Silver Sprocket, 2024
The gothic, queer fairytale we’ve all been yearning for is now manifested in Emily Carroll’s When I Arrived At The Castle. I devoured this graphic novel as hungrily and feverishly as the alluring vampiress wishes to drain the latest victim in her trap. The art is beautiful, the story provocatively dreamlike and haunting; it’s everything your macabre little heart will desire.
—Kennedy Cast, Milton
House of Anansi Press, 2024
I'm such a huge fan of Kayla Czaga's writing. This book is equally hilarious and gutting, conversational and taut, so seemingly effortless, but clearly not a hair out of place. How does she do it? I don't know, but prepare yourself!
—Paul Vermeersch, Toronto
Book*hug, 2023
This collection is worth reading for "Tenderloin" alone, a heartbreaker of a story about a mother's determination and quiet distress as she searches for her daughter on the streets of San Francisco. Whether the stories follow a widow travelling to Lily Dale, NY in hopes of connecting with her husband, or track the lives of a group of girls from their teen years into their often-disappointing adulthoods, these stories are beautiful, but with a shadow side. Filled with sharp, clear details, Places Like These sketches scenes that will remain with the reader long after the book is over.
—Anne Baldo, Windsor
Biblioasis, 2024
Spiraling gloriously at ferocious speed, Collins grabs at language from across the centuries. Reading this collection is being on a bullet train of sound and form. It's heart-pounding. Visually, one experiences it as a time traveler whose life is flashing before their eyes as they try to get it down on paper before it’s all over. It is a history of the world and a million-word dictionary raining down on the reader; read with dazzled caution.
—Rebecca Evans, Sault Ste. Marie
Brick, 2023
Bradley Peters’ debut collection of poems—inspired by his own experiences within the Canadian prison system—seeks the rigidity of an imposed and institutionalized form, but it also bristles at the imposition of that form onto the messiness of the human experience. These striking sonnets follow patterns they can’t seem to break, feed and fuel each other with a prisoner’s vocabulary, rage at the machine and cry for help, and seek meaning in the widening dialogical chasm between form and content. From the organization (in accordance with the deteriorating psychological effects of incarceration on inmates) to the brilliant, subtle design by Natalie Olsen (the fourteen bars on the cover; the squat, sanitary font), this book is a crucible where freedom and institutionalization wrestle it out. Compelling, anxious, violent, and straining towards what little light makes it through the cracks, this is poetry that does, terrifyingly, what it says.
—Owen Percy, Dundas
Stonehewer Books, 2024
In each of the dozen sparkling stories in Blue Runaways, BC writer Jann Everard introduces us to a woman at a turning point in her life: the depressed 20-something amputee, the restless middle-aged wife and mother, the grieving widow. Each woman is figuring out how to fill a hole in her heart. As one mother observes, there are always two choices: “Dig deeper—or reach for the hand that will pull you out.” Everard offers us a gentle hand of wisdom through her haunting prose.
—Sue Nador, Ottawa
Dundurn Press, 2023
Aley Waterman has a talent for putting her finger on big feelings and letting you squirm beneath them until it feels good. Her debut novel, Mudflowers, traces Sophie’s erotic and intellectual journey as she navigates grief, art, and being caught between people and places. The book slingshots between bohemian west-end Toronto and the highways and heartbreak of Sophie’s childhood in Corner Brook, Newfoundland. It is cheeky, touching, and ripe with passion. I could read this book ten times over and it would feel new every time.
—Jenna James, Conception Bay South
Douglas & McIntyre, 2022
Here’s a hot flash: Navigating the Messy Middle takes the temperature of women going through midlife in an honest, funny, encouraging way. Well-known for her bestselling The Mother of All parenting books, Ann Douglas gets to the heart of what most women can’t get out of their GPs about something that profoundly affects 50% of the population. Her deep dive tackles much more than just hot flashes and mood swings. Readers experience what great books do best: despite the solitary nature of reading, we feel part of a wider, supportive community, all navigating the same messy middle.
—Claire Ross Dunn, Toronto
Latitude 46 Publishing, 2023
There is a lot to love about Marion Agnew’s Making Up the Gods: ghosts, the allure of the wilderness of northern Ontario—which Agnew depicts in stunning clarity—and the quietly beautiful relationships between a woman, a boy, and a stranger. The writing is tinged with humour and insight, and it explores what tethers us to one another and to the places and people that we love. How do we let go, and when? As in life, the revelations in this book aren’t simple or straightforward but Agnew’s characters are determined and filled with so much hope.
