Posted: Tuesday September 18, 2018

Talonbooks Fall Poetry Launch in Vancouver

Talonbooks’ Fall Poetry Launch will feature readings by Fred Wah and Rita Wong (from beholden), Wanda John-Kehewin (from Seven Sacred Truths), Ted Byrne (from Duets), Tiziana La Melia (from The Eyelash and the Monochrome), Stephen Collis (from Almost Islands), and Christine Stewart (from Treaty 6 Deixis).

Tuesday, November 13
Doors at 7:30 p.m., readings at 8 p.m.
Pyatt Hall
843 Seymour Street
Vancouver, BC V6B 3L4

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Posted: Thursday September 6, 2018

Reprints Rolling In!

Drew Hayden Taylor’s Dead White Writer on the Floor and John MacLachlan Gray and Eric Peterson’s Billy Bishop Goes to War are hot off the presses, just in time for the school year. Dead White Writer on the Floor is now in its fourth printing, and Billy Bishop in its second edition, second printing.

Pick up your copies of Dead White Writer on the Floor and Billy Bishop Goes to War today!

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Posted: Wednesday September 5, 2018

The first of our Fall list: Almost Islands and Around Her

The crisp air of fall is upon us here in Vancouver – and we’re very excited to announce that the first of our Fall books have arrived in house!

Almost Islands is a powerful memoir of Stephen Collis’s friendship with legendary Canadian poet, broadcaster, and painter Phyllis Webb – now in her nineties and long enveloped in silence. In a series of extended poetic, political, and philosophical digressions, the book meditates on literary ambition and failure, poetry and politics, choice and chance, location, colonization, and climate change – the struggle that is writing, and the end of writing.

Around Her, written by Sophie Bienvenu and translated by Rhonda Mullins, filters twenty years in the lives of Florence Gaudreault and her estranged son, Adrien, through the prism of twenty characters who have crossed their paths. Replete with emotional twists and turns, the book probes the failures and hopes of whole segements of society – the young, the old, families, couples, lonely souls – and reveals the proximity of past traumas, showing the bonds that unite us. Michel Tremblay calls it “absolutely wonderful.”

Order your copies of Almost Islands and Around Her today!

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Posted: Monday August 20, 2018

M.A.C. Farrant – three stories at Geist

The Great Happiness, the third book in M.A.C. Farrant’s trilogy of miniatures is coming out next Spring with Talon. The second book in the trilogy, The Days, was a finalist for the 2017 ReLit Award for Poetry and the 2017 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize; the first, The World Afloat, won the 2014 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize. Farrant’s miniatures have been called “confidently left-field” and “as wild as colourful birthday helium balloons released into a hurricane.” The Great Happiness is a book you’re not going to want to miss.

Whet your appetite for The Great Happiness by moseying over to Geist’s website to read three miniatures from the collection – “Positive Impact,” “The Weather Channel,” and “Waiting Room.”

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Posted: Tuesday August 14, 2018

The Eyelash and the Monochrome – now IRL and in full colour!

The Eyelash and the Monochrome by Tiziana La Melia arrived in-house today!

Combining visuals and text, this collection of poems travels through territories as varied as daily and domestic activities; social relationships; literature, cinema, and art; as well as dreams, as it moves between the page and the exhibition.

The Eyelash and the Monochrome and Other Poems asks: what happens when material becomes thought and thought becomes object? At once a book of poetry and an artist’s book, it gathers together poems, performance scripts, and parallel texts, illustrating the hybrid nature of these texts and trespassing upon the boundaries of genre. It is a book about enmeshment, about the potentiality of interplay. It is a conversation. It is not linear, but it interrogates and explores the line: lines of text, lines of dialogue, socio-economic lines drawn or crossed, lines that were the trails of snails … Everything is a signifier, meaning is elastic, and references are multifaceted. La Melia’s multivalent and generative practice lives in process; it thinks through materials (paint, objects, non-human forms) with violent sentimentality, excessive desire, naiveté, narrative construction, and an awareness of the body and memory.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Tuesday July 17, 2018

Talonbooks authors win Jessie Awards

The 36th annual Jessie Awards took place last night, and we are excited to announce that four Talonbooks authors have won awards!

Tetsuro Shigematsu, alongside Jamie Nesbitt and Susan Miyagishima, won Outstanding technical design and execution for the purpose of historical storytelling for 1 Hour Photo, which is coming out with Talon this fall.

Niall McNeil and Marcus Youssef, alongside several other castmates, won Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble – Large Theatre for King Arthur’s Night, which is out now with Talon.

Last but not least, Jovanni Sy received the nod for Outstanding Original Script for Nine Dragons, also out now with Talon.

Congratulations to all the winners and nominees!

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Posted: Friday June 22, 2018

Pride Month Reading!

