Posts

Media Hits: RIPPER, UNMET, ON OIL, and more!

IN THE NEWS!

RIPPER

Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre by Mark Bourrie was reviewed by Charlotte Gray in the Globe and Mail on April 1. You can read the full review here.

Gray writes,

“Mark Bourrie has produced a searing but convincing critique of the Conservative Leader’s shortcomings that will give pause to anyone outside the diehard Poilievre base.”

Ripper was also reviewed in the Hill Times on April 2. Check out the full review here.

Mark Bourrie was featured in the Toronto Star in conversation with Stephen Maher. The article was published online on March 29, and you can read it here.

Get Ripper here!

UNMET

UNMET by stephanie roberts was reviewed in The Miramichi Reader on April 1. Check out full review of this poetry collection here.

Pearl Pirie writes,

“[roberts] admirably permits wide swathes of herself on the page, yet without being didactic or maudlin and without overwriting.”

stephanie roberts was interviewed by Olive Andrews for The Ex-Puritan‘s Winter 2025 issue. Read the full interview here.

Andrews writes of the collection,

“The poems are both singular and vast, wading through moments, objects, and places with visceral clarity while guiding the reader through the thrashing waves of its overarching themes: loneliness, pandemic, domestic violence, ecological crisis, police brutality, and more. The work is grounded and groundbreaking, pointed and sprawled. “

stephanie roberts was also interviewed for Open Book‘s ‘Poets in Profile’ on March 28. Check out the interview here.

Open Book writes,

“stephanie roberts returns with another complex and stunning work that looks at both the seen and unseen, and explores social issues through lyric and line in a truly singular way.”

Grab UNMET here!

ON BOOK BANNING

Ira Wells, author of On Book Banning, was interviewed by David Moscrop this week in The Jacobin. The article, “The Shared Logic of Censorship,” discussing censorship and what’s being done to combat it, can be read here.

From the interview, Wells says:

“Education involves building up critical thinking facilities and faculties. Indoctrination involves breaking them down. Education involves inculcating independent thinking. Indoctrination involves submission to doctrine.

We need to rediscover that distinction. And we need to revive the best spirit of our democracy.”

Grab On Book Banning here!

ON OIL

On Oil by Don Gillmor was featured on LitHub‘s list of “10 Nonfiction Books to Read in April.” Check out the full list here.

LitHub writes,

“Gillmor . . . draws a line from the greed and hubris at the heart of that first explosion straight to the present day—and beyond.”

Get On Oil here!

THE PASSENGER SEAT

The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana was reviewed in The Tyee, for the article “There’s Power in Male Bonding. Must There Be Menace?” The review was posted on March 28, and you can read it here.

Tom Sandborn writes,

“Khurana employs classic tropes of the buddy road trip and crime novel/true crime genres while giving them a critical 21st-century twist—think In Cold Blood meets Grand Theft Auto with the psychological complexity and moral anguish of Dostoevsky and inputs from third-wave feminists.”

Get The Passenger Seat here!

OLD ROMANTICS

Old Romantics by Maggie Armstrong was excerpted in LitHub. The chapter “My Success” can be read in full here.

Old Romantics was also given a pre-review by Kassie Rose in The Longest Chapter, which can be read here. Rose writes,

“I had other books lined up to read, but the narrator of all the stories in Old Romantics hooked me.”

Maggie Armstrong was interviewed by Tadgh Hoey in Brooklyn Rail, which you can read in full here.

Hoey writes,

“Reading [Old Romantics] left me vacillating between almost spitting out my coffee to laugh and feeling sunken and eviscerated at the recognition of Margaret’s many personal, professional, and romantic disappointments and the scalpel-like precision with which Armstrong renders them page after page.”

Grab Old Romantics here!

MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

May Our Joy Endure by Kev Lambert (trans. Donald Winkler) appeared on CBC The Next Chapter’s list of three books in translation to check out now. You can read the article here.

Reviewer Robert Wiersema says,

“[The translation] flows beautifully … it has a metrical rhythmic quality that is very unusual in English. So I think that’s Winkler’s translation from the French, at work.”

Grab May Our Joy Endure here!

Events

On Oil: Don Gillmor at Words Festival

Join Don Gillmor as he speaks about his new book On Oil, a searching reconsideration of our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil, in this virtual event with the Words Festival. Don will be in conversation with host and Words Director Josh Lambier.

This free virtual event will take place on Tuesday, April 29 at 7pm EST over Zoom.

More details and event link here.

Grab On Oil here!

ABOUT ON OIL

A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.

Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.

In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.

ABOUT DON GILLMOR

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of three novels, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata, a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History, and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling StoneGQThe WalrusSaturday NightToronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.

On Oil: Don Gillmor at Ottawa Writers Festival

Join Don Gillmor as he speaks at the Ottawa Writers Festival about his new book On Oil, in which the journalist and former roughneck considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.

This event will take place on Saturday, May 3.

Time and more details to come.

Grab On Oil here!

ABOUT ON OIL

A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.

Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.

In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.

ABOUT DON GILLMOR

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of four novels, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata, a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History, and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling StoneGQThe WalrusSaturday NightToronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.