What We're Reading: Editors' Picks, Spring 2022

It’s been a long winter and we can’t wait to dive into these spring titles! Join us with some of the hottest new reads this coming season.

Straggle: Adventures in Walking While Female

by Tanis MacDonald

Wolsak and Wynn, June 2022

“In this wide-ranging collection of essays Tanis MacDonald walks the reader down many paths, pointing out the sights, exclaiming over birds, sharing stories and asking questions about just who gets to walk freely through our cities, parks and wilderness. Deer move mysteriously through these essays, knowing just when they vanish from sight, as do predators, both human and animal. She walks to begin to understand the place she now calls home in Southern Ontario, catalogues the fauna around her in FaunaWatch and continues walking through illness. From a child spotting a snowy owl on her way to school in Winnipeg, to a young woman watching her own distinctive walk be imitated in an acting class, to a worried daughter helping her mother relearn how to walk after a bad fall on a busy road, MacDonald shares how walking has shaped her life and the lives of many others. Wry, smart, political and lyrical, these essays share the joy of walking as well its danger and uncovers the promise it offers – of healing, of companionship and of understanding.”

Cobalt: Cradle of the Demon Metals, Birth of a Mining Superpower

by Charlie Angus

House of Anansi, February 2022

“The world is desperate for cobalt. It drives the proliferation of digital and clean technologies. But this ‘demon metal’ has a horrific present and a troubled history.

The modern search for cobalt has brought investors back to a small town in Northern Canada, a place called Cobalt. Like the demon metal, this town has a dark and turbulent history.

The tale of the early-twentieth-century mining rush at Cobalt has been told as a settler’s adventure, but Indigenous people had already been trading in metals from the region for two thousand years. And the events that happened here – the theft of Indigenous lands, the exploitation of a multicultural workforce, and the destruction of the natural environment – established a template for resource extraction that has been exported around the world.

Charlie Angus reframes the complex and intersectional history of Cobalt within a broader international frame – from the conquistadores to the Western gold rush to the struggles in the Democratic Republic of Congo today. He demonstrates how Cobalt set Canada on its path to become the world’s dominant mining superpower.”

The Creative Instigator’s Handbook: A DIY Guide to Making Social Change through Art

by Leanne Prain

Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2022

“From the co-creator of the seminal craftivism book Yarn Bombing: a guide for creatives to making impactful, socially engaged art projects.

Flash mobs come and go, but purposeful creativity can change communities. Are you a creative (aspiring or otherwise) who is curious about how you can apply your skills to activist, socially engaged art projects? Whether you paint, sew, sing, build, weld, or rhyme, The Creative Instigator's Handbook explores how to take that big project you've been dreaming about and actually make it happen.

In response to the challenging times that we live in, The Creative Instigator's Handbook will inspire readers to use their creativity to spur change in the world around them. Guiding readers through the various aspects of a project from ideation to final documentation, the book examines the relationship between creative leadership, community art projects, and social justice, and includes the perspectives of 23 creative instigators who have stretched the boundaries of what ‘art’ should or shouldn't do.

The Creative Instigator's Handbook will appeal to creatives willing to expand their comfort zones by jumping into the fray and doing some outrageous, inspired rabble-rousing of their very own.”

The Call of the Red-Winged Blackbird: Essays on the Common and Extraordinary

by Tim Bowling

Wolsak and Wynn, February 2022

“‘Nearly sixty years of life, with all of its diversities and social pleasure, its joys and sorrows, successes and failures, a whole changing theatre cast of characters, some still loved and on the stage, others long since slipped into the darkened wings, and I remain most entranced by the simple glories of a fruit tree and a songbird. Why should it be so?’

In this lush collection of essays Tim Bowling picks up the common questions, and beauties, of life and examines them closely. From questions of love and money, to the search for solitude in a clamouring world, to poetry and the place of art today, Bowling writes beautifully and thoughtfully on what it means to be alive now. And in the end, we come back to the moon, the trees, the salmon that swim to the sea and the call of the red-winged blackbird, which his mother imitated to call him inside at night, as a child.”

All the Horses of Iceland

by Sarah Tolmie

Tor/Forge, March 2022

“A hypnotic historical fantasy with gorgeous and unusual literary prose, from the captivating author of The Fourth Island.