—Rebekah Skochinski, Thunder Bay
Now or Never Publishing, 2023
Sleepers and Ties by Gail Kirkpatrick is one of the loveliest and most accomplished books I have read of late. Written with a mesmerizing use of language, the prose narrative is often poetic. Margaret is a curator at a small Canadian museum. While settling her late sister’s affairs, she discovers that her sister has left a bequest for the revival of a rural railway line. The novel deals with a number of story lines, all beautifully nuanced and interconnected. This is a thought-provoking, utterly evocative and moving book.
—Lucy E.M. Black, Port Perry
Latitude 46 Publishing, 2023
McCulloch’s novel tells the story of an Ojibwe family, relayed via protagonist Joe Pete’s spiritual search for her father Sandy after he disappears. Her quest unleashes a river of ancestral grief as deep as the torrent that swallowed Sandy alive. Trauma is brought in contact with the solace of nature’s constancy to form a stunning work of literary fiction, immersing us in its wilderness and love. The past is interwoven with the present, as is the conflict between tradition and colonial indoctrination. I loved this book for its depth, for teaching me of the love nature holds, and for its unflinching authenticity.
—Mona Angéline, New York / Santa Cruz
Freehand Books, 2023
End Times is an impressive and emotionally charged collection of short stories with an enchanting cast of characters who struggle with meaning, God, and feeling like the end may be near. Within, we explore the divide between believers and non-believers of an evangelical Jesus, and true contemplation about the emptiness of life. The stories paint a real picture of the meaning of faith, how people come to it, and how hard it is to ever really get away from it, even if you want to. This collection allows us a glimpse of understanding of how it feels to be a true believer and how faith gets and keeps its grasp on those who have it.
—Laurie Burns, Dartmouth
House of Anansi, 2023
Tauhou tells stories of different sizes and shapes. Each stands on its own, but there is interplay—like translucent pictures overlapping. The stories evoke author Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall’s own Māori and Coast Salish ancestry. These worlds are distinct but Nuttall lets them meet sometimes, celebrating their unique histories and nuances while emphasizing the shared experience of colonization. Though Nuttall’s characters may appear for only a few pages, you feel intimate with them. Her writing is tactile and sensual; everything is vividly felt. Tauhou spans continents and centuries, but Nuttal’s close-up storytelling makes them fit in the palm of your hand.
—Anna Bowness, London
Mawenzi House, 2022
I recommend this underrated gem for its portrayal of Muslim characters in Canada. Through its clear, engaging, and accessible prose, it fills the gap of South Asian fiction writers of Pakistani origin in CanLit. The novel, like Pirbhai’s debut short story collection, Outside People (Inanna 2017), works to organically undo the myth of the monolithic Muslim identity in Canada.
—Sanchari Sur, Mississauga
Gaspereau, 2023
A fusion of textbook-style history lesson and personal essay, Write, Print, Fold and Staple is a delightful summary of the importance of independent publishing to Canada's literary landscape. Grounded in his own participation in the poetry micropress ecosystem, author Jim Johnstone uses philosophical argument, case study, and a detailed breakdown of various micropresses from Canada's past and present to advocate for the essentiality of do-it-yourself, be-the-change bookmaking. As informative as it is entertaining, Write, Print, Fold and Staple is essential reading for all Canadians!
—Jacob Alvarado, Orangeville
Pottersfield Press, 2023
Two Purdys: A Double Portrait by Brian Purdy is a thoughtful collection of poems in the memoir tradition. Brian Purdy is the estranged son of Canadian literary icon Al Purdy. As the offspring of an extra-marital affair, Brian attempts to reconcile the absence of Al from his childhood. The son grows into the same work/struggle as his father—being a poet in Canada—and their literary passions become their point of brief connection until his father’s death. This is a good read for those reflecting on their own relationship to a male progenitor.
—Jordan Trethewey, Fredericton
Book*hug Press, 2023
I highly recommend Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler, a hybrid collection arranged in four parts. Particularly gripping is Mockler’s deep dive into autofiction, stories that span childhood to adulthood and those emotionally charged moments—first love, first crush, first period and more—that inform our growing identity and show us what it means to belong. In powerful, distilled prose, Mockler seamlessly blends dark humour with pain. Add in absurdist flash fiction, climate anxiety, micro-conversations—this is a book with existential bite.
