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ROMANTIC Virtual Launch Video

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Last night we celebrated the virtual launch of Mark Callanan’s new poetry collection, Romantic (October 12, 2021)! Mark Callanan had a wonderful discussion with fellow poet Luke Hathaway, who showed up dressed in shining armor for the event! The reading was followed by an audience Q&A, and a successful book giveaway!

And if you missed the live launch, you can still check it out below!

 

ABOUT ROMANTIC

Drawing on Arthurian myth, the Romantic poets, the ill-fated “Great War” efforts of the Newfoundland Regiment, modern parenthood, 16-bit video games, and Major League Baseball, these poems examine the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, both as individuals and as communities, in order to explain how and why we are the way we are. At its heart, Romantic interrogates our western society’s idealized, self-deluding personal and cultural perspectives.

ABOUT MARK CALLANAN

Mark Callanan is the author of two previous poetry collections. He was one of the founding editors of the St. John’s, Newfoundland-based literary journal Riddle Fence and co-edited The Breakwater Book of Contemporary Newfoundland Poetry. He lives in St. John’s with his wife, poet and critic Andreae Callanan, and their four children.

 

Get your copy of Romantic from Biblioasis here!

THE SINGING FOREST Virtual Launch Video

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Last night we celebrated the launch of Judith McCormack’s The Singing Forest (September 21 2021)! Judith was joined by criminal lawyer Frank Addario, and author and Judge Maryka Omatsu, for a fascinating discussion and engaging audience Q&A. Afterward, there was a giveaway for the book.

And if you weren’t able to make the live event, you can still watch it below!

ABOUT THE SINGING FOREST

In a quiet forest in Belarus, two boys make a gruesome find that reveals a long-kept secret: the mass grave where Stalin’s police buried thousands of murder victims in the 1930s. The results of the subsequent investigation—30,000 dead—has far-reaching effects, and across the Atlantic in Toronto, young lawyer Leah Jarvis finds herself tasked with an impossible case: the trial of elderly Stefan Drozd, a former member of Stalin’s forces, who fled his crimes in Kurapaty for a new identity in Canada. Though Leah is convinced of Drozd’s guilt, she needs hard facts. Determined to bring him to justice, she travels to Belarus in search of witnesses—and finds herself piecing together another set of evidence: her mother’s death, her father’s absence, the shadows of her Jewish heritage. Lyrical and wrenching by turns, The Singing Forest is a profound investigation of memory, truth, and the stories that tell us who we are.

ABOUT JUDITH MCCORMACK

Judith McCormack was born in Evanston, and grew up in Toronto, with several years in Montreal and Vancouver. She is Jewish through her mother, and her maternal grandparents came from Belarus and Lithuania, with her father contributing his Scots-Irish heritage. Her writing has been shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Fiction Prize, the Journey Prize and the Amazon First Novel Award, and her short stories have appeared in the Harvard Review, Descant, The Fiddlehead, Coming Attractions and Best Canadian Stories. She also has several law degrees, which first introduced her to story-telling, and is a recipient of the Law Society Medal and The Guthrie Award for access to justice.

Order from Biblioasis here!

 

AS YOU WERE Virtual Launch Video

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On Saturday, October 16, we held the virtual launch of Elaine Feeney’s As You Were! Elaine had an excellent discussion with Douglas Stuart, Booker-Prize winning author of Shuggie Bain, and the event was hosted by Grace Harper. Afterward, there was an audience Q&A, and a book giveaway!

And if you weren’t able to watch the event live, no worries! You can still watch it here:

ABOUT AS YOU WERE

Sinéad Hynes is a tough, driven, funny young property developer with a terminal cancer diagnosis—but no one knows it: not her fellow patients in a failing hospital, and certainly not her family. She has confided only in Google and a shiny magpie. Yet she can’t go on like this, tirelessly trying to outstrip her past and in mortal fear of her future. Across the ward, Margaret Rose is running her chaotic family from her rose-gold Nokia. In the neighbouring bed, Jane, rarely but piercingly lucid, is searching for a decent bra and for someone to listen. And Sinéad needs them both.

