In an appealing, ruminative collection of “smart stuff,” a poet looks to own remote past, as well as a city’s past, present, and (possible) future. In imagining and telling new stories, the poetry works to challenge presumptions embedded in colonial history. —Harold Rhenisch reviews Inventing What We Need to Know, by W.H. New (Oakville: Rock’s Mills Press, 2025) $20.00 / 9781772443240
“In fewer than ninety pages, Dobie has produced an incredibly nuanced, eminently readable novel full of insights on being unhoused, a disappearing middle class, and the difficulties of romantic relationships, particularly when both parties have differing communication styles.” —Jessica Poon reviews The Tenants, by Pat Dobie (Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2024) $18.00 / 9781772142297
Essay collection relates the “great pleasure of strolling in great cities” and offers an appealing and illuminating “window into a wider world.” —Bill Paul reviews The Coincidence Problem: Selected Dispatches 1999-2022, by Stephen Osborne (Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2024) $24.95 / 9781551529653
“The sheer intellect and sharp-eyed creator in these works has given history and perspective on a time and place of artistically fevering production, forging its own way.” —Cathy Ford reviews Another Order: Selected Works, by Judith Copithorne (edited by Eric Schmaltz) (Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2023) $34.95 / 9781772015539
A “bubbly sensibility” blends well with a sobriety in stories that address “the serious matters of our loves and our times.” —Carellin Brooks reviews Disembark, by Jen Currin (Toronto: House of Anansi, 2024) $22.99 / 9781487011895
Sophomore story collection has “a finger firmly on the pulse of contemporary life and delivers trenchant criticisms of human foibles.”
—Candace Fertile reviews Last Woman, by Carleigh Baker (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2024) $24.95 / 9780771004148
Poems with cool-eyed but compassionate observations convey personal transformations and memorable cityscapes. —Adrienne Fitzpatrick reviews Nevertheless: Walking Poems, by Gillian Jerome (Madeira Park: Harbour Publishing, 2022) $19.95 / 9780889714120
The Dancehall Years by Joan Haggerty Salt Spring Island: Mother Tongue Publishing, 2016 $20.00 / 9781896949543 Reviewed by Tom Shandel First published November 11, 2016 * Joan Haggerty has always been in a vanguard of very few. Her first book, Please, Miss, Can I Play God (Methuen, 1966), was based on her teaching drama to…
Read more #41 Haggerty’s pre-Hippie Vancouver
Bob Bouchette’s last story, 1938 by Janet Nicol First published October 21, 2016 * Long before Allan Fotheringham or Eric Nicol, Vancouver’s most popular columnist was Bob Bouchette. The prolific non-conformist Bob Bouchette wrote literally thousands of columns, usually around 700 words each, mostly for The Vancouver Sun. His six-part series on the abysmal conditions…
Read more #30 Bob Bouchette, everyman scribe