The writers represented in The Border as Fiction: Writers of Taiwan are some of the most
noted in Taiwan, and their age differences, experiences, and talents speak to the broad range, depth, diversity, and historical breadth and maturity of the literature. The tensions of this history, the complexity of the themes, and the dedication to truth in story telling reflect the incredible artistic achievements that these writers have attained. For Taiwan, the borders are not fiction, but for these writers, fiction has proved to be the best way to express their thoughts about the varying "borders" of their country and culture. In some respects, and in some cases, fiction becomes reality.
The Sylvia Hotel Poems
by George Fetherling
ISBN # 9780981018690 POETRY SERIES 60 pages $14.95
Vancouver’s venerable Sylvia Hotel, famed haunt of artists, writers, and lovers, provides the
setting for this series of deeply personal reflections on unrequited love. Eloquent and
aphoristic, worldly-wise in tone, and laden with feeling, every one of these masterful poems
will speak to, and for, all who have lived “close to the lip of ecstasy and despair” and “cannot
/ wash the truth out of themselves.” Melancholy, forbearing, wistful, and irrepressibly witty,
The Sylvia Hotel Poems is a sustained triumph of style, of character, and of human
understanding.
George Fetherling lives in Vancouver, near the Sylvia Hotel, after having been based
in Toronto – which he still visits frequently – for many years. He has been
publishing poetry since the mid 1960s. He is also a novelist, memoirist, cultural
commentator and visual artist. Among his many books are Travels by Night, The
Dreams of Ancient Peoples, Madagascar: Poems & Translations, and the forthcoming
Walt Whitman’s Secret.
Real Gone
by Jim Christy
ISBN # 99781926802015 NOVELLA SERIES 132 pages $16.95
Real Gone turns the myth of the Sixties on its head. The protagonist may be a peripatetic
young man on an intense search but he knows that the gaff is in. There are sex and drugs,
of course, and politics, even a little rock and roll. There is also Rhythm and Blues, and jail
and murder; some famous people have walk-on parts but they are no match for a wild
assortment of obscure rounders, radicals and roustabouts. Set in 1967-1968, the novella
records the very moment that an empire reached its peak and started its decline.
Like the protagonist of Real Gone, Jim Christy grew up in Philadelphia, led a
knockabout life in the United States which included carnivals, hoboing, and
professional boxing, was involved in radical politics and moved to Canada in 1968.
As well as being a writer, he is also a widely exhibited visual artist and has recorded
CDs of poetry and music and performed in various countries. Recent books include
the novel The Redemption of Anna Dupree (2004) and the nonfiction book Scalawags
(Anvil Press, 2008).
Sew Him Up
by Beatriz Hausner
ISBN # 9781926802022 POETRY SERIES 96 pages $16.95
No other Canadian writer is as thoroughly conversant with the fertile tradition of
surrealism as Beatriz Hausner. She bestows the imaginative energy and erotic power behind
this abundantly creative way of seeing on every poem in Sew Him Up: stitching together
intelligent invention and free-flowing intuition in one charged, open-ended packet after
another. What was domesticated breaks its shackles and runs wild; devotion to friends
and family remodels a ferocious tenderness.
Beatriz Hausner lives in Toronto. She is a literary translator of some renown, with
more than twenty works of literature published to date. She was President of the
Literary Translators’ Association of Canada, as well as one of the founders of the
Banff International Literary Translation Centre. She is recognized for her tireless
advocacy in the of international literature in English translation. She has a previous
poetry collection, The Wardrobe Mistress, as well as several chapbooks of poetry.
Psychic Geographies
by Gregory Betts
ISBN # 9781926802008 POETRY SERIES 80 pages $16.95
Gregory Betts is a poet, editor, essayist, and teacher originally from Vancouver and
Toronto. He is the author of If Language, Haikube, The Others Raisd in Me, as well as
eight chapbooks and numerous bits of ephemera. He has edited editions of poetry by
W.W. E. Ross, Raymond Knister, and Lawren Harris, and recently finished a critical
edition of selected stories, essays, and manifestos by Bertram Brooker, Canada's first
avant-gardist. He is the co-editor of PRECIPICe literary magazine, and curates the
Grey Borders Reading Series in St Catharines.
Psychic Geographies is a tour de force, an ambitious exploration of the age, its physical and
emotional permutations, its tragic contradictions, its joyful transformations. Gregory Betts
takes a construct from the Situationists of the last Century as a means of exploring the
language and rhetoric of the contemporary global moment as symptomatic of stasis and
psychosis. How he does this is what sets Psychic Geographies apart, what makes this a book
without precedent in Canadian letters.