Everyone knows of the horses of Iceland, wild, and small, and free, but few have heard their story. Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland weaves their mystical origin into a saga for the modern age. Filled with the magic and darkened whispers of a people on the cusp of major cultural change, All the Horses of Iceland tells the tale of a Norse trader, his travels through Central Asia, and the ghostly magic that followed him home to the land of fire, stone, and ice. His search for riches will take him from Helmgard, through Khazaria, to the steppes of Mongolia, where he will barter for horses and return with much, much more.

All the Horses of Iceland is a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, brought to life by an expert storyteller.”

An Orchid Astronomy

by Tasnuva Hayden

University of Calgary Press, July 2022

“A five-pointed, language-infused star map cataloging a migrating requiem of memories, mythologies, and science in the face of climate catastrophe and personal collapse.

Sophie grew up in Veslefjord, deep in the Norwegian North, where the ice stretches to the horizon and the long Arctic night is filled with stories about the animals of the sea, ice, and sky. Now the ice is melting and the animals are dying. Sophie’s mother is also dead, leaving behind a daughter and a lover on the melting permafrost.

An Orchid Astronomy is the story of Sophie, of her personal trauma and of climate catastrophe, told in striking experimental poetry. Crossing poetic styles and genres, words and sentences flow and break, twist into images, and cluster together like the Arctic stars. Coming together in a sustained narrative, these poems ask how we grapple with magnificent loss, searching for solutions in science, in mythology, in storytelling and ultimately, in our relived memories.

Challenging, powerful, and beautiful, An Orchid Astronomy wrestles with the grief we feel for the loss of those we love and grief for the changing world. In the language of mass extinction and the unknowable sky, Tasnuva Hayden fearlessly explores the nuances of personal collapse, sublimated desire, unfulfilled longing, and the ways we must move forward in the face of the impossible in poetry that dazzles like the moon on a midwinter night.”

Face

by Joma West

Tor/Forge, February 2022

“In Joma West's Face, Margaret Atwood meets Kazuo Ishiguro in this sci-fi domestic drama that reimagines race and class in a genetically engineered society fed by performative fame.

How much is your Face worth?

Schuyler and Madeleine Burroughs have the perfect Face – rich and powerful enough to assure their dominance in society.

But in SchAddie’s household, cracks are beginning to appear. Schuyler is bored and taking risks. Maddie is becoming brittle, her happiness ever more fleeting. And their menial is fighting the most bizarre compulsions.

In Face, skin color is an aesthetic choice designed by professionals, consent is a pre-checked box on the path to social acceptance, and your online profile isn’t just the most important thing – it’s the only thing.”

Woman, Watching: Louise de Kiriline Lawrence and the Songbirds of Pimisi Bay

by Merilyn Simonds

ECW Press, May 2022

“From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman – a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.

Referred to as a Canadian Rachel Carson, Louise de Kiriline Lawrence lived and worked in an isolated log cabin near North Bay. After her husband was murdered by Bolsheviks, she refused her Swedish privilege and joined the Canadian Red Cross, visiting her northern Ontario patients by dogsled. When Elzire Dionne gave birth to five babies, Louise became nurse to the Dionne Quintuplets. Repulsed by the media circus, she retreated to her wilderness cabin, where she devoted herself to studying the birds that nested in her forest. Author of six books and scores of magazine stories, de Kiriline Lawrence and her ‘loghouse nest’ became a Mecca 'for international ornithologists.

Lawrence was an old woman when Merilyn Simonds moved into the woods not far away. Their paths crossed, sparking Simonds’s lifelong interest. A dedicated birder, Simonds brings her own songbird experiences from Canadian nesting grounds and Mexican wintering grounds to this deeply researched, engaging portrait of a uniquely fascinating woman.”

Best Young Woman Job Book: A Memoir

by Emma Healey

Random House Canada, March 2022

“A witty, soulful memoir about trying to make a living under the burden of unwelcome truths.

Emma Healey just wants to be a writer.

