Read the Hammer, Spring 2023
Below we hear from nine of our fabulous local Hamilton Area writers with recently published or forthcoming books.
Get to know their books, their favourite local independent bookstores, the books they love, and how Hamilton influences their writing.
Strange Loops. Liz Harmer. Knopf Canada. $29.95, 256 pp., ISBN: 9780345811271
liz harmer
Strange Loops, Knopf canada, january 2023
About the Book
As small children, Francine and her twin Philip shared a seemingly unbreakable bond—but in adolescence the connection frayed, and in adulthood the siblings are locked in a repeating loop of complex, destructive emotions. Matters have reached a breaking point, and Francine, now in her thirties and the married mother of two small boys, is convinced that Philip’s teenaged infatuation with religion and subsequent, ongoing obsession with his sister’s “moral impropriety”—sparked by his discovery of her involvement in a forbidden relationship—are to blame.
As storm clouds of resentment and mutual betrayal gather ominously, threatening to upend both siblings’ lives and damage their families, Francine unexpectedly finds herself in a situation that mirrors her earlier transgression: stirred and unsettled by her attraction to a wildly inappropriate man. And the one person who suspects is the last person she trusts—her disapproving twin.
With the plot twists of a thriller, lean prose crackling with intensity, and big ideas explored alongside the messy truth of human relationships, Strange Loops simultaneously shocks and thrills the reader, all while asking vital questions about faith, love, and desire.
Q&A With liz harmer
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
Hamilton is the city of my great loves and my formation, and I will always identify with it. It's also a place I loved when others didn't see its value. It's a city filled with natural beauty, with art and culture, filled with other people I admire and whose friendship is dear to me; it's the place where I became a writer.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
Strange Loops is a complicated, dark novel that I hope is disturbing even as it is page-turning.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
This is a tough question because I have divided loyalties. I adore the booksellers of Epic Books and The City & The City. But the bookstore of my heart is Dave Kuruc's King West Books: I was so fond of the previous location of his art shop Mixed Media I tried to use it as a setting in my first novel--I spent my adolescence shopping for art supplies--and its current location is the bookstore I haunted in my youth.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
I can't wait to read Amy Jones's Pebble & Dove!
Pebble & Dove. Amy Jones. McClelland & Stewart. $24.95, 336 pp., ISBN: 9780771099311
amy jones
pebble & dove, mcclelland & stewart, may 2023
About the Book
This is the story of a family falling apart, only to be brought back together again by an unlikely champion—a 1,000-pound aquatic mammal named Pebble.
Lauren’s life is a mess. She has a storage unit full of candles she can’t sell, a growing mountain of debt, and a teenage daughter, Dove, who barely speaks to her. Then her husband sends her a text that changes everything. Eager to escape her problems, she drives herself and Dove south to her late mother’s rundown trailer in Florida. While keeping her eccentric new neighbours at Swaying Palms at bay, Lauren begins to untangle the truth about her estranged mother. How did world-famous portrait photographer Imogen Starr end up at Swaying Palms?And what happened to her fortune and her photographs?
Meanwhile, Dove has secrets of her own. A mysterious photograph leads her to discover the abandoned Flamingo Key Aquarium and Tackle, where she meets Pebble, the world’s oldest manatee in captivity. It is Pebble, a former star attraction, and her devoted caretaker, Ray, who will hold the key to helping Lauren and Dove come to terms with Imogen’s unexpected legacy.
Darkly funny and sharply observed, Pebble & Dove is a moving novel about the complicated relationship between mothers and daughters, and learning how to choose between what’s worth saving and what needs to be let go.
Q&A With amy jones
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
Honestly, it thrills me! We moved to Hamilton in 2019, and we’ve been blown away by how open, warm, and welcoming the literary community has been. It’s such a vibrant scene; there are so many incredible writers, publishers, bookstores, and literary events in this city and I am so grateful and honoured to be a part of it. It feels like home.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
My next novel, Pebble & Dove, will be published on May 30. It’s adult literary fiction, which always sounds a bit dry, so I’ve been telling people it’s about “mothers, daughters, and manatees”—for some people, the “mothers and daughters” part is the selling point, and for some the “manatees” is the selling point (yes, there are real manatees in it!).
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
As I mentioned, there are so many (it’s one of the things I love most about the city!) but my heart belongs to our Crown Point neighbours, The City and the City Books. Not only do they have a really amazing selection of new and used books, but the owners, Tim and Janet, also have a podcast and a book club, they organize a monthly reading series, host book launches… really, they work so tirelessly to promote artists in the city and I deeply admire and am grateful for their commitment to community-building and their passion for books.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
Earlier this year I read Kill The Mall by Pasha Malla and oh boy, what a book. It’s weird, disturbing, wildly funny, strangely moving, and completely, wholly original, just like all of Pasha’s books!
