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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!

THE FUTURE wins CANADA READS 2024!

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We are overjoyed to announce that this morning at 11 AM ET, The Future by Catherine Leroux (translated by Susan Ouriou) was declared the winner of CBC’s Canada Reads competition 2024! One of the most important literary prizes in Canada, the competition is a four day broadcast event featuring five celebrity panelists championing Canadian books and debating their merits, in this battle of the books a title is eliminated each day until the last remaining book is named the one book all Canadians should read. The post-dystopian novel which was published by Biblioasis on September 5, 2023, was championed by the brilliant writer, and fantastic debater, Heather O’Neill. The theme of this year’s competition was “one book to carry us forward.” Set in an alternate history in which the city of Detroit was never ceded by French Canadian settlers and citizens still speak French, The Future is the story of one woman’s search for her missing granddaughters across a post-industrial landscape reeling from ecological collapse. It shows how it is in building community that we can find hope.

In her impassioned defense of the novel, Heather O’Neill said,

“This is a book about how the future belongs to children and how wrong it is that they are being given a broken world.”

The other Canada Reads champions appreciated the novel’s beautiful prose, colorful characters, and bittersweet ending. 

Both Catherine Leroux and Heather O’Neill are natives of Montréal, Québec and translator Susan Ouriou hails from Calgary, Alberta. The Future is the first translation to win Canada Reads since Kim Thúy’s Ru in 2015, and only the third translation to win in the prize’s more than twenty year history. 

Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells says,

“Before I was even a publisher, I remember listening avidly to Canada Reads. I can remember exactly where I was at certain moments—in the Tim Hortons drive-through in Emeryville, Ontario, when Lisa Moore defended Mavis Gallant’s short fiction against the suggestion that they were somehow lesser than a novel, for example—and today’s episode, for entirely different reasons, will remain as emblazoned. Heather O’Neill was the champion that a book like Catherine Leroux’s The Future needed, that literature in this country needs: kind, generous, gentle; off-centre and sparking insight in unexpected places and ways. We’re grateful for her efforts, thrilled for Catherine, one of our favourite writers and people; and ecstatic that Canada Reads has brought The Future to a nation-wide audience in a way that would have been impossible otherwise. Our heartfelt thanks, also, to moderator Ali Hassan, as well as Erin Balser, Lucy Mann, Charlene Chow and the rest of the Canada Reads team, whose professionalism, enthusiasm and care helped the anxiety go down.”

This is Biblioasis’ first book to win Canada Reads and its second translation to be nominated for CBC’s Canada Reads. The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue (translated by Pablo Strauss) was nominated in 2020. 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. 

CBC’s Canada Reads premiered in 2002. The great Canadian book debate has been airing annually for more than twenty years and selects a winning book that all Canadians should read. Ali Hassan hosted the 23rd competition, in which a panel of five celebrity advocates will champion Canadian books. More information on the program is available at cbcbooks.ca.

Grab your copy of The Future here!

ABOUT THE FUTURE

Winner of Canada Reads 2024 • One of Tor.com’s Can’t Miss Speculative Fiction for Fall 2023 • Listed in CBC Books Fiction to Read in Fall 2023 • One of 20 Books You Heard about on CBC Last Week • One of Kirkus Reviews’ Fall 2023 Big Books By Small Presses • A Kirkus Review Work of Translated Fiction To Read Now • One of CBC Books Best Books of 2023 • A CBC Books Bestselling Canadian Book of the Week

In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

Photo Credit: Justine Latour

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR & TRANSLATOR

Catherine Leroux is a Quebec novelist, translator and editor born in 1979. Her novel Le mur mitoyen won the France-Quebec Prize and its English version, The Party Wall, was nominated for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Future won CBC’s Canada Reads 2024, received the Jacques-Brossard award for speculative fiction and was nominated for the Quebec Booksellers Prize. Catherine also won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. Two of her novels are currently being adapted for the screen. She lives in Montreal with her two children.

Photo Credit: Jaz Hart Studio Inc

Susan Ouriou is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation for which she has also been shortlisted on five other occasions. Many of her young adult translations have made the IBBY Honor List. She has also published two novels, Damselfish and Nathan, edited the anthologies Beyond Words – Translating the World and Languages of Our Land – Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec and contributed a one-act play to the upcoming anthology Many Mothers – Seven Skies. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Media Hits: YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS, THE FUTURE, THE EDUCATION OF AUBREY MCKEE, 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 on Michigan Public Radio. The feature was reported online on February 28, 2024. You can read (and listen!) to the MPR piece here.