As a teenager, she is introduced by her actor/playwright mother to the role of ‘standardized patient,’ performing illness as a living training dummy for medical students. In university, she joins a creative writing program, cultivating a poet’s interest in language while learning lessons about the literary world that have more to do with survival than art. Through her twenties, she writes software manuals for the world’s leading producer of online pornography, masters search engine optimization for a marketing firm run out of a bedroom by two Phish-loving brothers, narrowly escapes death as a research assistant for a television drama, and works the night shift captioning daytime TV. Along the way, as she navigates dating apps, tumultuous relationships, and the evolution of a voice that she is slowly learning to trust, she begins writing personal essays for money – and finds herself embroiled in a content economy that blurs the boundaries between day job and art-making even further.

Through the stories of several very odd jobs, each related to – but also achingly far from – the job she really wants, poet and essayist Emma Healey creates a unique snapshot of the gig economy that is also a timeless meditation on identity, value and language.

For a writer trying to pay the bills, life can be a work in progress.”

A Convergence of Solitudes

by Anita Anand

Book*hug Press, May 2022

“A story of identity, connection and forgiveness, A Convergence of Solitudes shares the lives of two families across Partition of India, Operation Babylift in Vietnam, and two referendums in Quebec.

Sunil and Hima, teenage lovers, bravely defy taboos in pre-Partition India to come together as their country divides in two. They move across the world to Montreal and raise a family, but Sunil shows symptoms of schizophrenia, shattering their newfound peace. As a teenager, their daughter Rani becomes obsessed with Quebecois supergroup Sensibilité – and, in particular, the band’s charismatic, nationalistic frontman, Serge Giglio – whose music connects Rani to the province’s struggle for cultural freedom. A chance encounter leads Rani to babysit Mélanie, Serge’s adopted daughter from Vietnam, bringing her fleetingly within his inner circle.

Years later, Rani, now a college guidance counselor, discovers that Mélanie has booked an appointment to discuss her future at the school. Unmoved by her father’s staunch patriotism and her British mother’s bourgeois ways, Mélanie is struggling with deep uncertainty about her identity and belonging. As the two women’s lives become more and more intertwined, Rani’s fascination with Mélanie’s father’s music becomes a strange shadow amidst their friendship.”

The Petting Zoos

by K.S. Covert

Dundurn Press, May 2022

“In a virus-fearing world, skin hunger can drive you crazy – and human petting zoos can return you to yourself.

Ten years after the deadly virus nicknamed Henny Penny, the world has largely recovered – there’s an interim government as well as law and order, and life is returning to normal for the greatly reduced population. But despite effective vaccines, the law still requires people to wear protective masks and gloves at all times in public, and many still fear a resurgence of the virus. On top of this, people who haven’t been touched in years are going crazy from skin hunger.

Lily has lived in fearful isolation for ten years, afraid to rejoin the world. But a return-to-work order and an invitation to go to a petting zoo – a highly illegal club where people go to touch and be touched start to bring her back to life.

A post-apocalyptic sex adventure and a woman’s journey of self-discovery, The Petting Zoos is an erotic love story for an age of extreme caution, in which the value of safety itself is questioned.”

Fugue With Bedbug

by Anne-Marie Turza

House of Anansi, April 2022

“The eagerly awaited second collection from acclaimed poet Anne-Marie Turza.

Be startled by metaphysical snails and the ghosts of footnotes in the dark. Fugue With Bedbug is part musical reference, part portraiture, a series of uncanny poems attending to time and mortality, an eccentric essay, and a musical score. Using the fugue form as a foil and a quiet compositional strategy, poet Anne-Marie Turza argues that the mission: ‘in afterthought, was Jell-O, a salad of delicate intent and shimmy . . .’”

The Last Housewife

by Ashley Winstead

Sourcebooks Landmark, August 2022

“From the author of the acclaimed In My Dreams I Hold a Knife comes a pitch-black thriller about a woman determined to destroy a powerful cult and avenge the deaths of the women taken in by it, no matter the cost.

While in college in upstate New York, Shay Evans and her best friends met a captivating man who seduced them with a web of lies about the way the world works, bringing them under his thrall. By senior year, Shay and her friend Laurel were the only ones who managed to escape. Now, eight years later, Shay's built a new life in a tony Texas suburb. But when she hears the horrifying news of Laurel's death – delivered, of all ways, by her favorite true-crime podcast crusader – she begins to suspect that the past she thought she buried is still very much alive, and the predators more dangerous than ever.