The Great Outer Dark. David Neil Lee. Wolsak & Wynn. $15.00, 250 pp., ISBN: 978-1-989496-60-2
david neil lee
the great outer dark, wolsak & wynn, august 2023
About the Book
After his voyage across the galaxy, Nate Silva arrives home to find Hamilton in the grip of a monstrous triumvirate. The Resurrection Church of the Ancient Gods has returned, with the human form of the shape-changing nightmare from the Medusa Deep as its leader. And closely guarded in a downtown tower a mind-devouring entity called Oracle lurks. The city is infested with invasive species that have slithered into our world during the Church’s occult ceremonies – many-legged dritches, bat-like thrals and the eerie, flying night-gaunts. Caught in the middle of this are Nate’s friends Megan and Mehri, who are leading the resistance with the Furies, along with a mysterious double agent, the enigmatic Dr. Eldritch and his Cosmic Wonder Circus. For the safety of everyone he loves, Nate and his friend H.P. Lovecraft hijack the antique airship Sorcerer for one last voyage, to free Earth from the Great Old Ones once and for all.
Q&A With David Neil lee
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
It’s sort of like being an author with a national reputation, but in a very small country. Some years ago a librarian who has worked at both the Burlington Public Library, and the Hamilton Public Library, explained to me that the two readerships, just a few kilometres apart, were utterly different. As I understood it, what they were saying was that Burlington’s reading culture sees themselves as Toronto outliers, and are very tuned into what comes from Toronto. Hamilton on the other hand - for better or worse - is very much its own entity. Whereas Toronto authors are seen as Canadian writers, Hamilton authors are seen as Hamilton writers.
Considering the city’s cultural diversity, maybe we should work on developing a distinctive Hamilton language, a blend of English, Mohawk, French, Spanish, Punjabi, Farsi, Afghani, Italian, Swahili, etc. OK, that’s too ambitious, but it’s possible that, at least, we already have our own literary language.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
It’s The Great Outer Dark, the final book of the Lovecraftian YA trilogy I started for Wolsak & Wynn in 2015. At the end of the book Nate, the teenage protagonist, is ready to hunker down and try for a "normal" life, full-Hamilton style, but realizes that his adventures have changed him: he’s already part of a bigger, more dangerous, more exciting world, a world that needs him. I tried to make the ending beautiful.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
In Hamilton we’re lucky to have several great indie bookstores, each of them with a sensibility as individual and distinct as that of any writer. I love them not only because I am a book junkie, but because I feel like all of them have gone out of their way to be supportive of me and my books. To answer this question, though, I’ll focus on Janet Lee and Tim Hanna’s City and the City Books because it’s closest to me, I can walk there in about twelve minutes. Tim and Janet have been very proactive with putting on literary events, and opening up spaces that to the best of my knowledge, hadn’t been used for readings before, like Jordan’s Homeside Pub and The Hearty Hooligan. The store opened just before the pandemic and they’ve managed to get through it and stay open, which I suspect was not easy. But every one of Hamilton’s indies has a story.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
I’ve been sort of working in what you’d sort of call I guess the horror genre since I began the Midnight Games trilogy, so I checked out Liz Worth’s The Mouth is a Coven and it’s really good. I’m not sure Hamilton per se had much influence on the novel, but it’s steeped in the postindustrial hopelessness that often goes unacknowledged as being a big part of the city. Its young protagonists might be categorized “punk” not so much because they intentionally embrace the role, but because it’s the milieu they were born into. But their world contains a supernatural element; they reach out to it in desperation because their immediate reality offers, or seems to offer, so little. I can relate to that and there’s a bit of that, I think, in the Midnight Games books. Anyway Liz’s work, like so much so-called genre fiction, is rich in allegory, more so I feel than a lot of literary fiction.
