news | Thursday May 21, 2026

rob mclennan Reviews sometimes, forest

rob mclennan reviews sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner, stating that “the poems of sometimes, forest have such a wonderful thick and rich quality, a mélange of sound and bounce and visual play, offering a layered density of language as thick and teeming with life as any forest floor.” Read the complete review here.

news | Wednesday May 20, 2026

Four Talonbooks Titles on League of Canadian Poets Book Awards Longlists!

Talonbooks authors are well represented on the longlists for the 2026 League of Canadian Poets Book Awards! Four of our 2025 titles appear on the various longlists. The League of Canadian Poets has three annual book awards: The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award for a debut collection of poetry, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award for a book of poetry written by a for a book of poetry by a woman and non-binary individuals, and the Raymond Souster Award for a book of poetry penned by a member of the League of Canadian Poets. Here’s the breakdown:

Cecily Nicholson’s 2025 crow-centred collection Crowd Source is on the longlist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the Raymond Souster Award!

The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd, a poetry collection written in the imagined voice of Zulaykha (“the wife of Aziz” in the Qur’an and the Biblical “wife of Potiphar”), is on the longlist for the Raymond Souster Award!

Hajer Mirwali ’s debut collection Revolutions is on the Gerald Lampert Award longlist! Revolutions looks at shame, pleasure, and Muslim daughterhood.

Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon and translated by Jessica Moore is on the longlist for the Pat Lowther Memorial Award! This dual-language collection in Innu-aimun and English.

A huge congratulations to Cecily, Rahat, Hajer, Joséphine, and Jessica for this outstanding achievement! Check out all of this year’s commended authors here.

news | Sunday May 17, 2026

Sharon Thesen Pens a Tribute to the Late Gladys Maria Hindmarch

Poet and educator Sharon Thesen (Aurora, Refabulations) pens a really lovely tribute to the late author and activist Gladys Maria Hindmarch in The Capilano Review. Thesen remarks on Hindmarch’s warm and sharp observations, her energy, her kinship with the sea, and her work. Read Thesen’s moving rememberance here.

news | Saturday May 16, 2026

Revolutions Reviewed in Herizons

Banah el Ghadbanah reviews Trillium Book Award for Poetry–finalist Revolutions, the debut poetry collection by Hajer Mirwali, in the spring 2026 issue of Herizons. Of Revolutions, el Ghadbanah says “the book was a transcendental journey.” Banah el Ghadbanah also notes that, “the poems squeeze off the page and take unconventional shapes.” Order your copy of the spring 2026 issue of Herizons here.

news | Friday May 15, 2026

Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project Has Arrived!

The final book of our spring 2026 season has arrived and the spring list is going out with a bang! Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project by award-winning author and playwright Carmen Aguirre has arrived! In Fire Never Dies, Aguirre maps the intersection between art and revolution through the life of photographer and activist Tina Modotti. Modotti’s story begins in 1920s Mexico City, where her art flourished and she encountered other icons of the day, including Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, after seven years she abandoned photography to join the antifascist cause, ultimately running the Red Aid Hospital during the Spanish Civil War.

An excerpt from Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project:

“TINA
Chloroform, syringes, insulin, camphor, anti-tetanus shots, anti-
gangrene, tourniquets.

SAGRADX CORAZÓN
Soap and water to wash the wounds.

TINA
Go to the ones who are suffering the most first, because
suffering is a sign of life. …
(yelling out) Comrade Hemingway!

ERNEST enters.

ERNEST
Yes.

TINA
You won’t be driving the ambulance today.

ERNEST
Okay.

TINA
You’ll drive this vehicle instead.

ERNEST
What is it?

TINA
A mobile transfusion unit. Donated by the Canadian
Communist Party. There are injured comrades in the trenches
that we need to get to right away. Comrade Bethune is waiting
for us there.

ERNEST
Yes, Nurse Maria.

_TINA and ERNEST ride in the vehicle. We hear the sound
of a war plane._

TINA
(looking out the window) Cazzo.

