news | Tuesday August 18, 2026

Talonbooks Nominated for Best of Vancouver 2026

Thank you so much for nominating Talonbooks for The Georgia Straight’s Best of Vancouver Award for Best Book Publisher! We’re so honoured you chose us and we’re happy to be in such wonderful company.

If you’d like to vote for us, voting is open until August 23 on The Georgia Straight’s website. Cast your vote here.

Thank you, Talonites!

news | Wednesday August 19, 2026

rob mclennan on Beautiful Unknown Future

rob mclennan reviews Beautiful Unknown Future by Chilliwack’s inaugural Poet Laureate, Taryn Hubbard! See mclennan’s thoughts on this witty book of poetry here.

news | Wednesday August 12, 2026

Québec Book Day 2026

August 12 is Québec Book Day! The literary scene in Québec is world class and Talonbooks has the joy of publishing so many incredible authors, poets, playwrights, and thinkers based throughout the province. Here are some recent and forthcoming books by Québec-based authors that we think you’ll love:

1. Sailors Can’t Swim by Dominique Scali translated by Jessica Moore

The winner of the 2023 Prix des libraires du Québec, the 2023 Prix Jacques-Brossard de la science-fiction et du fantastique, and the 2023 French Prix Imaginales will soon be available in English! The island of Ys in the Atlantic ocean is a place of great stratification. The rich live safely behind high, city walls while on the shores, the poor must rebuild again and again after every great tide. Danaé Poussin, an orphan born with the rare and suspect ability to swim, flows between shore, city, and sea, steering through the rocky possibilities for women in the calm before revolution. Pre-order your copy here.

2. A Great Consolation by Michel Tremblay translated by Linda Gaboriau

Books 8 and 9 of the award-winning Desrosiers Diaspora series place us in Montréal in 1935 and 1941, following the Desrosiers family through twists, turns, triumphs, and tragedies. Order your copy here.

3. SUBTEXT by Nicole Raziya Fong

This genre-defying book of poetry sifts through dreams, refracting the language of identity formation. It collages the echoes of diasporic and colonial histories through poetry, drama, autobiography, and archival uncovering. Order your copy here.

4. The Tao of the World by Jovanni Sy

Premiering right now at Stratford Festival, his bawdy play asks what it means for things to return to normal. Recently liberated from the constraints of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singapore’s wealthy elite – armed with taste, bon mots, and the invisible labour of the working class – scheme, woo, connive, and behave badly. Pick up your copy here.

5. Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore

This award-winning, dual-language poetry collection presents gorgeous poems side by side in Innu-aimun and English. With empathy and deep observation, these poems travel between the clamour of Montréal and the nomadic ways of Bacon’s Ancestors in Nitassinan. Get your copy here.

6. Convivialities: Dialogues on Poetics by Michael Nardone

How are the great arts practitioners of our time thinking about the world? About creating? Through conversations with luminaries and recipients of awards such as the Pulitzer Prize, the Venice Biennale’s Silver Lion, the PEN American Open Book Award, the MacArthur Fellowship, and more, Michael Nardone investigates. Order your copy here.

Happy Québec Book Day!

news | Tuesday August 11, 2026

The Vancouver Sun on bill bissett: Over 40 Years of Art

The Vancouver Sun names bill bissett: Over 40 Years of Art at the Wil Aballe Gallery one of the top five must-see art events in Vancouver. This exhibit highlights the visual art of the multi-talented bill bissett, author of th book uv lost passwords 1, its th sailors life / still in treetment, and more.

The article quotes Wil Aballe, who says “Bill Bissett is one of the most significant and under-recognized figures in Vancouver’s conceptual art history, … The show is an opportunity to place Bill’s visual work in the context it deserves, alongside the city’s broader lineage of conceptualism … It’s also part of a longer-term commitment of my gallery to bridge Vancouver’s historically significant artists with the emerging Canadian scene we represent today.”

bill bissett: Over 40 Years of Art is on at the Wil Aballe Gallery until September 5. See more details here.