Rachel Ishikawa and Olivia Mouradian write:

“The novel contends with histories of forced migration, poverty, and environmental degradation … [and] speak[s] more broadly to the ways cities will be forced to change in the face of climate change.”

The Future was also reviewed in the Ottawa Review of Books on February 28, 2024. You can read the full review here.

Tim Niedermann writes:

“Leroux immerses the reader in these children’s world as they experience it … Trees and animals, wind and water speak to them in ways adults have forgotten…A paean to the wisdom that childhood possesses and the promise that it holds.”

Leroux read from The Future on CBC As It Happens on February 28, 2024. You can listen to the full episode here.

Grab your copy of The Future here!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (Mar 5, 2024) has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal! The review was published online on Mar 1, 2024. You can read the full review here.

Sam Sacks writes:

“Like fellow Scandinavian authors Jon Fosse and Karl Ove Knausgaard, Mr. Stefánsson joins plainspoken depictions of daily life to intimations of mysticism, creating a spectral, haunted atmosphere … Questioning, vulnerable and openly sentimental, this is an absorbing commemoration of what the author calls the paradox that rules our existence, the vivifying joy and paralyzing sorrow of loving another person.”

Your Absence Is Darkness featured by the Historical Novel Society as a forthcoming book to watch for. The article was published online on February 29, 2024.

You can read the full Historical Novel Society article here.

Get Your Absence Is Darkness here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić (Feb 6, 2024) was featured on Lit Hub as having one of the best book covers of February! Check out the full article here.

Get Love Novel here!

HOW TO BUILD A BOAT

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Nov 7, 2023) was reviewed in The Arts Fuse. The article was published online on March 1, 2024 and you can read the full review here.

Roberta Silman calls the book:

“[A] work of such depth and compassion that it was no surprise to learn that it was on the Long List for last year’s Booker prize … This is a book that should be read by every child and adult who is convinced he doesn’t ‘fit in.’ A book whose allusions and concerns broaden our view of the world.”

Get How to Build a Boat here!

ALL THINGS MOVE

All Things Move: Learning to Look in the Sistine Chapel by Jeannie Marshall (Apr 4, 2023) has been reviewed in Commonweal Magazine. The article was published online on February 26, 2024, and you can read the full review here.

Jeff Reimer writes:

“Marshall does not set up her unbelief as a barrier to encounter. Rather, she allows herself to be addressed by the paintings. She opens herself to them … Marshall is as much seeker as skeptic.”

Get All Things Move here!

BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2024

The Best Canadian Poetry 2024 anthology (Nov 14, 2023) has been featured on CBC Victoria and in Victoria Buzz, in advance of the Victoria book launch. Both pieces were published on February 28, 2024. You can listen to the CBC interview feature here.

Get Best Canadian Poetry 2024 here!

Check out all three Best Canadian anthologies here!

Media Hits: BURN MAN, THE FUTURE, LOVE NOVEL, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE FUTURE

Catherine Leroux, author of The Future (trans. by Susan Ouriou) (Sep 5, 2024) was interviewed alongside Heather O’Neill on CBC The Next Chapter by Ali Hassan, as part of their promotion of The Future for CBC Canada Reads, our nationwide literary competition. The interview aired on February 2, 204. You can listen to the full episode here.

Catherine Leroux was also interviewed for CBC Syndication which includes dozens of shows across the country. The interviews were conducted live on February 7, 2024. You can find links to all of her recent CBC interviews and features for Canada Reads here.

Get The Future here!

BURN MAN

Burn Man: Selected Stories by Mark Anthony Jarman (Nov 21, 2023) has been reviewed in the Wall Street Journal by Sam Sacks. The review was published online on February 8, 2024 and can be read here.

Fiction critic Sam Sacks writes:

“The stories in Burn Man, by the Canadian writer Mark Anthony Jarman, derive from the … raucous lineage of Barry Hannah, Thomas McGuane and Denis Johnson … He gives us a gallery of antiheroes—some of them bona fide criminals but many just screwups—who are helpless in the grip of their worst impulses.”

Get Burn Man here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić (Feb 6, 2024) was reviewed by Andrew Hood on The Bookshelf. The review was published online on February 5, 2024, and can be read in full here.

Hood writes:

“In its depiction of a contemporary relationship submitted to the meatgrinder of contemporary demands and expectations, Love Novel is unafraid and unsparing in its honesty.”

Love Novel was also listed in Library Journal as recommended by booksellers. The article was published online on February 5, 2024 and can be seen here.

Get Love Novel here!

THE HOLLOW BEAST

The Hollow Beast by Christophe Bernard, translated by Lazer Lederhendler (Apr 2, 2024) was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on February 2, 2024, and you can read the full review here.

