THE SINGING FOREST, ON PROPERTY, THE AFFIRMATIONS, THE DAY-BREAKERS, HAIL THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN, THINGS ARE AGAINST US, POGUEMAHONE: Media Hits!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS

THE SINGING FOREST

The Singing Forest by Judith McCormack (September 21, 2021) was highlighted during a book segment on CBC’s The Next Chapter. Author Wendy McKnight was on the show to recommend three historical fiction novels, including The Singing Forest! The conversation aired on March 26, 2022, and was replayed on March 28, 2022. You can listen to or read the full conversation here, where the comments about The Singing Forest start at 6:45.

Wendy McKnight says:

“I think I may have saved the best for last. I just found this book so beautifully written, even despite the fact that it’s at times very horrifying and upsetting. [Judith McCormack] does a really masterful job of weaving a story from present-day Toronto and then going back to pre-World War II Belarus … And so that idea that people can go through times and can still maintain their dignity and their sense of self is such a strong theme that it’s just so beautifully done.”

Get your copy of The Singing Forest here!

ON PROPERTY

Rinaldo Walcott, author of On Property (February 2, 2021), is being featured by the Writers’ Trust Amplified Voices campaign, an effort to highlight books that were published by BIPOC or racialized Canadian authors during the COVID-19 pandemic. A video conversation between Rinaldo Walcott and Canisia Lubrin was released today, where they discuss On Property. You can watch the full video conversation here.

Learn more about the Writers’ Trust Amplified Voices campaign here.

“So the challenge for the persistence of human life is how will we redistribute everything that has come out of the dread and the horror but also the intimacies of these encounters.” —Rinaldo Walcott

Order On Property here!

THE AFFIRMATIONS

The Affirmations by Luke Hathaway (April 5, 2022), was reviewed by Jackie Wong in The Tyee: “On Affirmations and Letting Life Change Us.” The review was published on March 23, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Wong writes:

“There’s something healing about watching people wrestle with and arrive on the other side of a long winter of the land and spirit, whether onscreen or on the page. Accordingly, Luke Hathaway’s The Affirmations is just the thing to read now as we defrost from another pandemic winter and notice the green buds on tree branches, a promise of renewal almost in spite of all we’ve seen.”

Order The Affirmations here!

THE DAYBREAKERS & HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

The Day-Breakers by Michael Fraser and Hail, the Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver (April 5, 2022), have been reviewed on Marrow Reviews by Catherine Owen. The review was published online on March 24, 2022. Take a look at the full review here.

Owen writes:

“Two new poetry titles from Biblioasis, as distinct as can be envisioned, apart from their attentions to the specificities of sound, reassure this reviewer that a variety of approaches to the motivations behind poetry persists. Alexandra Oliver’s Hail, the Invisible Watchman points to the validity of artifice in craft beyond emotion’s call (an Eliotian acolyte perchance?), while Michael Fraser’s stunning collection The Day-Breakers attends to how feeling exists within diction, inside an era’s particular lexicon of pain and triumph.”

Order The Day-Breakers here!

Order Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

THINGS ARE AGAINST US

Lucy Ellmann, author of Things Are Against Us (September 28, 2021), was interviewed by Nahlah Ayed on CBC Ideas. The episode aired on Thursday, March 24, and was posted online earlier that evening. Listen to the full interview here.

From the interview:

Nahlah Ayed: We hear it everywhere, group chats, social media, political commentary: people are overwhelmed with not just what’s happening in the world, but also by the amount of information that we get about what’s happening in the world. How do you cope with the ‘too-muchness’ of everything?

Lucy Ellmann: Well, one way is to read 18th-century novels. Nineteenth-century will do, too. They’re very involving. They’re beautiful. They’re funny. They’re full of satire. A kind of thing that no longer exists. Almost no one understands satire anymore. I think it’s because, I don’t know, education doesn’t exist, I guess, or we just all lost our sense of humour.

I think you have to get back to humour and nature. And I think, taking a walk and getting away from the machines. But if you go for a walk, everyone else is still on a machine out there. So they need their machines forcibly confiscated when they leave their house so that at least outdoors, there’s some kind of community life where you actually face each other.

Order Things Are Against Us here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone (May 3, 2022) by Patrick McCabe has been reviewed by Kirkus Reviews. The review will be published online on March 30, 2022.

