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September 2016

Monday September 26, 2016
Thin Air Festival, Winnipeg, with Christian Guay-Poliquin

Friday September 30, 2016
Richmond, BC launches Fall 2016 Writer in Residence Karen X. Tulchinsky

October 2016

Thursday October 6, 2016
Phinder Dulai at the Indo-American Arts Council’s 3rd Annual Literary Festival, NYC

Thursday October 6, 2016
A Conversation with Carl Peters: Close reading Gertrude Stein’s Tender Buttons

Thursday October 6, 2016
Bev Sellars launches Price Paid in Ottawa

Wednesday October 12, 2016
Play: “The (Post) Mistress” at the Berkeley Street Theatre in Toronto, ON

Thursday October 13, 2016
Conference: The Concept of Vancouver at Brock U, St. Catharines, ON

Thursday October 13, 2016
Phinder Dulai at WritersRead 2016–2017, Concordia University, Montreal

Thursday October 13, 2016
Book Launch: M.A.C. Farrant’s THE DAYS at Munro's Books in Victoria

Friday October 14, 2016
Play: “You Will Remember Me” in Armonk, NY

Saturday October 15, 2016
Book Launch: Reading Sveva at the Caetani Cultural Centre (Vernon, BC)

Thursday October 20, 2016
Talonbooks Fall 2016 Launch!

Monday October 24, 2016
The Poetry and Science of Climate Change, with Stephen Collis at SFU Vancouver

Wednesday October 26, 2016
Play: “The Refugee Hotel” in Montreal

Friday October 28, 2016
M.A.C. Farrant at the Sidney Literary Festival on Vancouver Island

November 2016

Tuesday November 1, 2016
Play: “Empire of the Son” at the Cultch, Vancouver

Tuesday November 8, 2016
Play: “The Watershed” in Montreal

Wednesday November 9, 2016
Play: “Mom’s the Word” in Winnipeg

Saturday November 26, 2016
22nd annual Ottawa Small Press Book Fair

January 2017

Thursday January 5, 2017
Play: “Empire of the Son” at the Centaur in Montreal

Saturday January 7, 2017
Carl Peters at the MLA Convention in Pennsylvania

Wednesday January 11, 2017
Play: “the (Post) Mistress” in Surrey, BC

Monday January 30, 2017
Play: “Crees in the Caribbean” in Thunder Bay, ON

March 2017

Tuesday March 7, 2017
Play: “You Will Remember Me” at the Centaur Theatre in Montreal

May 2017

Thursday May 4, 2017
Play: “Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth” in Kamloops, BC

This Sunday: WORD Vancouver!

If you’re in Vancouver, British Columbia, this weekend, don’t miss WORD!

WORD Vancouver is Western Canada’s largest celebration of literacy and reading. Centered around the Vancouver Public Library and Library Square on Sunday, September 25, WORD promotes books and authors with free exhibits, performances, and hands-on activities for a wide range of ages and interests.

You’ll find wonderful Talon poets at this year’s WORD Vancouver festival, and Talonbooks will be in attendance in the independent publishers tent! Stop by, say hello to our staff members, and browse our latest books.

More information is available here.

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Bev Sellars in Vancouver this week

Price Paid is newly published, and author Bev Sellars is in town!

Join her tomorrow evening to celebrate the launch of her highly anticipated new book, Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival. Hear how North America’s Indigenous peoples have contributed to the rest of the world; uncover the dark period of regulation by racist laws during the twentieth century; and explore how Indigenous land and resource rights are being re-established today. Following her groundbreaking and award-winning debut, They Called Me Number One, Sellars offers a personal, candid and eye-opening clarification of misconceptions still widely believed about First Nations people. The event takes place on Thursday, September 22 at 7:30 p.m. at the Norman Rothstein Theatre (950 West 41st Avenue) in Vancouver, British Columbia. Tickets are still available through Theatre Wire.

Then, tomorrow, join Bev for a discussion about the history of Indigenous activism in Canada and her new book. The event takes place at 3 p.m. on the afternoon of Friday, September 23 at the Central Branch of the Vancouver Public Library. Find this event on the VPL website.

U Girl has arrived!

Meredith Quartermain’s new novel has arrived!

U Girl tells the meta-fictional, feminist story of Frances Nelson, a first-year university student who wants to write a novel. This nostalgic novel is set in Vancouver in the early 1970s, but its characters and conflicts ring just as true today.

Now is a great time to order a copy, because our student special continues! Throughout September, students who order U Girl will get 20% off! (Regular price: $19.95; student price: $15.95) How? Use your student email address (we trust you) to order through info@talonbooks.com, mentioning the student special, and we’ll get your copy of U Girl in the mail the very next day!

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George F. Walker’s new website is launched

Playwright George F. Walker, famous for his darkly comic plays, has a new website! Visit georgefwalker.ca to find out about his plays, read his bio, or seek out performance rights.

Talonbooks is British Columbia’s Publisher of the Year!

We are honoured to announce that the Association of Book Publishers of British Columbia has awarded Talonbooks the Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award for 2016. The award was presented in Vancouver last evening, Tuesday, September 13, at the annual awards dinner.