The review reads:

“Quebecois writer Bernard debuts with a feverish burlesque about a one-time hockey player’s decades-long dispute with a referee and his grandson’s attempts to reverse the family curse … Bernard’s bawdiness and mania credibly evoke Thomas Pynchon’s flights of invention.”

Order The Hollow Beast here!

THE FULL-MOON WHALING CHRONICLES

Jason Guriel, author of The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles (Aug 1, 2023) has written a piece for The Millions, in which he discusses his journey from lyric poetry to a novel in verse. The article was published online on February 6, 2024. Check out the full essay here.

Grab The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles here!

THE ART OF LIBROMANCY

The Art of Libromancy by Josh Cook (Aug 22, 2023) was reviewed in the Chicago Tribune by John Warner as part of his “Top 5 Favorite Books About Bookstores.” The review was published online on January 27, 2024. You can read the full article here.

Warner calls the book:

“A treatise on the way commerce shapes what and how we read.”

Grab The Art of Libromancy here!

ALL THINGS MOVE

All Things Move by Jeannie Marshall (Apr 4, 2023) has been featured in Canadian Architect. The review was published online on February 1, 2024. Read the full review here.

Reviewer Adele Weber writes:

“All Things Move: Learning to Look at the Sistine Chapel … makes a unique case for considering the Chapel as something other than a religious enclave, scholarly artifact, or checklist tourist attraction. It’s all those, of course, but its otherworldly qualities transcend religious, academic, or tour-bus affiliations.”

Get All Things Move here!

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

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IN THE NEWS!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2024), according to CBC Books is the #1 bestselling Canadian fiction title in Canada this week! You can view the full list here.

The Future was featured in the Windsor Star. The article was published on January 13, 2024, and you can read the full profile here.

Trevor Wilhelm writes:

“Dystopian novel The Future, published by Windsor’s Bibliosias, is in the running for a national competition to determine the one book to rule them all.”

Catherine Leroux, author of The Future, has been interviewed on CBC: Let’s Go. The interview aired on January 15, 2024. Listen to the full interview here.

Grab your copy of The Future here!

BURN MAN

Burn Man by Mark Anthony Jarman (Nov 21, 2023) received an outstanding review in the New York Times! The review was published online on January 13, 2024. You can read the full review here.

Lincoln Michel writes:

“Anyone who enjoys poetry in prose, who feels enlivened by language and struck by sentences, will find much to admire in Burn Man. Jarman’s stories are full of violence, tragedy and mistakes. Yet there’s plenty of humor and heart too. […] Burn Man left me seeing a bit more beauty in our hurting-heart world.”

Burn Man was featured again in the New York Times by Greg Cowles as part of their Editor’s Choice column: “9 New Books We Recommend This Week.” The article was published online on January 25, 2024, and can be read here.

Cowles says, of Burn Man:

“The Canadian author Jarman may not be a familiar name in the United States just yet, but this anthology aims to fix that.”

Burn Man was reviewed by Andrew Hood on The Bookshelf’s website. The review was published online on January 19, 2024, and can be read here.

Hood writes:

“If I would compare Jarman to anyone other than himself, it would be to Tom Waits. Post-Kathleen Brennan Tom Waits. Yes, these are stories in the generic sense, just as a Tom Waits song is, technically, a song, but they are made of different things. For Waits, anything is percussive if you bang on it hard enough in the right place, and Jarman bashes language in the same way. The instrumentation in a Jarman story may sometimes sound conventional, but once isolated, sounds like nothing other than what it is. […] Reading Jarman is often, and I mean this in the best way possible, like drinking from a fire hose.”

Burn Man has also been excerpted in Lit Hub. The excerpt was published online on January 17, 2024—take a look here.

Get Burn Man here!

YOUR ABSENCE IS DARKNESS

Your Absence Is Darkness by Jón Kalman Stefánsson, translated by Philip Roughton (March 5, 2024)  is an Indie Next Pick for March and has also received an outstanding starred review in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on January 14, 2024. You can read the full review here.

Publishers Weekly writes:

“What makes this so irresistible is the narrator’s constant optimism as he probes profound questions from within the murk of his consciousness (“Give me darkness, and then I’ll know where the light is”). Stefánsson is poised to make his mark on the world stage.”

Order your copy of Your Absence is Darkness here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simić was featured on Kirkus Reviews as one of “20 Titles You Can Read in a Week.” The article was published online on January 24, 2024. Check out the full list here.

Order your copy of Love Novel here!

BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2024 & BEST CANADIAN ESSAYS 2024

Best Canadian Essays 2024 and Best Canadian Poetry 2024 (Nov 14, 2023) have been reviewed in The Miramichi Reader. The article was published online on January 23, 2024. You can read the full review here.

Christina Barber writes of the anthologies:

“A testament to the importance of literature in Canada … it is a powerful body that celebrates the creative and literary spirit of Canadians from coast to coast to coast.”

Best Canadian Essays 2024 was also reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. The article was published online on January 13, 2024, and you can read the full review here.

Susan Huebert writes:

“Each of the authors in Best Canadian Essays 2024 offers a particular style and perspective, but the essays work together to provide a picture of some of the issues Canadians have been facing. Many readers are likely to find something to interest them in this short collection of essays.”

Grab your copy of Essays here and Poetry here!

Check out all three Best Canadian anthologies here!

Media Hits: HOW TO BUILD A BOAT, ALL THE YEARS COMBINE, COCKTAIL, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

HOW TO BUILD A BOAT & INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DROWNING

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Nov 7, 2023) and Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton (Apr 18, 2023) were both featured on the New Yorker‘s list of “The Best Books of 2023”! The article was posted online on December 20, 2023, and can be read here.

On Feeney:

“Feeney’s prose is beautifully crisp.”

On Heighton:

“These stories, by a Canadian novelist, poet, and musician who died last year, peer keenly into the penumbra surrounding death … Heighton’s stories wrestle with life’s uncontrollable endings and beginnings: birth, tragedy, failed resurrection. His characters grasp at time, even as it slips away—violent, sacred, apocalyptic, mundane.”

Get How to Build a Boat here!

Get Instructions for the Drowning here!

SLEEP IS NOW A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country by Mike Barnes (Nov 14, 2023) has been reviewed in the Midwest Book Review! The review was published online on December 20, and can be read here.

Reviewer Michael Carson calls it:

“An inherently fascinating and engaging read from start to finish.”

Get Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country here!

ALL THE YEARS COMBINE

All the Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows by Ray Robertson (Nov 7, 2023) was mentioned in SPIN Magazine. The article was posted online on December 20, 2023, and can be seen here.

SPIN writes,

“Ray Robertson … walks listeners through the endless thicket of music. At points, his crackling prose froths over into hyperventilating superfan’s rants—an approach that befits a band with such a passionate following. Sometimes … more is more.”

All the Years Combine was also reviewed in Palo Alto. The review was published online on December 21, 2023. Read the full review here.

Ashwini Gangal calls the book:

“Delightfully genre-fluid—part critique, part review, part biography, part journalism.”

Get your copy of All the Years Combine here!

COCKTAIL

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sep 12, 2023) has been featured on CBC Books’ list of “55 books by past CBC Literary Prizes winners and finalists that came out in 2023.” The article was published on December 19, 2023.

You read the full list here.

Grab your copy of Cocktail here!

DREAMING HOME

Lucian Childs, author of Dreaming Home (June 6, 2023), appeared on the Ivory Tower Boiler Room podcast to talk about exploring queer youth in literature. The episode was posted on December 16, 2023. Listen to the full episode here.

Grab your copy of Dreaming Home here!

BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2024

Best Canadian Poetry 2024 editor Bardia Sinaee wrote an article for the Literary Review of Canada on assembling the anthology. The article appeared online on December 22, 2023, and will appear in their January-February print issue. Read the full essay here.

Sinaee writes,

“When we give them our attention, great poems give us a lifetime of bracing, transcendent insight in a few lines; this is their offering. My offering to readers is a gathering of poems that delighted, startled, and challenged me. Poems that embrace ambiguity and risk. And poems that approach the uncertainty of the present moment with humility.”

Get your copy of Best Canadian Poetry 2024 here!

Get all three Best Canadian 2024 anthologies here!

Media Hits: HOW TO BUILD A BOAT, OFF THE RECORD, THE FUTURE, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

GLOBE 100 BEST BOOKS OF 2023

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Nov 7, 2023), Breaking and Entering by Don Gillmor (Aug 15, 2023), Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton (Apr 18 2023) and The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles by Jason Guriel (Aug 1, 2023) have been featured by the Globe and Mail as a part of “The Globe 100: The Best Books of 2023.” The article was published online on December 8, 2023.

You can read the full list here.

ON COMMUNITY

On Community by Casey Plett (Nov 7, 2023), was selected as one of CBC Books’ Best Canadian Nonfiction of 2023. The article was published online on December 14, 2023.

You can read the full list here.

Get On Community here!

SETH’S CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES

A review of Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories (Oct 31, 2023) was featured in Cemetery Dance Magazine. The review was published online on December 12, 2023. You can read the review here.