The War As I Saw It: In Rhodesia, Now Zimbabwe, Through the Eyes of a Black Boy. George Matuvi. Wolsak & Wynn. $20.00, 120 pp., ISBN: 978-1-989496-69-5
george matuvi
the war as i saw it: in rhodesia, now zimbabwe, through the eyes of a black boy, Wolsak & Wynn, june 2023
About the Book
In The War as I Saw It, George Matuvi invites us into the world of a young boy living through a war he doesn’t understand. As violence drives his family from their home in the mountains to the streets of Zimbabwe’s towns and then cities, the author shares his family’s story with honesty, composure and a touch of humour. Interspersed within this tale of flight, hardship and the eventual return to rebuild, Matuvi shares stories of his life as a child, from making soccer balls out of discarded plastic bags to the tales his father told around the fire at night, adding depth and joy to his portrait of a family struggling with displacement. The War as I Saw It is not a tragedy, though there were many tragedies during the war, it is a story of love, of strength in difficulty and of the ingenuity of one family as they cope with forces beyond their control.
Q&A With george matuvi
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
Believe it or not, it’s still sinking in that I am actually an author, frankly it means a lot to me and my family. It is a little nerve wracking to know that very soon everyone who reads my book will know my story.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
I am humbled to know there are people who would want to know the story of a then little boy growing up in a war-torn environment. The good thing is my book is not entirely about the war but is also about living a day-to-day life, in a different environment or circumstances than what we have here in North America.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
I like to go up the escarpment area to Indigo in Ancaster, it’s a short drive for me and the staff is very friendly.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
I would like to read Daniel Coleman’s Yardwork, I would like to know more about the City of Hamilton and the history of the surrounding area. However, this being my first book I am just getting to know who the authors are in Hamilton.
Adventurize Your Summer! Chris Pannell. Wolsak & Wynn. $20.00, 118 pp., ISBN: 978-1-989496-68-8
chris pannell
adventurize your summer! wolsak & wynn, april 2023
About the Book
Award-winning poet Chris Pannell’s latest collection, Adventurize Your Summer!, is a wide-ranging look at travel, art and life. The author writes poems about the “Eastern Migrating Tourist,” and the indifference of the waters of the Nile, with many stops in between. Pannell gives equal time to great paintings and to the retired cab driver on dialysis; he is as adept writing about the Beach Boys as describing the cafés of Lisbon. Hopscotching through time and space, the poems in Adventurize Your Summer! are a study in humanity, filled with keen observation, touched with both sorrow and the wry observation that life is never what is promised in the marketing copy.
Q&A With chris pannell
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
Hamilton is a great city in which to be a writer or visual artist. An annual event like GritLIT and a monthly event like the Lit Live Reading Series bring so much new writing to the city. Events like these help keep the community excited about what others are doing, and inspired to tread their own crazy path towards a fulfilling career. We are truly blessed with independent bookstores too, such as King West Books, Epic Books on Locke Street, The City and The City Books on Ottawa Street, J.H. Gordon on King Street East, and The River Trading Company on Barton Street. (There are others too.) The opportunities to find books and to be in a bookish environment are quite plentiful.
And for visual artists too, we have many gallery spaces both large and small to enjoy and to be amazed by in many corners of the lower city. A thriving music scene? Hamilton has the venues. With more re-opening after the pandemic. There is plenty of room here to make your own contribution.
I guess I’ve been a “Hamilton author” so long, I don’t think of it any more. My books are full of references, settings and events that could only be found here. I wasn’t born here, or raised here, or schooled here, but we moved to the city in 1988. My wife and I have never thought of moving again. Hamilton’s hospitality and sense of community are strong. Writers look out for each other. And Arts Hamilton, with events like the annual Book Awards, really brings people together as well.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
It’s a collection of poems that I’ve written over thirty years, though most of them were started in the last ten years. It’s like a Selected Poems of work that has never made it into any of my prior books. And as the title implies, it’s about the ironies and discomforts of travel as much as seeing fabulous faraway places. Despite the travel theme, much of it is based in the city, if that makes any sense. We have inward journeys, as well as outward ones.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
They are all great, with different approaches to stocking books and finding their clientele. I love them all. Really. See the list above (question one).
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
Many books could be cited here, but one I have never forgotten is The Amateurs by Liz Harmer. I rarely read dystopian fiction, but that one is an extraordinary accomplishment. And because Harmer no longer resides in Hamilton (having been raised here) it’s probably not as well known as it should be.
The Marigold. Andrew F. Sullivan. ECW Press. $24.95, 352 pp., ISBN: 9781770416642
andrew f. sullivan
The marigold, ECW Press, April 2023
About the book
The Marigold, a gleaming Toronto condo tower, sits a half-empty promise: a stack of scuffed rental suites and undelivered amenities that crumbles around its residents as a mysterious sludge spreads slowly through it. Public health inspector Cathy Jin investigates this toxic mold as it infests the city’s infrastructure, rotting it from within, while Sam “Soda” Dalipagic stumbles on a dangerous cache of data while cruising the streets in his Camry, waiting for his next rideshare alert. On the outskirts of downtown, 13-year-old Henrietta Brakes chases a friend deep underground after he’s snatched into a sinkhole by a creature from below.
