If you enjoy seeing authors paraded around like show ponies, visit Book Expo America, the annual publishing tradeshow taking place this week at the Javits Center in New York City. Just as celebrity memoirs and how-to books dominate bestsellers lists, the longest lineups I saw at the show were not for big-name authors (and they’re […] More »

  Jen Neale is a 28-year-old Vancouver based writer and winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, for her story “Elk-Headed Man”. This particular literary prize boasts a fine track record of uncovering some of the country’s future literary stars. Past winner Alyssa York presented Neale with $5,000 in Toronto on Wednesday. […] More »

In some circles these days, talking about reading is tantamount to announcing you have leprosy. Once, I was greeted by plaintive laments and guilty, apologetic admissions: I wish I had time to read or I honestly can’t remember the last time I read a book. Now, my mentions of books are more often met by […] More »

Terry Glavin, Canada’s answer to Christopher Hitchens, is a passionate provocateur and talented storyteller who for the past few years has turned his attention to Afghanistan. Glavin gathered stories in Afghanistan from a diverse group of people: teachers, shopkeepers, women soccer players and others we don’t usually hear from whenever the role of Canada and […] More »

The book El Mal introduces Argentinians to the man who controls much of their freshwater: Barrick founder and chair Peter Munk. Recently published in Spanish, the book’s full title roughly translates as “The Evil.” The book describes Canadian mining company Barrick Gold as a “virtual third country” that laws created at its behest and pays […] More »

Literary prizes are often seen as either a barometer or an enforcer of national taste. Gillian Roberts’s Prizing Literature turns instead to how prizes like the Giller and Booker confer upon their Canadian recipients an unofficial certificate of citizenship. With clear prose and theoretical acumen, Roberts probes the vexed relationship between national culture and hospitality, […] More »

In his new book, Look Down, This is Where It Must Have Happened, Hal Niedzviecki at times assumes the malaise of his characters seamlessly: “I’m a mortgage broker who works from his basement home office. I can find a lender suitable to your needs. A lot of people go to the bank. Don’t go to […] More »

There is a unicorn on the cover of this book. This book is like a book with a unicorn on the cover. This book is like a unicorn, like something mythical and beautiful that has to disappoint, either by its non-existence or the drab ordinariness it must assume in order to exist. This book is […] More »

The words “book” and “fan” don’t really fit. Music and fan, sure. Sports and fan, you bet. But when it comes to books, you’re a reader or a lover, rarely a fan. Maybe it’s because fandom has little place in an industry infamous for its cynicism and curmudgeonly attitude, its scything insults and ivory tower. […] More »

The characters in Rebecca Rosenblum’s second collection of short stories, The Big Dream, have one thing in common: they work at Dream Inc., a lifestyle magazine publisher struggling to stay afloat. Like the troubled company, most face an uncertain future, navigating their problems from trial separations and parenthood to a terminally ill parent. Drawing from her […] More »

The poems in Mannequin Rising, Roy Miki’s fifth poetry collection, are interspersed with the author’s photomontages, many of which contain storefront mannequins superimposed with images of pedestrians in the street. The mannequins can be taken as metaphorical commentary on the human figures in the frames; static and passive, “standing there at / attention all day”—as […] More »