Author’s third book of poems, is “a charming sequence that boldly documents the speaker’s firsthand experience with mental illness. Far from unfamiliar to those who have not been diagnosed with such an illness, the speaker’s thoughts and feelings represent an intensifying of the human spirit in all its joy and personal inadequacy and, most of all, in its need for a sense of purpose to feel whole.” —gillian harding-russell reviews Notes From The Ward, by Steffi Tad-Y (Guelph: Gordon Hill Press, 2025) $20.00 / 9781774221679
Please take a moment to contribute to our annual fundraiser at The British Columbia Review. In our 2024 campaign we raised $14,000 from 158 donors, which represents about a quarter of our income, the rest coming from grants, advertising, and partnerships. I hope we can equal that amount again this year. A big thank you to those who have already donated.
Evelyn Lau’s “Cursing, Flailing,” selected by Mary Dalton for inclusion in Best Canadian Poetry 2026 (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2025) $24.95 / 9781771966764
Solemn and autumnal when not wintry, a pair of ruminative poetry collections range widely as they reflect on troubled personal histories and the outside world. —Marguerite Pigeon reviews I Would Like To Say Thank You, by Joseph Dandurand (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025)
$19.95 / 9780889714908 and November, November, by Isabella Wang (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2025) $19.95 / 9780889714847
“The challenge in creating the exhibition Eating Bitterness: The Canadian Journey from Exclusion to Inclusion was to develop a temporary travelling exhibition which tells the story of the Chinese Exclusion Act in an original, more hopeful way. At the same time, we wanted to raise awareness of the barriers that are faced by the Chinese Canadian community and other communities that need to be overcome.” Christine Cheung reflects on the Eating Bitterness: The Canadian Journey from Exclusion to Inclusion exhibition, currently at the Victoria Chinatown Museum until October 26.
Sharing a focus on Chinese Canadian war efforts, a pair of strikingly illustrated picture books tell layered stories that would serve well at home and in the classroom. —Alison Acheson reviews Endgame: The Secret Force 136, by Catherine Little (illustrated by Sean Huang) (Oakville: Plumleaf, 2023) $22.95 / 9781738898244 and Reach for the Sky: How Two Brothers Built an Airplane in Chinatown, by Evelyn Sue Wong (illustrated by Sarah Ang) (Oakville: Plumleaf, 2025) $22.95 / 9781738898244
A late entrant to the teeming dystopia subgenre with adolescent protagonists, a novel shows potential and emotionally powerful scenes, but is marred by weak characterization and a “generic dystopia fill-in-the-blanks” structure. —Isabella Ranallo reviews Slice the Water, by PP Wong (Fredericton: Goose Lane Editions, 2025) $26.00 / 9781773104447
In a free-wheeling interview, Cathalynn Labonté-Smith and PP Wong touch on an array of topics, from book-banning and British comedies to inspiration and the meaning of “elephant-anus” in the fictitious nation of Mahana.
Selfhood, interpersonal relations, family history, and the wonders of the world are examined acutely in a debut collection book of verse, where some poems have greater immediate appeal than others.—Brett Josef Grubisic reviews Stolen Plums, by Alice Turski (Montreal: Signal Editions, 2025) $19.95 / 9781550656770
“Catherine Clement’s new book, The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, and the commemorative exhibition that preceded it, takes an unflinching look at the inter-generational impact of the ‘…fanatical documentation [which] reached its apex with the passing of the federal 1923 Chinese Immigration Act.'” May Q. Wong reviews The Paper Trail to the 1923 Chinese Exclusion Act, by Catherine Clement (Oakville: Plumleaf Press, 2025) $59.95 / 9781069093516
The promise of comfort and security in a new home continues to elude the proverbially overworked and underpaid characters in a searing novel that highlights exploitation, corruption, and bad faith in Canada’s immigration system. —Ron Verzuh reviews Frosty Lanes, by Harpreet Sekha (translated by Akal Amrit Kaur and Inderpal Kaur) (Chhanna, India: Rethink Books, 2025) $x.xx / 9789348092922
Cerebral, inventive, challenging, and deeply, well, bookish, the “whole novel glows with similar interplays of similarly repeated words and issues, ones that touch on the most fundamental nature of the human experience—truth and knowledge, beauty (especially of music), love, and, perhaps most fundamentally, happiness.”—Theo Dombrowski reviews The Book of Records, by Madeleine Thien (Toronto: Knopf Canada, 2025) $36.95 / 9781039009561
“I don’t think of myself as an author,” begins acclaimed curator Catherine Clement, “I think of myself as a street historian or community historian first, and the only reason I create books is to solidify those memories, to lock them in for future generations to find.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment featuring Vancouver curator and historian Catherine Clement.
In a debut novel, “a party animal of a book that resoundingly delivers,” two sisters—one “prone to shoplifting in her job as a cashier,” the other a “skin care influencer with a cult-ish following” tussle in a wacky story that marries social critique and wit. —Jessica Poon reviews Julie Chan Is Dead, by Liann Zhang (Toronto: Simon & Schuster Canada, 2025) $24.99 / 9781668079867
“With the budget and size of the current gallery, it had become difficult to adequately show the collection and avoid being just a storehouse. Hence, the wise decision to have a rotating exhibition for the next five years, so that the public can appreciate the depth and breadth of the collection.” Christina Johnson-Dean reviews the exhibition A View from Here: Re-Imagining the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria Collections curated by Steven McNeil and Heng Wu.
“Henry Yu is a history professor at The University of British Columbia. He tells The British Columbia Review about how his path to becoming an historian was shaped by the exclusion and challenges of his Chinese Canadian ancestors in BC.” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with historian and UBC professor Henry Yu
“As a child of immigrants, novelist and memoirist Yasuko Thanh asks the question: What is home?” Trevor Marc Hughes presents an interview segment with Yasuko Thanh.
A missing father sparks a discomfiting family reunion in a novel that presents “an authentic, timely, and moving account of the Asian immigrant experience through a distinctly British Columbian lens—one that should resonate long after reading it.” —Daniel Gawthrop reviews The Tiger and the Cosmonaut, by Eddy Boudel Tan (Toronto: Viking Canada, 2025) $26.95 / 9780735248557
Set on Haida Gwaii during WW1, a novel’s teenage narrator, “a curious mixture of innocence and experience,” stands out among other characters that are “ciphers for the social problems the author illuminates.” —Candace Fertile reviews Sisters of the Spruce, by Leslie Shimotakahara (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2024) $26.00 / 9781773861371
In a “brilliant work,” poems “attest in every moment to the strength that new ancestors, new techniques, and new understandings brought to British Columbia by migration.” —Harold Rhenisch reviews Tabako on the Windowsill, by Hari Alluri (Kingston: Brick Books, 2025) $23.95 / 9781771316491
