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Floating Voice

Two recent books nicely illustrate, for me, the disturbing state of contemporary publishing. The first book, Hemingway: The Toronto Years (Doubleday) by William Burrill, a Toronto journalist, is a handsome example of the book-making art.... The secon

Blaine Kyllo
Firefly

Now that Buffy is over, Whedon has but one TV program to work on: Angel. Which is all the more sad because he had created the best thing to hit television in years: Firefly. That show starred Nathan Fillion (born in Edmonton) as Captain Malcolm Reyno

Five Stories, Nine Selves

That’s what matters to me, these stories, you kick them up in the dust and they get inside you.

Michael Hayward
Fine Art in Lockdown

Michael Hayward on Félix Fénéon and the exhibits unseen during COVID-19.

Mandelbrot
Flesh and Bone

Flesh and Bone (with Meg Ryan, James Caan and that handsome guy whose name I keep forgetting) had been sitting for months in New Arrivals at the local video purveyor's and no one ever seemed to pick it up. Feeling more than usually desperate last wee

Roni Simunovic
Flight of Fancy

Roni Simunovic takes an Air Canada rouge flight from Halifax to Calgary and ridicules the flight attendants' absurd new uniforms.

Steven Heighton
Fireman's Carry

In this excerpt from Steven Heighton's new book, The Dead Are More Visible, a firefighter must decide what lives are worth saving in the heat of a four-alarm fire. The official line is that firefighters save people—but what about reptiles?

VIVEK SHRAYA
First Pluck

A young boy gets his first pair of tweezers after overhearing locker room conversations about body hair in this excerpt from God Loves Hair by Vivek Shraya.

Ann Diamond
Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House

Barbara Olson, author of The Final Days: The Last, Desperate Abuses of Power by the Clinton White House (Regnery), died aboard Flight 77 when it hit the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. Unfortunately, therefore, she does not have to account for the no

Stephen Osborne
Finding Paradise

Mandelbrot reviews Maps of Paradise by Alessandro Scafi, a history of humanity's attempts to locate utopia.

Sarah Leavitt
Fingersmith

Sarah Waters’s novel pulls the reader into the gritty, dangerous world of mid-nineteenth-century London, where the petty thieves are known as fingersmiths.

Lily Gontard
Finding Farley

Lily Gontard reviews the Farley Mowat-inspired film, Finding Farley (National Film Board).

Alberto Manguel
Final Answers

For most artists, the learning of the craft never ceases, and no resulting work is fully achieved

Lily Gontard
Finish Me

Lily Gontard reviews One Day (Hodder & Staughton), David Nicholls's novel about a decades-long friendship.

SUE GOYETTE
Fidelity

Three poems by Sue Goyette, excerpted from her book Penelope.

Jill Boettger
Field Guide to Stains: How to Identify and Remove Virtually Every Stain Known to Man

Did you know that you are more likely to encounter Worcestershire sauce stains in winter and that correction fluid stains are most common in April?

Shannon Emmerson
Ferry Woman's History of the World

I wish I could say that I finished Ferry Woman's History of the World (Coteau) by Susan Andrews Grace on the ferry ride home, but I didn't. This is a wonderful book, full of Celtic history, the speaker's childhood, her confrontations with Jesus, and

Kathleen Murdock
Fighting Fires

Kathleen Murdock on the shiny TV adaptation of "Little Fires Everywhere".

Helen Godolphin
Field Guide to North America

You could take the Lesbian National Parks and Services Field Guide to North America (Pedlar Press) into the woods, but this guidebook, written by Rangers Shawna Dempsey and Lorri Millan, is just as suitable for reading in bed. In fact, under the cove

Geist Staff
Felicity's Fool

Felicity's Fool, by François Gravel (Cormorant), is a novel with history and science in it, and both the history and the science are very good. Its protagonist is a mild-mannered doctor driven to search for the organ of happiness in the human brain.