Good Evening, Central Laundromat
by Jason Heroux
ISBN # 9781926802046 NOVELLA SERIES 96 pages $16.95
What if your best friend’s ghost was still hanging around town? What if your girlfriend
mysteriously lost her voice and didn’t seem to care? What if a strangely independent
pigeon started following you wherever you went? These are the questions plaguing
Cameron Delco as he struggles to get to the bottom of a bizarre mystery that begins with
a fortune-teller in a late night Laundromat and ends somewhere inside a dusty lint trap. A
book where the present moment is like a dream and the distant past feels like an
unfinished work-in-progress, Good Evening, Central Laundromat is about learning how to
separate the lights from the darks in life, death, and laundry.
Jason Heroux is the author of two poetry collections, Memoirs of an Alias and
Emergency Hallelujah. His work has appeared in chapbooks, anthologies and
magazines in Canada, the U.S., Belgium, France, and Italy. He lives in Kingston,
Ontario.
A Gardener on the Moon
by Carole Giangrande
ISBN # 9781926802053 NOVELLA SERIES 128 pages $16.95
Overwhelmed by his wife’s illness and swamped with memories of being a prisoner of
war, Pierre LeBlanc retreats into a hasty affair and recalls the breakup of his youthful
relationship with Lorraine. Meanwhile, his daughter Danielle struggles to claim her dad’s
abandoned language and her American roots. Danielle’s prodding draws Pierre into an
encounter with Lorraine which helps him confront the unspoken sorrows and regrets of
his life. Set in Montreal during the crisis of 1970, this novella evokes the traumas and
heartbreak of time present and time past with exquisite lyricism and passionate energy.
Carole Giangrande is the author of An Ordinary Star and A Forest Burning (novels),
Missing Persons (short stories), and two non-fiction books. She worked for many years
as a broadcast journalist for CBC Radio. Her essays have been anthologized and her
fiction, articles and reviews have appeared in Grain, New Quarterly, Descant, Canadian
Forum, Matrix, The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and Books in Canada. She now
hosts Words to Go, a podcast for writers and readers.
The Cousin is an extraordinary journey that evolves from going somewhere, in this case Sicily, to ending up somewhere else, in this case, inside the body of a transvestite named Simone. The Cousin deals as much with memory, violence and sexuality as it does with family, self and culture.
~
The Cousin is a delightful novella. Calabro’s style is gentle and effortless, his character creation so absorbing and so right on, and of course it is a great narrative, so surprising, so bizarre, and yet so honest.
– Sky Gilbert, author of An English Gentleman and Brother Dumb
Calabro’s work erases the line between the ordinary and the haunting, as if he has peeled back the skin of the real to make it ‘realer’.
– Nino Ricci, author of Lives of the Saints and The Origin of Species
“The Cousin is essentially a tale of unmasking the truth. The language is crisp and clear and the Sicilian setting is beautifully recreated in fresh realistic brushstrokes… The Cousin’s use of sexuality is an original look at finding the truth about your roots and identity… the book sizzles with erotic power.” – Prairie Fire
Harbour View
by Binnie Brennan
ISBN # 978-0-9810186-4-5 ~ 128 pages ~ $16.95
Harbour View is the story of six people whose lives intersect in a nursing home overlooking Halifax Harbour. Memories draw the residents, staff, and family members from rich and diverse pasts to a present filled with grace and poignancy. Threaded with music and connected by themes of dislocation, family legend, and longing, Harbour View offers a glimpse of the extraordinary lives of ordinary people.
~
“This novella starts with a single, clear voice and then grows in complexity with the addition of several more distinctive characters until it achieves fine harmony and resonance. By the end of this short work, we have a choir depicting a broad range of human experience.”
– Antanas Sileika, author of Woman in Bronze
“Brennan’s writing is symphonic in nature and scope, her characters so fully human you may think you hear them whisper in your ear. Here is prose filled with surprising microscopic observation; sometimes funny, other times poignant, these details are heart-stopping in their truth and beauty. Structurally brilliant, Brennan’s layered, empathetic storytelling underscores the heart of this novella – we are given not just a view, but a vision of interconnectedness.”
– Sheree Fitch, author of Kiss the Joy As It Flies
A Pleasant Vertigo
by Egidio Coccimiglio
ISBN # 978-0-9810186-5-2 ~ 74 pages ~ $14.95
A Pleasant Vertigo follows Gerard Gordon, once a famous Manhattan artist who is desperately trying to stage a comeback. While battling the woes of a failed career, no income and a pregnant partner, Gerard finally gets a break, yet his need to have his ego stroked proves once more to be his downfall. A Pleasant Vertigo is funny, sexy, and quirky while moving at breakneck speed to a surprising conclusion.
~
"Since the age of 14, my mentor was Dizzy Gillespie and through him I became addicted to the music of Cuba way back in the '40's. This book [A Pleasant Vertigo] is an inventive and witty voice that cuts through like a slide trumpet.”
