The Bibliophile: Backlist Is a Fiction (But Overstock Is Far Too Real)

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I’ve been thinking a lot in recent months about backlist. For those unfamiliar with the term, backlist refers to a given publisher’s catalogue of previously published titles that remain in print and available to the market. The designation distinguishes those books from frontlist, the ones that a publisher has only recently published, usually over the past year, and is still actively working to promote. The Oxford English Dictionary, which credits first use to Stanley Unwin in his 1946 edition of The Truth About Publishing, says that it is a catalogue of “books still available for sale by a publisher or bookseller, but no longer classified by him as ‘current’ or ‘new.’” Backlist is therefore a relatively new concept in publishing, less than eighty years old, though a tremendous amount of ink, both in contracts and media, has been spilled on the subject since.

Photo: Biblioasis inventory (seen above) is meticulously tracked by Emily Stephenson-Bowes, our Operations Manager

The majority of a publisher’s available catalogue, unless they’ve only started or have published limited runs for a set market, will almost always be backlist; and generally speaking, the more a publisher’s sales come from the backlist, the healthier and more stable they are. Backlist makes up anywhere between 50–80 percent of the average multinational’s sales, though for smaller independent publishers, perhaps especially in Canada, it’s quite often a fraction of this. At Biblioasis, we’re in a relatively healthy position, with 35–40 percent of our sales coming from our backlist of more than four hundred titles (though, in truth, only a small percentage of our backlist titles contribute much to these sales). There’s only one trade book in our soon-to-be-twenty-year history that’s gone out of print. A decade ago, in the Globe and Mail, Mark Medley wrote, exasperated, that in his time covering Canadian books, he’d “never met a publisher more convinced of the greatness of their every book,” and asserted that I believed we’re getting stronger every year. I’m still that publisher, I still believe that our list, almost every year, is better than the last (and yes, this year’s is the best ever), and I’ve therefore made a commitment to keep all of our books, whenever humanly possible, available for people to discover.

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As most reading this likely know, I got my start in books twenty-six years ago by opening a used bookstore, which means most of my bread and butter was backlist and out-of-print books. I was always much more thrilled to discover a signed Whitman photo in a moldy banana box (true story!) than to get my hands on the hottest new release; very little has changed in the intervening years. It was the near-constant demands I received for certain out-of-print regional history books—especially Marty Gervais’s The Rumrunners—that started me thinking about publishing in the first place, so the press in a very real way was formed to service backlist. And as the primary buyer for our current bookshop—now majority new—I’ve paid particular attention to growing our backlist holdings over the past five years; as a result, our sales have more than doubled. It struck me that, for many readers—at least to judge by our own shop, they are getting younger—backlist is a fiction: every unread book, every undiscovered author, is a new discovery to a reader, no less fresh and current than a title only released last Tuesday. To the TikTok generation, Dostoevsky may well be just another angsty, bearded hipster; and thanks to TikTok we sell a lot of Dostoevsky. If I could just get the best of what we’ve previously published in front of more people, including Caroline Adderson’s A History of Forgetting, Russell Banks’s Foregone, Mike Barnes’s Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country, Clark Blaise’s This Time, That Place, Mark Bourrie’s Bush Runner, Randy Boyagoda’s Original Prin, Craig Boyko’s Psychology and Other Stories, Graeme Macrae Burnet’s Case Study—and I’ve only quickly skimmed through to the B’s (forgive me, dear authors, any omissions: you were next on the list!), I think people would be thrilled with what they find.