To learn more about some of the exciting art events in the city of Vancouver this August, read The Vancouver Sun’s full article here.

news | Monday August 10, 2026

An Article on George Bowering

Silas Kaufman

Cecily Ross pens a piece about George Bowering in The Literary Review of Canada, covering his farewell collection Pearl, Bowering’s profound legacy, and more. Ross says of Pearl, “Lyric poems reflect Bowering’s sly humour and love of everyday … detail.” Read the article here.

news | Sunday August 9, 2026

Jónína Kirton on Wax Poetic

Jónína Kirton, author of Save Your Prayers – Send Money, An Honest Woman, and more, is a guest on the radio show Wax Poetic! Kirton talks about the knowledge of the body, what it means to care for another being (be that plant or human), and how love changes with age. Hear Kirton read her poems and listen to the interview here.

news | Thursday August 6, 2026

A Review of SUBTEXT

rob mclennan wrote a review of SUBTEXT, the new book of poetry by Nicole Raziya Fong. mclennan refers to it as “cinematic” and “compelling.” SUBTEXT takes 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. Read the full review here.

news | Wednesday August 5, 2026

Women in Translation Month 2026

August is Women in Translation Month! It’s refreshing to see translated works (and the highly skilled women in the field) get more shine in recent years. The work of translation is the work of connection, it’s essential. To mark the occasion, Talonbooks is highlighting three works, recent and forthcoming, translated with remarkable finesse that we’d like to celebrate.

1. Uiesh / Somewhere by Joséphine Bacon, translated by Jessica Moore, finalist for the 2026 Pat Lowther Memroial Award and winner of the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation! Uiesh / Somewhere is a dual-language book of poems that 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. Pick up a copy here

2. Dear Chekhov by Michel Tremblay, translated by Linda Gaboriau is forthcoming this October! Familial bonds and tensions are on glorious display over a Thanksgiving dinner in this new play by Michel Tremblay in which he re-examines an old, unfinished script that pays tribute to the great Anton Chekhov. Pre-order a copy here.

3. Sailors Can’t Swim by Dominique Scali, translated by Jessica Moore arrives back from the printer this September! Part oceanic fairy tale, part history of an alternate eighteenth century, the winner of the 2023 Prix des libraires du Québec, Prix Jacques-Brossard de la science-fiction et du fantastique, and French prix imaginales will soon be available in English. Get your copy here.

We wish you a wonderful month of reading!

news | Tuesday August 4, 2026

cop city swagger on Warland Award Shortlist

We’re thrilled to see cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng on the shortlist for the 2025 Warland Award! The Warland award is administered annually to an exceptional hybrid-genre book published in Canada.⁠
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cop city swagger combines poetry with documentary practices to examine whose safety really matters in the most expensive city in the nation. ⁠
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Congratulations to all of the shortlisted authors! Learn more here.

news | Friday July 24, 2026

Recording of George Bowering Interviewing Daphne Marlatt

The University of British Columbia Okanagan published a recording of George Bowering (Pearl, Taking Measures, and more) interviewing Daphne Marlatt (Intertidal, Then Now, and more)! Tune in here to listen to these two icons of Canadian literature converse.

news | Wednesday July 22, 2026

An Interview with Jenn Ashton in The Vancouver Guardian

Check out this interview in The Vancouver Guardian with Jenn Ashton, a finalist for the 2026 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editor’s Society’s Book Awards for BC Authors! Here she shares some of her art, what it’s like to have her new book based on her teenage journals Growing My Way Home in the world, and more. To learn more about this multi-talented creative, click here.

news | Tuesday July 21, 2026

Growing My Way Home a Finalist for Book Award for BC Authors!

Growing My Way Home by Jenn Ashton is a finalist for the 2026 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society’s fourth annual Book Awards for BC Authors in the Indigenous Voices category! A huge congratulations to Jenn! Growing My Way Home is a powerful story of struggle, perseverance, and reconnection based on Ashton’s teenage diaries. Check out all of this year’s finalists here.

news | Monday July 20, 2026

Jónína Kirton and bill bissett Featured

Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton and th book uv lost passwords 1 by bill bissett are highlighted in Read Local BC’s article about books to check out for Disability Pride Month. Kirton’s new collection takes on the wellness industry and bissett’s new novel of poems takes readers to the breath of the poem and beyond. Get all of Read Local BC’s recommendations here.