The reviewer writes:

“A searing family drama and bittersweet evocation of nostalgia for lost youth.

Irish novelist McCabe’s new work is a leap beyond his previous accomplishments in fiction; a sprawling, epic novel in verse, the book builds on the tradition of lyric poetry as a method of storytelling, shot through with a postmodern Beat sensibility. The tale begins in the present as narrator Dan Fogarty arrives at the nursing home where his sister, the mercurial Una Fogarty, lives. From there, the narrative quickly moves back in time to the early 1970s to a communal house in London’s Kilburn district, where the siblings spent their early adulthood among an endless parade of flatmates, besotted poets, and various other hippies and hangers-on. At the center of this bohemian gyre is the Scottish poet Troy McClory, and the anything-but-rosy romance between Troy and Una becomes something of a leitmotif throughout the story. Swirling around this torrid relationship, the book details the siblings’ childhood during WWII and their coming-of-age against the backdrop of the Vietnam War, while the lingering specters of alcoholism, mental illness, and suicide are never far from the margins of the text. Despite these bleak themes, the novel is not without its share of humor—early ’70s pop-culture references abound, and the Joycean linguistic play is a pleasure to read. Structurally, the book is a marvel; McCabe’s inventive use of enjambment and stanza layout push the boundaries of what is possible in narrative storytelling. The vernacular, drunken verse format may be daunting at first, but after a few pages the narrative develops a hypnotic rhythm, as if one is sitting on a barstool listening to the narrator unspool his story over a pint (or three). At this point, the reader has merely to hang on and enjoy the ride.

A moving saga of youth, age, and memory—by turns achingly poetic, knowingly philosophical, and bitterly funny.”

Order your copy of Poguemahone here!

HOUSEHOLDERS

Householders cover

Kate Cayley, author of Householders (September 2021), was interviewed by James Tennant for Get Lit CFMU.

The episode aired on March 24, 2022 and is available online here.

Get your copy of Householders here!

POGUEMAHONE, SAY THIS, THE MUSIC GAME, SHIMMER: Reviews & Interviews!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS

POGUEMAHONE

Patrick McCabe has been interviewed in The Times in regards to his forthcoming novel Poguemahone (May 3, 2022). “Pat McCabe: A lifetime’s search for the voice” was published online on March 18, 2022. You can read the full interview here.

An excerpt from the interview:

“In the early stages of creating his new novel, though, there were times when he wondered if he was throwing it all away. Poguemahone is a free-form experiment that reads like a psychedelic ballad. Narrated by an Irishman living in England, it’s McCabe’s weirdest and wildest work to date. ‘And it’s my best,’ he insists. ‘I worked so hard on it. I’m not a great fan of indiscipline. It might look like this is wild, but everything ties up in it, and that’s not always the case with me. It won’t be for everybody, but it is for me.'”

The Globe and Mail posted their ‘Spring 2022 Books Preview’ and it includes Poguemahone (May 3, 2022) by Patrick McCabe! You can view the full list here.

Of Poguemahone, Emily Donaldson writes:

“The Irish writer, twice a Booker bridesmaid for novels including The Butcher Boy, takes an audacious stylistic turn with this 600-page novel-cum-snowballing-free-verse-monologue by an Irishman caring for his 70-year-old dementia-afflicted sister in England, which the Guardian has boldly declared this century’s Ulysses.”

Preorder Poguemahone from Biblioasis here!

SHIMMER

Also included in the Globe and Mail‘s ‘Spring 2022 Books Preview’ was Alex Pugsley’s short story collection, Shimmer (May 17, 2022)! Check it out on the list here.

Of Shimmer, Emily Donaldson writes:

“Dialogue, character study and a fair dose of profanity star in the latest collection of short stories by the Halifax writer whose previous work has elicited comparisons to Robertson Davies and John Irving.”

Preorder your copy of Shimmer here!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game (February 8, 2022) by Stéfanie Clermont, trans. by JC Sutcliffe, has been reviewed in Quill & Quire! The review was posted online on March 17, 2022, and will be in their March 2022 print issue. Read the full review here.

Reviewer Cassandra Drudi writes:

“A richly created world that spans cities and years … Despite the often dark subject matter, The Music Game is hopeful and optimistic, too: it is a portrait of people who have built community on their own terms.”

Pick up your copy of The Music Game here!

