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CanLit--the commonly used short form for English Canadian Literature as a cultural formation and industry--has been at the heart of several recent public controversies. Why? Because CanLit is breaking open to reveal the accepted injustices at its heart. It is imperative that these public controversies and the issues that sparked them be subject to careful and thorough discussion and critique. provides a critical and historical context to help readers understand conversations happening about CanLit presently. One of its goals is to foreground the perspectives of those who have been changing the conversation about what CanLit is and what it could be. Topics such as literary celebrity, white power, appropriation, class, rape culture, and the ongoing impact of settler colonialism are addressed by a diverse gathering of writers from across Canada. This volume works to avoid a single metanarrative response to these issues, but rather brings together a cacophonous and ruinous multitude of voices.

A modern-day fable and mythic bildungsroman, The Faerie Devouring tells the story of a young girl raised by her grandmother (a stalwart matriarch and wicked fairy godmother) following her mother's death during childbirth. The absent mother haunts the story of this girl whose greatest misfortune is to have been born female. In this critically-acclaimed coming-of-age story by Quebecois author Catherine Lalonde, and translated by Oana Avasilichioaei, questions of what it means to be born female and grow into a woman are explored. The story is rife with song, myth, phantasmagoria, spells, desire, ferocious poetic telling, wild imagination, and unruly language. Lalonde uses the form of a disenchanted and metaphorical fable to recount what it means to find a life force in one's lineage, even when one is born into "nothing."

Kerstin Ostheim, a journalist, and P. J. Banner, a freelance photographer, have been together six months after meeting on a dating website. They are getting married in two weeks and as the wedding fast approaches, they question their compatibility while investigating mysterious horse killings that are taking place in Ogweyo's Cove, the Pacific tourist haven where they live. In the meantime, Schuld Ostheim, Kerstin's transgender daughter from her first marriage, is preparing for an art exhibit after being hospitalized for a physical assault while her boyfriend, Woloff, an Olympic medalist in the 1500m, comes to terms with a career ending knee injury. As Kerstin and P.J. get closer to the truth about the dead horses, they also begin to more clearly see each other. Simultaneously, Schuld and Woloff encounter obstacles caused by how their relationships with the past effects their sense of a possible future. Ultimately, Smells Like Stars draws attention to what is hidden in plain sight, that life can be cruel, ambiguous and without meaning.

"Lambda Literary and Stonewall Book Award-winner Hasan Namir shares a joyful collection about parenting, fatherhood and hope. These warm free-verse poems document the journey that he and his husband took to have a child. Between love letters to their young son, Namir shares insight into his love story with his husband, the complexities of the IVF surrogacy process and the first year as a family of three. Umbilical Cord is a heartfelt book for parents or would-be parents, with a universal message of hope."--

The urgency of the climate emergency is explored in this latest collection by award-winning poet Talya Rubin. It offers recognition of, and salve for, the vast mysteries of the natural world, our human interior, and the relationship between the two.In these poems, human and wild meet in everyday encounters: the melting of ice sheets and fathoming ecological disaster while listening to news reports on the radio; moments of childhood ice skating and unrequited love alongside geological formations and weather patterns. Underlying the collection is a mild sense of absurdity, one that mirrors our existential plight of continuing on in the face of what feels like impossibility.Iceland Is Melting and So Are You asks us to consider what we have kept frozen and unexamined within us and--in doing so--recognize the complex grief and wonder we face in considering the end of the human epoch.

Consisting of 256 16-line quartets and 34 free-form interruptions, this slow-moving haunting work is a beautiful example of "thinking in language," a meditation that explores time and memory in both content and form. The 20th century is already more than 20 years past: The Absence of Zero is Kolewe''s elegy to that era, and the disparate fragments of its ideas that continue to affect and disrupt our present.

