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June 2017

Monday June 26, 2017
“James Douglas: An Opera” in Vancouver, featuring poems by Jónína Kirton

Tuesday June 27, 2017
Poetry Reading + Panel Discussion with Ian Hatcher, Taryn Hubbard and Clint Burnham

Friday June 30, 2017
Bev Sellars in the Spring Reading Series, Whistler, BC

September 2017

Wednesday September 6, 2017
Maylis de Kerangal at the Open Book Festival in Cape Town, South Africa

Thursday September 7, 2017
Coast to Coast: Canada’s Literary Women featuring Meredith Quartermain in Niagara Falls, Ontario

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

October 2017

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

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

November 2017

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

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

Abel proves able: Jordan Abel wins the Griffin!

photo by Kirby from Knife, Fork, Book
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.

The Griffin Poetry Prize is the most lucrative prize for poetry in Canada, and one of the most monied literary prizes in the world. The Griffin was founded in 2000 to serve and encourage excellence in poetry. The prize is for first-edition books written in or translated into English and submitted from anywhere in the world. Each year the jury selects an international short list and a Canadian short list. On June 7 in Toronto, the short-listed poets read excerpts from their books to an audience of 1,000 people, and each poet was presented with a leather-bound edition of their book and $10,000 for their participation in the readings.

The awards ceremony was held last night in Toronto’s Distillery District and attended by some 320 guests. Scott Griffin, founder of the prize, and trustees (Mark Doty, Carolyn Forché, Marek Kazmierski, Michael Ondaatje, Jo Shapcott, Karen Solie, and David Young) hosted the event. Judges for this year’s Prize were Sue Goyette (Canada), Joan Naviyuk Kane (US), and George Szirtes (UK). These distinguished writers and poets each read 617 books of poetry, received from 39 countries around the globe, including 23 translations, if you can believe it!

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.

