star Most Anticipated Spring Title • A 49th Shelf Can’t Miss Title for Spring
The scene is Toronto, the early 1990s, and at a house party Aubrey McKee falls in love with a bewitching stranger who talks him into stealing a piece of cake. This woman—a poet named Gudrun Peel—rapidly becomes the person for whom he would do anything at all. Together, Aubrey and Gudrun make a life of delirious idiosyncrasy. Surrounded by friends, frenemies, lovers, and rivals in the underground arts scene, the possibilities of their destiny remain radically open. But as their relationship deepens, and their creative and professional lives stumble, stall, and then suddenly blow up, Aubrey and Gudrun struggle against their own inexperience . . . as well as each other.
The much-anticipated follow-up to Alex Pugsley’s Aubrey McKee, The Education of Aubrey McKee is a campus novel in which the city of Toronto is the institute of higher education and the setting for a glittering story about the incandescence of ﬁrst love.
ABOUT ALEX PUGSLEY
Alex Pugsley is the author of the novels Aubrey McKee and The Education of Aubrey McKee, as well as the short story collection Shimmer. Following the publication of Aubrey McKee, he was named one of CBC’s Writers to Watch. He has been nominated for Canadian Comedy Awards, Gemini Awards, Hot Doc Awards, National Magazine Awards, and is a winner of the Writers’ Trust Journey Prize. His feature film Dirty Singles is available on Apple TV and Prime Video. His next novel, Silver Lake, the third book in a series about Aubrey McKee, is forthcoming from Biblioasis.

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.

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.

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.

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