In this collection of deeply personal essays, twenty-six writers explore their connection with language, accents, and vocabularies, and contend with the ways these can be used as both bridge and weapon. Some explore the way power and privilege affect language learning, especially the shame and exclusion often felt by non-native English speakers in a white, settler, colonial nation. Some confront the pain of losing a mother tongue or an ancestral language along with the loss of community and highlight the empowerment that comes with reclamation. Others celebrate the joys of learning a new language and the power of connection. All underscore how language can offer both transformation and collective healing. Tongues: On Longing and Belonging through Language is a vital anthology that opens a compelling dialogue about language diversity and probes the importance of language in our identity and the ways in which it shapes us. With contributions by: Kamal Al-Solaylee, Jenny Heijun Wills, Karen McBride, Melissa Bull, Leonarda Carranza, Adam Pottle, Kai Cheng Thom, Sigal Samuel, Rebecca Fisseha, Hege Anita Jakobsen Lepri, Logan Broeckaert, Taslim Jaffer, Ashley Hynd, Jagtar Kaur Atwal, Téa Mutonji, Rowan McCandless, Sahar Golshan, Camila Justino, Amanda Leduc, Ayelet Tsabari, Carrianne Leung, Janet Hong, Danny Ramadan, Sadiqa de Meijer, Jónína Kirton, and Eufemia Fantetti.

"In a way, the language is the protagonist in this book. It is luminous and vibrant, full of associations, reflections and quotes. The words embrace the world with sensuality, humour, wonder and a confusion of feelings." --Fredrik WandrupIn a hotel, high up in a mountain village, two sisters aim to reconnect after distant years that contrast their close, almost twin-like upbringing. Martha has just been discharged from a sanatorium after a mental breakdown. Ella agrees to keep her company in the hope that the clean winter air will provide clarity--and a way back to their childhood connection.It's only when plans go awry, and Martha disappears in a rage, that Ella discovers a new sense of self outside her filial role. This identity is reinforced by various encounters: the hotel receptionist who takes her under her wing; the enigmatic love interest; the wistful, drunken Salvation Army soldier; the carpenter. And not least, Ella's encounter with the writings of Stefan Zweig, which have a profound impact.Winner of the Critics' Prize 2018 and shortlisted for the Booksellers' Prize 2018, Mona Høvring's work is as sharp as it sensitive; insightful as it is original when exploring the many distractions of the heart.

Grace Porter is reeling from grief after her partner of seven years unexpectedly leaves. Amidst her heartache, the 30 year-old library tech is tasked with reading newly discovered letters that Amelia Earhart wrote to her lover, Gene Vidal. She becomes captivated by the famous pilot who disappeared in 1937. Letter by letter, she understands more about the aviation hero while piecing her own life back together.When Grace discovers she is pregnant, her life becomes more intertwined with the mysterious pilot and Grace begins to write her own letters to Amelia. While navigating her third trimester, amidst new conspiracy theories about Amelia's disappearance, the search for her remains, and the impending publication of her private letters, Grace goes on a pilgrimage of her own.Letters to Amelia is a stunning, contemporary epistolary novel from the creator of the internationally acclaimed Love Lettering Project. It underscores the power of reading and writing letters for both connection and self-discovery, and celebrates the unwritten, undocumented parts of our lives.Above all, Letters to Amelia is a story of the essential need for connection--and our universal ability to find hope in the face of fear.Praise for Letters to Amelia: "Brimming over with Lindsay Zier-Vogel's obvious love for the story of Amelia Earhart, Letters to Amelia is a wonderful novel about flight and passion, about love-letters and reaching out; a novel about how we never know quite what's coming next, but still keep launching ourselves into the blue tomorrow."--Jon McGregor, author of Reservoir 13"A tender portrait of heartbreak and a thoughtful ode to new motherhood. Letters to Amelia is an endorsement of finding our own ways to heal, and a celebration of that big, messy, wonderful journey of coming into one's own. Charming and beautifully rendered, this is a big-hearted hopeful novel, full of life and love." --Stacey May Fowles, author of Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me"When we think of Amelia Earhart, we think enigmatic adventurer and feminist pioneer--and, of course, of her mysterious disappearance. But in Letters to Amelia, we meet a different Amelia Earhart, as seen through the eyes of Grace, the novel's protagonist, a young library tech tasked with reading her letters: an Amelia who is funny, charming, joyful, sad, and most of all, full of life. Zier-Vogel writes with uncanny empathy about heartbreak, friendship, motherhood, and the common threads that connect women across time, geography, and even between earth and sky. Letters to Amelia is a gorgeous, big-hearted debut that will make you feel like you are flying, and Zier-Vogel is a writer whose career is about to soar." --Amy Jones, author of Every Little Piece of Me"Letters to Amelia invites us to hold our heroines close and to take heart - it is gentle and joyous, full of tenderness, alive and sturdy with hope." --Anne Michaels, author of Fugitive Pieces and The Winter Vault

