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Media Hits: THE FUTURE, BARFLY, COCKTAIL, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2024), was reviewed in Alberta Views! The review was published online on May 31, and is available to read here.

Reviewer C. S. Wiesenthal writes,

“While the setting of The Future is indeed dystopian—a ruined and toxic Fort Détroit—the story told here is one that won’t leave you despairing . . . the novel’s overall vision [is] of regenerative potential: the cycle of time and the transformation of all life forms offer possibilities for redemption and hope.”

Get The Future here!

BARFLY

Barfly by Michael Lista (June 4, 2024) has been reviewed in The Seaboard Review by Michael Greenstein. The review was posted online on June 3, and you can read it here.

Greenstein writes,

“With liquid refreshment, firehose, and fire escape, besotted Barfly is a sobering experience.”

Barfly was also featured in Lit Hub‘s list of ’26 new books out today’ along with an excerpt! The list was published on Jun 4 and can be viewed here, and you can read June 7’s excerpted poem, “Auld Lang Syne” here.

Grab Barfly here!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) was featured in CBC’s article “10 books you heard about on CBC Radio recently.” The article highlighted Alex Pugsley’s recent interview on CBC’s The Next Chapter. The list was posted on June 4, and you can check it out here.

Get The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Pick up the first book, Aubrey McKee, here!

WORK TO BE DONE

Work to Be Done: Selected Essays and Reviews by Bruce Whiteman (Mar 12, 2024) was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was published online on June 1, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer Ron Robinson writes,

“Poet, translator, culture historian, book reviewer and lover of language, Bruce Whiteman has sifted and scrutinized 50 years of his critical writings and selected those that still have delight to offer the curious reader.”

Grab Work to Be Done here!

THE ART OF LIBROMANCY

Josh Cook, author of The Art of Libromancy (Aug 22, 2023), was interviewed on Lit Hub‘s podcast Write-minded: Weekly Inspiration for Writers. The interview, about the behind-the-scenes of selling books, was posted online on June 3, and you can give it a listen here.

Grab The Art of Libromancy here!

IN AWARDS

COCKTAIL

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sep 12, 2024) has won the New Brunswick Book Awards’ Mrs. Dunster’s Award for Fiction! The announcement was made on June 1, and you can check out the full list of award winners here. Congratulations to Lisa!

Grab a Cocktail to celebrate here!

PRESS SPOTLIGHT

Photo Credit: Joanna Gigliotti

Biblioasis Press made the news this week, featured in the Globe and Mail! The article by Ira Wells focused on Biblioasis’ place and recognition in the publishing trade.

The article was published online on June 3, and you can check it out here.

Media Hits: HELLO HORSE, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024) was reviewed in the Globe and Mail! The review was posted online on May 31, and you can read the full piece here.

Critic Emily Donaldson writes,

“‘It’s always more important to feel things than to understand them,’ our priest-cum-devil says to the narrator at one point. That’s useful advice for approaching Your Absence Is Darkness, which feels, in a sense, like it teaches us to read it as we move along—if you’ll indulge me—as an earthworm might: blindly burrowing and occasionally moving toward the light.”

Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!

HELLO, HORSE

Hello, Horse by Richard Kelly Kemick (Aug 6, 2024) received a starred review in Kirkus Reviews! The review, which will be in their July print issue, was published online on May 31 and can be read here.

Kirkus writes,

“The tales here mix whimsy, weirdness, lust, and Canadian politics, bringing to mind George Saunders and the slackers from Wayne’s World . . . He has a penchant for alternating between things familiar and bizarre . . . Provocative, entertaining short fiction.”

Order Hello, Horse here!

BARFLY

Barfly by Michael Lista (June 4, 2024) was reviewed in The Walrus, in a critical essay by Nicholas Bradley. The review was published on May 31, and you can read it here.

Bradley writes,

“Lista’s poems . . . are fun, completely miserable, and almost certainly bad for you. Barfly should be affixed with a Health Canada warning. You must be nineteen or older to purchase this product. Not safe in any amount. Abandon hope, all ye who enter here.”

Order Barfly here!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

Alex Pugsley, author of The Education of Aubrey McKee (May 7, 2024), was interviewed on the Across the Pond Podcast. The interview was posted online on May 30, and you can listen to it in full here.

Host Lori Feathers states,

“This book captures the youthful impatient desire for excitement and experience and also the disillusionment that encroaches on this desire over time.”

Pugsley was also interviewed on CBC Here and Now‘s Tuesday Afternoon Book Club, which aired on May 28. You can listen to the segment here.

Ramraajh Sharvendiran calls the book,

“A love story inspired by the author’s own lived experience that takes us back to the city of Toronto at a time (the 90’s) when it felt more supportive of artists.”

Get The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book, Aubrey McKeehere!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024), was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press! The review was published online on May 25, and you can check it out here.