Photo: Books within boxes lie dormant upon colourful metal shelves

Despite the promise that the internet would make everything available, as things have shifted from enthusiasts to algorithms real discoverability has never been harder. The relentless focus on the new, the current and the forthcoming, has made it increasingly difficult for books published only a few months earlier to discover their readers, let alone books published seasons before. If you can’t find a review anywhere, if it’s not available, even spine out, on a bookseller’s shelves, what chance does a reader have to find it? There’s nothing new about this complaint. It’s even getting hard to keep new books on warehouse shelves: storage costs have gone through the roof, and one major distributor we work with has been pressuring client publishers to destroy every single book that is returned, billing publishers as much as 20 percent of list price merely to restock it. It’s destructive and, in my view, unethical, merely another example of large, almost monopolistic corporations putting profit ahead of purpose. Publishers are pressured to adopt new technologies, such as print-on-demand, to service all backlist requirements (and even some frontlist ones), and we’ve made use of it as we’ve needed to. But too often the quality isn’t close enough to minimum standards of our usual offset printing; when I was in Cincinnati this past March and found a POD edition of one of our books on the shelves at Downbound, I was very disappointed with its appearance, a disappointment that has only amplified over the ensuing months. I wouldn’t have bought that edition of the book, and I do not doubt that others have picked it up and put it down for the same reason. Which is a real shame, because it was one of the best books we published in the last year.

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So as a result, we’ve resisted relying overmuch on POD; we’ve resisted letting our distributor pulp our books immediately on return to the warehouse; we’ve tried to resist as long as possible pulping any of our books. It was one of the reasons we purchased our nine-thousand-square-foot building here in Windsor: to try and control our storage costs and to ensure that we could keep everything available. But the costs are still catching up with us: between our various warehouses, storage costs could be as high as 50,000 dollars this year: to a small press like ours, that is an awful lot of money. So: we’ve embarked on our first major (and only second overall) stock reduction in twenty years: we remain as committed as we ever have been to keeping all of our books in print, but we need to reduce inventory and attendant fees. We’ve offered the authors of affected books the opportunity to buy stock at a small fraction of the cover price; we’re looking into remainder options where it makes sense; and we’ll be pulping what we can’t reduce through other means, while maintaining enough stock to handle sales well into the future. If we need to reprint a book at a later date to supply demand, we will do so: at this point that is still a much cheaper option than paying for additional storage. And, finally, we’re also offering readers the opportunity to stock up on some exceptional books at a fraction of the cover price: from hundreds of titles, at five dollars a book. You can pick up the aforementioned Adderson and Blaise and Boyagoda and Boyko (though not the Bourrie or the Burnet!), and many others, books that I still love (All Things Move and As You Were and The Iconoclast’s Journal and Martin John and The Party Wall and Zolitude, to scan the alphabet in five titles) as much as some of the new books we’re excited to put before you in the coming months. So, please, stock up: it’s taken twenty years for us to reach this point, and if I have my way it’ll be twenty more before we have a sale like this again.

Photo: The opening scene of a horror movie about an indie publisher who runs out of storage space

Just do me a favour: if you read something you love, please tell someone: word of mouth still remains the best recommendation engine, and every single one of these authors and books deserves to be more widely discovered and read. Thank you, and happy reading (and ordering).

Dan Wells
Publisher

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Keep up with us!

The Bibliophile: Horsin’ Around

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It’s officially too-hot-to-sleep season in Windsor, and so in between refilling our water bottles for the sixteenth time and trying to find the shadiest route down the street to the cafe, we decided it was time to wake The Bibliophile from its summer slumber.

In the spirit of fresh starts, we’ll be adding some additional kinds of content to this newsletter: alongside excerpts, essays, publicity news, and exclusive interviews with our authors, keep an eye out for industry musings and behind-the-scenes stories, featuring contributions from each of us and illuminating some of the day-to-day in the life of a publishing house, and what it is that makes us Biblioasis. (We do take requests: tell us what you’d like to know!)

Today it’s my pleasure to introduce Julia Lei, who’s recently started with us in publicity. Julia comes to us with a background in research and digital marketing and we’re delighted to have her aboard the good ship Biblio. Read on to learn a little bit about her early adventures in publishing, and a couple of the excellent books she’s been working on.

Vanessa Stauffer
Managing Editor

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September has marked the beginning of fall since I could remember running to catch the yellow bus on the first day of school. This has remained constant for over two decades, from elementary through grad school, despite changes over the years in fall’s hotness and my modes of transportation. This June, however, I started working as a publicist at Biblioasis, and the learning curve has dissolved my entrenched perspective on the season’s boundaries and contents.