Happy Pride Month! Talonbooks’ catalogue has a plethora of great LGBTQ2S+ books to choose from.

Today, we’d like to highlight three of our reader favourite titles: recently published, Joshua Whitehead’s full-metal indigiqueer, and from our backlist, Jane Rule’s landmark novel Desert of the Heart and Michel Marc Bouchard’s (trans. Linda Gaboriau) moving play Tom at the Farm.

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Posted: Thursday June 21, 2018

Happy National Indigenous Peoples Day!

Today is the summer solstice, and it’s also the day we celebrate Indigenous Peoples! At Talonbooks, the cultural production of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Peoples – writing by, for, and about Indigenous Peoples – is a central part of what we do every day of the year.

We have many recent and forthcoming titles we’d like to share with you today. Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Race and Reconciliation, full-metal indigiqueer, Safety Sand, and Talker’s Town and The Girl Who Swam Forever, out recently, and Sir John A: Acts of a Gentrified Ojibway Rebellion., Seven Sacred Truths, From Oral to Written: A Celebration of Indigenous Literature in Canada, 1980–2010 (second printing!), and Thanks for Giving, out soon, include Indigenous authors, and beholden and Treaty 6 Deixis, both forthcoming this fall, centre themes of how non-Indigenous people in Canada engage with Indigenous Peoples, our treaties, and the land on which we all live.

Last but not least, Talonbooks will soon be rolling out the 2018 edition of our Indigenous catalogue!

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Posted: Friday June 8, 2018

Find Finding Mr. Wong on a shelf near you!

Finding Mr. Wong by Susan Crean is hot off the presses!

Finding Mr. Wong chronicles the author’s effort to piece together the life of the man she knew as Mr. Wong, cook and housekeeper to her Irish Canadian family for two generations. A Chinese Head Tax payer hired by Crean’s grandfather in Toronto in 1928, Wong Dong Wong remained on the job following Gordon Crean’s death in 1947. Crean’s homage weaves the various strands of her memories of and discoveries about Mr. Wong during the last twenty-five years of his life; she travels the streets and histories of Chinatowns in Vancouver and Toronto, Canada, and twice she visits Guangdong, China, where she locates Wong Dong Wong’s home village, finds descendants of his father’s brother, and learns the beginning of his story: orphaned as a newborn, then brought to Canada by his uncle, Wong YeeWoen.

Finding Mr. Wong is an important contribution to a growing body of writings that illuminate the lives of people silenced or otherwise negated by myopic history.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Friday June 8, 2018

New Plays in Town: Talker’s Town and The Girl Who Swam Forever

Talker’s Town and The Girl Who Swam Forever, by Marie Clements and Nelson Gray, has arrived!

The two one-act plays in Talker’s Town and The Girl Who Swam Forever are set in a small B.C. mill town in the 1960s. They portray identical characters and action from entirely different gender and cultural perspectives. In many ways, the two separate works are inter-related coming-of-age stories, with transformation as a key theme.

The central action in both plays involves an Aboriginal girl, Roberta Bob, who escapes from a residential school and hides out by the river. In Nelson Gray’s Talker’s Town, the story is conveyed by a teenage non-Indigenous boy whose friend has had a relationship with the girl and whose attempts to hush up the affair lead to disastrous consequences. In Marie Clements’s The Girl Who Swam Forever, the action unfolds from the perspective of the girl, who – to claim her past and secure her future – must undergo a shape-shifting transformation and meet her grandmother’s ancestral spirit in the form of a hundred-year-old sturgeon.

Employing a single setting and working with the same set of characters, the playwrights have created two radically different fictional worlds, one Aboriginal and one non-Aboriginal. Published together, the plays form a fascinating diptych that reveals rifts between Indigenous and colonial/settler histories and provides a vehicle for cultural exchange.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Thursday June 7, 2018

David McFadden (1940–2018)

It is with great sadness that we report the death of David McFadden, a well-renowned and beloved Canadian poet who published over three dozen volumes of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. David passed away on Wednesday, June 6, aged 77. We offer condolences to his family and his many friends and admirers.

David was deeply involved with publishers and magazines across Canada during his decades-long career. He published four books with Talonbooks between 1987 and 2002, including Five Star Planet, Great Lakes Suite, There’ll Be Another, and Gypsy Guitar. David was a three-time Governor General’s Award nominee: Gypsy Guitar received a 1988 nomination, alongside The Art of Darkness (McClelland & Stewart) in 1984, and Be Calm, Honey (Mansfield Press) in 2009. David won the Griffin Prize for Poetry for What’s the Score? (Mansfield Press) in 2013 and was shortlisted in 2008 for Why Are You So Sad? (Insomniac Press).

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Posted: Thursday June 7, 2018

King Arthur’s Night and Peter Panties has arrived!

King Arthur’s Night and Peter Panties, a two-play book by Marcus Youssef and Niall McNiel, has arrived!

