Biblioasis

Hello, Horse & A Way to Be Happy: Vancouver Double Launch
2024-09-08 19:30 - 21:00 (America/Toronto) | Tightrope Theatre, 2343 Main St, Vancouver, BC, Canada
Join us in Vancouver to celebrate the double launch of our two fall short story collections: A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) and Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024). Caroline and Richard will each read from their collections, followed by a discussion and audience Q&A. Books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place at the Tightrope Theatre on Sunday, September 8 at 7:30PM.
Grab A Way to Be Happy here!
Get Hello, Horse here!
ABOUT A WAY TO BE HAPPY
Longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize
Short stories about disparate characters consider what it means to find happiness.
On New Year’s Eve, a pair of addicts robs a string of high-end parties in order to fund their own recovery. A recently separated woman relocates to a small northern town, where she receives a life-changing visitation, and a Russian hitman, suffering from a mysterious lung ailment, retrieves long-buried memories of his past. In the nineteenth century, a disparate group of women coalesce in the attempt to aid a young girl in her escape from a hospital for the insane. These are but some of the remarkable characters who populate these stories, all of them grappling with conflicts ranging from mundane to extraordinary. Caroline Adderson’s A Way to Be Happy considers what it means to find happiness—and how often it comes through the grace of others.
ABOUT CAROLINE ADDERSON
Caroline Adderson is the author of five novels (A Russian Sister, Ellen in Pieces, The Sky Is Falling, Sitting Practice, and A History of Forgetting), two previous collections of short stories (Pleased to Meet You and Bad Imaginings), as well as many books for young readers. Her award nominations include the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, two Commonwealth Writers’ Prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. The recipient of three BC Book Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, and the Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement, Caroline lives and writes in Vancouver.
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.

Michael Lista at Eden Mills Writers' Festival
2024-09-08 13:30 - 14:30 | Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, 19 Cedar Street, Eden Mills, Ontario, N0B 1P0, Canada
Join Michael Lista, author of the collection Barfly, at Eden Mills Writers’ Fest for the panel “In Verse”. Michael will be joined by fellow writers Faith Arkorful, Aedan Corey, and Shani Mootoo, along with host Madhur Anand, for an event of readings and interviews. The panel is sponsored by the League of Canadian Poets.
The event will take place on Sunday, September 8 at 1:30PM ET.
More details here!
Get a copy of Barfly here.
ABOUT BARFLY
A CBC Books’ Poetry Collection to Watch for in Spring 2024 • A Toronto Star Most Anticipated Spring Title
We’re in love, but we’re still Millennials. / What’s wrong with our hearts is congenital.
In Barfly, the poet comes back to haunt himself, and us. In this incomparable third collection, his first in a decade, Michael Lista returns to reinvent poetry with humour, pugnacity, and a deeply singular voice. Splicing Byronic rhymes and Auden’s meters with the twenty-first century irreverence of a late-stage Twitter feed, the poems in Barfly are alternatingly aggressive, sweet, deadly, and raw with a break-your-heart vulnerability.
ABOUT MICHAEL LISTA
Michael Lista is an investigative journalist, essayist and poet. He has worked as a book columnist for the National Post and as the poetry editor of The Walrus. He is the author of four books: the poetry volumes Bloom and The Scarborough; Strike Anywhere, a collection of his writing about literature, television and culture; and The Human Scale: Murder, Mischief and Other Selected Mayhems, a book of longform journalism. His essays and investigative stories have appeared in the New Yorker, The Atlantic, Slate, The Walrus, Canadaland, and Toronto Life. He is a contributing editor at Toronto Life and Maclean’s. He was the 2017 Margaret Laurence Fellow at Trent University and the winner of the 2020 National Magazine Awards for both Investigative Reporting and Long Form Feature Writing. His story “The Sting” is being adapted by Adam Perlman, Robert Downey Jr., and Team Downey into a television series for Apple TV+.
