news | Tuesday July 8, 2025

Kuei, My Friend Listed as an Anti-racism Resource

Kuei, My Friend by Deni Ellis Béchard and Natasha Kanapé Fontaine (translated by Béchard and Howard Scott) is named as a resource on the government of Canada’s anti-racism learning hub! Check it out here.

news | Friday July 4, 2025

Talon Titles in The Tyee

Exciting to see two Talonbooks spring 2025 titles, allostatic load by Junie Désil and Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali, appear in The Tyee’s article about great books to read this summer. These can’t-miss poetry collections are a great addition to any TBR list. View all of their recommendations here.

news | Thursday July 3, 2025

Disability Pride Month 2025

July is Disability Pride Month! To celebrate the month, we’re highlighting recent and forthcoming titles written by disabled/chronically ill authors who will knock your socks off.

This brand new poetry collection by the multi-talented Junie Désil explores the intricacies and intersections of chronic illness, the commodifications, and the burden of systemic injustice. Désil digs into the personal, medical, and career spheres, sharing the experience of seeking healing in a sharp world which does not always believe you or wish you well.

An excerpt:

“cancel all my health-type subscriptions,
turn off all my notifications and reminders
to drink water, to get up and stretch for thirty seconds,
to box breathe, cancel previously free now not-free pandemic
subscriptions during my short-lived shelter-in-place
aspirations of knitting, breadmaking, preserve making,
guitar playing, indie-film watching.

put on my noise-cancelling earphones
and actually – i want to so much –
rest.”

Check out allostatic load here.

Forthcoming this autumn is tours, variously by poet and researcher (with a focus on mad, disability, queer, and trans rhetoric) Drew McEwan! The poems of this collection saunter through an abstracted network of transformational encounters where bodies struggle with and against a game of follow the leader, postured by the series of connected rooms we share. Together they guide the reader through an interrogation of the ways we tour the spaces of language, always stepping between the sayable and the unsaid.

An excerpt:

“Advice:

Lay out the ground lines the length and breadth of the monument proposed.
Collect foliage for the upper tier, browned leaves for flooring.
What remains ever exterior to thought is thought.
Lay bare the concrete while still damp.
Place visionary on paper, anticipate business to come.
The room does not exist before revealing itself.
Curve and scale may lead us to false impressions.
Surveil the animal complacencies beyond the door.
A forum models a proportionate citizenry.
Retain the excess, motivate a corrective.
Count the legs of the chair before an occupation.
Do not allow negativity to presuppose a body only to remove it.”

Pre-order your copy of tours, variously here.

Our favourite poet from lunaria is back with another stellar poetic offering in th book uv lost passwords 1. ths book asks is langwage lost wev had creativ langwage almost 7 thousand yeers we still dont undr stand each othr veree well dew we want 2? the book uv lost passwords 1 arrives this fall.

An excerpt from “th alphabets uv our beings”:

“dayze n nites retreev us
conseev us re create us row guide n steer us enlarge us diminish us find sheltr n recuse releev spin resiliens clasp each othr in hopeful em brayce th pineal mysterious”

Pre-order your copy of the latest bill bissett here.

Wishing everybody an excellent Disability Pride Month!

news | Wednesday July 2, 2025

Talon Title on Literary Hub

The New Long Poem Anthology (Second Edition) edited by Sharon Thesen is one of the ten collections named on Literary Hub’s list of Canadian poetry books to read to expand your mind. Some other familiar names such as R. Kolewe, rob mclennan, and David Homel are on the list as well! Read all of Dawn Mcdonald’s recommendations here.

news | Friday June 27, 2025

The Middle in The Winnipeg Free Press

melanie brannagan frederiksen reviews the new poetry collection The Middle by Stephen Collis in The Winnipeg Free Press. She calls the work, which extends Collis’s investigation of threatened climate futures into a poetics of displacement and wandering, “Stephen Collis’s latest tour de force.” Read the entire article here.

news | Friday June 27, 2025

June is Audiobook Month!