Recruiting the help of the podcast host, Shay goes back to the place she vowed never to return to in search of answers. As she follows the threads of her friend's life, she's pulled into a dark, seductive world, where wealth and privilege shield brutal philosophies that feel all too familiar. When Shay's obsession with uncovering the truth becomes so consuming she can no longer separate her desire for justice from darker desires newly reawakened, she must confront the depths of her own complicity and conditioning. But in a world built for men to rule it – both inside the cult and outside of it – is justice even possible, and if so, how far will Shay go to get it?”

Di-Bayn-Di-Zi-Win (To Own Ourselves): Embodying Ojibway-Anishinabe Ways

by Jerry FontaineandDon McCaskill

Dundurn Press, February 2022

“A collaboration exploring the importance of the Ojibway-Anishinabe worldview, use of ceremony, and language in living a good life, attaining true reconciliation, and resisting the notions of indigenization and colonialization inherent in Western institutions.

Indigenization within the academy and the idea of truth and reconciliation within Canada have been seen as the remedy to correct the relationship between Indigenous Peoples and Canadian society. While honourable, these actions are difficult to achieve given the Western nature of institutions in Canada and the collective memory of its citizens, and the burden of proof has always been the responsibility of Anishinabeg.

Authors Makwa Ogimaa (Jerry Fontaine) and Ka-pi-ta-aht (Don McCaskill) tell their di-bah-ji-mo-wi-nan (Stories of personal experience) to provide insight into the cultural, political, social, and academic events of the past fifty years of Ojibway-Anishinabe resistance in Canada. They suggest that Ojibway-Anishinabe i-zhi-chi-gay-win zhigo kayn-dah-so-win (Ways of doing and knowing) can provide an alternative way of living and thriving in the world. This distinctive worldview – as well as Ojibway-Anishinabe values, language, and ceremonial practices – can provide an alternative to Western political and academic institutions and peel away the layers of colonialism, violence, and injustice, speaking truth and leading to true reconciliation.”

Stories I Might Regret Telling You: A Memoir

by Martha Wainwright

Random House Canada, March 2022

“The singer-songwriter’s heartfelt memoir about growing up in a bohemian musical family and her experiences with love, loss, motherhood, divorce, the music industry, and more.

Born into music royalty, the daughter of folk legends Kate McGarrigle and Loudon Wainwright III and sister to the highly acclaimed, genre-defying singer Rufus Wainwright, Martha grew up in a world filled with incomparable musical legends – Anna McGarrigle, Leonard Cohen, Suzzy Roche, Richard and Linda Thompson, Emmylou Harris – and struggled to find her voice in a milieu in which every drama was refracted through song. Then, in 2005, she released her critically acclaimed debut album, Martha Wainwright, containing the blistering hit, ‘Bloody Mother F*cking Asshole,’ which the Sunday Times called one of the best songs of that year. That release, and the albums that followed, such as Come Home to Mama and I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too, showcased Martha’s searing songwriting style and established her as a powerful voice to be reckoned with.

Martha digs into her life with the same emotional honesty that has come to define her music. She describes her tumultuous public-facing journey from awkward, earnest, and ultimately rebellious daughter, through her intense competition and ultimate alliance with her brother, Rufus, to finding her voice as an artist and the indescribable loss of their mother, Kate. With candor and grace, Martha writes of becoming a mother herself, finally understanding and facing the challenge of being a female artist with children. Stories I Might Regret Telling You is a thoughtful, moving account of the extraordinary life of one of the most talented singer-songwriters in music today.”

Still Hopeful: Lessons from a Lifetime of Activism

by Maude Barlow

ECW Press, March 2022

“In this timely book, Barlow counters the prevailing atmosphere of pessimism that surrounds us and offers lessons of hope that she has learned from a lifetime of activism. She has been a linchpin in three major movements in her life: second-wave feminism, the battle against free trade and globalization, and the global fight for water justice. From each of these she draws her lessons of hope, emphasizing that effective activism is not really about the goal, rather it is about building a movement and finding like-minded people to carry the load with you. Barlow knows firsthand how hard fighting for change can be. But she also knows that change does happen and that hope is the essential ingredient.”