- Quincy Jones
"Definitely a page-turner, once I picked it up I couldn’t put it down. It reads more like a suspense thriller than an expose of the contemporary art world.”
– Andy Moses
"A disturbing and powerful journey into the heart of Art World darkness. Sexy, smart, and with a cutting satiric edge – a raw, real ride on a wave of champagne and mad ego, and at the same time a thoughtful meditation on art and life. ”
– Michael Guinzburg
Evidence
by Samuel Andreyev
ISBN # 978-0-9810186-8-3 ~ 80 pages ~$16.95
Tactility morphing into thought, thought into memory, memory calcifying into language: such are the ‘in-between’ states explored in Evidence. Resembling core samples of conscious experiences, these a-temporal, fragmentary poems explore memory, spatiality and the mechanics of thinking. In this unsteadily shifting landscape, a productive tension between hyperlucid recollection and total atomization is everywhere in evidence.
~
“What to say about this young poet that will make his work sound more interesting than it already is? Any lame explanations I might provide would leave Andreyev’s mystifying sense of balance in ruin. If you have ever wondered how many words a poet might place on the head of a pin before the angles start singing, this is a book for you.”
– Jay MillAr
"Max Ernst once said that an artist should keep one eye on the inner realm and one eye on the outside world. With this collection, Samuel Andreyev accomplishes that and more, casting a third eye onto a vivid poetic domain that lies distinctly elsewhere.”
– Steve Venright
“In Evidence, Samuel Andreyev’s visionary poems always know when to stop. They refute perfection but flirt with omniscience. He declares that one day he will escape the logs and bark of undivided attention and will eventually become made of time.”
– David W. McFadden
Of All the Ways To Die
by Brenda Niskala
ISBN # 978-0-9810186-6-9 ~ 128 pages ~ $16.95
In Of All the Ways To Die, by Brenda Niskala, Urma holds a pot luck for the people she has lost from her life. The invitation attracts the attention of loved ones, acquaintances and a few famous faces, including a bog mummy, St. Anthony, a Cree grandmother, and an eccentric prairie shipbuilder. Is it possible they can help her find Eileen,the missing teenager? Of course, everyone brings a dish, their favourite recipes, and their stories – how they lived and yes, how they died..
~
“This offbeat little ghost story, short and sweet, from Brenda Niskala, over twenty-five years after her first book, is, as they say, worth the wait.”
– Dave Margoshes
“… a brilliant vehicle for a story that weaves together the lives of ordinary people teetering on the edge of hope with fascinating historical figures. Reader, be prepared for tears and laughter, and for many trips to the kitchen cupboard, for the food brought to this literary table will make you drool.”
– Byrna Barclay
“Of All the Ways to Die is literally a marvel; Brenda Niskala takes us on a journey into the underworld, the land of the dead, and does it here in the real live world of Saskatchewan. The book is also a marvelous collection of characters, a marvel of enchanting prose, a marvel of human compassion.”
– Robert Kroetsch
Ten Thousand Miles Between Us
by Rocco de Giacomo
ISBN # 978-0-9810186-7-6 ~ 80 pages ~ $16.95
“For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.” For its part, the book, Ten Thousand Miles Between Us, is a collection of poems about the love affair with movement. From the wide open Canadian prairies to the claustrophobic markets of Indonesia, Rocco de Giacomo’s poems explore the relationship between the delight of the exotic and the frightening sense of the other that exists in the heart of the modern-day traveller.
~
De Giacomo distils the existential horror and beauty (often at the same time) buried within the most seemingly mundane events. He does this with such effortlessness that I suspect he slips quite by accident beneath the surface of things, modestly and generously revealing to us what he has found there. … These poems are authentic, surprising and refreshingly relevant.
– Jacob Scheier, author of the Governor General’s Award winning More To Keep Us Warm
In our society, Commerce exalts the everyday and puts everything up for sale: There’s no room for grace, no respect for divinity. But Rocco de Giacomo dissents from our corrosive, abrasive modernity. His Christ sports a white hat and a Windsor knot; his Mary steps out – unhesitatingly – on Joseph for God; a lover, as inspired as Michelangelo, “shudders slightly into sleep / your one fingernail secretly / trying to chisel your name / across my chest….” De Giacomo combines the religiosity of Thomas Merton with the fleshy analyses of Alberto Moravia. The result is a transcendent lyricism that never loses touch with marble, paper, water, blood, smoke, clouds, bus stations, bars, Mr. Freezees, and pasta sauce, I mean, that never forgets where and how we live.
– George Elliott Clarke, Laureate, 2001 Governor-General’s Award for Poetry
The Extraordinary Event of Pia H.