Did you know? June is audiobook month! We love to listen to a book on the go. Picking out radishes at the grocery store? Audiobook! In transit? Audiobook! Cleaning up a stack of dishes? (You get the picture.) Here are a handful of available/forthcoming audiobooks to keep you company as you go about your day.

1. The Weight of Snow by Christian Guay-Poliquin, translated by David Homel

Available now! Listen to the winner of the Prix littéraire France-Québec, the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-Language Fiction, the Prix Ringuet, and the Prix littéraire des collégiens! After surviving a major accident, a man is trapped in a village buried in the snow and cut off from the world by a nationwide power failure. He is entrusted to Matthias, a taciturn old man who agrees to heal his wounds in exchange for wood, food, and eventual escape from the village. Will they manage to stand up against external threats and intimate pitfalls? Download your copy here.

2. Unfuckable Lardass by Catriona Strang

Available now! Unfuckable Lardass reverts the patriarchy’s gaze. It began as an attempt to refract and undercut an outrageous insult allegedly lobbed at German Chancellor Angela Merkel. This stellar poetry collection draws on language from a wide range of sources – including European witch trials, Marx, Darwin, Renaissance and popular music, and common profanity, as well as from the author’s experience of post-reproductivity and of carrying out caring labour during declines, deaths, and the COVID-19 lockdown. Download your copy here.

3. Gaman – Perseverance: Japanese Canadians’ Journey to Justice by Art Miki

Keep your eyes peeled, because coming soon is the audiobook of the winner of a 2025 Canada-Japan Literary Award! Gaman – Perseverance is a revealing memoir by the former president of the National Association of Japanese Canadians that describes the long journey towards resolution for the historic injustice that deprived Japanese Canadians of their basic human rights during and after World War II. Gaman – Perseverance details the intense negotiations that took place in the 1980s between the Government of Canada and the NAJC – negotiations which finally resulted in the historic Japanese Canadian Redress Agreement of September 1988 and the acknowledgment by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney that Canada had wronged its own citizens. Watch this space!

Talonbooks uses Glassboxx, a free app, to deliver its audiobooks. Learn more here.

news | Thursday June 26, 2025

Future Works Review

Steven Ross Smith reviews the new poetry collection Future Works by Jeff Derksen in The British Columbia Review. Smith calls the collection “surreal, witty … and most often political … brilliant.”

An excerpt from the article: “Clever poems, accessible and complex in their leaps … Derksen has the gift of being able to embrace the language of institutions and structures … into modes, sometimes personal, sometimes societal comment, that draw engagement, critique, and are accessible.”

Read the complete piece here.

news | Thursday June 26, 2025

rob mclennan Reviews Talon Titles

rob mclennan has penned reviews of several of the new spring 2025 Talonbooks poetry titles! Check out his review of Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali here, his piece on allostatic load by Junie Désil here, and his take on Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson here.

news | Wednesday June 25, 2025

bill bissett X The Chemical Brothers

The latest track by Tom Rowlands, co-founder of The Chemical Brothers, is built around a sample of poetry by literary phenom/lunaria’s top poet (not to mention author of the forthcoming th book uv lost passwords 1) bill bissett. Learn more and check out the song in this article in Electronic Groove.

news | Tuesday June 24, 2025

Review of Crowd Source

Alexandra Oliver reviews the new poetry collection Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson in The Literary Review of Canada. Continuing Nicholson’s attention to contemporary climate crisis, social movements, and Black diasporic relations, Crowd Source came out in April.

Oliver says “Crowd Source offers a fluid, graceful perspective on the importance of gathering, moving, and persisting.”

Read the complete article here.

news | Saturday June 21, 2025

National Indigenous Peoples Day 2025

June 21 is National Indigenous Peoples Day! We have the great pleasure of working with a number of brilliant Indigenous creatives at the forefront of their fields. Here are a handful of Indigenous-authored titles, some brand new and some from the vault, that we love. Guaranteed to enrich any bookshelf or TBR pile, check out the following works of poetry, drama, and nonfiction.