Buffalo is the New Buffalo

by Chelsea Vowel

Arsenal Pulp Press, April 2022

“Powerful stories of ‘Metis futurism’ that envision a world without violence, capitalism, or colonization.

‘Education is the new buffalo’ is a metaphor widely used among Indigenous peoples in Canada to signify the importance of education to their survival and ability to support themselves, as once Plains nations supported themselves as buffalo peoples. The assumption is that many of the pre-Contact ways of living are forever gone, so adaptation is necessary. But Chelsea Vowel asks, "Instead of accepting that the buffalo, and our ancestral ways, will never come back, what if we simply ensure that they do?"

Inspired by classic and contemporary speculative fiction, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo explores science fiction tropes through a Metis lens: a Two-Spirit rougarou (shapeshifter) in the nineteenth century tries to solve a murder in her community and joins the nehiyaw-pwat (Iron Confederacy) in order to successfully stop Canadian colonial expansion into the West. A Metis man is gored by a radioactive bison, gaining super strength, but losing the ability to be remembered by anyone not related to him by blood. Nanites babble to babies in Cree, virtual reality teaches transformation, foxes take human form and wreak havoc on hearts, buffalo roam free, and beings grapple with the thorny problem of healing from colonialism.

Indigenous futurisms seek to discover the impact of colonization, remove its psychological baggage, and recover ancestral traditions. These eight short stories of ‘Metis futurism’ explore Indigenous existence and resistance through the specific lens of being Metis. Expansive and eye-opening, Buffalo Is the New Buffalo rewrites our shared history in provocative and exciting ways.”

Waking Occupations

by Phoebe Wang

McClelland & Stewart, March 2022

“The second collection from the acclaimed author of Admission Requirements.

This astonishing new collection of poems contemplates our obligations to live in a creative, generative, and revolutionary way amid a cascade of global contingencies.

In a four-part meditation on what it means to live on occupied land and in colonial time, the subject of these poems has moved beyond arriving and departing and wakes each day to meet her commitments and to heal from complicities, exclusions, difficult truths and the pandemic of forgetting. It follows the figure of the female artist as a time-travelling woman, embodied by mother and daughter, through the gallery of memory. The poems enact brief encounters with objects, events, and works of art that hold us accountable. Finally, a set of shadow elegies mourn what the next generation has already lost, while searching for traces of the wild and for ceremonies that might mend us.

Waking Occupations is an urgent, essential collection that considers what we carry from previous generations and our liabilities to the cyclical nature of the work that uplifts us.”

Some of My Best Friends: Essays on Lip Service

by Tajja Isen

Atria/One Signal Publishers, April 2022

“A fearless and darkly comic essay collection about race, justice, and the limits of good intentions.

In this stunning debut collection, Catapult editor-in-chief and award-winning voice actor Tajja Isen explores the absurdity of living in a world that has grown fluent in the language of social justice but doesn’t always follow through.

These nine daring essays explore the sometimes troubling and often awkward nature of that discord. Some of My Best Friends takes on the cartoon industry’s pivot away from colorblind casting, the pursuit of diverse representation in the literary world, the law’s refusal to see inequality, and the cozy fictions of nationalism. Isen deftly examines the quick, cosmetic fixes society makes to address systemic problems, and reveals the unexpected ways they can misfire.

In the spirit of Zadie Smith, Cathy Park Hong, and Jia Tolentino, Isen interlaces cultural criticism with her lived experience to explore the gaps between what we say and what we do, what we do and what we value, what we value and what we demand.”

A Factotum in the Book Trade

by Marius Kociejowski

Biblioasis, April 2022

“The bookshop is, and will always be, the soul of the trade. What happens there does not happen elsewhere. The multifariousness of human nature is more on show there than anywhere else, and I think it’s because of books, what they are, what they release in ourselves, and what they become when we make them magnets to our desires.

