catalogues | Thursday July 11, 2024
Talonbooks Complete 2024 Catalogue
We are thrilled about the Talonbooks titles making their way to a bookstore near you this year.
Forthcoming in non-fiction is the winner of the 2020 Grand Prix du Livre de Montréal! The Boys’ Club: The Many Worlds of Male Power by Martine Delvaux and translated by Katia Grubisic is both an activist text and a work of scholarship examining the brazen misogyny of men in power across fields, including Hollywood, politics, tech, law enforcement, architecture, religion, and the military.
2024 is a stellar year for new plays, which bring wit, guts, and wisdom to the front. Redbone Coonhound by Amy Lee Lavoie and Omari Newton follows interracial couple Mike and Marissa. They meet a dog with an unfortunate breed name – Redbone coonhound – unleashing a debate about race and their relationship that manifests as a series of satirical micro-plays. Cottage Radio & Other Plays by Taylor Marie Graham introduces us to the tough and witty women of Southwestern Ontario. Inspired by a true story, we the same by Sangeeta Wylie takes us to 1979 Việt Nam, where six children and a mother become separated from their father and husband as they flee their homeland by boat. Thirty-five years later, the mother shares secrets that escort the past into the present. Feast by Guillermo Verdecchia is a magic-realist examination of the anxieties of the early twenty-first century by way of a comfortable North American family grappling with global crises and their own extractive appetites. Anosh Irani new play Behind the Moon is set in a Mughlai restaurant in Toronto where protagonist Ayub must contend with the family he’s left behind and the terrible circumstances of his exploitative work situation. Finally, an unexpected (possibly metaphysical) stranger arrives for dinner at the home of three recluses in the new play Withrow Park by Governor General’s Literary Award–winner Morris Panych.
The name of the game for the poetry on Talonbooks’ 2024 list is hybrid forms. In Wet, a collection of poetry and photography, Leanne Dunic unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe. Tiziana La Melia fuses poetry and visual art in her environmentalist and experimental collection lettuce lettuce please go bad. Documentary poetics are on full display in the forthcoming cop city swagger by Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–winner Mercedes Eng as she blends poetry, excerpts from news articles and interviews to interrogate whose safety matters in the city of Vancouver and beyond. Musical scores, photography, theatre, and symphony come together in Chambersonic by award-winning writer, translator, musician, and artist Oana Avasilichioaei. In sophie anne edwards’ debut collection Conversations with the Kagawong River, poetry and visual art merge in a site-specific engagement with the ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island). A Jamali Rad forthcoming No Signal No Noise is part poetry, part experimental novel, and part philosophical treatise, following protagonist Zero as they stumble upon a mysterious manuscript and are thrown into a journey across centuries, continents, and concepts. With a flair for the comedic, Jump Scare by Daniel Zomparelli digs into mental health, neurodivergence, grief, pop culture, queer consumer culture, and the commodification of identity. You’re Gonna Love This by Dina Del Bucchia is a deeply personal, working-class long poem about how media culture’s around-the-clock presence impacts our connection to the world. Finally, award-winning author Stephen Collis returns with The Middle, an investigation of threatened climate futures with a particular focus on the human-plant relationship.
