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September 2017

Wednesday September 20, 2017
DAS UBERBINSCHE TOUR 2017 (Danielle LaFrance + Anahita Jamali Rad)

Friday September 22, 2017
Sidney Literary Festival, featuring M.A.C. Farrant

Friday September 22, 2017
Wanda John-Kehewin reads at Surrey Muse

Wednesday September 27, 2017
M.A.C. Farrant at the Victoria Festival of Authors

October 2017

Tuesday October 3, 2017
Play: “1 Hour Photo” by Tetsuro Shigematsu at the Cultch in Vancouver

Wednesday October 11, 2017
City of Victoria Butler Book Prize Gala, with M.A.C. Farrant

Friday October 13, 2017
Jordan Abel as part of the Poetry Cabaret at Wordfest Calgary

Friday October 20, 2017
Honouring Reconciliation Reading Circle: Bev Sellars' They Call Me Number One

Saturday October 21, 2017
A Celebration of Talonbooks at the Vancouver Writers Fest

Tuesday October 24, 2017
Daphne Marlatt gives the Page Lecture at Queen’s University, Kingston

Thursday October 26, 2017
Play: "Only Drunks and Children" at the Magnus Theatre in Thunder Bay, ON

Friday October 27, 2017
Poetry Reading: Daphne Marlatta and Erín Moure, Montreal

November 2017

Friday November 3, 2017
Stephen Collis at the Festival of Readers (St. Catharines, ON)

Friday November 3, 2017
“Missing”: A new opera about the Highway of Tears at the Cultch, Vancouver

Saturday November 11, 2017
Play: “Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth” in Vancouver, BC

January 2018

Tuesday January 16, 2018
Play: Empire of the Son at Alberta Theatre (Alberta, AB

Thursday January 25, 2018
Play: “Jitters” by David French in Vancouver

June 2018

Friday June 15, 2018
Play: “Hosanna” at the Centaur Theatre, Montreal

The Days is a finalist for the City of Victoria Butler Book Prize!

The Victoria Book Prize Society announced today its short list for the 2017 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. This $5,000 prize is awarded to a Greater Victoria author for the best book published in the preceding year in the categories of fiction, non-fiction, or poetry.

Farrant’s previous book, The World Afloat, won the prize in 2014.

Our fingers are crossed for The Days!

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Talonbooks needs a copy editor/proofreader! Perhaps it’s you?

Do you have a keen eye, a sharp red pencil, and a passion for avant-garde Canadian literature? If so, we need you! Come help Talon publish its Fall 2017 books and prepare to publish its Spring 2018 books.

Talonbooks seeks a Copy Editor/Proofreader for a full-time, three-month contract position between September 15 and December 15, 2017 (approximately).

Opportunities to work part-time or in a freelance capacity with Talon may extend beyond contracted dates.

Download this job posting as a PDF.

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Fall fiction is in the house! New novels by Wajdi Mouawad and Philippe Arseneault

Two new novels are now available! Our fiction game is strong this fall: two unforgettable, dark, magical tomes by two mighty Quebec authors have been translated into English by some of Canada’s strongest translators.

Anima ($19.95 CDN) is the much anticipated novel by playwright Wajdi Mouawad (translated now into English by Linda Gaboriau), and Zora, A Cruel Tale (translated by Fred A. Reed and David Homel; $19.95 CDN) is a gothic tale of the macabre and the bizarre…

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Réjean Ducharme, a loss for Quebec and all of us

Talonbooks is grieved to learn of the passing, earlier this week, of beloved and reclusive Quebec author Réjean Ducharme at age 76. His passing was first announced by his French publisher, Éditions Gallimard.

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Talon poets in Contemporary Verse 2: Convergence

The latest issue of CV2 (Summer 2017; Vol. 40, No. 1) celebrates the Iceland–Canada Art Convergence and features work on survival, cross-cultural exchange and legacy, book reviews, and interviews. And may we say, it is a beautiful issue, featuring art on the cover by Icelandic artist Heimir Björgúlfsson.

Inside, five new resonant poems by Métis/Icelandic poet Jónína Kirton are published, and Colin Smith has written a double book review (found on page 163) of Stephen Collis’s Once in Blockadia and Danielle LaFrance’s Friendly + Fire. See highlights from his review on both books’ web pages. We were also immensely complimented in the review’s final paragraph (page 166), and we thank Smith for acknowledging our incredible authors and their place in the cultural vanguard:

… Over the last few years, Talonbooks has ramped up the political stakes of its poetry list. With the emergence of titles like Cecily Nicholson’s Triage (2011), Jeff Derksen’s The Vestiges (2013), Nikki Reimer’s DOWNVERSE (2014), Catriona Strang’s Corked (2014), Jordan Abel’s Injun (2016), Clint Burnham’s Pound @ Guantánamo (2016), and Donato Mancini’s Same Diff (2017) – and these are only the books I know; there may be others – we should consider Talon a producer of some of the most sociable and politically astute experimental poetry in current-day Canada. Add the Collis, add the LaFrance, add Mercedes Eng’s upcoming Prison Industrial Complex Explodes (due out Fall 2017), and we have a handsome brick of poetry here. Huck these books at the heads of power.