SAY THIS 

Say This (March 1, 2022) by Elise Levine, was interviewed on Across the Pond podcast. It was published online on March 22, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

Get your copy of Say This here!

THE MUSIC GAME, SAY THIS, CHEMICAL VALLEY, POGUEMAHONE, A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE, ON DECLINE: March Media Medley!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

THE MUSIC GAME

An excerpt of The Music Game (February 8, 2022) by Stéfanie Clermont, trans. by JC Sutcliffe, has been published in Literary Hub! The excerpt was published online on February 28, 2022.

Read the full excerpt here.

The Music Game was also featured on the blog, Buried In Print. Read the full article here.

In the post, they write:

“Readers get a clear sense of that fog of youthfulness (where inherently ideas contain dichotomies like ‘clarity’ and ‘confusion’) but also a sense of lived-in and vibrant Montreal (and Ottawa) … It’s not the kind of story that makes you feel like you need to know what happens—because, actually, very little “happens”—but it’s the kind of storytelling that makes me care about the characters’ daily lives and lifelong dreams.”

In celebration of International Women’s Day, CBC Books put together a list of ’22 women writers in Canada you should read in 2022.’ Included on the list is The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont, trans. by JC Sutcliffe. You can view the full list here.

The Music Game was listed by both Literary Hub and 49th Shelf as recommended reads for March! You can read the full list from Literary Hub here, and the full list from 49th Shelf here.

In her recommendation for Literary Hub, bookseller Kay Wosewick writes:

The Music Game is a delicious sneak peek into Millennial life, one that acknowledges few boundaries, alternates between excess and emptiness, repeatedly taste-tests and spits out adulthood, and ebbs and flows within the surrounding cacophony. Simultaneously exciting and unsettling.

The Music Game was reviewed in the latest issue of the Montreal Review of Books! The review is printed in their Spring 2022 issue and was posted online on March 2, 2022. You can check out the full review here.

In her review, Roxane Hudon writes:

“Clermont is relentless in her writing, and pain seems to await these characters at every corner, but by concluding this way, with everyone together and alive sharing music and stories, she’s showing us that, even for a generation often teetering on the edge, there is beauty, and friendship, and hope.”

The Music Game was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was posted online on March 12, 2022. Read the full review here.

In her review, Sara Harms writes:

“Montreal author Stéfanie Clermont’s award-winning debut is a stunning, incisive immersion into a community of young radical activists finding love, experiencing violence, rejecting hegemony, and struggling to survive financially in a world of dead-end jobs.”

The Music Game was also reviewed in The Charlatan, posted online on March 10, 2022. Read the full review from The Charlatan here.

In her review, Melissa White writes:

“Canadian author Stéfanie Clermont delivers in her debut novel, The Music Game, pushing the boundaries of narrative structure through intimate portrayals of young adulthood … Similar to the extremely successful Irish-millennial author Sally Rooney, she portrays the complex feelings and emotions of her characters in simple terms, thus making them feel universal.”

Pick up your copy of The Music Game here!

SAY THIS

Elise Levine, author of Say This (March 1, 2022), was interviewed in The Baltimore Fishbowl. It was published on March 2, 2022. Read the full interview here.

An excerpt from the interview:

BFB: […] Has form always been a central consideration in your writing?

EL: I’ve always understood form and style as elements in service of character. But with Say This I felt greater freedom to formally experiment. Here I was writing a novella— when I’d previously written short stories and novels—and then a second one, so why not take things further? Especially in light of the characters’ experiences with the unsayable, the unanswerable, which called out for me to push hard on the use of fragments and white space as a kind counter-text.

Say This was reviewed in Toronto Star. It was published online on March 11, 2022, and can be read here.

An excerpt from the review:

“Levine repeats the phrase “everything has already happened” in both novellas and the line is key to the book as a whole. It is both the truth and wishful thinking: the crime is done, it’s already happened, this much is true. But for these characters, the crime is never in the past. It is always happening, a constancy of pain and loss that will forever shape their lives.

Say This is a breathtaking, daring exploration of that constancy, of the lingering power of trauma, and the roots and branches of violence and despair.”

Author Elise Levine was also interviewed by PEN America on March 3, 2022. You can find the full interview here.