Kris Rothstein
Fierce People

In Fierce People by Dirk Wittenborn (Bloomsbury), fifteen-year-old Finn Earl aches to enter the privileged, self-indulgent world inhabited by the billionaire Osborne family and their wealthy friends. One minute he’s trying to cover up his mother’s dr

Stephen Osborne
Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World

Some good Canadian with lots of hard currency should give Pico Iyer a ticket to Yellowknife, or Inuvik, or Pangnirtung or Come By Chance—almost anywhere in Canada, come to think of it. Iyer is the author of Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of

Kris Rothstein
Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks

Kris Rothstein reviews Fantasy Freaks and Gaming Geeks by Ethan Gilsdorf (Lyons Press).

Patty Osborne
February

Patty Osborne reviews February by Lisa Moore (Anansi).

Sadie McCarney
Fact
Christmas in Lothlórien

It was a gruesome war, Santa added in Papyrus font, but the forces of Good eventually emerged victorious

Madeleine Pelletier
Fact
Dummies Raising Goats

Time to call a professional

Rose Divecha
Fact
Clearing Out My Mother's House

The large supply of nine-volt batteries suddenly made sense

S.I. Hassan
Fact
Becoming Canadian

I traffic deep time in a great storm, guilty of ignorance and omission

Adrian Rain
Fact
Schrödinger’s Kids

The log jam is tall and wide and choosing wrong means we don’t make it home

Dayna Mahannah
Fact
The Academy of Profound Oddities

The fish is a suspended phantom, its magenta skeleton an exquisite, vibrant exhibit of what lies beneath

Kelly Bouchard
Fact
After the Flames

A wildland fighter witnesses an old burn's second act

ERNIE KROEGER
Fact
Acoustic Memory

Memories sneak up, tiptoe quiet as a cat. Boom like a slapshot

J.R. Patterson
Fact
True at First Flight

The unmistakable buzz of an approaching aircraft is enough to send my family onto the lawn

Eimear Laffan
Fact
The Trap Door

This invertebrate does not go looking for prey

rob mclennan
Fact
Elizabeth Smart’s Rockcliffe Park

For the sake of the large romantic gesture

Sara de Waal
Fact
Little Women, Two Raccoons

Hit everything dead on, even if it’s big

Margaret Nowaczyk
Fact
Metanoias

The names we learn in childhood smell the sweetest to us

Ian Roy
Fact
My Body Is a Wonderland

Maybe my doctor has two patients named Ian Roy, and I’ve been sent the other Ian’s file

Sara Graefe
Fact
My Summer Behind the Iron Curtain

No Skylab buzz in East Germany.

Sara Cassidy
Fact
The Lowest Tide

Nature’s sanctity is the only portal to the future.

Kathy Page
Fact
The Exquisite Cyclops

A writer roams her sleepscape in search of the extraordinary subconscious

Hollie Adams
Fact
A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths

In search of a big picture at the end of the singular world

David Sheskin
Fact
PRESS 1 IF

PRESS 1 IF YOU THINK YOU MAY HAVE HEARD THE BIG BANG.

EVELYN LAU
Reunion

He looked vaguely familiar— there was a sort of outline around his ­features that I almost recognized, a translucent and shifting visage, as of someone I once knew. He looked vaguely familiar— there was a sort of outline around his ­features that I al

Craig Taylor
Punch

It was at about this moment that I hit him in the face, which is something I’ve never done before. I don’t know what perfect form the punch took in my mind, but by the time the impulse had pushed its way through me, my hand had bent inward like an old person’s claw, or a doll’s hand—curved around but without a bottle to clutch.

Stephen Osborne
Fields of Time

With the approach of her tenth summer, Julia considers the holidays that lie before her: will there be too many things for her to do? Trying to look ahead from school time, with its time-tables and schedules, makes it hard to remember, or to imagine, what summertime will be before summer arrives and the school year ends. In the summer when I was Julia’s age I heard Elvis Presley for the first time, down by the river on the jukebox in the fish-and-chip joint where teenagers went to hold hands and drink ice cream sodas and eat salted french fries drenched in vinegar.