• Abel proves able: Jordan Abel wins the Griffin!
• Home again, home again after the convention circuit
• Donato Mancini will be writer in residence at the University of Windsor this fall
• 50 years of Talonbooks, and a new catalogue that includes every title in print!
• 50 years since Expo 67, and a book bundle to celebrate!
• Bev Sellars books shortlisted for First Nation Communities READ 2017–2018 award
• Mend the Living wins Wellcome Book Prize!
• Save the date! Our Spring 2017 Poetry Launch is on April 27 in Vancouver
• Jordan Abel’s Injun short-listed for the Griffin!
• New poetry in house, right on time for National Poetry Month!
• Thank you, poetry lovers of the eastern US!
• New books for spring! Poetry, fiction, and drama
• March 25–31: Anahita Jamali Rad, Danielle LaFrance, and Donato Mancini on tour in California
• Adeena Karasick archive donated to Simon Fraser University
• Once in Blockadia is short-listed for the George Ryga Award!
• Mend the Living is short-listed for the Wellcome Book Prize!
• BC book publishers and members of parliament celebrate BC Book Day
• All-Star Talon poets on tour in the eastern U.S.
• Same Diff has arrived!
• Talon book design in the press
• Once in Blockadia long-listed for the George Ryga Award!
• Bev Sellars speaks to UBC’s business students
• Join Daphne Marlatt and M.A.C. Farrant in Calgary this Thursday
• Sachiko Murakami is the new writer in residence at U of T
• “Winners and Losers” opens in Calgary tomorrow!
• Tomorrow! Stephen Collis on Gabriola Island
• Cecily Nicholson is the new writer in residence at SFU
• Danielle LaFrance and Anahita Jamali Rad are in Calgary for the Flywheel Reading Series
• Enter Time with Colin Browne and Charles Edenshaw
• This weekend: Carl Peters at the MLA Convention in Pennsylvania
• Happy holidays from Talonbooks! What a year 2016 has been…
• All Fall 2016 plays are now available!
• Watch the trailer for the new movie based on Maylis de Kerangal’s novel, Mend the Living
• Save the date! False Starts launches in Montreal on November 8
• Opening tomorrow! Empire of the Son at the Cultch, Vancouver
• Read Local BC 2016
• Fred Wah and Colin Browne at the Vancouver Writers’ Fest this past weekend
• Our Fall 2016 books are launched!
• Tomorrow: Talon’s big fall launch!
• Thanks for a great reading, Victoria!
• Join M.A.C. Farrant at Munro’s in Victoria to launch The Days
• Phinder Dulai in NYC, Montreal, and Saint Catherines in early/mid-October
• Prairie Harbour is a finalist for the Governor General’s Awards!
• All the Fall 2016 poetry is in the house!
• Talonbooks at the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association trade show
• Karen X. Tulchinsky is Richmond’s Writer in Residence this fall
• Photos from WORD Vancouver 2016
• bill bissett wins Pandora Award!
• This Sunday: WORD Vancouver!
• Bev Sellars in Vancouver this week
• U Girl has arrived!
• George F. Walker’s new website is launched
• Talonbooks is British Columbia’s Publisher of the Year!
• Price Paid is already a BC bestseller!
• U Girl on the radio
• This fall, hear readings from Once in Blockadia along the Cascadia coast
• Price Paid has arrived!
• Reviews of The Days are in!
• Another great review of U Girl
• The first review is in: Ubyssey loves U Girl
• Oana Avasilichioaei on the East Coast this September!
• The dog days of summer, and The Days of Fall
• On stage now! “Salt-Water Moon” at the Pacific Theatre in Vancouver
• Tomorrow! Carl Peters talks Gertrude Stein at People’s Co-op Books, Vancouver
• Tonight in New York City, the Poets House Poetry Publication Showcase opens New York City
• Starting today! Denman Island Readers and Writers Festival 2016​
• Running on Fumes has arrived!
• Fall 2016 previews!
• Opening this Friday at the Vancouver Art Gallery: Colin Browne’s Emily Carr and Wolfgang Paalen exhibit
• Tomorrow night, the 2016 Woodcock and Ryga Awards will be presented
• On Monday, June 27 in Vancouver, the 2016 Jessie Awards will be presented
• A new home for Ralph Maud’s Charles Olson library
• Canadians and the Panama Papers: We’re not as innocent as we think we are
• Two new reviews of Mend the Living
• Tomorrow in Toronto! Lakeside Play Readings
• The Watershed has arrived!
• Talonbooks will be at Congress 2016 this weekend
• Talonbooks at BEA 2016
• Listen: Full audio recording of our recent Vancouver launch
• Book review: Canada, A New Tax Haven in the Vancouver Sun
• Take a ride on the ferry boat, and pick up a great book!
• Tomorrow: Authors for Indies Day across Canada!
• Photos from our big launch last night
• Two quadruple book launches this week!
• Annotating Gertrude Stein, a century later
• This week! Weyman Chan at the Edmonton Poetry Festival
• Now available: “the best script Morris Panych has ever written”
• Photos from the 2nd annual BC Book Day at the British Columbia Legislature
• Our final Spring 2016 poetry title is here – Human Tissue!
• Clint Burnham’s first Talon book!
• Hot off the press: Jason Patrick Rothery’s debut play!
• Alain Deneault warned us about Panama
• The North + South Book Tour – Garry Thomas Morse in the prairies
• Forever Yours, Marie-Lou is on stage in England
• This Saturday in Montreal, join us for the launch of Mend the Living
• Save the date! April 26 – the Talon Spring 2016 Poetry Launch in Vancouver
• Save the date! April 28 – the Talon Spring 2016 Poetry Launch in Calgary
• An honourable mention for Rom Com in the Alcuin Awards!
• Read an interview with Rahat Kurd
• We the Family has arrived!

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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“REDress”: A poem by Jónína Kirton, from An Honest Woman

By Jónína Kirton

For you, in solidarity, during this National Poetry Month, a poem from Jónína Kirton’s new collection.

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