Critic Blu Gilliand writes,

“Seth’s illustrations suggest more than they actually show, adding to the quiet horror creeping around the edges. These are perfect for a quick read on a cold winter’s night, and are sure to warm the cockles of any jaded horror fan’s heart.”

Also, a “visual taste” of Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories was featured in the Literary Review of Canada‘s Bookworm newsletter. The excerpt was published online on December 12, 2023. You can check out the excerpted illustrations here.

Grab all three 2023 Christmas Ghost Stories here!

Check out the rest of the series here!

HOW TO BUILD A BOAT

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (Nov 7, 2023) has been reviewed in the New Yorker as part of their “Briefly Noted” column. The article was published online and in print on December 18, 2023. You can read the full review here.

The New Yorker writes:

“Feeney’s prose is beautifully crisp.”

Get How to Build a Boat here!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, trans. by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023) has been featured on CBC Day 6’s Holiday Gift Guide. The list was published on December 18, 2023. The complete CBC Day 6 gift guide can be seen here.

Catherine Leroux was also interviewed on CBC’s Afternoon Drive. The interview aired on December 15, 2023. Listen to the full Afternoon Drive interview here.

Get The Future here!

OFF THE RECORD

Off the Record edited by John Metcalf (Dec 5, 2023) was reviewed in The BC Review. The review was published online on December 18, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Brett Josef Grubisic calls it:

“Carefully wrought, tonally diverse, artful, thoughtful, revelatory, and nothing short of enticing.”

An interview with Caroline Adderson on her experience contributing to Off the Record was featured in Open Book. The interview was published online on December 12, 2023, and can be read here.

The book is described by Open Book in glowing terms:

“Metcalf challenges six decorated Canadian authors to consider and share just how they became writers. Each essay is accompanied by a short story, showcasing each writer’s literary identity and style, and providing insight into how each writer approaches their work and their editorial relationships.”

Get Off the Record here!

SLEEP IS NOW A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country by Mike Barnes (Nov 14, 2023) has been reviewed in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on December 9, 2023, and can be viewed here.

Publishers Weekly writes,

“The volume’s particular magic lies in Barnes’s adept use of free-flowing chronology and hallucinatory language to immerse readers in the depths of his psychosis … This isn’t easy to forget.”

Mike Barnes was also interviewed on CBC’s Fresh Air on December 9, 2023 and published a playlist for the book on Largehearted Boy on December 11, 2023.

You can listen to the full interview here, and check out Barnes’ playlist here.

Get Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country here!

POGUEMAHONE

Poguemahone by Patrick McCabe was listed on The Book Beat‘s Year-End Favorites by Tom Bowden. The list was published online on December 14, 2023, and can be seen here.

Bowden writes,

“Poguemahone, for all its bleakly comic episodes, is more seriously about the tensions between traditional and modern ways, trust and betrayal, memory and vengeance, and British / Irish power dynamics.”

Get Poguemahone here!

THE FUTURE Longlisted for CANADA READS 2024!

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We’re excited to share that this morning at 10 AM ET, CBC announced the longlist for Canada Reads 2024. Among them is The Future by Catherine Leroux (translated by Susan Ouriou) which was published by Biblioasis on September 5, 2023.

The Future has received many glowing reviews and was named one of CBC Books’ Best Books of 2023. Additionally it was listed by the Globe and Mail, Kirkus Reviews, Tor.com, Lit Hub and Book Riot as one of the most anticipated titles of 2023. A Kirkus starred review praised The Future for

“Elevating disparate voices, drawing a complex picture of community-focused life beyond the family unit.”

“Catherine Leroux has been a favourite here at the press for nearly a decade, a writer of elegance and vision,” said Dan Wells, Biblioasis Publisher. “We’re grateful that this Canada Reads spotlight will help bring more readers to her work.”

This is the second of Biblioasis’ books to be nominated for CBC’s Canada Reads. The Dishwasher by Stéphane Larue (translated by Pablo Strauss) was nominated in 2020.

CBC’s Canada Reads is a Canadian book debate that has been airing annually for more than twenty years. Ali Hassan will host the 23rd competition, in which a panel of five celebrity advocates will champion Canadian books. Each day of the competition, one book will be eliminated by the panelists until a winner is declared the must-read book for Canadians in 2024. More information on the program and the nominated titles is available at cbcbooks.ca.

Order your copy of The Future here!

ABOUT THE FUTURE

In an alternate history in which the French never surrendered Detroit, children protect their own kingdom in the trees.