Michał Kozłowski
Wild World

One day a Swiss couple stopped in at the carpet shop, just as they had each year for the last ten years. Every spring they loaded up a cargo van with nets and jars and drove from their home in Switzerland to east Turkey, where they collected ­butterflies together. The man, Walter, had caught snakes in Africa and South America all his life and sold them to universities and private collectors, but that day he was turning seventy-five and, he said, it is not so wise at my age to play with snakes.

Mary Vallis
Waiting for Michael (Jackson)

Reporting on the Michael Jackson trial from a Best Value Inn in Santa Maria, California.

Andrea G. Johnston
The Fallen Man

It’s dark when I get off the bus by the corner store. Not the best area of town. The only other person in sight is lying on the sidewalk.

J. Jill Robinson
One Night at the Oceanview

Did that really happen?  J. Jill Robinson initiates a midnight stand-off between the police and two drunk brothers in an RV Park in White Rock, B.C.

Anik See
Fact
The Crush and the Rush and the Roar

And a sort of current ran through you when you saw it, a visceral, uncontrollable response. A physical resistance to the silence

Rayya Liebich
Fact
Righthand Justified

Language built on sounds of delight, coloured in the gardens of Beirut

JEROME STUEART
Fact
The Dead Viking My Birthmother Gave Me

“The first time I met him, he caused me to float to the ceiling"

Joseph Pearson
Fact
No Names

Sebastian and I enjoy making fun of le mythomane. We compare him to characters in novels. Maybe he can’t return home because he’s wanted for a crime.

Minelle Mahtani
Fact
Looking for a Place to Happen

What does it mean to love a band? A friend? A nation?

Christine Lai
Fact
Now Must Say Goodbye

The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,

the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown

Emily Lu
Fact
Love Song for Mosquito

Violence could not reach them only when they were distant as the moon, not of this world

Daniel Francis
Re-hanging the National Wallpaper

When I lived in Ottawa in the 1970s, I used to enjoy passing lazy afternoons at the National Gallery looking at the pictures. I remember how surprised I was when I first encountered the Group of Seven collection. These paintings were completely familiar—I’d seen them in schoolbooks and on calendars, posters, t-shirts, everywhere—yet at the same time they were completely unexpected.

Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café

It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.

Brad Cran
Fact
Leading Men

"Leading Men” is taken from a work-in-progress, Cinéma-Verité and the Collected Works of Ronald Reagan: A History of Propaganda in Motion Pictures.

Brad Cran
Fact
Empires of Film
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away

Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.

SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm

Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.

Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans

I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.

Kathleen Winter
BoYs

Derek Matthews has to be the ugliest boy in the class but I like him. I’ve liked every boy except Barry Pumphrey now. Barry Pumphrey likes me.

Norbert Ruebsaat
Media Studies

These stories and conversations took place in a Media and Communications Studies class at a Canadian college. Students come to the college from many countries, in the hope of enrolling eventually in a North American university.

BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late

"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."

CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne

Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.

CONNIE KUHNS
Fifty Years in Review

A new anthology of reviews, interviews and commentary on Joni Mitchell's music reveals the star-making machinery.

MARY MEIGS
Off- and On-Camera

Out on the set, except for the fact that there is always someone to catch us if we stumble, or someone to set up folding chairs for us between scenes, we are beneficiaries of the semi that denies the passing of clock-time. There is nothing to remind

Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher

Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."

JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound

It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.

Daniel Francis
War of Independence

World War I, Canada’s “war of independence,” marked a turning point for a young colony wanting to prove itself as a self-reliant nation, but at what cost.

Luanne Armstrong
Kingdom of Monkeys

The latest fashion in Canadian publishing appears to be for books of short stories or slim novels from recent graduates of creative writing programs, as publishers hedge their bets by trying to find writers with credentials. Creative writing workshop

Stephen Osborne
Karl Marx

The new Karl Marx biography by Francis Wheen (4th Estate) fails to illuminate a man who was loved by his family and revered by his followers; instead we are given a hazy sketch of a petulant, perhaps incompetent man of few skills and little disciplin

Patty Osborne
Keep On Truckin'

This fast-paced, quirky, heart warming and hilarious novel captures the fast and loose crossovers of language and culture that make southeast New Brunswick unique.