ERNEST
Franco’s, Hitler’s, or Mussolini’s?

TINA
(still looking) It’s too far away to tell. Fuck fuck fuck. Are you
religious, by any chance?

ERNEST
God no! Is it coming towards us or veering off ?

TINA
Can’t tell yet.

ERNEST
What do I do?

TINA
(still looking) Keep going.”

Through a dynamic blend of styles and theatrical forms, the play mirrors Modotti’s struggle to reconcile passion, creativity, and political conviction. Order your copy here.

news | Tuesday May 12, 2026

Asian Heritage Month 2026

May is Asian Heritage Month! To celebrate the occasion, Talon has put together a reading list of some cool, unique titles that belong in your library. Dive into the craft and creativity of a diverse roster of authors of Asian heritage working in poetry, drama, comedy, and nonfiction. These Talonbooks authors are tackling subjects like desire, class, the climate crisis, grief, justice, community, isolation, lineage, language, and much, much more. Here are some recent and forthcoming titles we’d love to shout out:

1. wet by Leanne Dunic

Winner of the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize wet is a collection of poetry and photography that follows a Chinese American model in Singapore as she thirsts for labour justice, climate action, and liveable environments for humans and animals alike. In images and language shot through with empathy and desire, wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe. The 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize jury notes that “wet moves with the clarity and patience of water itself, layering observations of place with intimate reckonings of identity.” Pick up your own copy here.

2. The Tao of the World by Jovanni Sy

After isolating during a global pandemic, Singapore’s wealthy elite make up for lost time, bedding other people’s partners and swindling one another out of dynastic fortunes. Inspired by William Congreve’s The Way of the World and Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, The Tao of the World is a Restoration comedy for modern times, a hilarious, bawdy romp that asks what it means for things to return to normal. The Tao of the World is having its world premiere at the Stratford Festival this summer (get your tickets here). Pre-order your own copy of Sy’s forthcoming play here.

3. Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali

Check out the Trillium Book Award for Poetry–finalist Revolutions! In this debut collection, Mirwali looks at shame and pleasure, asking how young Arab women – who live in homes and communities where actions are surveilled and categorized as 3aib or not 3aib, shameful or acceptable – make and unmake their identities. In conversation with artist Mona Hatoum’s kinetic sculpture + and –, Revolutions is a work of art not to be missed. Get your copy here.

4. The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd

Have you read Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–finalist The Book of Z yet? In Rahat Kurd’s latest collection, she writes in the imagined voice of Zulaykha, “the wife of Aziz” in the Qur’an and the Biblical “wife of Potiphar.” Here, Zulaykha considers her Abrahamic lineage from its estranged and fragmented reality, asking what consolation human desire and divine longing might offer our shared present tense. Order your copy here.

5. Speaking Through the Night: Diary of a Lockdown March–April 2020 by Wajdi Mouawad and translated by Linda Gaboriau

Work of nonfiction Speaking Through the Night showcases Mouawad’s unparalleled ability to turn a phrase. While isolating in the early days of the pandemic, Mouawad embarks upon a spectacular inner voyage, travelling from his own microcosm to the eye of the Big Bang. We follow him from Peter Handke’s office to his father’s retirement home, from the banks of the Saint Lawrence to Montréal, Greece, Greenland, and the Lebanon of his childhood. Pick up your copy here.

6. Music at the Heart of Thinking by Fred Wah

Check out Music at the Heart of Thinking by recipient of the 2025 Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence Fred Wah! Music at the Heart of Thinking is a poetry that works through language as the true practice of thought and improvisation as the tool that listens to and notates thinking. In this collection that Knife Fork Books says boasts “marvels every page”, Fred Wah’s poetic mastery is on full display. Snag a copy of your own here.

7. cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng

Check out cop city swagger, the latest poetry collection by author and activist Mercedes Eng. A finalist for the 2026 City of Vancouver Book Award, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver’s police. Holding close lived and living connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown neighbourhoods, Eng juxtaposes the police’s and the city’s institutional rhetoric with their acts of violence against marginalized people, presenting a panoramic media montage of structural harm and community care. Order your copy here.