To make her films, Eva must take out her eyes and use them as batteries. To make her art, Finn must cut open her chest and remove her lungs and heart. To write her novels, Grace must use her blood to power the word processor. Suture shares three interweaving stories of artists tearing themselves open to make art. Each artist baffles their family, or harms their loved ones, with their necessary sacrifices. Eva''s wife worries about her mental health; Finn''s teenager follows in her footsteps, using forearms bones for drumsticks; Grace''s network constantly worries about the prolific writer''s penchant for self-harm, and the over-use of her vitals for art. The result is a hyper-real exploration of the cruelties we commit and forgive in ourselves and others. Brewer brings a unique perspective to mental illness while exploring how support systems in relationships—spousal, parental, familial—can be both helpful and damaging. This exciting debut novel is a highly original meditation on the fractures within us, and the importance of empathy as medicine and glue.

Poetry. Bilingual Edition. Translated from the Norwegian by Roger Greenwald. Paal-Helge Haugen's Meditasjonar over Georges de La Tour was published in Norwegian in 1990, won the Norwegian Critics' Prize, and was a finalist for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize. The book consists of a series of thirty-four poems that emerge from Haugen's long engagement with the work of the French painter.The kinship between Haugen and La Tour can hardly be surprising to anyone familiar with Haugen's poetry and La Tour's paintings: light in all its aspects, including its absence, is central to both bodies of work. Haugen describes these poems as "meditations...on the charged stillness, sorrow and celebration in the marriage of light and dark."Haugen evokes, juxtaposes, and alludes more than he states, creating a dense web that joins his own world of imagery to La Tour's iconography and atmosphere. These meditations rest on constant tensions between different centuries and belief systems, between different art forms, and between the different but allied sensibilities of the poet and the painter whose work he contemplates.

Fiction. Latino/Latina Studies. In the tradition of Borges, Nabakov, and Bolano, THE RED ALBUM is a work of fiction that questions historical authenticity and authority. Divided into two parts, the book begins with an edited and footnoted narrative of dubious origins. In the second part, a section of "documents" (including essays, memoirs, a short play and a filmography) shed light on the first narrative. Familiar characters are revealed to be writers, and the writer and editors of the initial narrative are revealed to be characters. As the ghosts of social revolutions of the past are lifted from the soil in Catalonia, and a new revolution unfolds in South America, the number of mysteriously missing author/characters grows almost as fast as new author/characters emerge and complicate and scatter the threads of the story.

Poetry. First published in 1999 in an edition of 300 perfectbound copies and 26 spiralbound copies lettered A-Z and signed, PILLAGE LAUD by "Erin Moure" is a lost cult item that now returns to print. As the 1999 edition announced, PILLAGE LAUD selects from pages of computer-generated sentences to produce lesbian sex poems (cauterizations, vocabularies, cantigas, topiary and prose) by pulling through certain found vocabularies, relying on context: boy plug vagina library fate tool doctrine bath discipline belt beds pioneer book ambition finger fist flow. It used MacProse, a freeware designed by American poet and jazz musician Charles O. Hartman as a generator of random sentences based on syntax and lexicon instructions internal to the program; the program worked on Apple systems prior to OS X and is now in the dustbins of computer history. In 1999, the news was shocking: Moure's poems are written by a computer. In 2011, now that everyone is a computer, the book can be read anew.

"Catalogue d'oiseaux began as notes sent to poet Aaron Tucker's long-distance partner. Not initially intended for publication, the writings moved, over time, into a long, lyrical, confessional love poem. Following the couple on travels across the globe--from Berlin to the Yukon, Porto to Toronto--this poem is expansive, moving sensually through small, intimate spaces and the larger world alike. Traced through art, architecture and the cultural life of varied cities, Catalogue d'oiseaux lives between geographies and chronologies as a kaleidoscopic gathering of the many fractals that make up a couple's life. This is a stunning work; a celebration of the depth of adult love, and the elemental parts of life that make it so."--

Finalist for the 2021 Grand Prix du livre de Montreal"A writer may do as she pleases with her epoch. Rage accumulates." From iconic feminist writer Gail Scott comes Permanent Revolution, a collection of new essays gathered alongside a recreation of her groundbreaking text, Spaces Like Stairs. In conversation with other writers working in queer/feminist avant-garde trajectories, including l'écriture-au-féminin in Québec and continental New Narrative, these essays provide an evolutionary snapshot of Scott's ongoing prose experiment that hinges the matter of writing to ongoing social upheaval. Scott herself points to the heart of this book, writing, "Where there is no emergency, there is likely no real experiment."With a Foreword by Zoe Whittall and an Afterword by Margaret Christakos.