Daniel Francis
Killer Angels

Daniel Francis reviews the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, a minute-by-minute reimagining of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Stephen Osborne
Karla's Web: A Cultural Investigation of the Mahaffy-French Murders

Thematic convergence was far from my mind when Frank Davey's nearly-instant book, Karla's Web: A Cultural Investigation of the Mahaffy-French Murders (Viking), appeared in the office. For one thing, it came in a wrapper announcing it to be a copy of

Michael Hayward
Karl Ove Knausgaard: A tale of the tape

The final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle allows us to compare Karl Ove’s literary edifice with others of similar ilk—and bulk.

Eve Corbel
Kafka

Mairowitz and Crumb’s Kafka, meanwhile, opens with a horrifying drawing of one of Franz K’s many grisly fantasies of his own death—a pork butcher’s cleaver hacking off neat slices from his head.

Patty Osborne
Justa

Justa by Bridget Moran is another great book—this time I'm typesetting it, and I almost never read books that I typeset But I found myself reading sections while waiting for other sections to print, and I could tell it was going to be a good one. Jus

Michael Hayward
Just Kids

Long before Patti Smith became “the Godmother of Punk” she was a not- atypical teenager of the 1960s, living with her parents in suburban New Jersey.

Patricia Holmes
Karenin Sings the Blues

Many of the poems in Sharon McCartney’s second book, Karenin Sings the Blues, have won national competitions and been published in literary magazines, and so set the standard and tone for the rest of this fine collection. The book is presented in thr

Mandelbrot
Juxtsuppose

My dog-eared copy of Juxtsuppose, a zine "conceived and coordinated by Billy Rueben and Brad Y" (available at Box 30007 Parkgate, N. Vancouver V7H 2Y8) represents the best two bucks I've spent all year.

Carra Noelle Simpson
Josh Ritter

On February 22, 2007, the folk singer-songwriter Josh Ritter stepped on stage at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre, played three songs and said little more than “I’m excited to be here.” Uh-oh, I thought. After a few songs he absorbed the warm glow

Eve Corbel
Jungle Out There

Eve Corbel reviews Lumberjanes, a "smart, cute-in-a-good-way" comic series that follows the supernatural hijinks of five girls at an extraordinary summer camp.

Michał Kozłowski
Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech

Michal Kozlowski reviews Joseph Howe and the Battle for Freedom of Speech by John Ralston Saul.

Kathleen Murdock
Juice Worth the Squeeze

Review of "Shadow of Doubt: The Trials of Dennis Oland, Revised and Expanded Edition" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon.

Mandelbrot
Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition

Mandelbrot reviews Jeff Wall: The Complete Edition (Phaidon).

Jennesia Pedri
Jamaica on Ice

Jennesia Pedri reviews A Brief History of Seven Killings by Marlon James.

Carrie Villeneuve
Jesus Christ: The Lost Years

The two actors shared the portrayal of Jesus as well as playing the other characters, including Mary Magdalene, John the Baptist, Elvis and the three wise men—with a versatility and energy that contributed to a unique and very funny show.

Patty Osborne
Jeannie and the Gentle Giants

In Jeannie and the Gentle Giants by Luanne Armstrong (Ronsdale), Jeannie is a young city girl who ends up in a foster home in the countryside near Kelowna, B.C., and the gentle giants are two enormous work horses named Sally and Sebastien who help Je

Michael Hayward
Japanese Beatniks and Revised Boy Scouts

Michael Hayward on a selection of work from the writing collective known as "the Beats"

Shannon Emmerson
jacks: a gothic gospel

In the note accompanying Geist's copy of jacks: a gothic gospel (Livres DC Books), the book's author Anne Stone recommends it for review, or for "hanging out on a coffee table as an orange object." And, although it is a lovely orange object, jacks is

Peggy Thompson
Haunts

Peggy Thompson on Amber Dawn's Sodom Road Exit.