Instead of seminars to attend and tutorials to teach, my fall calendar is now full of exciting bookish events to plan for and manage. To track preparation progress, our team consults multiple, ever-evolving to-do lists that are equally frightening and satisfying to look at. In particular, the title schedule and master media lists direct my daily triaging of tasks and toggling of tabs as we gear up for the closest batch of Biblioasis publication dates. The first of which, the August 6, 2024, publication of Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick, marks my new fall.

Establishing a new daily routine around a new job is challenging enough without the seasons shifting on you. As I try to get my steps in and drink enough water, I find inspo in the day-in-the-life of Richard Kelly Kemick, an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. Being his publicist, I was able to review his author questionnaire, which is a document authors new to Biblioasis fill out so we can get to know them better and do the best publicity possible for their work. The following is drawn from Richard’s finished questionnaire:

Q:

It’s useful to us to have a sense of your existing commitments and the lead time you might need for promotional and publicity opportunities. Give us a quick Day-in-the-Life sketch of your typical availability. What’s an average twenty-four hours like for you?

A:

7 am: Rouse from slumber
8 am: Walk dog and infant child with Litia to Litia’s work
9 am: Breakfast and then put infant child down for nap
9:30 to whenever Christ wills it: Write
12 pm: Walk dog and infant child to post office to check mail and gossip with fellow Rossland residents
1 pm: Lunch!
1:30 pm: Put infant child down for nap
1:30 to whenever Christ wills it: Write/read/nap
3 pm: Litia returns home from work
3–6 pm: Write
6:30 pm: Dinner!
7–9 pm: Go to school gymnasium and FUCKING CRUSH at volleyball
9–10 pm: Go home and gossip with Litia, talk shit about the fellow Rossland residents I gossiped with earlier in the day
10–11 pm: Read Ducks, Newburyport
11 pm: Slip into slumber

Seems like someone is adulting well . . . eight hours of sleep? I don’t know her, but one can dream. To stay on track with basic self maintenance and work, I started using a sticky note system on my desk that honestly looks better than it works. It might be time for me to try a good ol’ notebook, like the kind Roland Allen decided to write about in The Notebook: A History of Thinking on Paper. From an interview with the author, here’s a peek behind the making of this non-fiction title, which comes out September 4, 2024.

Q:

Can you tell me a bit more about yourself and how The Notebook came to be?

A:

I am from London originally. I studied English literature in Manchester University, which was great, and gave me some critical knowledge. Then I was an English teacher abroad in Poland for a couple of years. For most of my working life I’ve worked in publishing, but not on the editorial side. You might say that I’ve spent much longer working Excel grids than Word documents. Always on the sales side. Mostly illustrated books, mostly international markets—either the foreign rights market or the American market.

I’m very interested in the business behind things, so when I found that one of the first uses of notebooks was bookkeeping, it made perfect sense to me. Notebooks are so important within the bookkeeping field, and that has such an impact on other things, that it’s bound to spill over. That’s why you get really interesting things like the zibaldone, which are these Italian notebooks that normal people kept at home. People from all kinds of trades keep zibaldone. It was cheap and affordable and it’s a way a normal person can appreciate literature in an era before print. They came into existence because everyone in Florence had a notebook for bookkeeping. Because I have been working on the business end of things all my working life, I find that very relatable. On top of selling books, I started writing books under pseudonyms on the side as a fun thing to do. I’ve written eight books under five names, but they are all gift and novelty books. From a writing point of view it was good training. I’m quite good at sitting down and writing one thousand words. That was good discipline, writing about bicycles, aroma therapy, marijuana, sourdough bread, all these weird little nonfiction books.

I’d always wanted to publish a book about notebooks, but never found an author to do it, never found an editor who got it, so I started to write it myself.

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In addition to The Notebook, here are some other noteworthy reads from Biblioasis for the (eventual) upcoming sweater weather:

Thanks for reading!

Until next time,

Julia Lei
Publicist

Media Hits: MAY OUR JOY ENDURE, THE NOTEBOOK, THE PAGES OF THE SEA, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) was reviewed in The Guardian! The review was published online on July 25, and is available to read here.

Critic Claire Adam writes,

“The writing is confident and precise; evocative of the beauty of the Caribbean and full of sparkling observation. I’ll eagerly await whatever this talented author has in store for us next.”