8. A Child’s Seance by Weyman Chan

Finally, forthcoming this fall is A Child’s Seance by poet Weyman Chan! A Child’s Seance begins with a Ouija board game played by a brother and sister as they attempt to make contact with their dead mother. Out of their shared grief explodes a big bang of questions about the universe’s smeared complexity. Pre-order your copy here.

Happy Asian Heritage Month! We hope it’s a month of art, joy, and connection.

news | Friday May 8, 2026

ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another Shortlisted for Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose

ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another by ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn is on the shortlist for the Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose! ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok uses the spirit marker writing system as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. This vital and well-researched work delves into language philosophy with tremendous knowledge and warmth. The Indigenous Voices Awards were founded in 2017 to support and celebrate the works of Indigenous authors in so-called Canada. A huge congratulations to ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn and to all of the shortlisted authors! Check out all of the shortlisted titles here.

news | Wednesday May 6, 2026

An Interview with Jónína Kirton

Shari Narine interviews Jónína Kirton, author of the new hybrid poetry and prose collection Save Your Prayers – Send Money for windspeaker.com. The pair discuss Kirton’s new book, why Kirton decided on hybridity for this latest collection, unpacking trauma, and more.

An excerpt from their discussion:

“Red River Métis-Icelandic author Jónína Kirton hopes her newest book, Save Your Prayers – Send Money, makes people think about how they respond to those who have chronic illnesses.

The title ‘is a bit cheeky. And you know, we Métis, we’re cheeky. It’s one of our favourite things,’ said Kirton. She said the title is meant to be poetic. The word money is intended to be a metaphor for support.

‘We need actual practical support.’

The “we” Kirton refers to are people who have chronic illnesses and their caregivers. She contends that better supports are needed for both.

‘Prayers are not enough,’ she writes.”

Read the complete interview here.

news | Tuesday May 5, 2026

Hajer Mirwali Is a Finalist for the Trillum Book Award for Poetry!

Revolutions, the debut collection by Hajer Mirwali, is a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry! Revolutions sifts through the grains of Muslim daughterhood to reveal two metaphorical circles inextricably overlapping: shame and pleasure. This collection asks how young Arab women – who live in homes and communities where actions are surveilled and categorized as 3aib or not 3aib, shameful or acceptable – make and unmake their identities. Way to go, Hajer! The Trillium Book Award for Poetry is given to an exceptional first, second, or third book of poetry from an Ontario-based author. Read the official announcement here.

news | Friday May 1, 2026

th book uv lost passwords 1 in The British Columbia Review

Harold Rhenisch writes about his experiences on a road trip with bill bissett and shares his thoughts on bissett’s latest work, th book uv lost passwords 1 in The British Columbia Review. Rhenisch says, “When bill reads, he creates a charged space by chanting and shaking a rattle. That enhanced excitement is here throughout the book, too.” Read the full article here.

news | Thursday April 30, 2026

Save Your Prayers – Send Money an Indigenous & Lit Book Club Pick!

Jónína Kirton new book Save Your Prayers – Send Money is Black Walnut Books’s Indigenous & Lit Book Club pick for their July 19 session! Save Your Prayers – Send Money delves into disability politics through the lived experience of a seventy-year-old Métis woman and recovering New Ager. Moving between poetry and prose, in this collection Kirton takes on the wellness industry and explores how a peace might be found whether we heal or not.

