news | Wednesday April 22, 2026

Earth Day Reading List

April 22 is Earth Day, a day to take action for the environment and to consider the welfare of the planet and our role in it. If you’re looking to engage with new environmental and ecological perspectives, or motivation to kickstart your next wave of activism, or if you want to connect with thinkers who care about the planet, water, the forests, the rivers, land stewardship, combatting extractive practices, and the more-than-human world as much as you do, here are a handful of titles we think you’ll love.

1. Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard

This wonderful new poetry collection from Chilliwack’s inaugural Poet Laureate Taryn Hubbard reflects with candour and wit on the precarity we share with the nonhuman world. Get your copy of Beautiful Unknown Future here.

2. sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner

In sometimes, forest, the brand new book of poetry by Vancouver Poet Laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner, our speaker returns each day to the same forest where she marks the changes around her, and the changes within her, too. Pick up a copy here.

3. Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson

The latest collection from award-winning author Cecily Nicholson traces the path of the crows who dot across the sky of the lower mainland twice daily. Crowd Source will have you connecting with corvids as you never have before. Secure your copy here.

4. Feast by Guillermo Verdecchia

Magic-realist play Feast by Guillermo Verdecchia follows a comfortable North American family unraveling in the shadow of compounding global crises. A wildly original critique of extractive practices and appetites, Feast takes on take the uncertainties and anxieties of the early twenty-first century. Order your copy here.

5. Lha yudit’ih We Always Find A Way: Bringing the Tŝilhqot’in Title Case Home by Lorraine Weir with Chief Roger William

Winner of a 2026 Jeanne Clarke Local History Award Lha yudit’ih We Always Find A Way is a community oral history of Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia, the first case in Canada to result in a declaration of Aboriginal Rights and Title to a specific piece of land. Told from the perspective of the Plaintiff, Chief Roger William, joined by fifty Xeni Gwet’ins, Tŝilhqot’ins, and allies, this book encompasses ancient stories of creation, modern stories of genocide through smallpox and residential school, and stories of resistance including the Tŝilhqot’in War, direct actions against logging and mining, and the twenty-five-year battle in Canadian courts to win recognition of what Tŝilhqot’ins never gave up and have always known. Get your copy here.

6. wet by Leanne Dunic

Winner of the 2025 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize wet is set in Singapore during a time of drought and wildfires. In photographs and language shot through with empathy and desire, wet unravels complexities of social stratification, sexual privation, and environmental catastrophe. Snag a copy of your own here.

7. Future Works by Jeff Derksen

Future Works is a funny, angry, and moving book about human and more-than-human labour, cities and trees, extractive economies, and the possibilities of decolonizing temporalities and building a shared futurity. Pick up a copy here.

8. A History of the Theories of Rain by Stephen Collis

Finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry A History of the Theories of Rain explores the strange effect our current sense of impending doom has on our relation to time, approaching the unfolding climate catastrophe through its dissolution of the categories of “man-made” and “natural.” Delve into it here.

9. Some People Fall in the Lodge and Then Eat Berries All Winter by annie ross

Poetry and art collection Some People Fall in the Lodge and Then Eat Berries All Winter is a gorgeous book that explores extinctions, species interdependence, environmental justice, soul loss in modernity, the natural and Supernatural worlds, and animal rights and power, always keeping peace and love for Mother Earth in view. Order your copy here.

10. TENDER by Laiwan

TENDER is a multidisciplinary book equally visual and textual that spans thirty years of curious inquiry into our shared human–animal condition. Laiwan traverses diverse terrains – the body, land, language – which are rooted in her courageous and uncompromising history of activism and in experiences of building community across and beyond difference. Get your copy here.

11. Hummingbird by Elaine Ávila

New play Hummingbird follows once-apathetic high school student Alex as they find an essential role in a community nest finding network, uncover family secrets, and learn how a hummingbird disrupted a major pipeline project. Pick up your copy here.

12. Conversations with the Kagawong River by sophie anne edwards

Multidisciplinary work Conversations with the Kagawong River spends time with and co-creates with an ecosystem of Mnidoo Mnising (Manitoulin Island), the Gaagigewang Ziibi (Kagawong River). edwards invites the participation of various collaborators – woodpeckers, otters, currents, ice, grasses. The resulting poems, supported by local Elders, language speakers, and historians, make visible the colonial, environmental, and social processes that construct an ecosystem and (settler) relationships to it. Secure your copy here.

Happy Earth Day from all of us at Talonbooks.