Kris Rothstein
Forever

Forever is a Dutch film made by the experienced documentarian Heddy Honigmann. Its subject is Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris but its scope includes life and death, history and memory, art and beauty.

Eve Corbel
Issue 2 Endnotes

In Geist No. 1, I reviewed a handful of Canadian publishers’ catalogues.

Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers

Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.

Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots

"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."

Alberto Manguel
Reading the Commedia

An appreciation of Dante's "Commedia."

Alberto Manguel
Reach Out and Touch (Somebody's Hand)

There is no way to step back from the orgy of kisses without offending.

Rob Kovitz
Question Period

Rob Kovitz compiles the pressing questions of the day—"How are they gonna beat ISIS?" And, "On Twitter, who cares?"

Stephen Henighan
Becoming French

For an English-speaking Canadian who has been exposed to French from an early age, Paris is the most disorienting city in Europe. It is grandiose, but it is mundane.

Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy

Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.

Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO

For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.

Daniel Francis
Afghanistan

One thing Canadians have learned from our armed incursion into Afghanistan is that we do not have a vocabulary for discussing war or warlike events.

Daniel Francis
African Gulag

The atrocities were carried out in the name of some version of “civilization” that the Queen represented.

Daniel Francis
Acts of Resistance

"Resistance to wars is as much a Canadian tradition as fighting them." Daniel Francis discusses alternative histories, anti-draft demonstrations and the divisive nature of war.

Alberto Manguel
A Novel for All Times

Alberto Manguel's column from Geist 93 about how the most important Turkish novelist of modern times took over fifty years to reach English-speaking audiences.

Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far

On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.

Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time

What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.

Alberto Manguel
A Brief History of Tags

A reflection on the complex and often inexplicable process of bibliographic categorizations.

Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror

What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.

Annabel Lyon
Ethical Juices

Parables, cautionary tales, morality plays, allegories—the notion that we can study literary works as texts of ethics is as old as literature.

Stephen Henighan
Ethnic Babies

Stephen Henighan discusses the crude first steps to finding a new way to talk about racial reality.

Daniel Francis
Come to the Cabaret

The Penthouse, the notorious Vancouver night club, shares a history with several of the city's missing women cases.

Stephen Henighan
Chariots of China

A bibliophile's worst nightmare: being stuck on a plane with a terrible book. A book mistaken for a work of serious history.

Stephen Henighan
Caribbean Enigma

Unravelling the mysteries of Alejo Carpentier

Daniel Francis
Canada's Funnyman

A misogynist, a racist and an academic walk into a bar...

Stephen Henighan
Campus Confidential

"In the public eye, universities have never recovered from the antics of Donald Sutherland as Professor Jennings in the 1978 film Animal House."

Alberto Manguel
Burning Mistry

Alberto Manguel examines a modern-day book burning and asks: how is this still happening?

Clare Coughlan
The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess

Clare Coughlan reviews her experience seeing (and before that, waiting in line to see) The Love Crimes of Gillian Guess.

S.K. Grant
The Joy of Cooking

"Scallions are eaten raw by self-assertive people": Why S.K. Grant was surprised to discover The Joy of Cooking as a literary work.

Jocelyn Kuang
The Jonathans

Two different novels about family dysfunction—This Is Where I Leave you and The Corrections—written by two different Jonathans. Reviewed by Jocelyn Kuang.

Patty Osborne
The Girl Without Anyone

The Girl Without Anyone is a series of linked short stories by Kelli Deeth, dealing with a teenage girl's budding sexuality, self-doubt and confusion. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.

The Eyre Affair

Karen Schendlinger reviews The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book by Jasper Fforde, two smart, allegorical crime novels starring a detective named Thursday Next.

Patty Osborne
Hunger

It takes Patty Osborne a month to get halfway through the 462 pages of the Giller Prize-winning novel The Polished Hoe, which is only halfway through the 24 hours during which the story takes place.

Sarah Leavitt
Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic

Sarah Leavitt reviews Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic, Alison Bechdel's first graphic novel full of vibrantly alive, expressive characters and richly satisfying extras.