Check out all of Black Walnut Books’ picks for their 2026 Indigenous & Lit Book Club here.

news | Wednesday April 29, 2026

Kevin Loring on Global News

Kevin Loring speaks about his award-winning play Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer: A Trickster Land Claim Fable with Juliane Bodini on Global News. Loring discusses the impetus for writing the play, the importance of the story at this moment, and more. A production of Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer is running now at Regina’s Globe Theatre, get your tickets here. Watch the interview here.

news | Tuesday April 28, 2026

Caroline Russell-King on Redeye

Caroline Russell-King is a guest on the podcast Redeye! She delves into the new play that she co-wrote with Maria Crooks, Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor’s Life. Russell-King chats about finding Selma Burke as the subject of the play, the process of dramturgy, and what she hopes people take from the play. Listen to the interview here.

news | Sunday April 26, 2026

Nicole Raziya Fong on All Lit Up

All Lit Up features Nicole Raziya Fong for their National Poetry Month series, Poets Resist, where twenty-one poets use poetry to push back against marginalizing forces. Nicole Raziya Fong reads work from their new collection SUBTEXT, which takes a multifaceted approach to questions of diaspora and selfhood, incorporating visual and textual elements that dialogue with one another and ask readers to negotiate the unsteady shoals of identity and history. They also give an interview on the role poetry might have in resistance. From the interview:

“Poetry’s resistance is formal, historical, and personal. Poetry is a place where we can begin to approach that which cannot be plainly stated in ordinary speech. Poetry has the potential to work within language to dissemble the walls created between things—both visually and conceptually.”

Listen to Nicole Raziya Fong read and check out their interview with the All Lit Up team here.

news | Saturday April 25, 2026

Elee Kraljii Gardiner on North by Northwest with Margaret Gallagher

On April 18, Elee Kraljii Gardiner was a guest on North by Northwest with Margaret Gallagher! The pair chatted about Kraljii Gardiner’s new collection sometimes, forest, her time as Vancouver’s Poet Laureate and her legacy project, the practice of co-creating art with the woods, hylofeminism, the benefits of “becoming strange to yourself,” and more. In Kraljii Gardiner’s new collection, the speaker revisits the same forest every day, noting the changes both inside and outside of herself as she does. Listen to their conversation and get your dose of Elee Kraljii Gardiner reading her remarkable poetry here.

news | Friday April 24, 2026

Taryn Hubbard Named Chilliwack's Inaugural Poet Laureate!

Some great news from Chilliwack, BC: Taryn Hubbard, author of the brand new poetry collection Beautiful Unknown Future, Desire Path, and more has been named Chilliwack’s inaugural Poet Laureate! Congratulations on this exciting news, Taryn! Read the Chilliwack Arts Council’s press release here.

news | Thursday April 23, 2026

Hot Off the Press! Verbal Violence Is Here!

Verbal Violence by poet and malprofessional Danielle LaFrance has landed and is ready to storm your bookshelf! Verbal Violence unravels, dissects, and shreds the language of the professional managerial class. Hacking up neoliberal doublespeak, ideological reproduction, and progressive-except-Palestine rhetoric, Verbal Violence spits it out time and time again.

An excerpt from Verbal Violence:

Verbal Violence confronts capitalism’s managerial style guide for saying nothing at all with the fiery and empathetic conscience of the managed, their cri de cœur cracking the straight-faced bureaucracy of our most banal communications. Pick up your copy here.

news | Wednesday April 22, 2026

Earth Day Reading List

April 22 is Earth Day, a day to take action for the environment and to consider the welfare of the planet and our role in it. If you’re looking to engage with new environmental and ecological perspectives, or motivation to kickstart your next wave of activism, or if you want to connect with thinkers who care about the planet, water, the forests, the rivers, land stewardship, combatting extractive practices, and the more-than-human world as much as you do, here are a handful of titles we think you’ll love.

1. Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard

This wonderful new poetry collection from Chilliwack’s inaugural Poet Laureate Taryn Hubbard reflects with candour and wit on the precarity we share with the nonhuman world. Get your copy of Beautiful Unknown Future here.

2. sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner

In sometimes, forest, the brand new book of poetry by Vancouver Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner, our speaker returns each day to the same forest where she marks the changes around her, and the changes within her, too. Pick up a copy here.

3. Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson

The latest collection from award-winning author Cecily Nicholson traces the path of the crows who dot across the sky of the lower mainland twice daily. Crowd Source will have you connecting with corvids as you never have before. Secure your copy here.

4. Feast by Guillermo Verdecchia

Magic-realist play Feast by Guillermo Verdecchia follows a comfortable North American family unraveling in the shadow of compounding global crises. A wildly original critique of extractive practices and appetites, Feast takes on take the uncertainties and anxieties of the early twenty-first century. Order your copy here.

5. Lha yudit’ih We Always Find A Way: Bringing the Tŝilhqot’in Title Case Home by Lorraine Weir with Chief Roger William

Winner of a 2026 Jeanne Clarke Local History Award Lha yudit’ih We Always Find A Way is a community oral history of Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, the first case in Canada to result in a declaration of Aboriginal Rights and Title to a specific piece of land. Told from the perspective of the Plaintiff, Chief Roger William, joined by fifty Xeni Gwet’ins, Tŝilhqot’ins, and allies, this book encompasses ancient stories of creation, modern stories of genocide through smallpox and residential school, and stories of resistance including the Tŝilhqot’in War, direct actions against logging and mining, and the twenty-five-year battle in Canadian courts to win recognition of what Tŝilhqot’ins never gave up and have always known. Get your copy here.

6. wet by Leanne Dunic

Winner of the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize wet is set in Singapore during a time of drought and wildfires. In photographs and language shot through with empathy and desire, wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe. Snag a copy of your own here.

7. Future Works by Jeff Derksen

Future Works is a funny, angry, and moving book about human and more-than-human labour, cities and trees, extractive economies, and the possibilities of decolonizing temporalities and building a shared futurity. Pick up a copy here.

8. A History of the Theories of Rain by Stephen Collis

Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry A History of the Theories of Rain explores the strange effect our current sense of impending doom has on our relation to time, approaching the unfolding climate catastrophe through its dissolution of the categories of “man-made” and “natural.” Delve into it here.

9. Some People Fall in the Lodge and Then Eat Berries All Winter by annie ross

Poetry and art collection Some People Fall in the Lodge and Then Eat Berries All Winter is a gorgeous book that explores extinctions, species interdependence, environmental justice, soul loss in modernity, the natural and Supernatural worlds, and animal rights and power, always keeping peace and love for Mother Earth in view. Order your copy here.

10. TENDER by Laiwan

TENDER is a multidisciplinary book equally visual and textual that spans thirty years of curious inquiry into our shared human–animal condition. Laiwan traverses diverse terrains – the body, land, language – which are rooted in her courageous and uncompromising history of activism and in experiences of building community across and beyond difference. Get your copy here.

11. Hummingbird by Elaine Ávila

New play Hummingbird follows once-apathetic high school student Alex as they find an essential role in a community nest finding network, uncover family secrets, and learn how a hummingbird disrupted a major pipeline project. Pick up your copy here.

12. Conversations with the Kagawong River by sophie anne edwards

Multidisciplinary work Conversations with the Kagawong River spends time with and co-creates with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River). edwards invites the participation of various collaborators – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it. Secure your copy here.

Happy Earth Day from all of us at Talonbooks.

news | Tuesday April 21, 2026

Reviews of Rose at the National Arts Centre.

Tomson Highway’s play Rose made its world premiere as a three-act musical this spring in a production by the National Arts Centre’s Indigenous Theatre group. Madeleine Vigneron penned this review in Intermission Magazine and theatre critic Aisling Murphy and Indigenous politics reporter Alessia Passafiume chat with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC’s Commotion to discuss the production. Listen to their conversation here, or check out Sabrina Wex’s article for CBC Arts here.

news | Monday April 20, 2026

Jessica Moore on CBC Radio One

Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Jessica Moore (translator of Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon) reads from and discusses her essay “What Do You Want to Remember?” on CBC Radio One. This episode features essays and conversations with five of the artists behind the English-language winners of the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Awards. Moore begins reading from her piece at the 11-minute, 10-second mark. Listen here.