An excerpt from the interview:

I used fragments as a way of working against the truisms and conventional handlings of narratives surrounding violent crime. By their very nature, fragments embody what is missing; they convey a sense of absence, what remains unvoiced, including hard-to-name desires and the power imbalances that fuel abuse and thrive on the silences surrounding them. The fragments in the book highlight these silences and absences, reflecting how partial, how broken the characters’ understanding might be, and how difficult if not impossible it is for them to access an all-encompassing, consoling truth.

Say This was also named an Editors’ pick for March 2022 by 49th Shelf. You can see the full list here.

Get your copy of Say This here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe (May 3, 2022) has been reviewed in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on March 8, 2022, which you can read here. Poguemahone has also been selected as an Indie Next pick for May!

Publishers Weekly writes:

“McCabe draws the reader into a rambling web replete with Gaelic folklore, IRA agitation, and a soundtrack of glam and progressive rock. Lively and ambitious in form, this admirably extends the range of McCabe’s career-long examination of familial and childhood trauma.”

Preorder Poguemahone from Biblioasis here!

A FACTOTUM IN THE BOOK TRADE

A Factotum in the Book Trade by Marius Kociejowski (April 26, 2022) was featured in Hamilton Review of Books as part of “What We’re Reading: Editors’ Picks, Spring 2022.” The article was published online on March 9, 2022. You can read the full list here.

Preorder A Factotum in the Book Trade today here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021) was named a semi-finalist for the Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature! The announcement was made on March 7, 2022. Congratulations, David!

Chemical Valley also received an excellent review from Kirkus! The review was posted online on February 25, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Kirkus wrote:

“Huebert has a razor-sharp wit and an exacting eye for human foibles … [he] manages to offer intimate portraits of human lives without ever letting readers forget the climate bubbling just outside their windows … A masterful assemblage of environmentally minded tales.”

Order your copy of Chemical Valley here!

 

ON DECLINE

On Decline cover

Andrew Potter, author of On Decline (October 19, 2021) was a guest on the podcast Lean Out with Tara Henley. Host Tara Henley is a former CBC reporter, journalist, and bestselling author. The episode was published online yesterday, March 16, 2022. You can listen to the full episode here.

Pick up your copy of On Decline here!

Biblioasis Introduces New Ordering Terms for All Canadian Independent Accounts

/in /by

Biblioasis is excited to announce new ordering terms for all Canadian independent accounts that order through our distributor, University of Toronto Press — including an increased discount of 44%, participation in UTP’s free freight program, and extended return deadlines.

We’ve worked with UTP to establish a two-year minimum window for which Canadian independent booksellers need not worry about returning Biblioasis titles for full credit, and we’ve ensured that every order in the system, including pre-existing ones, will immediately receive the 44% discount.

“Every publisher talks about how much independent booksellers mean to them,” says Dan Wells, Biblioasis publisher and owner. “As booksellers ourselves, we’ve seen how important an additional 2, 4, 6% discount can be over the course of a year; how important free freight is; how the freedom not to worry about hard return deadlines can give books a longer period of time on the shelf and allow them more of a chance to find readers.”

“We’ve therefore decided to do more to even the playing field between the chains, online retailers, and our independent partners. We hope that this initiative will allow independent Canadian booksellers who want to carry our books to do so with less restriction and in greater numbers, increasing visibility and giving them a bit more time to catch a reader’s attention.”

“CIBA members are thrilled to hear of the new terms being offered by Biblioasis,” says Lori Cheverie, Bookmark Charlottetown Manager, AIBA President, CIBA board member, and the head of CIBA’s Supplier Relations Committee. “These changes reflect the importance in the partnership between Canadian publishers and booksellers in a healthy bookselling eco-system and will result in getting even more Canadian titles into the hands of our readers.”

We are thankful to Ontario Creates, who helped to support this initiative through their BookFund program. Ontario Creates is a provincial government agency that works to provide the support that creates jobs and economic opportunities in creative industries including the film, music, book, magazine, television, and interactive digital media sectors, both domestically and internationally.

Biblioasis is a literary press based in Windsor, Ontario. Since 2004 we have published the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and literature in translation. For more information please visit our website, biblioasis.com

For more information, please contact:

Erika Sanborn
Marketing & Publicity, Biblioasis
esanborn@biblioasis.com
519-915-3930

DANTE’S INDIANA, CHEMICAL VALLEY, THE UNSEEN: Media Hits!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

DANTE’S INDIANA

Randy Boyagoda, author of Dante’s Indiana (September 7, 2021), was interviewed on the Today Faith Podcast! The interview was posted on February 18, 2022. You can listen to the episode here!