Order The Pages of the Sea here!

THE NOTEBOOK

Roland Allen, author of The Notebook, has been interviewed by David Marr on ABC’s Late Night Live podcast, talking about how the humble notebook changed the world. The interview was posted online on July 25, and you can listen to it here.

Roland Allen was also interviewed by John Dickerson on Slate‘s Gabfest Reads podcast, in which they discuss the historical origins of notebooks, how to keep a notebook and their own personal journeys documenting their lives. The episode was posted online on July 20, and you can listen to it here.

Order The Notebook here!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Sep 10, 2024), was featured in Quill & Quire’s  2024 Fall Fiction Preview. The list was published online on July 24, and you can check out the full preview here.

Attila Berki writes,

“Like his previous works, including Querelle of Roberval, Kevin Lambert’s new novel has garnered acclaim and won multiple awards in the original French. A philosophical critique of the ultra-privileged, it tells of a famous architect who returns to her hometown and creates a furor with a widely condemned Montreal megaproject.”

May Our Joy Endure was also reviewed (in French) in Fugues. The review was posted on July 21, and you can read it here.

Reviewer Benoit Migneault writes,

“[A] translation . . . that masterfully captures the quality of the original text. As a reminder, May Our Joy Endure brilliantly explores and satirizes the world of the ultra-rich, the galloping gentrification of neighborhoods, and the incestuous and parasitic links between political and economic circles.”

Order May Our Joy Endure here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was excerpted in the Ottawa Citizen. The excerpt, “Up to Huronia” from chapter two of the book, was published online on July 22. Read it in full here.

Grab Crosses in the Sky here!

DREAMING HOME shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award!

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We’re excited to share that Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs has been shortlisted for the Canadian Authors’ Association’s 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award! The shortlist was announced on July 21, and you can check out the full list here.

On Dreaming Home, one judge commented,

“From the opening sentence we know we’re in the hands of a master craftsman. This novel opens up through multiple, connected points of view into a landscape that’s deeply problematic: from the damaged father, through the gay son who refuses to accept the deal he’s been dealt, to the sister who propelled them into this abyss. Trauma impacts them all in unexpected and illuminating ways. Challenging and poignant, but ultimately joyful.”

Another judge praised,

“A poignant and sensitively written story of the profound repercussions of a forced outage of a young boy by his sibling and the decades-long fallout that ensues for him, his family members, and his lovers. Told from multiple perspectives, the narrative is compelling and heartbreaking, with a gentle hint of humour.”

The Fred Kerner Book Award is awarded annually to a Canadian Authors member who has the best overall book published in the previous calendar year, including fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

The winner will be announced at a virtual Fred Kerner Book Award readings event in early September, with the event date to be announced in August.

Get a copy of Dreaming Home here!

ABOUT DREAMING HOME

Shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize • Shortlisted for the 2024 Fred Kerner Book Award • A Globe and Mail Best Spring Book • One of Lambda Literary Review‘s Most Anticipated LGBTQ+ Books of June 2023 • A Southern Review Book to Celebrate in June 2023 • A 49th Shelf Best Book of 2023

When a sister’s casual act of betrayal awakens their father’s demons—ones spawned by his time in Vietnamese POW camps—the effects of the ensuing violence against her brother ripple out over the course of forty years, from Lubbock, to San Francisco, to Fort Lauderdale. Swept up in this arc, the members of this family and their loved ones tell their tales. A queer coming-of-age, and coming-to-terms, and a poignant exploration of all the ways we search for home, Dreaming Home is the unforgettable story of the fragmenting of an American family.

Credit: Marc Lostracco

ABOUT LUCIAN CHILDS

Lucian Childs is a fiction writer whose debut, Dreaming Home (Biblioasis 2023), was shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in literary fiction. He was a Peter Taylor Fellow at the Kenyon Review Writers Workshop and a finalist for the Faulkner-Wisdom Short Story Award. He is a contributing editor of the Lambda Literary finalist, Building Fires in the Snow: a collection of Alaska LGBTQ short fiction and poetry. His stories and reviews have appeared in the journals Grain, The Puritan, Plenitude, and Prairie Fire, among others. Born and raised in Dallas, Texas, he currently resides in Toronto, Ontario.

