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.

news | Sunday April 19, 2026

Behind the Moon Garners Reviews

Teesri Duniya Theatre’s production of Behind the Moon by Anosh Irani has garnered much acclaim and numerous reviews! Check out this piece in The Suburban, this article in The Montreal Times, this write up in Anokhi Life, and this review in Quebec Drama Federation’s The Overture. Behind the Moon takes place in a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto. Late one night, a mysterious stranger arrives requesting food from the restaurant’s employee Ayub after he’s already cleaned up and closed the place down for the day. What unfolds is a story of love and loss, freedom and faith, the meaning of brotherhood, and how we begin a new life.

news | Friday April 17, 2026

sometimes, forest Has Landed!

Hot off the press! sometimes, forest by Vancouver Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner has arrived and is ready to storm your to-be-read pile. Considering how networks of lateral support mitigate and challenge hierarchical, individualistic structures, sometimes, forest develops a theory of hylofeminism (“hylo” from the Greek meaning “forest matter) that attends to a deep, communal connection with nature as a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world.

An excerpt from “daylight”:

“comb a calendar through my hair
pull pollen off every strand
blonded by bees”

sometimes, forest alternatively rails at and desires a fluid beloved, sometimes forest, sometimes lover, friend, mother, or an absence the speaker yearns for in herself. Returning daily to the same woods, the speaker notices minute seasonal changes and considers her own internal changes too. Pick up your own copy here.

news | Thursday April 16, 2026

Tribute to Gladys Maria Hindmarch

There’s tribute to the late author, educator, and activist, Gladys Maria Hindmarch in BC BookLook. BC BookLook makes note of her history and her undeniable impact. Read the piece here.

news | Tuesday April 14, 2026

The Book of Z Named a Finalist for the 2026 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize!

We are delighted to share that The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd is a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize! In The Book of Z, Kurd writes in the imagined voice of Zulaykha – “the wife of Aziz” in the Qur’an and “the wife of Potiphar” in the Bible. In poems bright with desire and longing, The Book of Z reconsiders mystical possibilities, offers new readings.

Awarded annually by the BC and Yukon Book Awards, the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize is given to an exceptional work of poetry from an author based in Yukon or British Columbia. A huge congratulations to Rahat Kurd for this well-deserved honour! Check out all of this year’s finalists here.

news | Monday April 13, 2026

Hot Off the Press! Beautiful Unknown Future Has Arrived!

We’re delighted to announce that Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard has arrived! This new collection reflects with candour and wit on the precarity we share with the nonhuman world. Refusing false optimism, Beautiful Unknown Future layers the chaos of domestic life with the detachment of the corporate environment. Written while Hubbard’s children were young, these poems hold space for messy feelings about motherhood and care, the climate crisis, family ghosts, and office dynamics.

An excerpt from “Sweetie”:

“Sweetie, please come back to the staff room. Sweetie? We
need you to soothe us and ask us those questions that’ll make
us feel better about our actions. We need to rehearse our
rationales so they will sound authentic when the time comes
to testify. We like it when you connect the dots between our
heartbreaks for us. It’s your gentleness we demand right now.
Sweetie, come on. Someone left cookies here.”

Written in the shadow of compounding global crises, Beautiful Unknown Future looks critically to a future centred around tenderness, resilience, and love. Pick up your copy here

news | Sunday April 12, 2026

Save Your Prayers – Send Money in The Tyee

Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton is featured in an article in The Tyee about poetry collections to check out for National Poetry Month! Kirton’s latest poetry collection boldly takes on the wellness industry. Kirton delves into disability politics through the lived experience of a seventy-year-old Métis woman and recovering New Ager. Frank, moving, and forthcoming, this is a collection you can’t miss. Peruse all of the poetry suggestions in The Tyee here.

news | Saturday April 11, 2026

Poem by Jónína Kirton Read at the BC Legislature

We were very excited to learn that on March 31, British Columbia’s Labour Minister the Honourable Jennifer Whiteside shared Jónína Kirton poem “Fraser River Forgetting” from the collection Standing in a River of Time as a reflection with the BC Legislature. Congratulations, Jónína! What a fantastic poem to meditate on.

An excerpt from “Fraser River Forgetting”:

“around New West we find many mentions of Simon
the one the river is now named after
his Métis interpreter and guide forgotten

there are no statues no plaques devoted to
my great-great-great-grandfather, Waccan
a.k.a. Jean-Baptiste Boucher
a voyageur who spoke many languages
and is said to be the most famous
Métis man this side of the Rockies
he remains unnamed in most history books
there are no statues no plaques devoted to
his place in the settling of these lands

now buried at Fort St. James
I think I just felt him roll over
did he know what he was bringing?”

Listen to Minister Whiteside’s reading at the legislature here.