ARLEEN PARÉ
Between the Door Posts

Between the Door Posts, by Isa Milman (Ekstasis Editions), begins with this quote from Kafka: “How can one take delight in the world unless one flees to it for refuge?”

Eve Corbel
Bannock, Beans & Black Tea

Bannock, Beans & Black Tea by the writer/comix artist Seth, is a small, beautiful, disturbing and touching book in which Seth has compiled, edited and illustrated his father’s stories of growing up poor—really poor—in St. Charles, P.E.I.

Sam Macklin
Asterix the Gaul

Asterix the Gaul (Orion), a comic book classic recently reprinted, tramples over all sorts of contemporary niceties.

Derek Fairbridge
A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane's Signature Album

Ashley Kahn’s book A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane’s Signature Album, a lovingly detailed account of the creation of John Coltrane’s classic album of the same name, is a cause for celebration.

Jill Boettger
A Date With Destiny: Night of a Thousand Boyfriends

Just five pages into A Date With Destiny: Night of a Thousand Boyfriends by Miranda Clarke, I can’t decide whether to go to a hotel with an importer/exporter named Chaz, or ditch Chaz and go dancing at Club Neptune with a woman named Danni.

Derek Fairbridge
Da Capo Best Music Writing

The fourth volume in the Da Capo Best Music Writing pulls together some of the finest music writing published in 2003. It is rife with typos, but the articles are compulsively readable and they cover “rock, pop, jazz, country and more."

Sam Macklin
Complete Peanuts

Each book in the ongoing Complete Peanuts series (Fantagraphics) is beautifully designed by the Canadian cartoonist Seth, and features two years of thoughtfully reproduced daily and Sunday newspaper cartoon strips.

Stephen Osborne
Marie Tyrell

“I knew that I would dream that night of the city in flames, the brown-brick towers falling, caving in on themselves (in slow motion, great clouds of burning dust), proud lights flickering out, psssfft, all the messages going dark one by one."

Jill Boettger
Field Guide to Stains: How to Identify and Remove Virtually Every Stain Known to Man

Did you know that you are more likely to encounter Worcestershire sauce stains in winter and that correction fluid stains are most common in April?

Stephen Osborne
The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580

The Secret Voyage of Sir Francis Drake 1577-1580, by Samuel Bawlf, completes the story of European adventure in the north of North America in the sixteenth century.

Stephen Osborne
Snow Walker

Snow Walker, the film made from Farley Mowat’s book of stories, contains much cornball scripting, some wretched dialogue and a ponderous, bellowing soundtrack that equals the worst excesses of Cecil B DeMille’s Bible epics.

Kevin Barefoot
Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Eduardo Galeano’s Soccer in Sun and Shadow (Verso) collects his ruminations on the history and future of soccer, and consists of vignettes describing famous players, unlikely goals and every World Cup final since 1930.

Stephen Osborne
Weave

Lisa Pasold’s poetry collection, Weave, reads as a memoir of the twentieth century in a world bounded by Prague and Peru and the Russian front and the shores of Lake Ontario.

Kris Rothstein
The Nervous Tourist

Bob Gaulke’s description of his travels in Salvador (a region of Brazil), in The Nervous Tourist, evokes the age of imperialism. This modest chapbook contains insightful, engaging and funny writing about the eye-opening experience of travel.

Norbert Ruebsaat
The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power

The Corporation: The Pathological Pursuit of Profit and Power and in the film it is based on, turns notions about corporate responsibility and accountability into oxymorons.

Lily Gontard
The Cripple and His Talismans

The protagonist of The Cripple and His Talismans by Anosh Irani (Raincoast) is a self-centred, self-absorbed, wealthy-but-have-chosen-to-live-among-the-crippled-and-poor-in-Bombay man.

ARLEEN PARÉ
Invisible Lines

In Astrid van der Pol’s poetry collection, Invisible Lines (BuschekBooks), the past is the most hopeful, whereas each new future enters some form of sadness.

Patty Osborne
I'll Be Right Back

Writing on the Rock, which takes place on Denman Island, B.C., in early August, is now my favourite writers’ festival.