Check out Copper Thunderbird by Marie Clements, a play on canvases based on the life of renowned and notorious artist Norval Morrisseau; Uiesh / Somewhere, a dual-language collection of poetry in Innu-aimun and English by Joséphine Bacon and translated by Jessica Moore; ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one other by nêhîyaw educator ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn, a new work of nonfiction which uses the spirit marker writing system as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin; Pots and Other Living Beings, an outstanding collection of poetry and photography by annie ross; the forthcoming play White Noise by the late, great Taran Kootenhayoo; award-winning poetry book The Place of Scraps by Jordan Abel; outstanding comedy Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout by Tomson Highway; multi-award winning play Where the Blood Mixes by Kevin Loring; moving feminist poetry text An Honest Woman by Jónína Kirton; and brand new dark real estate/intersectionality comedy Open House by Drew Hayden Taylor.

If you’re looking for further Indigenous-authored books, take a look at our Indigenous catalogue. Happy National Indigenous Peoples Day!

news | Saturday June 7, 2025

A Review of lettuce lettuce please go bad

Sofia Wind reviews lettuce lettuce please go bad by Tiziana La Melia in the April/May 2025 issue of Discorder Magazine. Wind calls the poetry and visual art collection “beautiful, intimate, and deeply witty.” Check out issues of Discorder Magazine here.

news | Thursday June 5, 2025

Pride Month 2025

It’s Pride Month, everybody! We’re going to celebrate the best way we know how: by getting excited for a whole new slew of top-tier titles by queer and gender-diverse authors. We don’t want to spoil any surprises, but our forthcoming fall 2025 list is almost entirely comprised of works by amazing LGBTQIA2S+ writers. Without further ado, let us introduce you to new and upcoming books.

Investigating whose safety really matters in the most expensive city in the nation, cop city swagger conducts a threat assessment of Vancouver’s police. Holding close lived and living connections to the Downtown Eastside and Chinatown neighbourhoods, Eng juxtaposes the police’s and the city’s institutional rhetoric with their acts of violence against marginalized people, presenting a panoramic media montage of structural harm and community care. Pick up your copy here.

The final book in the Desorsiers Diaspora series arrives this July! Following the unforgettable cast of characters in the scrappy and lovable Desrosiers family, A Great Consolation comprises Survive! Survive!, set in 1935, and Crossing the Gulf of Misfortune, set in 1941. In Survive! Survive!, we spend time in shoe stores, dingy apartments, cinemas, and gay bars in Montréal in the colourful company of Ti-Lou and “la Duchesse” Édouard, whose sparkling exchanges hide indissoluble pain, in sombre days with Victoire and Télesphore at the bottom of the ruelle des Fortifications, and with father and daughter Josaphat and Laura Cadieux. In _Crossing the Gulf of Misfortune, the realities of WW II and rationing have set in and we join the families of Nana and Gabriel as they unhappily cram together in a new apartment with Victoire and Édouard, as well as with Albertine, her husband Paul, and their children, Thérèse and baby Marcel. Pre-order your copy of A Great Consolation here.

Arrinving this August, No Depression in Heaven asks how we respond to bad times. Written during country music’s most recent ascent in popularity, this poetry “LP” consists of ten “tracks” that each take up a rhythm, only to bend it out of shape. This collection asks what it means to hold onto something toxic because of the comforts it affords, to daydream about days long past rather than gripping the reins of the present. No Depression in Heaven pulls on its boots, tilts its hat, and brushes the dust off its Nudie suit before tipping language out of key. Pre-order a copy here.

This September, be sure to check out tours, variously! A poem as a guided tour. A tour of a series of empty rooms. This book asks how words form spaces of shifting relation. In a central guiding poem enriched by numerous detours exploring side passages and related themes, tours, variously forms a network of transformational encounters. Together they guide the reader through an interrogation of the ways we tour the spaces of language, always as guests. Pre-order your copy of tours, variously here.