All the while, construction of the city’s newest luxury tower, Marigold II, has stalled. Stanley Marigold, the struggling son of the legendary developer behind this project, decides he must tap into a hidden reserve of old power to make his dream a reality — one with a human cost.
Weaving together disparate storylines and tapping into the realms of body horror, urban dystopia, and ecofiction, The Marigold explores the precarity of community and the fragile designs that bind us together.
Q&A with andrew f. sullivan
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
It means I live here. It means I take part in things like gritLIT and Sharp Words and support local booksellers. It means I have a place where I can make and share my art in a community that actually values the arts and comes out to show that support. It also means I take the train on occasion. The Golden Horseshoe is slowly becoming one big community.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
My novel The Marigold came out in April, it's a polyphonic fungal horror novel about the fragile nature of community, the story of a city eating itself. In August, I have a new horror novel I cowrote with Nick Cutter called The Handyman Method coming out, it's a story about home improvement gone wrong and algorithmic possession. They're both books that play with the idea of genre and ask questions about what it means to be haunted in the modern world.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
The City & The City Books are good friends and just down the street in the east end. They made home deliveries during the lockdown periods of the ongoing pandemic. They're dedicated to putting on events with the local community and opening up the literary world to the public. It's great to see that kind of involvement in the east end.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
Liz Worth's The Mouth is a Coven is a story about modern vampires and a haunted, hunted city. Liz is a poet and tarot reader; her language is careful, languid, and sudden when required. Genre is a loose system of fences meant to keep us apart and Liz blows them all down without losing her breath.
River, Diverted. Jamie Tennant. Palimpsest Press. $18.95, 304 pp., ISBN: 978-1-990293-27-6
jamie tennant
River, diverted, palimpsest press, october 2022
about the book
The book shouldn’t exist – yet here it is.
River Black found cult success writing slasher flicks but has grown increasingly disillusioned and unhappy. When a mysterious book appears in her mailbox, her life is turned upside down. River returns to Nagano, Japan, where the book originated, hoping to pay respects to old friends and revisit her past. Instead, she finds her memory is duplicitous, her reality is porous, and the mysterious book is more alive than she could have believed. River, Diverted is a dark fairy tale that explores the trickery of memory, the delicacy of friendship, the nature of creativity and the deliverance of hope. Filled with pop culture references and a deep love of monster movies, River, Diverted is both a light-hearted and subtly serious read that will captivate readers.
Q&A with jamie tennant
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
I'm happy to be part of Hamilton and known for my relationship to Hamilton - I've lived here most of my life and I've published hundreds of thousands of words about the city (never mind all the airtime at CFMU, either!). What matters most to me, however, is the company around me. Being a Hamilton author means being part of a large (and growing) community of passionate, supremely talented people. Some of these people are burgeoning writers fresh out of high school, born and bred in Hamilton; others are recently arrived, established authors relocating from Toronto; some of these are...well, you get the point. On top of the talent, there's the open-heartedness, generosity and kindness of this group. When I was first published seven years ago, these people - who didn't know me, who didn't know my work - were incredibly supportive. It's why I started the GET LIT show - to find a way to give back.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
One thing? Oh jeez. OK - I'd like people to know that this is book started as a way to revisit and write about my days in Japan, but in the end, it's all about River. My main character River Black became more and more interesting, and I liked her more and more with each passing chapter. Sure, it's about Japan and friendship and memory and nostalgia; yes it's got horror movies and little monsters (again!) but really it's all about River.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
Oh picking one bookstore, that's just mean, HRB! OK. I'd have to go with Epic, simply because it's well-curated and run/operated by great folks and it feels friendly. So do the rest of them, though! I just have a soft spot for Epic, I used to browse while my young son (not so young now) was in karate lessons.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
To be honest, while I think he's gotten enough press lately (hahaha jk dude) Andrew F. Sullivan's The Marigold is the best thing I've read in a while, from Hamilton or anywhere else. It's wildly imaginative, socially and politically sharp, funny, and a lot of fun to read. It's a genre-bender though it's filed under "horror." Speaking of horror, can I throw in a bonus for "most horrific scene I've read in a long time?" Liz Worth, in The Mouth is a Coven. The scene with the birds. That's all I'll say.