Therese Estacion survived a rare infection that nearly killed her, but not without losing both her legs below the knees, several fingers, and reproductive organs. Phantompains is a visceral, imaginative collection exploring disability, grief and life by interweaving stark memories with dreamlike surrealism.Taking inspiration from Filipino horror and folk tales, Estacion incorporates some Visayan language into her work, telling stories of mermen, gnomes, and ogres that haunt childhood stories of the Philippines and, then, imaginings in her hospital room, where she spent months recovering after her operations.Estacion says she wrote these poems out of necessity: an essential task to deal with the trauma of hospitalization and what followed. Now, they are demonstrations of the power of our imaginations to provide catharsis, preserve memory, rebel and even to find self-love.

In Duct-Taped Roses, Billeh Nickerson shares heartbreaks and offers odes and elegies in reflections on family, community, life, and loss.As a bush pilot, Nickerson's father would duct-tape his planes to keep them flying. The poignancy of his relationship with his father is celebrated here in the long poem "Skies." Other poems reminisce about love and the complex resiliency of gay men.Through his signature irreverence, honesty and wit, Nickerson explores what can be repaired, what must be celebrated, and what--inevitably--is lost to time.

An assault survivor realizes she can rewind time and relives the experience in order to erase it. A teen athlete wonders why she isn't more afraid of death when the plane carrying her team catches fire. The daughter of a superhero ruminates on how her father neglected his children to pursue his heroics. Two shut-in depressives form a bond on Twitter while a deadly virus wipes out most of the population of North America. The stories in Erase and Rewind probe the complexities of living as a woman in a skewed society. Told from the perspective of various female protagonists, they pick at rape culture, sexism in the workplace, uneven romantic and platonic relationships, and the impact of trauma under late-stage capitalism. Quirky, intelligent, and darkly comic, Meghan Bell's debut collection is a highwire balance of levity and gravity, finding the extraordinary in common experiences. Praise for Erase and Rewind: "A tough compelling new voice that tells us what it's like to be young nowadays. Meghan Bell is a writer to watch." --Susan Swan, author of The Dead Celebrities Club "Utterly bold, darkly funny, candid and bizarrely tender, Meghan Bell's debut is a testament to being young and female, lost, lonely, and neurotic, while simultaneously trying to navigate the perilous journey of everyday life. Erase and Rewind is a compulsive coming-of-age short story collection from a talented writer." --Lindsay Wong, author of The Woo-Woo

Longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize Shortlisted for the 2021 Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction Shortlisted for the 2021 Concordia University First Book Prize Le Grand Prix du livre de Montreal: 2021 Jury Selection A remarkable debut about intergenerational female relationships and resistance found in the unlikeliest of places, We, Jane explores the precarity of rural existence and the essential nature of abortion.Searching for meaning in her Montreal life, Marthe begins an intense friendship with an older woman, also from Newfoundland, who tells her a story about purpose, about a duty to fulfill. It's back home, and it goes by the name of Jane.Marthe travels back to a small community on the island with the older woman to continue the work of an underground movement in 60s Chicago: abortion services performed by women, always referred to as Jane. She commits to learning how to continue this legacy and protect such essential knowledge. But the nobility of her task and the reality of small-town life compete, and personal fractures within their group begin to grow.We, Jane probes the importance of care work by women for women, underscores the complexity of relationships in close circles, and beautifully captures the inevitable heartache of understanding home.