In an alternate history of Detroit, the Motor City was never surrendered to the US. Its residents deal with pollution, poverty, and the legacy of racism—and strange and magical things are happening: children rule over their own kingdom in the trees and burned houses regenerate themselves. When Gloria arrives looking for answers and her missing granddaughters, at first she finds only a hungry mouse in the derelict home where her daughter was murdered. But the neighbours take pity on her and she turns to their resilience and impressive gardens for sustenance.

Photo Credit: Justine Latour

When a strange intuition sends Gloria into the woods of Parc Rouge, where the city’s orphaned and abandoned children are rumored to have created their own society, she can’t imagine the strength she will find. A richly imagined story of community and a plea for persistence in the face of our uncertain future, The Future is a lyrical testament to the power we hold to protect the people and places we love—together.

ABOUT CATHERINE LEROUX

Catherine Leroux is a Quebec novelist, translator and editor born in 1979. Her novel Le mur mitoyen won the France-Quebec Prize and its English version, The Party Wall, was nominated for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. The Future received the Jacques-Brossard award for speculative fiction and was nominated for the Quebec Booksellers Prize. Catherine also won the 2019 Governor General’s Literary Award for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien. Two of her novels are currently being adapted for the screen. She lives in Montreal with her two children.

Photo Credit: Jaz Hart Studio Inc

ABOUT SUSAN OURIOU

Susan Ouriou is an award-winning fiction writer and literary translator with over sixty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young-adult literature to her credit. She has won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation for which she has also been shortlisted on five other occasions. Many of her young adult translations have made the IBBY Honor List. She has also published two novels, Damselfish and Nathan, edited the anthologies Beyond Words – Translating the World and Languages of Our Land – Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec and contributed a one-act play to the upcoming anthology Many Mothers – Seven Skies. Susan lives in Calgary, Alberta.

Media Hits: ALL THE YEARS COMBINE, BURN MAN, CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

SLEEP IS NOW A FOREIGN COUNTRY

Mike Barnes, author of Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country (Nov 14, 2023), was interviewed in Open Book. The interview was posted on December 5, 2023 and can be read here.

Open Book writes,

“Mike Barnes is one of those rare writers who can do it all—in poetry, short fiction, novels, and memoir, he takes readers on nuanced, brainy, powerfully moving journeys. Fiercely intelligent yet consistently accessible and relatable, Barnes has a unique perspective informed by a deep empathy gained through his own difficult and complex experiences with mental health and grief.

His latest book, Sleep is Now a Foreign Country (Biblioasis), is a deeply personal, thoughtful, unflinching exploration of madness and imagination.”

Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country was (rave!) reviewed in the Toronto Star. The review was published online on November 23, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Brian Bethune writes:

“For all the ways Barnes’s book is indescribable, this much is true—it is a thing of beauty and courage.”

Get Sleep Is Now a Foreign Country here!

ALL THE YEARS COMBINE

Ray Robertson, author of All the Years Combine (Nov 7, 2023) has been interviewed on Bookin’ podcast, hosted by Explore Booksellers’ Jason Jeffries. The episode aired on December 4, 2023. You can listen to it here.

All the Years Combine was reviewed in Anti Music as part of their holiday gift guide for 2023. The article was published online on November 22, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Kevin Wierzbicki writes:

“All the Years Combine is a fast, enlightening read but it is also something to savor, like one of the Dead’s notorious hour-long jams.”

All the Years Combine was reviewed in The Ultimate Guitar. The review was published on November 27, 2023, and you can read it in full here.

Greg Prado writes,

“Author Ray Robertson … put[s] it all in perspective.”

Ray Robertson was interviewed in Roots Music Canada, which was published on December 1, 2023 and can be read here.

Jason Schneider writes,

“One of Canada’s most prolific writers … one thing that’s always made Ray’s work stand out is how he seamlessly blends his favourite music into his prose, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.”

Get All the Years Combine here!

THE FUTURE

The Future by Catherine Leroux, trans. by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023) was featured by CBC Books as one of their “Best Books of 2023.” The article was published online on December 5, 2023.

You can read the full list here.

Get The Future here!

ON COMMUNITY

Casey Plett, author of On Community (Nov 7, 2023), was interviewed on CBC’s The Next Chapter and in the Globe and Mail. Both interviews were published online on December 1, 2023. You can listen to the full episode of The Next Chapter here. You read the full Globe and Mail interview here.

On Community was reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on November 18, 2023. You can read the review here.

Matt Henderson writes:

“Plett ruminates on the importance of community in succinct, snappy prose.”

On Community was featured on The Tyee’s 2023 top reads for the holidays. The article was published online on December 1, 2023, and can be read here.