King Arthur’s Night is a musical extravaganza in which King Arthur banters with Merlin and romances Guinevere. An upside-down world … a betrayed love … an unwanted child … a revolt by the subjugated masses … a kingdom come undone … It leaves one pondering mysteries both absurd (how did the Round Table get to Harrison Hot Springs, British Columbia?) and profound (what is the link between the soul and
intelligence?).

Peter Panties is a radical re-imagining of the Peter Pan story in which Peter Pan and Captain Hook (or is he Macbeth?) drink lattes, the Lost Boys hang with detectives from CSI, and Tinkerbell and Wendy duke it out at Skull Rock. Peter is conflicted about growing up – “Fuck that! No mustache!” – but he also desperately wants to have sex with Wendy and make a baby. The situation is funny, but aching; sexual exclusion and the denial of full adulthood are no laughing matters for people whose lives include Down syndrome.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Tuesday May 8, 2018

Prison Industrial Complex Explodes wins the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize!

A heartfelt congratulations to Mercedes Eng, whose Prison Industrial Complex Explodes received the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize on Friday, May 4. The impetus for Prison Industrial Complex Explodes was the discovery of a cache of Eng’s father’s prison correspondence: letters from the federal government stating their intention to deport him because of his criminal record; letters from prison justice advocate Michael Jackson advising her father on deportation; letters from the RCMP regarding the theft of her father’s property, a gold necklace, while in transport to prison; letters from family members and friends; letters from Eng and her brother. rob mclennan calls Eng’s book “incredibly powerful and intimate” and we tend to agree.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Monday April 23, 2018

Check it out: Checking In!

Adeena Karasick’s latest collection of poems is hot off the press!

Checking In comprises a long poem and a series of other post-conceptual pieces – concrete poems, homolinguistic translations, Yiddish aphorisms – that offer exuberant commentary on the timelessness of digital information and our ravenous appetite for data and connection. Karasick’s words luxuriate in the materiality of language and the production of meaning. She checks in with pop culture, media studies, semiotics, critical theory, feminist theory, and contemporary Canadian and American literature. The lover of language play, the poetry reader, and the academic alike will drink in this poet-performer’s concoctions; as ever, they’re fun, smart, and topical.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Wednesday April 18, 2018

Byrne’s Duets grace us during Poetry Month

National Poetry Month continues, and the poetry continues to arrive! Vancouver poet Edward (Ted) Byrne’s latest collection is now available. Order your copy today!

Duets consists of interpretative translations of sonnets by Louise Labé, who lived and wrote in sixteenth-century Lyon, and those by thirteenth-century Florentine Guido Cavalcanti. The reader will find herein ninety poems, equally “translations” of Labé and Cavalcanti and “versions” authored by Byrne. Each sonnet is made up of nine lines, each line, in turn, made up of nine syllables. The work’s main body is written in the manner of the serial poem, a practice whereby the composing mind passes from room to room – and from stanza to stanza – in a kind of trance, forgetting and remembering.

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Posted: Monday April 16, 2018

Gracie has arrived!

Joan MacLeod’s latest play is hot off the press!

Gracie is a dramatic monologue telling the story of a girl raised in a fundamentalist community that transports child brides between polygamist communities in both Canada and the United States. Gracie loves her family, and her strong faith is a source of comfort to her. Although the play examines practices that are abhorrent, it does so without judgement (as critics have noted). The play is a work of fiction but is inspired by the history of polygamist communities in both Canada and the U.S. – and its timeliness is uncanny; two days after the play premiered (in January 2017), three persons from Canada’s largest polygamist community went to trial for transporting child brides. Gracie is window into a complex and secretive world. While it takes place in a sheltered community, it also resonates with issues at the fore right now: fundamentalism, basic human and religious rights.

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Tuesday April 10, 2018

Same Diff is a finalist for the Griffin!

We are thrilled to announce that Same Diff, the latest collection of poetry by Donato Mancini, is a finalist for the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize!

Mancini is in stellar company with the other two Canadian nominees: Billy-Ray Belcourt, author of This Wound is a World (Frontenac House), and Aisha Sasha John, author of I have to live (McClelland & Stewart). Read more about each title and about the international nominees on the official shortlist.

The winners – one Canadian and one international – will be announced on June 7.

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Posted: Tuesday April 10, 2018

Four Talon titles nominated for ReLit Awards!

We are very excited to announce that four Talon titles have been nominated for the ReLit Awards for books published in the year 2017! One novel and three collections of poetry have been nominated:

• Running on Fumes by Christian Guay-Poliquin
• The Days by M.A.C. Farrant
• Pound @ Guantánamo by Clint Burnham
• Injun by Jordan Abel

Find the full 2017 “long shortlists” here.

