news | Monday June 15, 2026

Pearl in BC BookWorld

Heidi Greco pens a review of Pearl by George Bowering in BC BookWorld! Of Pearl, Greco notes, “I’d be remiss if I failed to point out the humour at play in these pages, especially when it comes to his puns and silly “takes” on Robert Frost, one of which begins with these almost-too familiar lines: “Whose words are these? I think I’m lost / I’d better go and read some Frost.” Or, better yet, go and read some Bowering.” Read the complete piece here on page 28.

news | Sunday June 14, 2026

Port Moody Public Library Features They Called Me Number One

They Called Me Number One by Bev Sellars is included among the titles in Port Moody Public Library’s social justice book club set for adults. In this powerful memoir, Bev Sellars writes about her time at residential school and how the violence of it rippled on throughout her life. This book is a must-read for those confronting the injustices perpetrated against Indigenous people in so-called Canada. Check out all of the titles the library recommends for readers looking to do the work of social justice here.


news | Saturday June 13, 2026

Revolutions in The Miramichi Reader

Samantha Annie Bernstein reviews Hajer Mirwali ’s award-winning collection Revolutions alongside the new book of poetry by Eric Schmaltz in The Miramichi Reader. Bernstein draws parallels between the two, observing what is shared and what is withheld for poetic impact. Check out her in-depth article here.

news | Friday June 12, 2026

The Welland Tribune Shines a Light on Lighthouse Theatre's Crees in the Caribbean Productions

The Welland Tribune shines a light on Lighthouse Theatre’s upcoming productions of Crees in the Caribbean by Drew Hayden Taylor.

From the article: “Lighthouse’ interim artistic producer David Leyshon said the production perfectly balances comedy with emotional depth.

‘Drew has an extraordinary ability to make audiences laugh while also opening the door to meaningful conversations. It is warm, funny and full of heart, but beneath the comedy is a beautiful exploration of relationships and human connection.’”

Read the article here.

news | Wednesday June 10, 2026

Hajer Mirwali Wins the 2026 Trillium Book Award for Poetry!

We’re overjoyed to share that the 2026 winner of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry is Hajer Mirwali for her debut book Revolutions! This unforgettable work of poetry looks at the linking forces of shame, pleasure, and surveillance. Revolutions is an amazing collection and endlessly worthy of recognition. A huge congratulations, Hajer! See all of this year’s winners here.

news | Tuesday June 9, 2026

ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn Wins 2026 Wilfrid Eggleston Award!

We are thrilled to share that ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn has won the 2026 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction for his book ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another! In this educational work, quinn leads readers through the spirit marker writing system, using it as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. Including language philosophy and stories from his own life, ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok is an amazing and important book eminently worthy of recognition and celebration. A huge congratulations to ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn for this well-deserved win! The Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction is an Alberta Literary Award that honours outstanding works of nonfiction written by Alberta-based authors. Check out all of this year’s winners here. 

news | Saturday June 6, 2026

Save Your Prayers – Send Money in The Winnipeg Free Press

melanie brannagan frederiksen reviews Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton in The Winnipeg Free Press. Kirton’s new hybrid work of poetry and prose is a work with its face turned to disability justice. Written from the perspective of a seventy-year-old Métis woman and recovering New Ager, Save Your Prayers – Send Money takes aim at the wellness industry.

From the article, brannagan frederiksen says “What emerges over the course of this collection, animated by the question of what healing might look like in relation to chronic conditions, is a web of ancestral and community belonging.” Read the full piece here.

news | Thursday June 4, 2026

Pride 2026 Reading List

It’s Pride Month! We’re happy to take any opportunity to celebrate 2SLGBTQIA+ voices, perspectives, art, and self-expression. Talonbooks has put together a reading list of books by queer and gender diverse authors to put on your radar for Pride. Whether you want a zippy poetry collection, a pithy play, or a novel that will rake your emotions over the coals, we’ve got you covered.

1. SUBTEXT by Nicole Raziya Fong

SUBTEXT is the hot-off-the-press poetry collection by Montréal-based artist and poet Nicole Raziya Fong. SUBTEXT collages the echoes of diasporic and colonial histories through poetry, drama, autobiography, and archival uncovering. Dwelling in the bubbling froth of dreamwork, these poems take 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. Check out this interview Nicole Raziya Fong gave with All Lit Up about SUBTEXT and pick up a copy of your very own here.

2. full-metal indigiqueer by Joshua Whitehead

This triumphant poetry collection focuses on a hybridized Indigiqueer Trickster character named Zoa who brings together the organic (the protozoan) and the technologic (the binaric) in order to re-beautify and re-member queer Indigeneity. Following oral tradition (à la Iktomi, Nanaboozho, Wovoka), Zoa infects, invades, and becomes a virus to canonical and popular works in order to re-centre Two-Spirit livelihoods. They dazzlingly and fiercely take on the likes of Edmund Spenser, Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, and John Milton while also not forgetting contemporary pop culture figures such as Lana Del Rey, Grindr, and Peter Pan. This is a must-read collection. Get your copy here.