Critic Sheldon Birnie writes:

“While The Hollow Beast itself is a beast of a novel, despite its hefty page count it moves along at a leisurely clip, as though the reader is hearing the tall tale around the table at the local pub or late at night in the kitchen during a house party, with the lilt and cadence of an eloquent and well-soused Francophone, peppered throughout with allusions to Quebec history, Metallica’s Kill ‘Em All and the Montreal Canadiens, among others.”

Grab The Hollow Beast here!

Media Hits: WORK TO BE DONE, EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, CROSSES IN THE SKY, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

WORK TO BE DONE

Work to Be Done: Selected Essays and Reviews by Bruce Whiteman (Mar 12, 2024) was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader. The review was published online on May 15, and you can read it in full here.

Reviewer John Oughton writes,

“Whiteman is an erudite and very well-read lover of books in general, and literature in particular. He brings a finely honed critical perspective, a fine prose style of his own, and a sturdy sense of humour to the various essays and reviews collected here. “

Work to Be Done was also reviewed by Catherine Owen in FreeFall! The review was published online on May 13, and you can check out the full review here.

Catherine praises,

“Whiteman’s scholarship is prodigious and his style engaging as he addresses subjects that might be viewed as archaic or passé in a unique way, his tone intelligently conversational, quirky and eminently readable . . . His attention to the crucial choice of diction for translators and the essential sensitivity to sonority for the poet is relentlessly compelling. And he can be quite funny.”

Get Work to Be Done here!

CROSSES IN THE SKY

Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia by Mark Bourrie (May 21, 2024) was featured in the Toronto Star! The review was published online on May 15, and you can read it here.

Reviewer Ken McGoogan writes,

“In 2019, Mark Bourrie published Bush Runner, a biography of the adventurer Pierre-Esprit Radisson that was ‘compelling, authoritative, not a little disturbing—and a significant contribution to the history of 17th-century North America,’ as I wrote at the time. The same can be said about Bourrie’s latest, Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia . . . In reinterpreting the Jesuit’s martyrdom against the backdrop of Huronia’s destruction, Bourrie presents a revisionist history.”

Mark Bourrie was also interviewed about the book on The Andrew Carter Morning Show! The interview was posted online on May 17, and is available to listen to here.

Order 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 Literary Review of Canada alongside the first book in the Aubrey McKee Novels, Aubrey McKee! The review was published online on May 17, and will be printed in their June 2024 issue. You can read the full review here.

Reviewer Liam Rockall raves,

“Bold and dynamic, Pugsley’s novels are lively and vivid, filled with individuals who are benevolent and cruel and with scenes that are captivating and terrifying. Aubrey McKee and The Education of Aubrey McKee are the first two acts of a sweeping personal drama, and any remaining volumes cannot come fast enough.”

Alex Pugsley was interviewed about The Education of Aubrey McKee, on CBC Main Street NS with Jeff Douglas! The interview was posted online on May 14, and you can give it a listen here.

Grab The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book, Aubrey McKee, here!

SLEEP IS NOW A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Sleep is Now a Foreign Country by Mike Barnes was featured in articles from Windsor News Today and The Windsor Star about its Trillium Award nomination! The Windsor News Today article was posted online on May 11, and can be read in full here, and The Windsor Star article was posted on May 17, and can be read here.

Get Sleep is Now a Foreign Country here!

BIBLIOASIS SPRING SEASON LAUNCH

Biblioasis’s own publisher Dan Wells was interviewed on AM 800’s The Shift with Patty Handsides on May 16, about our upcoming Spring Season Launch! The launch, which will take place in Windsor on May 23, will celebrate five of our newest titles: Crosses in the Sky by Mark BourrieThe Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex PugsleySorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco CollinsBarfly by Michael Lista, and Work to Be Done by Bruce Whiteman.

Listen to the full interview here!

More details about next week’s launch here.

Media Hits: YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, BARFLY, THE FUTURE, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jon Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024), has been reviewed in the Financial Times! The review was published online on April 24, and is available to read in full here.

Reviewer Boyd Tonkin writes,

“Roughton’s radiant English versions of Stefánsson’s novels about the Icelandic encounter with modernity have built into one of the glories of 21st-century literary translation. Craggily gorgeous yet fluid and tender, sometimes comic, they capture the books’ balance between the powers of nature and the passions of humanity with consummate skill . . . This novel with a colloquial, intimate, up-to-date voice boasts sturdy epic bones . . . Throughout, the rhythmic, idiomatic prose gives pulsing reality to people and place, as Stefánsson both cherishes his ramifying clan and warns that only imagination makes them live.”

Your Absence Is Darkness was also reviewed in World Literature Today. The review was published online on April 26 here, and will appear in their May print issue.