Casey Plett was also interviewed on “The Maris Review,” Lit Hub’s podcast hosted by Maris Kreizman. The episode was published on November 30, 2023, and you can listen to the interview here.

Get On Community here!

SETH’S CHRISTMAS GHOST STORIES 2023

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories (Oct 31, 2023) have all been featured in the Chicago Tribune’s holiday gift guide which was published on November 30, 2023, as well as the Toronto Star‘s holiday gift guide which was published November 24, 2023. You can read the Chicago Tribune list here and the Toronto Star here.

Christopher Borelli (Chicago Tribune) writes:

“For the past several years Canadian publisher Biblioasis has revived the tradition, one thin, tiny book at a time (illustrated by minimalistic, idiosyncratic cartoonist Seth). They’ve revived ghosts by Edith Wharton, Charles Dickens and others. The newest installment … includes “The Captain of the Polestar,” a polar fright by Arthur Conan Doyle. What is, after all, “A Christmas Carol” but a ghost story, handed down, every holiday?”

Seth’s Christmas Ghost Stories were also reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada! The reviews of The Captain of the Polestar, The House by the Poppy Field, and A Room in a Rectory were published in their December print issue.

The three reviews write:

“The House by the Poppy Field is a spare and chilling tale that’s as much psychological as it is spectral. A perfectly sized collectible with Seth’s signature illustrations throughout, this latest edition would make for a fine stocking stuffer. Just don’t wait until Christmas morning to open it.”

“Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Captain of the Polestar (Biblioasis) is full of foreboding, with whispers of both Coleridge and Melville. In this edition, Seth complements the artful story from 1883 with bold and evocative imagery that  transports readers to the haunting scene.”

“Caldecott’s A Room in a Rectory … may well spook those who gather on Christmas Eve … Ultimately, the author’s and the illustrator’s treatments of ‘the obscene and macabre’ make for a lot of fun.”

Get all three 2023 Christmas Ghost Stories here!

Check out the rest of the series here!

BURN MAN

Burn Man: Selected Stories by Mark Anthony Jarman (Nov 21, 2023) has been reviewed in the Toronto Star. The review was published online on November 30, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Sara Harms writes:

“One doesn’t read a Mark Anthony Jarman story so much as one experiences it … These 21 stories in Burn Man selected by the author himself, are not ordered chronologically but rather the way a musician might sequence tracks on an album, paying careful attention to modulations in tempo and rhythm and how individual pieces play against one another.”

Get Burn Man here!

HOW TO BUILD A BOAT

How to Build a Boat by Elaine Feeney (November 7, 2023) has been listed in Lit Hub as one of the “10 Best Book Covers of November,” and on Bookmarks as one of “The Best Reviewed Books of the Month.” Both articles were published online on November 30, 2023.

You can read the Bookmarks article here, and Lit Hub here!

How to Build a Boat was also reviewed in the Winnipeg Free Press. The review was published online on November 20, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Malcolm Forbes calls it:

“A wonderful book that earned its rightful place on this year’s Booker Prize longlist.”

Get How to Build a Boat here!

BREAKING AND ENTERING

Don Gillmor, author of Breaking and Entering (August 15, 2023) was interviewed on CBC’s The Next Chapter on November 25, 2023, and All Write in Sin City on November 26, 2023.

You can listen to CBC Next Chapter here, You can listen to All Write in Sin City here.

Get Breaking and Entering here!

COCKTAIL

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sept 12 2023), was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada for their December print issue. It was also featured as one of The Miramichi Reader’s “Best Books of 2023.” Both the review and the list were published online on November 20, 2023. You can read the full LRC review here and The Miramichi Reader‘s list here.

Emily Latimer writes, in the LRC,

“Throughout Lisa Alward’s debut story collection, deceptively unassuming items … prompt a diverse cast of characters to reflect on events that have changed their lives … Alward’s sure-footed writing ably steers readers through stories about injuries, marriages, new parenthood, and other watershed moments.”

Cocktail was also featured on The Tyee’s 2023 top reads for the holidays. The article was published online on December 1, 2023 and can be read here.

Get Cocktail here!

INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE DROWNING

Instructions for the Drowning by Steven Heighton (Apr 18 2023) was featured by CBC Books as one of their “Best Books of 2023.” The article was published online on December 5, 2023.

You can read the full list here.

Get Instructions for the Drowning here!

Media Hits: THE FUTURE, LOVE NOVEL, STANDING HEAVY, and more!

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IN THE NEWS!

THE FUTURE

Catherine Leroux, author of The Future, trans. by Susan Ouriou (Sep 5, 2023), has been interviewed on CBC’s The Next Chapter. The interview aired on October 21, 2023. You can listen to the full interview here.