Media Hits: PAGES OF THE SEA, COMRADE PAPA, ON CLASS, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE PAGES OF THE SEA

The Pages of the Sea by Anne Hawk (Sep 17, 2024) was reviewed in Kirkus Reviews. The review will appear in their Aug 15 print issue, and was published online on July 19. Check it out in full here!

Kirkus writes,

“Hawk’s prose is beautiful, a lyrical and loving portrayal of an island and its people . . . A unique, scrappy, tender bildungsroman.”

Order The Pages of the Sea here!

COMRADE PAPA

Comrade Papa by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne (Oct 8, 2024), was reviewed by Alison Manley in The Seaboard Review. The review was published online on July 14, and you can read it here.

Manley writes,

“Comrade Papa is a sweeping coming-of-age story, spanning two centuries and continents, linking two characters across time and space to critique the long-lasting effects of colonialism. It’s also a very playful novel, poking fun at the purity of movements and the one-note branding we often slap on history. GauZ’ is a really interesting and experimental writer, and it shows here in his second book translated into English by Frank Wynne.”

Order Comrade Papa here!

ON CLASS

On Class by Deborah Dundas (May 9, 2023) was reviewed in the Montreal Serai. The review was published online on July 15, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer Veena Gokhale writes,

“Coming at the complex issue of class from several angles, Deborah Dundas draws from personal narrative, interviews and testimonies, formal research and studies, information from media, and other sources to present a holistic, nuanced and highly informative view of class in Canada.”

Get On Class here!

Check out the rest of the Field Notes series here!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jon Kalman Stefansson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024), was included in the Sarnia Journal‘s list, “The ultimate summer 2024 reading guide: The Book Keeper’s top picks.” The article was published online on July 17, and you can read it here.

Bookseller Ann writes,

“This is way more charming, endearing, beautiful and hopeful than the title, the cover and the themes of grief make it sound. It’s the perfect summer read if you love a cast of funny, endearing characters who roll over each other’s stories in a way that clarifies the meaning of community.”

Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!

ON CLASS and 1934 shortlisted for the Speakers Book Award!

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We’re pleased to share that two of our titles, On Class by Deborah Dundas and 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs, are both on the shortlist for the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award! The shortlist was announced this morning on July 12, 2024, and you can view the finalists here.

Promoting Ontario’s literary talent, the Speaker’s Book Award recognizes non-fiction works that highlight the province’s history and celebrate its diverse stories. Special consideration is given to books focusing on Ontario’s parliamentary heritage and on provincial political discourse.

The winner will be announced in late fall, with an award ceremony taking place on November 4.

Grab a copy of On Class here.

Check out 1934 here.

ABOUT ON CLASS

Shortlisted for the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award • A Hamilton Review of Books Best Book of 2023

Growing up poor, Deborah Dundas knew what it meant to want, to be hungry, and to long for social and economic dignity; she understood the crushing weight of having nothing much expected of you. But even after overcoming many of the usual barriers faced by lower- and working-class people, she still felt anxious about her place, and even in relatively safe spaces reluctant to broach the subject of class. While new social movements have generated open conversation about gender and racism, discussions of class rarely include the voices of those most deeply affected: the working class and poor.

On Class is an exploration of the ways in which we talk about class: of who tells the stories, and who doesn’t, which ones tend to be repeated most often, and why this has to change. It asks the question: What don’t we talk about when we don’t talk about class? And what might happen if, finally, we did?

Credit: Patrick McCormick

ABOUT DEBORAH DUNDAS

Deborah Dundas grew up poor in the west end of Toronto. She is now a writer and journalist, has worked as a television producer and is currently an editor at the Toronto Star. Her work has appeared in numerous publications in Canada, the UK and Ireland including Maclean’s, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, Canadian Notes and Queries, The Belfast Telegraph and The Sunday Independent. She attended York University for English and Political Science and has an MFA in Creative Non-fiction from the University of King’s College. She lives in Toronto with her husband and daughter and their loving, grumpy cat Jumper.

