Biblioasis

An Afternoon of Poetry: Robyn Sarah at Motel Chelsea
2026-05-24 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Toronto) | Motel Chelsea, 1418 Rte 105, Chelsea, QC, Canada
Come on out to Motel Chelsea, where Robyn Sarah, author of We’re Somewhere Else Now: Poems 2016–2024, will be joined by Ken Victor for an afternoon of poetry reading.
The event will take place on Sunday, May 24 at 2PM ET.
More details here!
Grab We’re Somewhere Else Now here!
ABOUT WE’RE SOMEWHERE ELSE NOW
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.
ABOUT ROBYN SARAH
A California Review of Books Best Poetry Book of 2025
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.

SILVER LAKE: Toronto Launch
2026-06-01 18:30 - 20:00 | Flying Books, 371 Queen St W, Toronto, ON, M5V 2A4, Canada
Join us in Toronto for the launch of Alex Pugsley’s Silver Lake, the third installment in his Aubrey McKee series. Alex will be reading from the novel, and books will be available for sale and signing.
The launch will take place at Flying Books on Monday, June 1 at 6:30PM.
Grab a copy of Silver Lake here!
Check out the previous Aubrey McKee books here.
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.

Don Gillmor at TIFA: Uncovering Hidden Fractures
2026-06-06 14:00 - 15:00 | Victoria College Chapel, 91 Charles St W, Toronto, ON, M5S 2C7, Canada
Don Gillmor, author of Cherry Beach, will be appearing at TIFA for the panel ‘Uncovering Hidden Fractures’. Don will be joined by Lilja Sigurðardóttir for a conversation on building atmosphere in modern crime fiction. The event will be moderated by Steven Beattie, and a book signing will follow.
The event will take place on Saturday, June 6 at 2PM. A festival pass is required.
More details here.
Get Cherry Beach here!
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.
