news | Friday October 17, 2025

You're Invited to the Talonbooks Fall 2025 Launch

You’re invited! On Friday, October 24, join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall for the Talonbooks fall 2025 launch! Help us celebrate the arrival of this unreal lineup:

The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd
th book uv lost passwords 1 by bill bissett
No Depression in Heaven by ryan fitzpatrick
Stigmata by Scott Jackshaw and
tours, variously by Drew McEwan.

The launch will be hosted by the author of #postdildo, Danielle LaFrance! Books will be sold by the amazing folks at The Paper Hound.

The Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall is wheelchair and scooter accessible. There is a parking lot behind the venue in the alley between East 3rd and East 4th Avenues. Attendance is free! Snacks and drinks will be served. A live stream will be available on the Talonbooks YouTube channel. We can’t wait to see you there!

Talonbooks Fall 2025 Launch
Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
1955 McLean Drive
Vancouver, BC
October 24, 2025
Doors open at 7:00 p.m.; readings begin at 7:30 p.m.

news | Friday October 24, 2025

The Piano Teacher in The Kingston Whig Standard

Michaela Tassone reviews Thousand Island Playhouse’s production of The Piano Teacher by Dorothy Dittrich in The Kingston Whig Standard. In this lovely, considered review, Tassone calls The Piano Teacher “sincere, heart-wrenching and a testament to the power of art; another stunning piece of Canadian theatre that should not be missed.” Read the complete review here.

news | Friday October 24, 2025

Play Ball!

CBC Books is celebrating the Toronto Blue Jays reaching the World Series with a spate of fantastic book recommendations about – you guessed it – baseball! On that list is George Bowering Baseball Love. Check out all of their selections here. 49th Shelf also recommends Baseball Love for their World Series reading, all of their suggestions can be found here.

news | Thursday October 23, 2025

Uiesh / Somewhere Named a Governor General's Finalist!

We are elated to share that Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore, is a finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation! Translated from the French, the poems in this incredible dual-language collection appear in Innu-aimun and English.

The pieces in Uiesh / Somewhere are rooted in Innu Elder Joséphine Bacon’s experiences of moving between the nomadic ways of her Ancestors in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the clamour of the city. Bacon is attentive to the smallest details of her environment, from the moon and the stars, the Northern Lights, and the falling snow, to the sirens of fire engines and the noise of a busy bar night. In this collection, she listens to the voices of the Old Ones, whose stories are alive within her, and reflects on the beauty and the pain of her long life.

A huge congratulations Joséphine and Jessica for this wonderful and well-deserved accomplishment, and congratulations to all of this year’s finalists! Read all about them here.

news | Thursday October 23, 2025

Crowd Source in BC Living

If you’re looking for a book by an author residing in British Columbia to read this fall, BC Living has got you covered. Sheri Radford compiled a list of fantastic local titles, including Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson that will wow you this autumn. Radford asserts that “anyone who’s ever marvelled at the twice-daily crow migration in Metro Vancouver will be enchanted by Crowd Source.” Peruse all of her recommendations here.

news | Wednesday October 22, 2025

Stir Reviews Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project

Angie Rico writes about Electric Company Theatre’s production of Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project by Carmen Aguirre in Stir. Rico says the play is “engrossing … it lets us in on the making and remaking of a revolutionary spirit.” Read her lovely piece here. To order tickets to see Fire Never Dies (running now at The Cultch!) click here.

news | Wednesday October 22, 2025

Lisa Tronca Reviews Convivialities

Lisa Tronca reviews Convivialities: Dialogues on Poetics by Michael Nardone on page 114 of issue 141 Espace. Tronca calls Convivialities “a sensitive and critical mapping of artistic and discursive practices … In dialogue with its epoch, the book explores how to enter into conversation, reflect, and listen together, inspiring us by the ways language and art respond to the urgencies of the present.”

Check out the issue here.

news | Monday October 20, 2025

ORACULE and Flying Red Horse in Canadian Literature

Scott Inniss responds to two Talon titles in Canadian Literature: ORACULE by Nicole Raziya Fong, a philosophical work that lives on the border of poetry and theatre, and Flying Red Horse by Dale Martin Smith a book of poetry about fatherhood and masculinity, and the conditions of whiteness that pressure those terms. Inniss looks at both books individually and also what themes and aims the two works share.

Of the works, Inniss writes “In both texts, poetry is not simply a vehicle of lyric self-expression but a mode of philosophical, intersubjective, and affective exploration. Both Fong and Smith construe poetics as a mode of questioning, with the interrogative as a prominent trope. … Although the language and tone are an intermixture of the meditative and the everyday, the concerns of the poems are widely phenomenological, existential, ecocritical, and anti-capitalist.”

Read the complete article here.

news | Sunday October 19, 2025

ryan fitzpatrick on Writing the Wrong Way

ryan fitzpatrick talks No Depression in Heaven on the podcast Writing the Wrong Way with Jonathan Ball. The pair talk poetry, country music, and much more. Tune in here or wherever you listen to podcasts.

news | Saturday October 18, 2025

2024/2025 Jessie Award Nominations

The 2024/2025 Jessie Award nominations are in and we are thrilled to see some familiar names and titles among the nominees! Wonderful to see Behind the Moon by Anosh Irani and Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer by Kevin Loring up for awards. Additionally, Lasa ng Imperyo (based on a A Taste of Empire by Jovanni Sy) has multiple nominations as does playwright Niall McNeil! The Jessie Awards celebrate outstanding accomplishments of theatre in Vancouver. Congratulations to all of this year’s nominees! See the full list here.

news | Friday October 17, 2025

Read Local BC Recommendations for LGBTQIA2S+ History Month

To celebrate LGBTQIA2S+ History Month, Read Local BC recommends checking out Stigmata by Scott Jackshaw and Heartlines: A Love Story by Sarah Waisvisz! See all of their suggested reads here.