ABOUT 1934

Shortlisted for the 2024 Speaker’s Book Award

The pride of Chatham’s East End, the Coloured All-Stars broke the colour barrier in baseball more than a decade before Jackie Robinson did the same in the Major Leagues. Fielding a team of the best Black baseball players from across southwestern Ontario and Michigan, theirs is a story that could only have happened in this particular time and place: during the depths of the Great Depression, in a small industrial town a short distance from the American border, home to one of the most vibrant Black communities in Canada.

Drawing heavily on scrapbooks, newspaper accounts, and oral histories from members of the team and their families, 1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year shines a light on a largely overlooked chapter of Black baseball. But more than this, 1934 is the story of one group of men who fought for the respect that was too often denied them.

Rich in detail, full of the sounds and textures of a time long past, 1934 introduces the All-Stars’ unforgettable players and captures their winning season, so that it almost feels like you’re sitting there in Stirling Park’s grandstands, cheering on the team from Chatham.

Credit: Lively Creative Co.

ABOUT HEIDI LM JACOBS

Heidi LM Jacobs’ previous books include the novel Molly of the Mall: Literary Lass and Purveyor of Fine Footwear (NeWest Press, 2019), which won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour in 2020, and 100 Miles of Baseball: Fifty Games, One Summer (with Dale Jacobs, Biblioasis, 2021). 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.

Media Hits: A WAY TO BE HAPPY, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

A WAY TO BE HAPPY

A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson (Sep 10, 2024) has received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews! The starred review will appear in their August print issue, and was published online on July 4. Check it out here.

Kirkus writes,

“Adderson . . . is a deft, masterful storyteller whose literary fiction surely deserves more attention.”

Order A Way to Be Happy here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was listed in Reactor‘s “Can’t Miss Indie Press Speculative Fiction for July and August 2024.” The article was posted on July 3, and you can read it here.

Tobias Carroll writes,

“These stories include a number of strange visions of the not-so-distant future—and throw some ghosts into the mix as well. “

Get Hello, Horse here!

THE NOTEBOOK

Roland Allen, author of The Notebook (Sep 3, 2024), was interviewed on Ryan Holiday’s podcast The Daily Stoic. The episode aired on June 26, and is available to listen to here.

Order The Notebook here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Manhattan Book Review. The review was published online for their June issue, and is available to read here.

Reviewer Eric Smith writes,

“Bernard’s hilarious tome is a hundred-proof fever dream of bizarre scenarios and Canada’s most outlandish cast of characters . . . But readers beware. Your technicolor nightmares will be fueled by The Hollow Beast.”

Grab The Hollow Beast here!

AWARD NEWS!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) has been longlisted for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards! The longlist was announced on July 4, and you can read it here.

Toronto Public Library has created a special reading list of the 2024 longlisted titles, here. The shortlist for the 2024 Toronto Book Awards will be announced later this summer and a winner will be named in a prize ceremony November 7.

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Or, check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here.

Media Hits: THE FUTURE, CROSSES IN THE SKY, THE HOLLOW BEAST, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2024) was featured in the Quill & Quire‘s article on “Independent booksellers’ top-selling Canadian titles of 2024”! The article was posted on June 26, and places The Future in the #2 and #3 spots on their top-sellers lists.

Check out the full article here.

Grab The Future here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brebeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was reviewed by Michael Taube in the Washington Examiner. The article was published online on June 21, and you can read it here.

Taube writes,

“Crosses in the Sky provides a detailed account of the giant-framed missionary who walked among the Hurons . . . This patron saint of Canada has long been given plenty of attention by Jesuits, whether for his missionary spirit or for his extreme suffering. It is good to see his legend now given serious historical treatment.”

Crosses in the Sky was reviewed in Guelph Today in bookseller Barb Minett’s column, “On the Bookshelf.” The review was posted on June 23, and can be read here.

Minett writes,

“Bourrie’s history of the attempted colonization of Huronia by the Jesuits and French is a torrent of information. Open the first page and you will be taken down a treacherous river full of gigantic rapids and waterfalls, and around every turn there is a skirmish or drought, an epidemic or blackflies . . . [This is] a very important book in the writing of Canadian history.”