news | Sunday July 19, 2026

Lha yudit'ih We Always Find a Way in Canadian Literature

Margery Fee reviews Lha yudit’ih We Always Find A Way byLorraine Weir with Chief Roger William in Canadian Literature, stating that “Scholars will be happy with the book’s admirable academic apparatus … The book belongs to a burgeoning number that provide an overview of the worldview and histories of particular nations from their perspectives, often deriving from the extensive in-house research required by court cases. This one should find a home on the bookshelves of many non-specialist readers.” To read the full review, order issue 264 of Canadian Literature.

news | Saturday July 18, 2026

An Interview with Jenn Ashton on Windspeaker.com

Shari Narine interviews Jenn Ashton, author of Growing My Way Home for Windspeaker.com. The pair discuss the merits of the designation of autofiction, and coming home to oneself.

From the article: “Building a greenhouse wasn’t metaphorical. Ashton did build an actual greenhouse.

Ashton tried to grow her plants in the greenhouse before the planting season and ran into numerous problems. In the end, she gradually moved the plants outdoors and put them in the ground.

‘When I look back at how my life was, I can see all of the things that were trying to get me back to where I was supposed to be. I think I was trying to have dominion over this place, and it was going to be my redo and I was going to do it right. And when I look at it now, I think, “Oh, that is such a colonized way of thinking that I was lord over these plants and everything and making this perfect place for them.” I was actually shutting out nature in that greenhouse,’ she said.”

Read the full piece here.

news | Friday July 17, 2026

An Interview with ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn in Lakeland Today

Meredith Kerr interviews ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn following his win of the 2026 Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English for his incredible work of nonfiction ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another. In their conversation, quinn says, “‘I thought … maybe others will start thinking about how we can leave bits of the language for the future generations.’” Read the piece in Lakeland Today here.

news | Thursday July 16, 2026

Two Talon Authors on the 2025 Warland Award Longlist

Two Talonbooks authors are on the 2025 Warland Award Longlist judged this year by Phanuel Antwi! The Warland Award annually recognizes an outstanding hybrid-genre work published in Canada. We’re thrilled to share that cop city swagger by Mercedes Eng, which fuses documentary practices and poetry, and No Signal No Noise by A Jamali Rad which marries prose, poetry, and philosophy are on this incredible longlist. To see this year’s longlist and learn more about the commended books, click here.

news | Wednesday July 15, 2026

King Arthur's Night on the Knowledge Network

The genre-bending documentary King Arthur’s Night based on the play by Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef is available to stream now on the Knowledge Network! Enjoy it here.

news | Tuesday July 14, 2026

Jenn Ashton and ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn in The Tyee

The Tyee has put out a list of local books to pick up for great summer reading. We’re thrilled to see two new Talonbooks titles in the article. The Tyee recommends checking out Growing My Way Home, a work of autofiction by award-winning Sḵwx̱wú7mesh author Jenn Ashton. Based on Ashton’s teenage journals, in Growing My Way Home we follow our narrator through abuse, her time as a young drug dealer and a teen parent through to becoming an established artist.

The Tyee also suggests picking up ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok by ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn. The winner of the 2026 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction and the Indigenous Voices Award for Published Prose in English, ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok offers a look into ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ nêhiyaw ways of being and some of the language philosophy behindᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. These two books can’t be missed. Read the complete article in The Tyee here.

news | Sunday July 12, 2026

Mercedes Eng on Wax Poetic

The award-winning poet Mercedes Eng, author of Prison Industrial Complex Explodes, my yt mama, and more was a guest on the radio program Wax Poetic to talk about her most recent poetry book, the 2025 City of Vancouver Book Award–finalist cop city swagger. Eng shares her poetry, discusses what inspired her to instrumentalize the language of institutions, government bodies, and venture capitalists to take aim at structural violence(s), the transcendent medicine of women activists working in community, and more. Listen to the full interview here.

news | Thursday July 9, 2026

An Interview with Hajer Mirwali in White Wall Review

White Wall Review conducts a fun mini-interview with the award-winning poet Hajer Mirwali. Mirwali’s debut book of poetry Revolutions, which looks at shame, pleasure, and Muslim daughterhood, won the 2026 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. Find out when Mirwali first began to consider herself a writer, when writing comes most easily to her, facts she has recently learned, and more. Read the complete interview here.