news | Thursday March 7, 2024

It's International Women's Day!

March 8 is International Women’s Day, and to celebrate in 2024, we want to highlight some of the incredible women authors we have had the privilege of working lately with who set the literary landscape ablaze. Below are just a handful of recommendations for International Women’s Day.

1. A Family of Dreamers by Samantha Nock

In this debut collection, Samantha Nock weaves together threads of fat liberation, desirability politics, and heartbreak while working through her existence as a young Indigenous woman coming of age in the city. A Family of Dreamers is a love song to northern cuzzins, dive bars, and growing up.

2. No More Harveys by Chantal Bilodeau

No More Harveys is the third play of the Arctic Cycle, a series of eight plays that looks at the social and environmental impacts of the climate crisis on the eight Arctic states. In No More Harveys, our protagonist flees her abusive husband and heads for Alaska to reunite with friends – and instead encounters the wonder of whales. This play presents a world dominated by colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy where the problems that plague our communities, be we women or whales, share the same gnarled roots.

3. Jigsaw by M.A.C. Farrant

By turns whimsical, insightful, meditative, funny, and factual, the “pieces” of Jigsaw touch on themes readers of the celebrated humorist and fiction writer M.A C. Farrant have encountered before: existence, love, joy, science, history, aging, roads, and Buddhism – and our seemingly universal love of jigsaw puzzles.

4. Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal and translated by Jessica Moore

In Canoes seven stories orbit a central novella, creating a collection that resonates with the vibrations and frequencies of women’s voices. Daughters, friends, sisters, young and old, talkative or daydreaming – in this moving and poetic collection, Maylis de Kerangal casts light on them all, exploring human entwinement and the precarious balance between life and death.

5. Song & Dread by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek

Rife with the paradoxical forces of boredom and intensity, the early days of COVID-19 passed under an inescapable pall. The poems of Song & Dread seek quietude, order, refuge, and space within that shroud. They remind us of community, connectedness, and what is inherently shared.

6 The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin & Kitimat by Elaine Ávila

Discover how Canada got the eight-hour workday! Visit the first town to vote on Big Oil! The Ballad of Ginger Goodwin recreates the events surrounding the mysterious death of Albert “Ginger” Goodwin, who led a strike at a Canadian zinc smelter in Trail, BC, that brought the WW I British war machine to a halt. In Kitimat, residents of an industry town in the glorious BC wilderness struggle to decide between economic prosperity and environmental protection when they must vote yes or no to a proposed oil pipeline.

7. Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead: ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣ ᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤ ᓂᑭᐦᒋ ᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân by Wanda John-Kehewin

In Spells, Wishes, and the Talking Dead: ᒪᒪᐦᑖᐃᐧᓯᐃᐧᐣ ᐸᑯᓭᔨᒧᐤ ᓂᑭᐦᒋ ᐋᓂᐢᑯᑖᐹᐣ mamahtâwisiwin, pakosêyimow, nikihci-âniskotâpân, John-Kehewin plays with form, space, and language, demonstrating which magics cannot be suppressed. Here is an unflinching look at colonialism’s sickening trail: its ongoingdetriment to the safety and mental health of Indigenous people, its theft of language, and its intergenerational harms. But here also is the unrelenting power of resistance, and the great strength in truth. Wanda John-Kehewin “stands in her truth” so that other survivors may stand in theirs.

8. The Boys’ Club by Martine Delvaux and translated by Katia Grubisic

Forthcoming in spring 2024, The Boys’ Club examines the history of gentlemen’s clubs and male fraternity in this devastating wide-reaching study of patriarchy. Delvaux lays bare the brazen misogyny of boys’ clubs across many fields, including media, politics, technology, law enforcement, architecture, and the military. Examining popular media produced by men about men, The Boys’ Club exposes a culture of consumption which profits off female experiences while disregarding female voices.

Happy International Women’s Day!