Stigmata by Scott Jackshaw is arriving back from the printer this September! Jackshaw’s collection is about bodies caught in the crosscurrents of sexual deviancy and religion. Its poems are ruinous encounters between traumatic and historical memory; they transfigure the cult of the wound into a mystic frenzy of sex, grief, and noise. Stigmata draws inspiration from a broad archive of texts and practices: apophatic theology, body horror, gardening, queer theory, classic films, poststructuralism, and bad sex. Together its poems form a counterhistory of the wound, an experiment in fractured memoir and misplaced anatomy that weaponizes the confessional mode, wrenching it from self-narration to approach a violence that breaks language and bodies apart. Pre-order your copy here.

Forthcoming this fall is the latest book of poetry from appointee to the Order of Canada and literary icon bill bissett! a novel uv pomes threding thru each othr th main charaktrs langwage n all uv us hedding off in all direksyuns ths book asks is langwage lost wev had creativ langwage almost 7 thousand yeers we still dont undr stand each othr veree well dew we want 2 thru th mysteree loves n rapturs speek. Pre-order your copy here.

Happy Pride, everyone! We hope you keep resisting, celebrating, and delving into great reads.

news | Wednesday June 4, 2025

Marie Clements Wins Canadian Screen Award

We were delighted to learn that the multi-talented Marie Clements (author of The Unnatural and Accidental Women and many others plays) won a Canadian Screen Award for Best Direction in a Drama Series for Bones of Crows! Check out the announcement here. Congratulations to Marie for this well-deserved win!

news | Tuesday June 3, 2025

Indigenous History Month 2025

June is Indigenous History Month! There are no shortage of amazing Indigenous-authored books to enjoy and these long, sunny days are a perfect time to read them. We have a whole Indigenous catalogue for you to check out, but if you’re seeking some fresh-off-the-press new titles to peruse, here are a few recent Talonbooks titles full of wit, wisdom, and wordsmithery (probably not a real word, but we think the occasion calls for it).

Biting new real-estate comedy Open House by Drew Hayden Taylor navigates current conversations about oppression, colonization, and middle-class aspirations. When an African Canadian man, a Chinese Canadian man, and a Jewish/Indigenous lesbian couple show up to an open house run by a white settler real estate agent, each is certain that this is destined to be their home, that they are the most deserving of winning the prize. A police incident traps the prospective buyers inside of the house and in those coveted halls, a riotous debate breaks loose.

Order your copy here.

The winner of the Prix des libraires, the Indigenous Voices award, the Prix littéraire des enseignant.e.s de Français, and the Coup de Cœur Renaud-Bray Uiesh / Somewhere by Innu poet Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore is an outstanding dual-language collection of poetry appearing in both Innu-aimun and English. This book has a light and lasting touch, dancing between Bacon’s experiences of moving between the nomadic ways of her Ancestors in the northern wilderness of Nitassinan and the clamour of the city.

An excerpt:

“Short of breath now
but in my dreaming I walk on
tireless

I know how to hear the leaves
I learn the world
my age grows old with me

I haven’t got a hundred words
I haven’t lived a hundred years”

Pick up your copy today!

Brand new book alert! Arriving back from the printer this July is ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another by ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn. In this new text, nêhîyaw educator ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn uses the spirit marker writing system as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. The spirit marker writing system holds forty-four spirit markers and fourteen minor spirit markers. Some people call that system the star chart. Each spirit marker holds a law. These laws are meant to guide us in ways that support us in life.

An excerpt:

“The earth holds us.

We are spinning and yet we do not fall off.

We need to remember.

We need to tell each other stories,
the old stories.

ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok.”

Pre-order your copy here!

Forthcoming this November is comedic drama White Noise by the inimitable, late playwright and storyteller Taran Kootenhayoo. In White Noise, two neighbouring families, one Indigenous and one white, dine together during Truth and Reconciliation Week. As cultural misunderstanding, colonial violence, and racism both covert and overt surface, White Noise asks, “How do we deal with internalized racism? Do we keep pushing it away … or do we make a change?” Taran Kootenhayoo’s answer is both emotionally intense and outrageously hilarious, a blistering comedic exploration of what it means to live in so-called Canada. Pre-order your copy here.