—Catherine Graham, Toronto
ECW Press, 2023
My Body is Distant is Paige Maylott’s daring and tender memoir that braids together cancer diagnosis, gender transition, and virtual gaming/romance. Each of these strands is explored with honesty and intimacy, colored with wry humour. The braided structure makes for multi-layered storytelling where memory, desire, and imagination are inextricably linked. One of the things that stood out to me is the unselfconscious way the book tackles sexuality and sexual experiences—and how those are tied to authenticity of identity. Avoiding the typical squeamishness of CanLit around the erotic, My Body is Distant actually makes the body very present and in doing so illuminates the things that make us most fragile, and the things that make us most whole.
—Anuja Varghese, Hamilton
House of Anansi, 2023
Brimming with verve, wit and bravado, Hannah Green’s Xanax Cowboy is a brain-jolting joy. Reading it felt almost like watching a live performance, one in which our equally tender-hearted and kick-ass heroine, the Xanax Cowboy, rides through modern frontiers, teetering dangerously in the saddle. I love this book. And almost every page contains a line I wish I’d written.
—Elyse Friedman, Toronto
Gooselane, 2023
I want to shove this book about living between languages in every poetry lover's hand, imploring: Here, here, lis ça! “But I don't know French!” they might answer. Beautiful. They'll live in the gaps, the ones the text creates, the ones created in the reading—such a joyfully collaborative experience. For those of us in that bilingual world, what a privilege to see the process/pain/pleasure of that "constant translation of oneself" that Bernier-Cormier explores in poems, progressive translations, notes, letters, essays, and visual poems. Tiens, read this!
—Dominik Parisien, Hamilton
Coach House Books, 2023
Slows: Twice by T. Liem was one of the best poetry collections I read in 2023. Each individual poem hit me so hard that I needed to read them twice, and they are each mirrored in the second half of the book, so I had to read them again! These poems imagine beyond themselves while reflecting back on themselves, encouraging us to embrace what new iterations of ourselves we might welcome. The poems in Slows: Twice are experimental and weird, playing with shape and sound and time, revelling in what life can be.
—Emma Rhodes, Toronto
Wolsak & Wynn, 2023
Wait Softly Brother by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is a unique and sometimes-spooky (dare I say even creepy?) novel that had me absorbed from the get-go. Floods, a dead twin, lost letters, and the American Civil War… oh, and a selkie. A creative, innovative, and gripping piece of work.
—Diane Baker Mason, Toronto
Arsenal Press, 2023
After hearing them read in Toronto almost a decade ago, I’ve been an admirer of A. Light Zachary’s wit, sensitivity, and attention to sound. Their debut poetry collection, More Sure, is perhaps long awaited, but has clearly benefited from the author’s care and patience. Confident, clever, and charming, the book is tight and well constructed overall, with some truly standout pieces, including the stunning rhymed sonnet (one in a series of impressive sonnets) “Someday I’ll Love _____ Zachary.”
—Annick MacAskill, Halifax
Coach House Books, 2023
Jim Johnstone’s The King of Terrors is a poetic telling of how illness and a close encounter with death can make us strange to ourselves and to the world. The book offers a chance to see our lives anew, even the things we regret. The poems dance between accepting death and hoping for a second chance to do it all again. As the poet says, “the future is as certain / as the body / it inhabits / and multiplies rapidly.”
—Courtney Bates-Hardy, Regina
Palimpsest, 2023
In G by Klara du Plessis and Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi, the poems are intelligent, playful, and provocative. The poets work to deconstruct language to its most evocative, underpinning the page with dense imagery and linguistic prowess. Having heard both poets read from the work at their launch in Toronto, I was taken aback by the poems “in the air” and their deliberate, musical soundscapes. G made me feel at home as a reader and listener in a soulful, intimate book.
—Joshua Chris Bouchard, Toronto
Invisible , 2023
Nina Dunic’s The Clarion, longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (among other deserved accolades), is told with pitch-perfect attention to two singular voices. The Clarion is outstanding for the quiet way its protagonists, brother and sister Stasi and Peter, seem to get under the skin. A gorgeous sonic improvisation on loss, failure, human impotence, and how contorted love can look.
—Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Prince Edward County
Dundurn Press, 2023
I know Nathan Whitlock, the author of Lump, and he’s a funny guy. And even though Lump tells the story of Cat’s discovering she has breast cancer during an unplanned pregnancy and a collapsing marriage, Lump is really (darkly) funny—but it’s also incredibly clever and sly. There’s another narrative, bubbling along underneath at first, until it rises to the surface in the second half of the book and the reader must confront their expectations about whose story gets to be told. The big C in this book isn’t cancer after all; it’s Class.
—Nicola Winstanley, Hamilton
Stelliform, 2023
From my humble horror collection to yours, I recommend Green Fuse Burning by Tiffany Morris. During an isolated artist’s residency near her late, estranged father’s Mi’kmaq birthplace, Rita is intent on sparking her creativity and reconnecting with the language, community, and culture she’s been stripped of. When grotesque, decaying creatures appear by the pond near her cabin, Rita convinces herself they’re hallucinations—manifestations of her grief. But once Rita submerges herself in nature, her learning and healing truly begin. Morris paints loneliness, loss of identity, and ecological crisis with a delicate brush; her eco-horror instils dread and yearning at every turn and considers the extent to which nature can heal us if we don’t—or won’t—heal nature.
—Filomena Cozzolino, Vaughan
Wolsak & Wynn, 2023
Burn Diary by Joshua Chris Bouchard is a collection of poems that masters the art of giving and taking. What is given to us is a dive into the physicality of poetry at a grassroots level, but what's taken is the innocence we had before experiencing it. Bouchard puppeteers the words and yanks the strings when you least expect it, and even when it becomes expected, that surprising excitement does not fade. Burn Diary is a must-ride rollercoaster to behold that renews your voucher each time the page is turned.
—Luigi Sposato, Etobicoke
Biblioasis, 2023
There are different ways to measure a collection of stories, but if you count the pure fire, the mad swing and hurricane force of the sentences, Burn Man: Selected Stories by Mark Anthony Jarman, surely sets the bar. Jarman’s voice has been a bellwether for the state of the short story in Canada for some time. This collection brings his fiercest prose, his most vital characters, and builds an architecture against which our troubled times can be thrashed. The music of broken men, splintered lives, and the salted souls left behind echo through the pages.
—Jeremy Thomas Gilmer, Fredericton
Coach House Books, 2023
Sheryda Warrener’s Test Piece is a meditation on both perspective and process. Consisting of five poems interspersed with images of rooms and spaces overlaid with text, it invites the reader to partake in each poem’s creation. In this, Warrener emphasizes the value of the creative process and the impermanence of perspective as a work continues to shift and reform in the eyes of the viewer. So too Warrener’s words, which take on new meaning with each read, making this a collection to return to time and time again.
—Erin Brenneman, Stratford
Brick, 2023
Brimming with lush and vibrant imagery, Erin Robinsong’s Wet Dream floods the reader’s senses and encourages them to sink into its stream of thought. It’s dense in the best sense of the word, as the speaker parses what it means to be a person on a dying planet. Through its entirety beats a steady pulse of hope though, just as through water we remain one being—all pieces of a vast ecosystem. Robinsong’s words are, in equal measure, a balm to the soul and a call to action, and the collection is a must-read for all poetry lovers.
—Erin Brenneman, Stratford
Gordon Hill Press, 2024
Ghadery’s new book welcomes the spooky season with skin-crawling short stories that keep us eerily uncomfortable but deeply curious and entertained. The collection builds an atmosphere of luminous morbidity that breaks taboos of silence and despair, and the stories are riddled with absurdity and desire. They follow women dealing with violence, depression, burnout, and stinky bathrooms. They invite us to meet those women where they are — and sometimes that’s in the mirror. Widow Fantasies is a feminist love letter with the power to heal heartache by ripping it from its darkest depths and letting it sizzle and settle in the warm light of the late summer sun.
—Aurora R., Ottawa
ECW, 2024
Suzan Palumbo’s Countess is a masterful sci-fi reimagining of The Count of Monte Cristo, infused with Caribbean anti-colonial spirit and queer representation. The story follows Virika Sameroo, a betrayed starship lieutenant, on a path of revenge and rebellion against the oppressive Æcerbot Empire. Palumbo skillfully weaves themes of justice, identity, and freedom into a vividly realized universe that critiques systemic oppression while celebrating resilience. This novella’s emotional depth and powerful narrative are a must-read for anyone who loves speculative fiction that challenges and inspires. Countess is as daring as it is unforgettable.
—Richard Kevis, Brampton