Order Dante’s Indiana here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021) has been reviewed in Hamilton Arts & Letters! The review appears in issue 14.2, and was posted online on February 22, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Reviewer Jenn Carson writes,

“[A] masterful exploration of dirty nature writing … Chemical Valley’s stories, for all their dystopian demons, are balanced by Huebert’s insistence on penning his characters with an empathetic hand. His gaze may be harsh, like the reality we inhabit, but his love for his fellow man, and our desperate desire for connection, is unwavering.”

Order Chemical Valley here!

THE UNSEEN

The Unseen (April 7, 2020) by Roy Jacobsen, and translated by Don Bartlett and Don Shaw, was reviewed in the North Bay Nipissing! The review of this first book in the Barrøy Chronicles was posted on February 19, 2022. You can check out the full review here.

Order The Unseen here!

Check out the sequel, White Shadow, here!

Preorder the third book in the series, Eyes of the Rigel here!

 

Play Along with THE MUSIC GAME

/in /by

In celebration of our latest release, the staff at Biblioasis played ‘The Music Game,’ and came up with a selection of songs that we thought were good accompaniments to the reading experience.

During key moments throughout the book, the characters play their own version of the music game where someone begins to describe a scenario or a feeling, and another person answers with what they think is an appropriate song.

“The Music Game seems to ask us to return to those vital conversations about the way we have been hurt and about wanting to make things better, even if the room to do that may feel so out of reach. It’s a book that allows us to escape our reality while also somehow facing it head-on. It’s a reminder of our fundamental interconnectedness, of the loss that still cuts through us every day, and, more than anything else, of the necessity of hope.” —Stacey May Fowles, Open Book

Check out our playlist below, and let us know what songs put you in a reading mood!

Get your copy of The Music Game here!

THE MUSIC GAME: Rave Reviews from the Toronto Star and more!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game (Feb. 8, 2022) by Stéfanie Clermont, trans. by JC Sutcliffe, has been reviewed in the Toronto Star! The review was published online on February 18, 2022. Read the full review here.

In his review, Steven Beattie writes:

“In her debut fiction, Montreal writer Stéfanie Clermont locates a 21st Century equivalent to the 1920s’ “lost generation” in a group of young people trying to find meaning and connection in a world of dead-end jobs, unaffordable housing, and romantic disappointments … The Music Game inhabits a liminal space between different bodies, psyches and geographies. Its characters can display the worst hipster traits — turning up their noses at Bruno Mars on a café stereo while genuflecting at the altar of Godspeed You! Black Emperor — and genuine insights into their inner selves and the nature of the world around them. If they share undeniable commonalities with lost generations before them, they are nonetheless, in Clermont’s hands, rendered specific and unique.”

Stéfanie Clermont was interviewed by Kenn at Shelf Life Books for their podcast, Book Storm. The episode was published online on February 11, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

The Music Game was included on Boswell Book Company’s blog as a staff recommendation. Read the list of recommendations here.

Bookseller Kay Wosewick writes:

“The Music Game is a delicious sneak peek into a generation (Millennials, of course) that acknowledges few boundaries, alternates between excess and emptiness, repeatedly taste-tests and spits out adulthood, and ebbs and flows within the cacophony that surrounds them. Yeah, a bit scary. But also exciting.”

The Music Game was also reviewed in the McGill Tribune and Apt613. Both reviews were published online on February 15, 2022.

In their review for the McGill Tribune, Louis Lussier-Piette writes:

“The Music Game’s structure is what sets it apart. Each chapter tells a self-contained story from the point of view of someone within Sabrina’s inner circle, be it a long-lost friend or a neighbour … Clermont’s reflection on activism is skillfully nuanced, exploring both the hopefulness and cynicism that often come with political engagement.”

Read the full review here.

In their review for Apt613, Emmanuelle Gingras writes:

“[An} audacious, honest, and liberating masterpiece … The Music Game sends us on a journey through this contemporary reality. It enumerates all the ways that we love and destroy one another … The Music Game is about relationships, yet also about all the ways we desperately try to escape reality … anyone who’s ever experienced depression or anxiety will find healing through Stéfanie’s loyal and beautiful ways of describing the inexplicable. She allows for contradiction; depth and lightness meet in a disturbing but cathartic way.”

Read the full review here.