"A young translator living in Toronto frequently travels abroad--to Hong Kong, Macau, Prague, Tokyo--often with his unnamed lover. In restaurants and hotel rooms, the couple begin telling folk tales to each other, perhaps as a way to fill the undefined space between them. Theirs is a comic and enigmatic relationship in which emotions are often muted and sometimes masked by verbal play and philosophical questions, and further complicated by the woman's frequent unexplained disappearances. You Are Eating an Orange. You Are Naked. is an intimate novel of memory and longing that challenges Western tropes and Orientalism. Embracing the playful surrealism of Haruki Murakami and the atmospheric narratives of filmmaker Wong Kar-wai, Sheung-King's debut is at once lyrical and punctuated, and wholly unique, and marks the arrival of a bold new voice in Asian-Canadian literature."--

With an introduction by Sara TilleyFrom playwright and poet Shannon Bramer comes Trapsongs, a collection of three dark comedies that navigate the realm of the surreal and absurd.In "Monarita," an intimate friendship between Mona, a frazzled new mother, and Rita, her beloved, estranged friend, is explored. Their interaction is a dance--part ballet, part mud-fight. In "The Collectors," Hanna Parson is being harassed by three ghastly collection agents who force her to confront her debt and isolation as she struggles to create meaningful art in her dishevelled apartment. And in the tragicomedy "The Hungriest Woman in the World," Aimee, a former artist, invites her preoccupied, workaholic husband, Robert, to the theatre to see a play about a sad octopus. His refusal sends her on a dark and playful journey into the topsy-turvy world of theatre itself.Trapsongs is by turns comedic, grotesque, and profane, but is all the while a tender exploration of the human condition in all its hilarious and humbling glory. Although each of these plays is a discrete creation, they contain and hold each other like a Matryoshka doll; all of the main characters are trapped within the song of their own lives.

"Aleya's world starts to unravel after a cafâe customer leaves behind a collection of short stories. Surprised and disturbed to discover that it has been dedicated to her, Aleya delves into the strange book... A mad scientist seeks to steal his son's dreams. A struggling writer, skilled only at destruction, finds himself courted by Hollywood. A woman seeks to escape her body and live inside her dreams. Citizens panic when a new city block manifests out of nowhere. The personification of capitalism strives to impress his cutthroat boss. The more Aleya reads, the deeper she sinks into the mysterious writer's work, and the less real the world around her seems. Soon, she's overwhelmed as a new, more terrifying existence takes hold. Jonathan Ball's first collection of short fiction blends humour and horror, doom and daylight, offering myriad possible storms."--

Spawn is a braided collection of brief, untitled poems, a coming-of-age lyric set in the Mashteuiatsh Reserve on the shores of Lake Piekuakami (Saint-Jean) in Quebec. Undeniably political, Marie-Andree Gill's poems ask: How can one reclaim a narrative that has been confiscated and distorted by colonizers?The poet's young avatar reaches new levels on Nintendo, stays up too late online, wakes to her period on class photo day, and carves her lovers' names into every surface imaginable. Encompassing twenty-first-century imperialism, coercive assimilation, and 90s-kid culture, the collection is threaded with the speaker's desires, her searching: for fresh water to "e;take the edge off,"e; for a "e;habitable word,"e; for sex. For her "e;true north"e;her voice and her identity.Like the life cycle of the ouananiche that frames this collection, the speaker's journey is cyclical; immersed in teenage moments of confusion and life on the reserve, she retraces her scars to let in what light she can, and perhaps in the end discover what to "e;make of herself"e;.

When life is upended, what do you do? Do you remain as you were, trapped in a form of stasis? Or do you accept your losses and move forward? These questions and more are the heart of The Handsome Man.These linked stories follow several years of the life of a young man as he is drawn around the world: from Toronto to Montreal, New York, Ohio, New Mexico, British Columbia, Berlin, Rome, and Northern Ontario, along the way meeting hippies, healers, drinkers, movie stars, old friends, and welcoming strangers. He isn't travelling, however; he's running away. But as far and fast as he runs, the world won't let him disappear, and each new encounter and every lost soul he meets along this journey brings him closer and closer to certain truths he'd locked away: how to trust, how to live in this world, and most of all, how to love again.

day/break, poet Gwen Benaway's fourth collection of work, explores the everyday poetics of the trans feminine body. Through intimate experiences and conceptualizations of trans life, day/break asks what it means to be a trans woman, both within the text and out in the physical world. Shifting between theory and poetry, Benaway questions how gender, sexuality, and love intersect with the violence and transmisogyny of the nation state and established literary institutions. In beautiful lyric verse, day/break reveals the often-unseen other worlds of trans life, where body, self, and sex are transformed, becoming more than fixed binary locations.