We have absolutely loved working on these projects, and we hope you love reading them. Our gratitude as always to the phenomenal authors who penned them.

news | Tuesday June 3, 2025

A Close Reading of Oana Avasilichioaei's Poetry

Erín Moure, Kate Colby, Sophia DuRose, Laynie Browne, and Hoa Nguyen join Al Filreis to offer a close reading of “Voices (remix) Side A” from Eight Track by Oana Avasilichioaei in a video produced by ModPo. Watch it here.

news | Tuesday June 3, 2025

Ebooks Are Now Available on Our Website!

There are more ways than ever to read Talonbooks titles! Ebooks are now available for purchase directly from our website. Once on the Talonbooks site, click “Books” and then select “Ebooks to browse all available options! If a title is available in ebook format, an option to purchase it will also appear on the book’s webpage.

Talonbooks uses the Glassboxx service (a free application) for delivery of our eBooks and audiobooks. This makes it quick and easy for you to get the books you’ve purchased in lovely apps on your iOS and Android phones and tablets as well as Windows and macOS computers. For more information about Glassboxx, click here. For increased accessibility, our ebooks have the text-to-speech function enabled. Happy reading!

news | Wednesday May 28, 2025

allostatic load in The British Columbia Review

Cathy Ford reviews the brand new poetry collection allostatic load by Junie Désil in The British Columbia Review.

An excerpt from the review: “allostatic load is … enhanced by graphic challenges to the common page, with striking memo and questionnaire-style layout in some poems, concrete illustrative pieces in others that create a way into the writer’s experience.”

Read the piece here.

news | Tuesday May 27, 2025

Hot Off the Press! Hummingbird Is Here!

Hummingbird, the new work of ecotheatre by Elaine Ávila is flitting to a bookstore near you! When forced to choose a topic for a mandatory high school project, Alex sarcastically says “hummingbirds” because one is hovering outside the window. Alex has no idea that this offhand choice will lead them to uncover hidden family histories in a mysterious journal from the 1860s, find an essential role in a community nest-finding network, open up to a vibrant ecosystem, and learn how a hummingbird disrupted a major pipeline project.

An excerpt from Hummingbird:

“SUSAN
This is the Coast Salish Watch House. They asked us to use our
settler privilege to be in solidarity today.

ALEX
What does that mean?

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 1
Indigenous people get more mistreated when settlers aren’t here –
more arrests, more beatings.

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 2
If we are here, the hope is that the mistreatment will be less.

ALEX swallows hard.

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 1
You don’t have to be here if you’re scared. It’s nothing to be
ashamed of.

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 2
You can totally contribute in other ways.

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 1
So please, no pressure.

ALEX
(deciding) No. I want to stay. What are we doing, exactly?

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 1
We’ve found one nest. It stopped the pipeline for breeding season.
If we find more, we can stop it for longer.

ALEX
So if I find another nest, it will help stop the pipeline?

NEST FINDING NETWORK MEMBER 1
Exactly.”

Order your copy of Hummingbird today.

news | Thursday May 22, 2025

Gaman – Perseverance Wins a Canada-Japan Literary Award!

We are over the moon that Gaman – Perseverance: Japanese Canadians’ Journey to Justice by author and activist Art Miki has won a Canada-Japan Literary Award! This revealing memoir details the long, arduous journey towards resolution for the historic injustice that deprived Japanese Canadians of their basic human rights during and after World War II. In Gaman – Perseverance, Miki vividly recollects his past experiences and family history, revealing the beliefs and attitudes that shaped his life’s journey as a youth in British Columbia, an educator in Manitoba, and a community leader across Canada. Congratulations to the brilliant Art Miki for this wonderful accomplishment!

Discover the winners of the 2025 Canada-Japan Literary Awards here.