Order your copy of The Music Game from Biblioasis here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY, THE MUSIC GAME, SAY THIS, THE DAY-BREAKERS, HAIL THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN: Rave Reviews!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

THE MUSIC GAME

The Music Game by Stéfanie Clermont (February 8, 2022) is now available in stores! The Music Game was listed by NYLON as ‘one of the best books coming out in February’ in a list published online on January 26, 2022. You can read the full article here.
Sophia June writes,
“Let’s hear it for an indie sleaze-era novel … class issues, deep friendship, betrayal, a gender transition and anti-globalization protests. You know, just ~Millennial~ stuff!”

The Music Game has been reviewed by Stacey May Fowles in Open Book. The review was posted online on February 3, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Stacey May Fowles writes,

“The Music Game seems to ask us to return to those vital conversations about the way we have been hurt and about wanting to make things better, even if the room to do that may feel so out of reach. It’s a book that allows us to escape our reality while also somehow facing it head-on. It’s a reminder of our fundamental interconnectedness, of the loss that still cuts through us every day, and, more than anything else, of the necessity of hope.”

The Music Game was also featured as a bookseller pick on 49th Shelf! The recommendation was posted on February 8, 2022. See the full list of recommendations here.

Susan Chamberlain (The Book Keeper) writes,

“Stéfanie Clermont’s award-winning debut novel is impressive and makes me look forward to her future writings. The novel is told in short glimpses or snapshots of time in the lives of the main characters and their satellite friends. It is the story of three young women growing into themselves and finding their way in the 2010s. Sabrina, Celine, and Julie begin as idealistic, anti-capitalist protesters, working low-level jobs and struggling to pay rent. They come together and move apart as they form friendships and experience jealousy, rivalry, and grief. They discuss big-picture issues and the minutia of everyday life while they pursue sex, find love, fall into the pits of depression and deal with the death by suicide of Vincent, a young man in their friend circle. Clermont masterfully navigates the blurry devastation of grief with gritty realism blanketed in the writing skills of a poet. This novel contains many passages that made me stop and savour the author’s deft manipulation of language and her ability to bring deep emotion to the surface. This is a book that I can highly recommend to readers who enjoy discovering new, talented, contemporary writers.”

Stéfanie Clermont was interviewed on CBC Breakaway yesterday, on February 9, 2022. You can listen to the full interview here.

Order your copy of The Music Game here!

SAY THIS

The first chapter of Elise Levine’s forthcoming book, Say This (March 1, 2022), has been published as an excerpt on Open Book. The excerpt was published online on February 8, 2022. You can read the full excerpt here.

Of the book, Open Book writes,

“Two linked novellas function as one powerful storytelling magic trick. Formally ambitious but grounded in deep, unflinching, and complex emotional truth … Devastating, beautifully and intentionally fragmented, and arresting, Say This peels back the layers of power, violence, trauma, and guilt that surround its central crime.”

Preorder Say This from Biblioasis here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

Chemical Valley by David Huebert (October 19, 2021), was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada! The review has been published online, and will appear in print in their March 2022 issue. You can read it here.

Reviewer André Forget writes,

“First in his 2017 collection Peninsula Sinking and now in Chemical Valley, Huebert’s uncanny facility for spinning densely poetic fiction out of the tawdry horror of twenty-first-century life has made him one of the most captivating authors of the past decade.”

Get your copy of Chemical Valley here!

THE DAY-BREAKERS & HAIL, THE INVISIBLE WATCHMAN

Hail, the Invisible Watchman by Alexandra Oliver (April 5, 2022) and The Day-Breakers by Michael Fraser (April 5, 2022) were both listed by CBC Books as ‘Canadian poetry collections to watch for in spring 2022’! The list was published online on February 3, 2022. You can check out the full list here.

Preorder Hail, the Invisible Watchman here!

Preorder the Day-Breakers here!

A GHOST IN THE THROAT a finalist for the NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARDS

/in /by

Biblioasis Title A Ghost in the Throat named a finalist by the National Book Critics Circle

WINDSOR, Ont.— On the evening of Thursday, January 20th, the National Book Critics Circle announced the finalists for the 2021 publishing year. Among them is A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa.

“We’re so very happy to receive this news, and thrilled for Doireann and hope that this will help to bring even more readers to her exceptional A Ghost in the Throat,” says Dan Wells, owner and publisher of Biblioasis. “We want to thank the NBCC jury, and offer congratulations to all of the other nominees, their publishers and editors.”