The ReLit Awards are given to books in three categories – novels, short fiction, and poetry – that have been written by Canadian authors while living in Canada and have been published by an independent Canadian press. Winners receive unique and custom-made rings.

Congratulations to all the nominated authors and their wonderful books! We look forward to finding out which books will be the winners!

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Posted: Wednesday April 4, 2018

Give another cheer for Indigiqueer!

We heartily congratulate Joshua Whitehead, whose collection of poetry, full-metal indigiqueer, has just been short-listed for the 2018 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry in the Alberta Literary Awards!

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Posted: Monday April 2, 2018

“This play is dangerously cool.”

1920s Hong Kong. A killer on the loose. Chinese detective Tommy Lam, the city’s most brilliant sleuth, is called in to investigate. Battling racism and his own reputation, Tommy follows clues to the glamorous Nine Dragons nightclub and into the haze of the opium trade … Nine Dragons is a hard-boiled mystery with a twist: a cross-cultural thriller and “a smart exploration of colonialism, racism, assimilation, and the clash of cultures” (Joff Schmidt, CBC). In the words of Donna-Michelle St. Bernard (artistic director at New Harlem Productions), “This play is dangerously cool.”

Jovanni Sy’s new play has arrived! And it’s right on time: the book is available in print just as the play is being mounted at Richmond’s Gateway Theatre from April 12 through 21. Books will be available for sale at the theatre; if you’re planning to attend the play, why not pick up a copy during intermission? Or, if you won’t be at the theatre, order your copy from Talon.

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Posted: Wednesday March 28, 2018

Dead by lightning? We have the cure!

Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s 1996 novel The Cure for Death by Lightning was nominated for the Giller Prize, was awarded the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and became a bestseller in Canada and Great Britain. A charming and somewhat disturbing coming-of-age story, it has become a perennial Canadian favourite.

And now it’s a play, too! Adapted for the stage by Daryl Cloran, The Cure for Death by Lightning first premiered in Kamloops, British Columbia, at the Western Canadian Theatre in the spring of 2017. Cloran’s adaptation – hailed by Anderson-Dargatz herself as a “magical vision … brought vividly to life in a wholly new form” – is now available in print. Order your copy today!

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Posted: Monday March 26, 2018

Montreal Gothic in the house

Our latest arrival is The Green Chamber, a Montreal Gothic novel by the brilliant Martine Desjardins and translated by Fred A. Reed and David Homel. Luxe, eerie, and wryly amusing, The Green Chamber is not to be missed; in the words of author M.A.C. Farrant, “Desjardins has created a comic novel worthy of the word ‘great’”!

Set between 1913 and 1963 in one of Montreal’s upper-middle-class, suburban neighbourhoods, Martine Desjardins’s The Green Chamber is a riveting, fast-paced, highly atmospheric novel that chronicles the decline of a wealthy French-Canadian family over the course of three generations. Desjardins’s humorous gothic saga – with its gallery of eccentric characters who play the races in secret and guzzle vanilla extract – reveals and revels in the fate of family fortunes: the first generation makes the money, the second generation lives on the interest, and the third blows it …

Order your copy today!

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Posted: Thursday March 22, 2018

[Updated] Job opportunity: Talonbooks needs a Production Editor

[UPDATE: Thank you to all applicants! As of the end of March, the position has now been filled.]

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Do you have book production experience, communications skills, and a passion for avant-garde Canadian literature? If so, we need you! Talonbooks seeks a Production Editor for a full-time, one-year contract position between April 2018 and April 2019 to cover a maternity leave.

As Production Editor, you’ll work closely with Talon’s editors and designer to design and typeset our Fall 2018 and Spring 2019 titles. You’ll be responsible for shepherding frontlist and backlist titles (reprints) through production to press. You’ll also work with our ebook publisher to produce and distribute ebooks.

Download this job posting as a PDF.

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Posted: Monday March 19, 2018

Kuei, My Friend has arrived!

Kuei, My Friend: A Conversation on Racism and Reconciliation has arrived!

This is an engaging book of letters between Innu poet Natasha Kanapé Fontaine and Québécois-American novelist Deni Ellis Béchard. A book for everyone, but with particular relevance to high-school-age readers, Kuei, My Friend is accompanied by a chronology of events, a glossary of relevant terms in the Innu-aimun language, and a detailed teacher’s guide that includes topics of discussion, questions, and suggested reflections for examination in a classroom setting.

Order your copy of Kuei, My Friend today!

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Posted: Thursday March 15, 2018

[Updated] Give a cheer for Indigiqueer!

Congratulations to Joshua Whitehead, whose collection of poetry, full-metal indigiqueer, has just been short-listed for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry! The awards ceremony will be held on June 4 at the NYU Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. Read the full list of this year’s nominees here.

UPDATE: The author has withdrawn his book from consideration for this award. Read his open letter about why.

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