A memoir of a life in the antiquarian book trade, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey between the shelves – and then behind the counter, into the overstuffed basement, and up the spine-stacked attic stairs of your favourite neighbourhood bookshop. From his childhood in rural Ontario, where at the village jumble sale he bought poetry volumes for their pebbled-leather covers alone, to his all-but-accidental entrance into the trade in London and the career it turned into, poet and travel writer Marius Kociejowski recounts his life among the buyers, sellers, customers, and literary nobility – the characters, fictional and not – who populate these places we all love. Cataloging their passions and pleasures, oddities and obsessions, A Factotum in the Book Trade is a journey through their lives, and a story of the serendipities and collisions of fate, the mundane happenings and indelible encounters, the friendships, feuds, losses, and elations that characterize the business of books – and, inevitably, make up an unforgettable life..”

You May Not Take The Sad and Angry Consolations

by Shane Neilson

Goose Lane Editions, March 2022

“Conceived as an archive of wisdom written by a disabled man for his children, You May Not Take the Sad and Angry Consolations gives voice to the experience of living in an ableist society: ‘Why does it hurt when emotion spills out of a body? How does emotion spell “body”? What does it mean to be good? Why is the surplus of beauty everywhere? What is the password?’ Weaving together reflections on fatherhood, Walt Whitman’s place in American history, art, and the lingering effects of past trauma, these ringing and raw poems theorize on the concept of shame, its intended purpose, and its effects for and on disabled body-minds.”

Recommended by Jessica Rose and Jen Rawlinson

The Memory Librarian: And Other Stories of Dirty Computer

by Janelle Monáe

HarperCollins, April 2022

“Whoever controls our memories controls the future.

Janelle Monáe and an incredible array of talented collaborating creators have written a collection of tales comprising the bold vision and powerful themes that have made Monáe such a compelling and celebrated storyteller. Dirty Computer introduced a world in which thoughts – as a means of self-conception – could be controlled or erased by a select few. And whether human, A.I., or other, your life and sentience was dictated by those who’d convinced themselves they had the right to decide your fate.

That was until Jane 57821 decided to remember and break free.

Expanding from that mythos, these stories fully explore what it’s like to live in such a totalitarian existence…and what it takes to get out of it. Building off the traditions of speculative writers such as Octavia Butler, Ted Chiang, Becky Chambers, and Nnedi Okorafor – and filled with the artistic genius and powerful themes that have made Monáe a worldwide icon in the first place – The Memory Librarian serves readers tales grounded in the human trials of identity expression, technology, and love, but also reaching through to the worlds of memory and time within, and the stakes and power that exists there.”

Rooms: Women, Writing, Woolf

by Sina Queyras

Coach House Books, May 2022

“From LAMBDA Literary Award winner Sina Queyras, Rooms offers a peek into the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind

Thirty years ago, a professor threw a chair at Sina Queyras after they’d turned in an essay on Virginia Woolf.

Queyras returns to that contentious first encounter with Virignia Woolf to recover the body and thinking of that time. Using Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own as a touchstone, this book is both an homage to and provocation of the idea of a room of one’s own at the centre of our idea of a literary life.

How central is the room? And what happens once we get one? Do we inhabit our rooms? Or do the rooms contain us? Blending memoir, prose, tweets, poetry, and criticism, Rooms offers a peek into the defining spaces a young queer writer moved through as they found their way from a life of chaos to a life of the mind, and from a very private life of the mind to a public life of the page, and from a life of the page into a life in the Academy, the Internet, and on social media.”

Beast at Every Threshold

by Natalie Wee

Arsenal Pulp Press, March 2022

“A formidable collection of poems that deconstructs the notion of ‘otherness’ through folklore and myth.

An unflinching shapeshifter, Beast at Every Threshold dances between familial hauntings and cultural histories, intimate hungers and broader griefs. Memories become malleable, pop culture provides a backdrop to glittery queer love, and folklore speaks back as a radical tool of survival. With unapologetic precision, Natalie Wee unravels constructs of ‘otherness’ and names language our most familiar weapon, illuminating the intersections of queerness, diaspora, and loss with obsessive, inexhaustible ferocity - and in resurrecting the self rendered a site of violence, makes visible the ‘Beast at Every Threshold.’

Beguiling and deeply imagined, Wee's poems explore thresholds of marginality, queerness, immigration, nationhood, and reinvention of the self through myth.”