What more can we say?

From Oral to Written is launched!

Ian Ross, Josephine Bacon, Tomson Highway, Richard Van Camp, Michael Kusugak, and Marilyn Dumont

Many thanks to the approximately 400 guests who joined us and the Vancouver Writers Fest at the Drum Is Calling Festival on Friday evening, July 28, to launch Tomson Highway’s new book! We so enjoyed celebrating with you the rich Indigenous literary landscape in Canada. The evening was a complete smash!

To see photos from the event, click “Go to story…”

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Tonight! Tomson Highway launches From Oral to Written

Join Talonbooks and the Vancouver Writers Fest for the launch of From Oral to Written, part of the Drum is Calling Festival!

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Cross your heart and hope to read

Michel Tremblay’s new-to-English novel has arrived!

A Crossing of Hearts ($16.95) continues Michel Tremblay’s Desrosiers Diaspora series of novels, a family saga set in Montreal during World War I. This third novel bursts with life as Rhéauna (Nana) and her baby brother travel to the countryside for their first-ever family vacation. The young city girl explores the natural world – and the enchanted forest of her inner, maturing self. The novel also further develops the character of Nana’s mother Maria so that we understand her motivations more fully, and at the same time recognize nods to the history of Quebec and the dynamics of the family under the strictures of the Catholic church.

Each novel in the series can be read on its own, but if you have enjoyed one, you are sure to enjoy them all! Pick up the first in the series, Crossing the Continent, and the second as well: Crossing the City.

From Oral to Written has gone from written to published!

Tomson Highway’s new book is here! A survey of Indigenous literature published in Canada between 1980 and 2010, From Oral to Written is now available!

From Oral to Written is the story of the Indigenous literary tradition, written – in multiple Indigenous languages, in French, and in English – by a brave, committed, hard-working, and inspired community of exceptional individuals – from the Haida Nation of Haida Gwaii to the Inuit of Baffin Island to the Mi’kmaq of Nova Scotia’s Cape Breton Island. Leading Indigenous author Tomson Highway surveys what he sees as the first wave of Indigenous writers published in Canada, highlighting the most gifted authors and the best stories they have told, offering non-Indigenous readers access to reconciliation and understanding, and at the same time engendering among Indigenous readers pride in a stellar body of work.

Order your copy today for $29.95, and join us for the book launch in Vancouver on Friday, July 28!

Abel proves able: Jordan Abel wins the Griffin!

Above (L–R): At the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize dinner, Kevin Williams, Talonbooks publisher; Jordan Abel, winner of the Griffin; Chelsea Novak, reporter and wife of Abel

Well, this is just the greatest day. Injun by Jordan Abel is the Canadian winner of the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize! Abel and Alice Oswald – winner in the International category, for her collection Falling Awake – each received $65,000 in prize money.

Read the official Griffin announcement, and see coverage of Abel’s win by the Globe & Mail, CBC Books, CBC Radio q, the Ottawa Citizen (also syndicated in the Montreal Gazette, the Saskatoon StarPhoenix, and others), Global News, BC BookLook, and Castlegar News (a nice hometown shout-out; Abel currently resides in Castlegar, BC).

And get your hands on a copy of Injun for $16.95.

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Buy a Quebec Book Day! August 12

August 12 is Buy a Quebec Book Day – and have we got books for you! Browse our list of 12 august and recently published Quebec books – any of which we would, of course, recommend. Read the list, and then get out to your local bookstore this Saturday and show la belle province some literary love!

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Listen: Nancy Shaw reads her poems

The Gorge: Selected Writing by Nancy Shaw launched in April, 2017 at the Western Front in Vancouver. To launch Shaw’s book, published posthumously, editor Catriona Strang read from The Gorge, and then this video was played to a rapt audience. In the video, you’ll hear the voice of Nancy Shaw, reading poems from her book Cold Trip (2006; co-authored with Catriona Strang).

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“The result is not simple”: Two Poems from Inspecting Nostalgia

By R. Kolewe

Inspecting Nostalgia is a new collection of poetry by R. Kolewe. This, his second collection, brings together found text and fragments of various writers’ work with scraps from his own journals.

In this third week of National Poetry Month 2017, and in advance of Kolewe’s Toronto launch on May 8, please enjoy two poems from the collection on Meta-Talon.

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An excerpt from “Reading Wordsworth in the Tar Sands” by Stephen Collis

By Stephen Collis

Stephen Collis’s latest collection of poetry is nominated for the 2017 George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. It rethinks the relationship between human beings and the natural world and searches for ways we can continue to resist. Today on Meta-Talon, we offer a section from “Reading Wordsworth in the Tar Sands,” the second long poem in Once in Blockadia.

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