As You Were is about intimate histories, institutional failures, the kindness of strangers, and the darkly present past of modern Ireland; about women’s stories and women’s struggles; about seizing the moment to be free. Wildly funny, desperately tragic, inventive and irrepressible, As You Were introduces a brilliant new voice.

ABOUT ELAINE FEENEY

Elaine Feeney is an award-winning writer from Galway and teaches at The National University of Ireland, Galway. She has published three collections of poetry, including The Radio was Gospel and Rise and the award-winning drama, WRoNGHEADED with The Liz Roche Company. As You Were, her debut novel, was published in 2020 by Vintage in the UK and in 2021 by Biblioasis in North America. It was shortlisted for Novel of the Year at the Irish Book Awards and was included in The Guardian’s top debut novels for 2020. It appeared widely in best books of 2020 including in The Telegraph, The Irish Independent, The Evening Standard, The Guardian, The Observer and The Irish Times.

Order from Biblioasis here!

ON TIME AND WATER Virtual Launch Video

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Last night we celebrated the launch of  Andri Snær Magnason’s new book, On Time and Water! Andri Snær Magnason was joined virtually by Meehan Crist and Lytton Smith in a great discussion. The event then moved on to an exciting audience Q&A and book giveaway! Biblioasis was thrilled to partner with the US publisher Open Letter Books for the launch, which was co-hosted by Glass Bookshop in Edmonton, AB.

If you missed the event, don’t worry—you can still watch it below!

Order your copy from Biblioasis in Canada.

Order your copy from Open Letter Books in the US.

Or, you can pick up a copy from your local bookstore!

 

ABOUT ON TIME AND WATER

Asked by a leading climate scientist why he wasn’t writing about the greatest crisis mankind has faced, Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland’s most beloved writers and public intellectuals, protested: he wasn’t a specialist, he said. It wasn’t his field. But the scientist persisted: “If you cannot understand our scientific findings and present them in an emotional, psychological, poetic or mythological context,” he told him, “then no one will really understand the issue, and the world will end.”

Based on interviews and advice from leading glacial, ocean, climate, and geographical scientists, and interwoven with personal, historical, and mythological stories, Magnason’s resulting response is a rich and compelling work of narrative nonfiction that illustrates the reality of climate change and offers hope in the face of an uncertain future. Moving from reflections on how one writes an obituary for a glacier to exhortation for a heightened understanding of human time and our obligations to one another, throughout history and across the globe, On Time and Water is both deeply personal and globally minded: a travel story, a world history, a desperate plea to live in harmony with future generations—and is unlike anything that has yet been published on the current climate emergency.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Andri Snær Magnason is one of Iceland’s most celebrated writers. He has won the Icelandic Literary Prize for fiction, children’s fiction, and non-fiction. In 2009, Magnason co-directed the documentary Dreamland, which was based on his book Dreamland: A Self-Help Manual for a Frightened Nation. In 2010, Magnason was awarded the Kairos Prize, presented to outstanding individuals in the field of intercultural understanding. Magnason ran for president of Iceland in 2016 and came third out of nine candidates.

MURDER ON THE INSIDE Virtual Launch Video

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We had a fantastic time celebrating the virtual launch of Catherine Fogarty’s book, Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary! The night kicked off with a discussion between Catherine Fogarty and guest Dean Jobb, and ended with a successful audience Q&A and book giveaway. Co-hosted by Novel Idea Bookstore in Kingston, ON.

In case you missed it, you can still watch the video here:

Order your copy from Biblioasis, or from your local bookstore!

Learn more about Novel Idea Bookstore!

 

ABOUT MURDER ON THE INSIDE

“You have taken our civil rights—we want our human rights.”