A Ghost in the Throat has received wide acclaim since its publication; winner of the 2020 Nonfiction Book of the Year from the An Post Irish Book Awards, winner of the 2020 Foyles Nonfiction Book of the Year, winner of the James Tait Black Biography Prize, shortlisted for the Republic of Consciousness Prize, shortlisted for the 2021 Rathbones Folio Prize, longlisted for the 2021 Gordon Burn Prize, a Guardian Best Book of 2020, a 2021 Indie Next Pick, a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2021, a Book Riot Best Book of 2021, a New York Times Notable Book of 2021, a Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of 2021, an NPR Best Book of 2021, a Chicago Public Library Best Book of 2021, a Globe and Mail Book of the Year, a Winnipeg Free Press Top Read of 2021, an Entropy Magazine Best of the Year, a LitHub Best Book of the Year, and a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2021.

Doireann Ní Ghríofa is also the author of six critically acclaimed books of poetry, each a deepening exploration of birth, death, desire, and domesticity. Awards for her writing include a Lannan Literary Fellowship (USA), the Ostana Prize (Italy), a Seamus Heaney Fellowship (Queen’s University), and the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, among others. This is her first work of prose.

Biblioasis is a literary press based in Windsor, Ontario. Since 2004 we have published the best in contemporary fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and literature in translation. For more information please visit our website, biblioasis.com

The National Book Critics Circle Awards, founded in 1974 at the Algonquin Hotel and considered among the most prestigious in American letters, are the sole prizes bestowed by a jury of working critics and book review editors. The awards will be presented on March 17, 2022, in a virtual ceremony that will be free and open to the public.

For more information, please contact:

Erika Sanborn
Marketing & Publicity, Biblioasis
esanborn@biblioasis.com
519-915-3930

AS YOU WERE, CHEMICAL VALLEY, A GHOST IN THE THROAT, ON TIME AND WATER, ROMANTIC : New York Times, interviews, and more!

/in /by

IN THE NEWS!

AS YOU WERE

As You Were by Elaine Feeney (October 5, 2021) has been reviewed by the New York Times in a list titled, ‘Hope Gained and Lost, in New Fiction From Around the World.’ The review was published online on January 14, 2022, and in the print edition on January 16, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Antonia Hitchens writes,

“The novel is intensely confessional … [As You Were] reads almost like a humorous screen adaptation of an illness memoir, its gaze trained more on the lived experience inside a hospital than on looming death. Feeney’s prose is intentionally not morbid; there is more levity than self-pity or wallowing in the remorselessness of fate.”

Get your copy of As You Were here!

CHEMICAL VALLEY

Chemical Valley cover

David Huebert, author of Chemical Valley (October 19, 2021), was interviewed in The Farside Review! The article was published on January 7, 2022. You can read the full interview here.

Lara Boyle writes,

“Thought-provoking, smart, and frighteningly surreal, David Huebert’s Chemical Valley is a brilliantly crafted collection of short stories that confront the violence of human nature in the natural world.”

Get your copy of Chemical Valley here!

A GHOST IN THE THROAT

A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (June 1, 2021) was reviewed in a critical essay in Ploughshares. The article was posted on January 13, 2022. You can read the full review here.

Holly M. Wendt writes,

“A Ghost in the Throat is not historical fiction, and not a novelization of Eibhlín’s life, either. The refusal to give in to sensationalism becomes a tender intimacy between writer and subject—subject who is not simply a subject, but a companion of many years by the project’s close—and this infuses the very act of art-making.”

Get your copy of A Ghost in the Throat here!

ON TIME AND WATER

On Time and Water cover

On Time and Water by Andri Snaer Magnason (March 30, 2021) received a touching review in Yale Climate Connections. The review was posted on January 14, 2022. Check out the full review here.

Donald Wright wrote,

“Across 300-plus beautifully written pages, Magnason visits both his past and our future, at times struggling to find the words to convey the enormity of the climate system’s collapse, of what is already here and what is coming down the pipe.”

Get your copy of On Time and Water here!

ROMANTIC

Romantic (October 19, 2021) author Mark Callanan was interviewed in the Newfoundland Herald! The interview was posted online on January 17, 2021. You can read the full interview here.

Get your copy of Romantic here!