The Jim Douglas Publisher of the Year Award was established in 2001 to recognize the contribution made to the publishing industry in British Columbia by publisher, editor, and consultant James Jardine Douglas. The award is presented to an active BC book publishing company that has earned the respect and applause of the community of publishers for a specific publishing project, an extraordinary contribution to the BC publishing community, and/or its extended commitment to excellence in publishing. Read more about this year’s awards on the BC Books website.

We are very proud to receive this year’s Jim Douglas Award! Many thanks to our readers and supporters from everyone at Talon: publisher and co-owner Kevin Williams, submissions editor and co-owner Vicki Williams, managing editor Ann-Marie, designer and tech guru Les, production co-ordinator Chloë, poetry editor Shazia, Spencer in sales and marketing, and Mocha the office pup. We’ll do our best to keep making great books!

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Price Paid is already a BC bestseller!

Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival, the new book by former Chief Bev Sellars about life under the Indian Act, makes its debut on the British Columbia bestsellers list at #7! We are so pleased to see this book making its way in the world so soon after its publication; what a worthwhile read it is. See the BC bestsellers list for the week of August 28, 2016, online or in the Vancouver Sun.

Sellars’s first book, a memoir called They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School, was the number one book in BC for many weeks, and was on the bestsellers list for a total of forty-four weeks in 2013–2014.

U Girl on the radio

This week, Meredith Quartermain was interviewed by Minelle Mahtani on Roundhouse Radio in Vancouver, British Columbia, about her new novel U Girl. Set in Vancouver in the early 1970s, U Girl tells the meta-fictional, feminist story of Frances Nelson, a first-year university student who wants to write a novel.

If you missed the radio spot, you can listen online. You’ll hear a reading from U Girl as well as Quartermain’s thoughts on writing, place, sex and sexual mores, and even fashion.

(And stay tuned to Mahtani’s show, Sense of Place, for a chance to win yourself a copy of U Girl! There will be a giveaway in mid-September …)

This fall, hear readings from Once in Blockadia along the Cascadia coast

The “most dangerous poet in Canada” (according to Eden Robinson) is coming to Portland and Seattle! Not to mention Vancouver, Burnaby, and the Gulf Islands of British Columbia. Stephen Collis’s new collection of poetry, Once in Blockadia, comes out in September, and Collis is taking it to the streets. Click on “Go to story” to see tour dates.

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Price Paid has arrived!

Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival is a new book by former chief Bev Sellars that untangles truth from some of the myths about First Nations and addresses misconceptions still widely believed today. Based on a popular presentation Sellars often told to treaty-makers, politicians, policymakers, and educators, Price Paid sheds light on life under the Indian Act.

Order your copy today for $19.95!

Reviews of The Days are in!

The first reviews of M.A.C. Farrant’s new collection of short fictions are in!

The Vancouver Sun was first, last week publishing a review by Candace Fertile calling The Days: Forecasts, Warnings, Advice “great fun, but it also makes you look at the world in a fresh way.” Highlights include:

Once again M.A.C. Farrant has delivered a packet of fictional snippets with heft. … Grounded in the everyday, Farrant’s observations reveal the unusual in the usual, and she does it with her charming and quirky sense of humour. … Farrant has her finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary life and can see both its beauty and its flaws, and they’re often the same thing.

Then, just yesterday, Publishers Weekly called The Days “a beguiling, quirky delight … Ever-whimsical and confidently left-field.” Read the full review online.

Order your copy of The Days for $14.95 today!

Read: One of our favourite scenes from U Girl

A delight to read, U Girl is the meta-fictional, feminist story of Frances Nelson, a first-year university student who wants to write a novel. This nostalgic novel is set in Vancouver in the early 1970s, but its characters and conflicts ring just as true today.

One of the most memorable – and perhaps character-defining – scenes of the novel takes place in Chapter 6, when Frances attends a poetry reading with her friend Dagmar, who will be reading (for the first time). Read the scene on Meta-Talon today.

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School Books: A List

It’s back-to-school time! For some, a happy haze of nostalgia sets in. For others, the supplies are bought and the outfits arranged in honour of that first week: you can be a new you. Maybe this year.

In honour of the back-to-school season, we’ve gathered a list of our favourite school-related Talonbooks. As though your fall reading list isn’t long enough already.

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Let the witticisms fly – it’s Dorothy Parker Day!

August 22 is Dorothy Parker Day! Say something witty and corrosive today, and expect no censure.

Let yourself be excited and delighted by the artfully spare stories in M.A.C. Farrant’s new collection, The Days. Averaging a couple of paragraphs each, they offer enough food for thought (and mood) to keep you going for months …

Today on Meta-Talon, we celebrate Farrant’s new holiday – Dorothy Parker Day – with a short story from The Days.

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Read excerpts from Running on Fumes

In Running on Fumes, the debut novel by Christian Guay-Poliquin (translated into English by Jacob Homel), we follow an increasingly punch-drunk driver on a road trip across an apocalyptic version of Canada. This road novel moves at a gripping pace, and its enigmatic narrator and elements of magic realism will intrigue and provoke discussion. (Trust us; our editors had some lively discussions during the making of this book!) Today on Meta-Talon, read selections from Running on Fumes …

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