news | Wednesday January 20, 2016

A look at what’s coming this spring

Spring 2016 is just around the corner! Here’s a look at what we’ve got in store for you.

Fiction

  • Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore (the same remarkable team that brought us Birth of a Bridge), is the gripping story, taking place within exactly 24 hours, of a heart transplant and all the lives touched along the way in this metaphysical adventure – the deceased, his family, his friends, doctors, nurses, lab techs, administrators, and, finally, the recipient.

  • Running on Fumes by Christian Guay-Poloquin, translated by Jacob Homel, follows an unnamed mechanic as he drives across the country to reach his dying father, confronting an increasingly post-apocalyptic setting, and his own failing mental state, along the way.

Non-fiction

  • Price Paid: The Fight for First Nations Survival by Bev Sellars (author of the bestseller They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School) untangles truth from some of the myths about First Nations; offering glimpses of foods, medicines, and cultural practices that North America’s aboriginal peoples have contributed to the world; and providing a clear and candid take on the history of aboriginal rights in Canada.

Poetry

  • Injun by Jordan Abel, a natural follow-up to last year’s Un/inhabited, is a long poem composed of found text from western novels of the pulp heyday – namely all instances of the word “injun” – that helps to destabilize the colonial image of the “Indian” in the western genre and the western canon.

  • th book is bill bissett’s latest collection of concrete poems, “poemes uv greef transisyun n sumtimes joy byond binaree constraints if evreething goez what is aneething accepting nihilism lettr texting as an approach 2 heeling sorrow denial.”
  • Human Tissue is a new collection by Weyman Chan that explores the history of our making and socializing a prototype misfit and constructing the conditions of alienation. What’s a monster to do?
  • Pound @ Guantánamo by Clint Burnham, whom we are very pleased to welcome to the Talon list, is a collection of poetry written in wartime – that is, today – whose title implies an analogy between Ezra Pound, imprisoned after WWII, and the inhabitants of the military or CIA prisons at Guantánamo Bay.

Drama

  • We the Family by George F. Walker, a play that follows the ripple effect of a culturally diverse wedding. This ain’t your grandma’s multiculturalism. Or maybe it is.

  • Sextet by Morris Panych, a dark and steamy comedy that explores the harmonies and dysfunctions of six sexually entangled musicians on an ill-fated winter tour
  • The Watershed by Annabel Soutar, author of Seeds, is a documentary play following one family’s struggle – and the struggle of their nation – to chart a sustainable course between economic prosperity and environmental stewardship
  • Inside the Seed, the debut of playwright Jason Rothery, whom we also welcome gladly to our list, is a contemporary version of Oedipus Rex reimagined as a darkly comic corporate/political thriller. (Book page coming soon!)

Stay tuned in the coming weeks for our full Spring 2016 catalogue, which will include all frontlist and backlist titles – more than 500 book listings!