The Future has been reviewed in the Montreal Review of Books. The review was published online on October 11, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Bronwyn Averett writes:

“Leroux brings believability, poetry, and hopefulness to the dystopian narrative of Fort Détroit by steering clear of the many pitfalls of end-times novel … This permits the novel to imagine infinite small beginnings within the ending, and to show how destruction is balanced by the ever-present promise of creation.”

The Future was also reviewed in The Miramichi Reader. The review was published online on October 10, 2023, and can be read here.

Lisa Timpf writes:

“Unlike some dystopian books, The Future is suffused with a sense of optimism … Though their neighbourhood is decaying and the economy is crumbling, the characters reach beyond the every-person-for-themselves trope by celebrating community, the power of cooperation, and hope.”

Get The Future here!

ALL THE YEARS COMBINE

Ray Robertson, author of All The Years Combine: The Grateful Dead in Fifty Shows (Nov 7, 2023), was featured in 519 Magazine. The feature was published online on October 26, 2023. You can read the full article here.

Dan Savoie writes:

“If life were a Grateful Dead concert, Chatham author Ray Robertson would be it’s philosopher-archivist.”

Ray Robertson was interviewed for the Chatham Daily News. The story was published online on October 17, 2023 and in print October 18, 2023.  Check out the full interview here.

Get All the Years Combine here!

LOVE NOVEL

Love Novel by Ivana Sajko, translated by Mima Simic (Feb 14, 2024) was reviewed in Publishers Weekly. The review was published online on October 25, 2023. You can read the full review here.

The review reads:

“A sharp and claustrophobic portrait of a fraying marriage … Sajko never takes her foot off the gas in this potent and incendiary outing.”

Preorder Love Novel here!

OFF THE RECORD

Off the Record by John Metcalf (Nov 14, 2023) was excerpted in Quill & Quire. Online on October 25, 2023. You can read the full excerpt here.

Off the Record was reviewed in Publishers Weekly, online on October 6, 2023. You can read the full review here.

The review reads:

“The authors’ reflections illustrate the complex interplay between craft and intuition that goes into writing fiction … and provide revealing case studies of how stories move from inspiration to published product. Aspiring writers will be enlightened.”

Order Off the Record here!

STANDING HEAVY

Standing Heavy by GauZ’, trans. by Frank Wynne (Oct 3, 2023) was reviewed in Words Without Borders. The review was published online on October 25, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Tobias Carroll writes:

“Tightly written and tautly structured, Standing Heavy has a considerable heft to it … There have been countless novels written about class and immigration over the years, but what Gauz’ has done here is truly singular.”

Standing Heavy by GauZ’ was reviewed in the New York Times, and was published online on October 6, 2023. You can read the full review here.

The review reads:

“This shrewd, episodic novel stars the security guards of Paris. Specifically: Ferdinand, Ossiri and Kassoum, undocumented Ivoirian immigrants whose watchful eyes examine Parisian turmoil over two generations. ‘Here, everything is on sale, even self-esteem,’ Ossiri notes, before he ejects shoppers at closing.”

Get Standing Heavy here!

COCKTAIL

Cocktail by Lisa Alward (Sep 12 2023), was featured on CBC Books as one of “18 books by past CBC Short Story Prize winners and finalists from 2023.” The article was published online on October 26, 2023. You can read the full article here.

Lisa Alward was interviewed on CBC Fredericton by Jeannie Armstrong. The interview was published online on October 23, 2023 and can be listened to here.

Cocktail was also reviewed on Pickle Me This blog on October 16, 2023. You can read the full review here.

Get Cocktail here!

1934

1934: The Chatham Coloured All-Stars’ Barrier-Breaking Year by Heidi LM Jacobs (June 6, 2023) was reviewed in the Literary Review of Canada. The review was published online on October 16, 2023, and will appear in the November 2023 print issue. You can read the full review here.

Michael Taube calls it:

“An inspiring story of determination and triumph, grounded in the belief that sport is for everyone.”

Get 1934 here!

THE FULL-MOON WHALING CHRONICLES

The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles by Jason Guriel (August 1, 2023) has been excerpted in the Washington Post’s Book World newsletter. The excerpt was published online on October 13, 2023. Read the full excerpt here.

In the newsletter, Ron Charles writes:

“Jason Guriel is a Canadian poet of gobsmacking originality. Three years ago, he published Forgotten Work, a futuristic novel about fans searching for an early 21st-century rock band. […] Guriel’s new verse novel is, if anything, even more bizarre and delightful.”

Get The Full-Moon Whaling Chronicles here!

 

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