3. Dear Chekhov by Michel Tremblay, translated by Linda Gaboriau

The scene is this: a table set outside in beautiful fall weather. A turkey roasting in the oven. Everything seems set for a festive family dinner – except that the playwright wants to rewrite his play. In classic Tremblay fashion, family dynamics take centre stage in this masterful play. Coming this fall, Dear Chekhov holds a mirror up to theatre. Pre-order your copy here.

4. Jump Scare by Daniel Zomparelli

This 2024 poetry collection is both hilarious and grief-y. In Jump Scare, Zomparelli uses horror movies as a vehicle to explore queer pop culture, the commodification of identity, neurodivergence, and grief. Written in an irreplicable, empathetic, irreverent voice, Jump Scare is a friendly ghost of a collection. Snag a copy of your own here.

5. Verbal Violence by Danielle LaFrance

Danielle LaFrance’s brand new book of poetry Verbal Violence weaponizes the email thread as a form, shredding the language of the managerial class. Here, they hack apart neoliberal doublespeak, ideological reproduction and progressive-except-Palestine rhetoric. This collection has edge, verve, and a bent towards justice carried always in its heart. Pick up a copy here.

6. Heartlines: A Love Story by Sarah Waisvisz

A finalist for a 2026 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ+ Drama, Heartlines centres around the lives, love, art, activism, and resistance of gender pioneers Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Heartlines takes the audience through the dizzying romance of their early life together in the Parisian avant-garde – and the subsequent fracturing of that life with the rise of nazism. Identities of all kinds are explored, suppressed, and liberated as their love withstands oppression, violence, and time itself. Copies are available here.

7. the berry takes the shape of the bloom by andrea bennett

the berry takes the shape of the bloom began as a linear narrative, offering a window into one trans person’s life after they felt contented and secure. In the end these poems, which capture particular moments in time, may recur in any given present: sometimes what surfaces is anxiety or anger, sometimes love or eagerness. Some poems bear witness; others hold grudges or shake free of them. Together, they entwine around enmeshed experiences of gender, family, trans pregnancy, abuse, fear, and becoming. the berry takes the shape of the bloom took second place in the 2024 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. Check out this review of the collection in Arc Poetry Magazine and pick up a copy here.

8. Desert of the Heart by Jane Rule

This formative sapphic novel first hit bookstands in the 1960s. It remains an essential work. Evelyn Hall is a literature professor who travels to Reno, Nevada in the summer of 1958 in order to obtain a divorce and thus put an end to her disastrous sixteen-year marriage. She is divorcing her husband on the advice of his psychiatrist because, this being the ’50s, he believes that Evelyn’s success is causing her husband’s depression. During her six-week stay at a boarding house (a residency requirement) Evelyn meets Ann Childs. The two fall in love and must navigate their feelings in the face of strain from inside and outside of their relationship. Get your copy here.

9. tours, variously by Drew McEwan

tours, variously takes readers on a guided tour, considering how we take up space within the imagined rooms of language and definition. The poems in this book lead the reader through an interrogation of the ways we tour the spaces of language, always stepping between the sayable and the unsaid. rob mclennan said of tours, variously that it writes “an exploration of betweenness, becoming and having become, having been the whole time, achieving an exploration not of uncertainty but of seeking, plumbing the depths of language into a solid ground.” Order a copy here.

Happy Pride, everyone! We wish you good reading and good resisting.

news | Wednesday June 3, 2026

Hajer Mirwali Wins the Gerald Lampert Award!

Hajer Mirwali has won the 2026 Gerald Lampert Award for a debut book of poetry! Mirwali’s book Revolutions looks at shame, pleasure, and Muslim daughterhood. In an extended conversation with Mona Hatoum’s artwork + and –, Revolutions 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.

The Gerald Lampert Award jury says of Revolutions: “Mirwali’s writing style is cutting edge and playful making for an incredibly admirable breakthrough book. Reading Revolutions is like having a companion that provides a familiar, daring feeling of clarity all while positioned within severe and surveilled conditions.”

Remarkable in both content and style, Revolutions is a mighty debut. Way to go on this well-deserved honour, Hajer! See all of the winners of this year’s League of Canadian Poets Book Awards here.

news | Tuesday June 2, 2026

Crees in the Caribbean in The Niagara on the Lake Local

The Niagara on the Lake Local highlights the forthcoming Lighthouse Festival productions of Crees in the Caribbean by Drew Hayden Taylor. From the article: “Interim artistic producer David Leyshon says the production perfectly balances comedy with emotional depth.

‘Drew Hayden Taylor has an extraordinary ability to make audiences laugh while also opening the door to meaningful conversations,’ said Leyshon. ‘Crees in the Caribbean is warm, funny, and full of heart, but beneath the comedy is a beautiful exploration of relationships and human connection.’”

Read the full article here.