Reviewer Daniel Haeusser writes,

Your Absence Is Darkness posits that we find happiness together even in that melancholy, using arts like music or literature to assert and explore our human connections, to forgive imperfection, and to thumb our noses at inevitability . . . its insights and gorgeously haunting prose make it a novel that fans of philosophic or metaphysical literature should experience.”

Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!

BARFLY

Michael Lista, author of the forthcoming poetry collection Barfly (Jun 4, 2024), was interviewed by Tara Henley on the Lean Out podcast. The interview was posted online on April 24, and you can listen to it in full here.

Tara calls the book,

“Exquisitely raw and vulnerable.”

Order Barfly here!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023), was featured in Montreal Blog’s article, “We asked 6 Montreal bookstores what every local should read at least once,” chosen by Argo Bookshop. The list was published online on April 23. You can read the article in full here.

The Argo Bookshop team commented,

“Beyond having just won Canada Reads, this book is so artfully crafted, and gives us a poetic vision: despite terrible societal changes, an imaginative future of community and hope can still arise.”

Get The Future here!

SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

Sorry About the Fire by Colleen Coco Collins (Apr 2, 2024) was featured in the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review‘s list of new poetry titles. The article was published on April 23, and you can see the full list here.

Get Sorry About the Fire here!

THE ART OF LIBROMANCY

The Art of Libromancy by Josh Cook (Aug 22, 2023) was featured in the Chicago Review of Book‘s list of “5 Books by Booksellers About Bookselling.” The article was published online on April 24, and be read here.

Greg Zimmerman writes,

“If you want to really dive deeply into the world of bookselling, this is the exact book for you.”

Get The Art of Libromancy here!

BURN MAN

Burn Man: Selected Stories by Mark Anthony Jarman (Nov 21, 2023) was reviewed in Alberta Views! The review was published in their May print issue.

Reviewer Alex Lettie writes,

“The stories here are brightly coloured, sharp-edged and shatterproof.”

Get Burn Man here!

Media Hits: ALL THINGS MOVE, YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, WORK TO BE DONE, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

WORK TO BE DONE

Work to Be Done by Bruce Whiteman (Mar 12, 2024) was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada! The review was published online on April 15, and will appear in the May print issue. Read the full review here.

Reviewer Keith Garebian writes,

“Divided into five parts, Work to Be Done reveals a mind steeped in the classics, particularly the works of Hesiod, Virgil, and Ovid. The book is rigorous in exercise and academically precise, and it strives for a perspective that sometimes seems Olympian in tone.”

Grab Work to Be Done here!

SORRY ABOUT THE FIRE

Colleen Coco Collins, author of Sorry About the Fire (April 2, 2024), was interviewed for All Lit Up‘s ‘There’s a Poem For That’ series! The interview was published online on April 16, and can be read 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 Literary Review of Canada, in the article ‘Found in Translation.’ The review will appear in the May print issue.

The review states,

“[Your Absence Is Darkness] . . . lends itself to any number of superlatives: Masterful. Intelligent. Haunting. Biblical and modern in equal measure.”

Your Absence Is Darkness was reviewed in the Tulsa Book Review online on April 19. Check out the full review here.

Reviewer Kevin Winter writes,

“If you are into slightly weird, esoteric literary fiction . . . then this book is for you.”

Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simic (Feb 6, 2024) was also reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada’s article ‘Found in Translation.’ The review will appear in the May print issue.

The review states,

“[Sajko’s] sentences mimic how, in the heat of argument, thoughts converge, events conflate, and emotions surge until one forgets where it all began.”

Get Love Novel here!

THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE

The Education of Aubrey McKee by Alex Pugsley (May 7, 2024) was featured in the Toronto Star‘s “Spring preview: 21 books to put at the top of your reading list.” The article was posted online on April 17, and can be read here.

Deborah Dundas writes,

“This latest is the second book in what is expected to be a four-book series, which began with 2020’s Aubrey McKee, which our reviewer called ‘exuberant, freewheeling stories’ with the general theme of ‘the insanity of being human.'”

Order The Education of Aubrey McKee here!

Check out the first book in The Aubrey McKee Novels, Aubrey McKee, here!

BARFLY

Barfly by Michael Lista (June 4, 2024) was also featured in the Toronto Star‘s “Spring preview: 21 books to put at the top of your reading list.” The article was posted online on April 17, and can be read here.

Deborah Dundas writes,

“The language is punchy, it can be raunchy, benefits from being read aloud, and when you do, like a Hole song, it’s full of bravado and vulnerability.”

Order Barfly  here!

ALL THINGS MOVE

All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel by Jeannie Marshall was featured in Vanity Fair‘s article “11 Books to Read This Month”! The list was published online on April 16, and can be read here.

Keziah Weir calls the book,

“Rich, meditative . . . The book is part art history, part memoir; a case for slowing down, curiosity, a closer look.”

Get All Things Move here!

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