news | Tuesday December 10, 2024

Conversations with the Kagawong River on a Puzzle

Looking for a literary recreation that isn’t reading during these cold months? What about a puzzle? The cover of Conversations with the Kagawong River, the debut poetry collection by sophie anne edwards, is featured on the Canadian Authors Jigsaw Puzzle from the Canadian Authors Association. Check it out here!

news | Wednesday December 4, 2024

rob mclennan reviews The Middle

rob mclennan writes about the new poetry collection The Middle by Stephen Collis on his blog. mcleannan says there’s “a thickness to the collection, an intellectual and lyric heft, blended in such a way to not allow either to get in the way of the other, but intermingle comfortably.” Read his thoughts here.

news | Tuesday November 26, 2024

cop city swagger in The Winnipeg Free Press

melanie brannagan frederiksen wrote about the new poetry collection cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng in The Winnipeg Free Press. Read it here.

news | Saturday November 23, 2024

Two Talonbooks Plays on Read Local BC

Read Local BC is celebrating books that are a product of collaboration! Two 2024 Talonbooks plays were written by writing duos: Do you mind if I sit here? by James Long and Marcus Youssef and Redbone Coonhound by Amy Lee Lavoie and Omari Newton. Lovely to see these two plays among the titles on this great list.

news | Friday November 22, 2024

Two Talonbooks Authors Have Won 2024 Writers' Trust Prizes

Two Talonbooks authors have won Writers’ Trust Literary Prizes! Filmmaker, multimedia artist, and author of multiple plays including Iron Peggy and Burning Vision Marie Clements has won the Matt Cohen Award which honours a lifetime of impactful creative work.

Rita Wong, author of beholden: a poem as long as the river, won the Latner Griffin Award given to a mid-career poet who has demonstrated poetic excellence.

Read about all of the winners of the Writers’ Trust literary prizes here. Congratulations, Marie and Rita! Well-deserved wins!

news | Thursday November 21, 2024

Withrow Park by Morris Panych Has Arrived!

Hot new play alert! Withrow Park by the award-winning playwright Morris Panych has arrived. Set in Toronto, three people gaze out their living room window as the days pass. Across the street in Withrow Park, life goes on – or is it a dream?

Then comes a knock at the door. Time has found them, hiding in plain sight. Or possibly it’s just a man in a wrinkled suit. But Janet, Marion, and Arthur must act now or forever be devoured by their own indifference. They can no longer live on the periphery of their own lives. They must invite the young man to dinner.

An excerpt from Withrow Park:

“ARTHUR
Look at that sad creature.

MARION
The man?

ARTHUR
No, that whippet. He just wants to go hang out with other dogs,
but no. He’s stuck with some woman on a phone.

MARION
How do you know what he wants?

MARION takes up her book.

ARTHUR
It’s what every dog wants.

MARION
It’s better if you can’t do something you want. Gives you
something to long for. I bet he’s perfectly happy wishing he
could run free but not doing it. And anyway, he doesn’t look
very intelligent. He’d run right into a car.

ARTHUR
Right into a car.

A mantle clock rings five times.

ARTHUR
It’s Janet. Look. She’s over there. She’s – (suddenly alarmed)
talking to him.

MARION
The whippet?

ARTHUR
The man.”

Full of Panych’s trademark humour, Withrow Park wryly tugs at anxieties around aging, isolation, and the constantly shifting world around us. Pick up your copy here.

news | Thursday November 21, 2024

The Piano Teacher in The Tyee

The 2022 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama winner The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key by Dorothy Dittrich is featured in The Tyee’s 2024 gift-giving guide!

An excerpt from The Piano Teacher:

“Sometimes when I first wake up, I don’t know where I am. Images start to flood my mind. It’s like being stuck in an endless loop of looking back, and it’s always perfect, the past is perfect and we were always happy.”

See all of The Tyee’s recommendations here.

news | Thursday November 21, 2024

Tanya Lukin Linklater in BOMB Magazine

Check out this in-depth discussion between the author of Slow Scrape Tanya Lukin Linklater and poet Kendra Sullivan in BOMB Magazine. The two writer-and-visual-artists chat about their creative practices, the words of other luminaries, and instigating institutional change.

Read the complete interview here.

news | Wednesday November 20, 2024

Fred Wah Remembers Roy Miki

Fred Wah remembers the late author and activist Roy Miki in The Capilano Review. Miki was a prolific author, editor, academic, and community leader whose tremendous impact was widely felt. Miki taught in the English department at Simon Fraser University for over thirty years, and was instrumental in the achievement of Japanese Canadian Redress. He passed away last month.

Of Miki, Wah writes, “For myself, and many others who benefitted from Roy’s intelligence and creativity, there is a sad chasm of bereftness. He brought a palpable sense of care and attention into matters urgent in our lifetime, all of which imbue the memory of the future with wonder and possibility.”

Read the full tribute to the brilliant Roy Miki here.

news | Wednesday November 20, 2024

2024 Governor General's Literary Award Winners

Author of Un/inhabited Jordan Abel, the late Marie-Claire Blais author of American Notebooks: A Writer’s Journey, and Katia Grubisic translator of The Boys’ Club: The Many Worlds of Male Power have all won 2024 Governor Generals Literary Awards! View the announcement here. A hearty congratulations to all of this year’s winners!