Crosses in the Sky also made an appearance on Quill & Quire‘s article on “Independent booksellers’ top-selling Canadian titles of 2024.” The article, posted on June 26, places Crosses in the #25 spot. Check out the article here.

Get Crosses in the Sky here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada. The review by Amanda Perry will appear in their July/August issue, and was published online on June 24 here.

Perry writes,

“It’s ambitious . . . [The reader] can tap into the author’s manic rhythm and admire the density of the world he creates . . . his technical mastery has generated all kinds of complex flavours, so long as one can stomach the initial shock of the taste.”

Grab The Hollow Beast here!

BARFLY

Barfly by Michael Lista (June 4, 2024) was reviewed in the Midwest Book Review. The review was posted in their Wisconsin Bookwatch on June 24, and can be viewed here.

The MBR writes,

“With his own distinctive style of cadence, rhythm, word driven imagery, and emotional reach, the poems comprising Michael Lista’s last volume of verse is an extraordinary, memorable, and unreservedly recommended addition to personal, professional, community, and college/university library Contemporary American Poetry collections and supplemental curriculum reading lists.”

Grab Barfly here!

ORDINARY WONDER TALES

Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart was featured in Book Riot! Kendra Winchester featured the essay collection in her newsletter Read this Book on June 26, and you can read it in full here.

Winchester writes,

“Emily Urquhart knows her stuff. She holds a doctorate in folklore, and publications around the world have featured her writing. In this collection of essays, Urquhart examines the magical and the everyday side by side.”

Grab Ordinary Wonder Tales here!

OFF THE RECORD

Off the Record edited by John Metcalf was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada! The review by Sarah Hampson was published online on June 24, and will appear in their July/August issue. Check it out here.

Hampson writes,

“[Metcalf’s] appreciation for the challenges of being a published writer is reflected in the clever approach he takes in Off the Record . . . The authors in Off the Record chart the course of their careers with stories of rejection, bad publishing decisions, punishing reviews, eventual triumph, and formative experiences. Which is the best kind of education for any wannabe writer—and a reminder for readers of the commitment involved in creating the fiction they get to enjoy.”

Grab Off the Record here!

HELLO, HORSE

Richard Kelly Kemick, author of the forthcoming story collection Hello, Horse (Aug 2024), wrote an essay for The Walrus. The essay, “I Tried to Finish a Dead Man’s Novel” was published online on June 20, and is available to read here.

Order Hello, Horse here!

Media Hits: COMRADE PAPA, MAY OUR JOY ENDURE, THE NOTEBOOK, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024), has been reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on June 15, and you can read it here.

Douglas J. Johnston writes:

“Bourrie is fast becoming the dean of Canadian literary non-fiction . . . Bourrie also manages to be panoramic in his historical descriptions of Huronia while concurrently focusing on biographical details of Brébeuf’s missionary work. This treatment of the problematic legacy of both the cleric and his religious order is top drawer.”

Grab Crosses in the Sky here!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on June 15, and you can check it out here.

Deborah Bowers writes,

“The characters are intense, with their creativity, angst, rebellion and ability to take life far too seriously (as one is apt to do in their 20s, navigating first loves and first jobs in 1990s Toronto) . . . It’s quite a thrill ride.”

The Education of Aubrey McKee was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader on June 15. You can read the full review here.

Heidi Greco writes,

“I adored this book.”

The Education of Aubrey McKee was also reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books! The review was posted online on June 15, and can be read here.

Timothy Niedermann writes,

“There is an intoxicating quality to Pugsley’s prose . . . The Education of Aubrey McKee [has] an emotional immediacy rarely found in a novel. Hopefully, readers will see more of Aubrey McKee in the future.”

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kevin Lambert, translated by Donald Winkler (Sep 3, 2024), has received a starred reviewed in Kirkus Reviews. The starred review was published online on June 15, and can be read here.

Kirkus writes:

“Award-winning Canadian novelist Lambert weaves a hypnotic narrative, smoothly translated from French by Winkler, about greed and inequality, hypocrisy, and, not least, a “dangerous notion of purity” . . . An astute critique of entrenched power.”