On April 14, 1971, a handful of prisoners attacked the guards at Kingston Penitentiary and seized control, making headlines around the world. For four intense days, the prisoners held the guards hostage while their leaders negotiated with a citizens’ committee of journalists and lawyers, drawing attention to the dehumanizing realities of their incarceration, including overcrowding, harsh punishment and extreme isolation. But when another group of convicts turned their pent-up rage towards some of the weakest prisoners, tensions inside the old stone walls erupted, with tragic consequences. As heavily armed soldiers prepared to regain control of the prison through a full military assault, the inmates were finally forced to surrender.

Murder on the Inside tells the harrowing story of a prison in crisis against the backdrop of a pivotal moment in the history of human rights. Occurring just months before the uprising at Attica Prison, the Kingston riot has remained largely undocumented, and few have known the details—yet the tense drama chronicled here is more relevant today than ever. A gripping account of the standoff and the efforts for justice and reform it inspired, Murder on the Inside is essential reading for our times.

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Catherine Fogarty is a storyteller. She is the founder and president of Big Coat Media and Story Hunter Podcasts. An accomplished television producer, writer and director, Catherine has produced award-winning lifestyle, reality and documentary series for both Canadian and American networks. Catherine is the executive producer of the Gemini nominated series Love It or List It and directed I Don’t Have Time for This, an intimate documentary about young women with breast cancer. Originally trained as a social worker, Catherine studied deviance and criminology. She worked with numerous at-risk populations including street youth, people with AIDS, abused women, and social services. Catherine holds an M.A. in Social Work, an MBA in Human Resource Management, and an MFA in Creative Non-Fiction from the University of Kings College. She was recently awarded the Marina Nemet Award in Creative Writing through the University of Toronto.

100 MILES OF BASEBALL Virtual Book Launch Video

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We had a fantastic night celebrating the virtual launch of Dale and Heidi LM Jacobs’ 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer! Kicking off the event was a Q&A and excerpt reading with the authors and guest Michael Elves, discussing everything from long drives to the ballpark, to the multitude of different ways people can watch the same game, and keeping the rediscovered love of baseball from going out again. A beautiful musical performance from Crissi Cochrane was given, before the night came to a close with a book giveaway.

 

In case you missed it, you can still watch the video here below:

 

ABOUT 100 MILES OF BASEBALL

By the end of the 2016 season, Dale Jacobs and Heidi LM Jacobs both finally admitted to themselves and to each other that they were losing interest in the Tigers and, consequently, in baseball itself—a thread that had not only connected the two of them, but brought them together with their families and with their own histories as well. They weren’t sure what they were missing, but they had an idea where it might be found: in their own backyard. Drawing a radius of one hundred miles around their home in Windsor, Ontario, Heidi and Dale set a goal of seeing fifty games within that circle in one summer, a schedule that took them across southwestern Ontario and into Michigan and Ohio, from bleachers behind high schools, to manicured university turf, to the steep concrete stands of major league parks. 100 MILES OF BASEBALL is the story of their rediscovery of their love of the game—and with it their relationships, and the region they call home.

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Dale Jacobs is the author of Graphic Encounters: Comics and the Sponsorship of Multimodal Literacy (Bloomsbury Academic, 2013). He is the editor of Sunday with the Tigers: Eleven Ways to Watch a Game (Black Moss Press, 2015) and The Myles Horton Reader (University of Tennessee Press, 2003), and co-editor (with Laura Micciche) of A Way to Move: Rhetorics of Emotion and Composition Studies (Boynton Cook/Heinemann, 2003). His academic/creative nonfiction book, The 1976 Project: On Comics and Grief, is forthcoming from Wilfred Laurier University Press. He is the editor of The Windsor Review and teaches in the English Department at the University of Windsor.

Heidi LM Jacobs’ novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press, 2019) won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2020. She is a librarian at the University of Windsor and one of the researchers behind the award-winning Breaking the Colour Barrier: Wilfred “Boomer” Harding & the Chatham Coloured All-Stars project. She is currently co-writing a book about the 1934 Chatham Coloured All-Stars, the first Black team to win the Ontario Baseball Amateur Association Championship (forthcoming from Wilfred Laurier University Press). Originally from Edmonton, she now lives in Windsor, Ontario.

 

Order your copy now here, or from your local bookstore!