Chrysalis. Anuja Varghese. Astoria/House of Anansi. $22.99, 208 pp., ISBN: 9781487011666
anuja varghese
chrysalis, astoria/House of anansi, march 2023
about the book
A couple in a crumbling marriage faces divine intervention. A woman dies in her dreams again and again until she finds salvation in an unexpected source. A teenage misfit discovers a darkness lurking just beyond the borders of her suburban home.
The stories in Chrysalis, Anuja Varghese’s debut collection, are by turns poignant and chilling, blurring the lines between the real world and worlds beyond. Varghese delves fearlessly into complex intersections of family, community, sexuality, and cultural expectation, taking aim at the ways in which racialized women are robbed of power and revelling in the strange and dangerous journeys they undertake to reclaim it.
q&A with anuja varghese
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
I really found my way back to writing after moving to Hamilton and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. There’s such a supportive and vibrant writing community here and so much exciting work coming out of the city. I’m incredibly proud to be a Hamilton author and invested in seeing opportunities and platforms for Hamilton creatives continue to grow!
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
My recent (and… only) book is called Chrysalis and it’s a genre-blending debut collection of short stories centring the lives of brown women and girls. It explores cultural expectations, sexuality, and transformation, and plays with elements of horror, fairy tale, and magic in the everyday. It’s spring vibes, but make it goth.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
We are blessed with so many indie bookstores in Hamilton that do so much to support local authors and book events. My fave is Epic Books! From running the festival bookstore during gritLIT every year, to selling books on-site all over the city at book launches and readings, to sponsoring the Fiction Award at the Hamilton Literary Awards, to running The Sequel out of the Playhouse Cinema – Epic Books enriches the Hamilton community in so many ways. Plus – they always have a killer window display!
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
Can I say everyone included in this roundup? ALSO – Amanda Leduc has a new book called WILD LIFE coming out in 2024 that I cannot wait to get my hands on!
Lump. Nathan Whitlock. Dundurn Press. $24.99, 336 pp., ISBN: 9781459751286
nathan whitlock
Lump, Dundurn Press, July 2023
about the book
Cat's career has stalled, her marriage has gone flat, and being a stay-at-home mom for two young kids has become a grind. When she finds out, all within a few days, that she is pregnant, that a lump in her breast is the worst thing it could be, and that her husband has done something unforgivably repulsive, she responds by running away from her marriage and her life — a life that, on the outside, looks like middle-class success. Her actions send waves of chaos through the lives of multiple characters, including a struggling house cleaner, a rich and charismatic yoga guru, and even an ailing dog. What follows is a dark comedy about marriage, motherhood, privilege, and power.
Q&A with nathan whitlock
What does it mean to you to be/be known as a Hamilton area author?
I have yet to publish a book while living here - my previous novels came out while I was in Toronto - but I am genuinely looking forward to earning that distinction. I remember standing in The City & The City Books a while ago, looking at the 'local authors' table and thinking: "When do I get on there?" When I finally did (after helping out with a couple of events they hosted), it was a perversely satisfying experience. Being an author in Toronto is a bit like being a cyclist in Toronto: there are too many around for any single one to stand out; you're a mildly irritating if somewhat inevitable part of the landscape. Hamilton is small enough and distinct enough that it feels cooler, somehow, to be associated with this city.
What is one thing you’d like us to know about your recent or forthcoming book?
My new novel, Lump (launching July 18th at The Casbah) deals with marriage and infidelity and toxic masculinity and bad parenting and casual racism and income inequality and breast cancer and gentrification and the cultishness of yoga, but it's also funny. Maybe not always funny-haha - it made my wife cry multiple times while reading it - but funny-yikes. Think Parasite with less gore and less genius, but more craft beer.
Tell us about your favourite local (Hamilton and surrounding area) bookstore and why it’s great.
I've already namechecked The City & The City Books. I love and frequent some other stores here (like Epic Books and JH Gordon), but The City & The City is so well-curated that I genuinely believe I could go in there blindfolded, reach out to any bookshelf, and grab something I would enjoy reading.
What is one book written by a local (Hamilton and surrounding area) author that you’re looking forward to reading, or that you’ve already read and loved?
She's my wife, so it's an obvious conflict of interest to name Yes or Nope, the collection by Meaghan Strimas that won the Trillium Poetry Prize a few years back, so I'll say Smoke, a collection of short fiction forthcoming from Wolsak & Wynn and written my friend Nicola Winstanley, who is also a great kid lit writer. There's a joke in Lump in which a character hears someone drop the c-bomb and assumes the person is from New Zealand: Nicola is the kind of New Zealander I was thinking of when I wrote that.