Order May Our Joy Endure here!

THE NOTEBOOK

The Notebook by Roland Allen (Sep 3, 2024) also received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews! The starred review was published online on June 13, and can be read here.

Kirkus calls the book,

“An enthusiastic, informative cultural history.”

Order The Notebook here!

COMRADE PAPA

Comrade Papa by GauZ’, translated by Frank Wynne (Oct 8, 2024), was reviewed in the Guardian‘s list of “The best translated fiction – review roundup.” The article was published online on June 21, and you can read it here.

John Self calls it,

“[A] funny, ebullient, often chaotic tale of French colonial exploitation of Ivory Coast . . . Ivorian author GauZ’ was shortlisted for the International Booker prize for his novel Standing Heavy. Comrade Papa is even better.”

Order Comrade Papa here!

Media Hits: HELLO HORSE, THE UTOPIAN GENERATION, ON COMMUNITY, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

HELLO HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) was highlighted in the Globe and Mail‘s list of “Thirty-four books to read this summer.” The article was published online on June 13, and you can check it out here.

Critic Emily Donaldson writes,

“The animal world interacts with the human one in confounding and sometimes wondrous ways in Kemick’s first collection, which abounds with the poet’s sideways, observational writing.”

Hello, Horse was also featured in BC Bookworld! The review was published in their Summer 2024 print issue, and is available to view online here.

BC Bookworld writes,

“Part of the joy of a collection of short stories is the surprising range of characters and situations that can spring from an author’s imagination. Richard Kelly Kemick’s debut collection of character-driven stories, Hello, Horse, range from the humorous to the bizarre.”

Order Hello, Horse here!

THE UTOPIAN GENERATION

The Utopian Generation by Pepetela, translated by David Brookshaw (Aug 13, 2024), was highlighted in the Globe and Mail‘s list of “Thirty-four books to read this summer.” The article was published online on June 13, and you can check it out here.

Critic Emily Donaldson writes,

“First published in Portuguese in 1992, this decades-spanning anti-colonialist novel from the early sixties by Angola’s most prominent writer (real name: Artur Pestana dos Santos) involves a group of students in Lisbon who, faced with the prospect of being conscripted to suppress a political uprising in their native land, end up (like Pepetela himself did) as guerilla fighters in Angola’s brutal 14-year war.”

Order The Utopian Generation here!

SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

Colleen Coco Collins, author of Sorry About the Fire (Apr 2, 2024), was interviewed on the All Write in Sin City podcast! The interview was posted online on June 9, and is available to listen to in full here.

Grab Sorry About the Fire here!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024), was reviewed in The /tƐmz/ Review! The review was published online on June 10, and you can read it here.

Reviewer Marcie McCauley writes,

“Jón Kalman Stefánsson’s writing is steeped in love and loss; his stories are sorrow-soaked, the kind that linger.”

Grab Your Absence Is Darkness here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simic (Feb 6, 2024), was reviewed in The /tƐmz/ Review! The review was published online on June 10, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer Alex Carrigan writes,

“The true love story in this novel is the love between the reader and the characters, asking the reader to sympathize with the flawed, struggling characters and to empathize with how easy it is to fall into cynicism and to forget the joy in life . . . Sajko’s novel can remind you that some relationships are too interwoven to be truly cut apart, and it’s in finding how they’re tied together that one will remember to persist regardless.”

Get Love Novel here!

ON COMMUNITY

On Community by Casey Plett (Nov 7, 2023) was feature in CBC Books’ list of “25 books for Pride Month.” The list was posted online on June 14, and is available to check out here.

CBC Books writes,

“Plett uses her firsthand experiences to eventually reach a cumulative definition of community and explore how we form bonds with one another.”

Get On Community here!

BEST CANADIAN SERIES 2024

The Best Canadian 2024 Series launch, part of TIFA’s Toronto Lit Up programme, was highlighted on their YouTube channel! The short video was posted on June 12, and you can watch it here.

Get Best Canadian Essays 2024 here!

Get Best Canadian Poetry 2024 here!

Get Best Canadian Stories 2024 here!

Get all three Best Canadian anthologies here!