Nicola Vulpe
128 pages $18.95
ISBN 978-0-9810186-0-7
Nicola Vulpe is one of Canada's most intriguing and imaginative authors. The Extraordinary Event of Pia H. is a story of dark miracles, but the real miracle is the writing: dense, playful -- and utterly engaging.
--Mark Frutkin, author of Fabrizio’s Return
A River At Night
Paul Zemokhol
80 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9810186-1-4
An archaeologist of the human heart, Paul Zemokhol uncovers the
memories of his Egyptian ancestors and their lost world by the Nile,
and he starkly juxtaposes them with his own plain experiences of
Canadian urban life in Toronto and Montreal. Writing in a style that
is both lyrical and elegiac, Zemokhol yearns for a poetry that existed
before him, finding remnants of it in his own memories, friendships,
family relations, and heroes. This collection will seduce the reader
with its lilting musicality, sincerity of feeling and richness of imagery.
~
All poets sing wisdom, but few do so as plainly and as poignantly as
Paul Zemokhol. He shows some Beat bliss, he pursues folksong
rhythms, and he expresses that Zen understanding that unifies God and
ant, cloud and diamond, the Nile and traffic jams, and, especially, the
head and the heart. I read him as combining William Carlos Williams
and William Blake: he is both a friend happy with life and a visionary
who sees beyond mortality.
Zemokhol's River isn't ink; it is light. Its taste isn't brackish, but biblical: wine with honey, plus just a dash of vinegar for piquancy.
– George Elliott Clarke
The Hawk
Rob Rolfe
80 pages $15.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-7-3
The Hawk weaves together reflections on history with a deep sense of compassion for people whose voices are too little heard in today’s world. Economical, yet expressive, Rob Rolfe’s writing evokes with sparse imagery the harsh but beautiful space where nature and peoples of different parts of the Americas collide and interact. The poems are direct, accessible, and appeal to the reader’s emotions in confronting death, courage, love and injustice.
Looking At RenaissancePaintings
and Other Poems
Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni
80 pages $15.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-8-0
Looking at Renaissance Paintings and Other Poems is a first book by a mature poet with strong ties to Toronto ’s Italian-Canadian community. The first of its two parts is concerned with the heritage, both cultural and spiritual, which comes down to us from the Renaissance in Italy , and its relevance to contemporary life. The second part has portraits of modern-day personages, along with wide-ranging reflections on friendship and family, on the passage of time, on travel and the sense of geographical distance, and on the centrality of home. Affection, concern, admiration, and love infuse poems marked by a spareness of style, a subtle simplicity, and a radiant clarity.
This Is How I Love You
Barbara Landry
80 pages $15.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-9-7
The poems in This is How I Love You are about the deep familial and spiritual bonds that exist at a visceral level. The inner dialogue surrounding these bonds is the raw material Landry draws from. She writes about losing a beloved sister, a God who whispers in her ear, a solitary afternoon in a Cuban café. Landry doesn’t shy away from the big questions and tackles them with courage and humour. With a language that is easily accessible, one containing a distinct musicality and rhythm, these poems leave an imprint on both the ear and the heart.
Wit in Love
Sky Gilbert
90 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-6-6 or 0978280660
Wit in Love is the story of a philosopher who falls in love. The narrator lives so much in his head that he has an extraordinarily strained relationship with reality. Written in the form of a journal, Wit in Love chronicles the day-to-day existence of a man who is struck - anything but - dumb, by romance. There are three young men in his life -- a shabby graduate student, a sexy train attendant, and the living memory of a past love. Wit in Love is loosely based on the life and loves of Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Mic Check
David Silverberg, Editor
94 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-5-9 or 0978280652
Mic Check is Canada’s first ever anthology of Canadian spoken word poetry, featuring the top performance poets in the country. From Halifax to Montreal to Toronto to Vancouver, Mic Check compiles the spoken word poetry that has been rocking poetry slam stages all over Canada. The poems are gritty, raw, powerful and uncensored. Featuring young poets from a variety of backgrounds, Mic Check is a primer for anyone curious about spoken word, and an ideal anthology to get a taste of what the strong Canadian spoken word scene has to offer.
The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon, Boy Talmudist
Michael Wex
90 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-2-8 or 0978280628
Heir to the Hipster line of rabbinical
leaders and sages, eleven year old
Micah Mushmelon enlists Shraga
Potasznik, the comic-book-addicted
protagonist of this novella to make good of
all things worthwhile in this world. An heir
to the rich modern Yiddish literary tradition,
Michael Wex paints a vivid, hilarious picture
of the hasidic demimonde. His is a view into Yiddish culture at once erudite and super hip, and always true to the cadences of a language that informs so much of modern
North American culture.
My Etruscan Face
by Gianna Patriarca
105 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-35 or 0978280636
My Etruscan Face is Gianna
Patriarca’s sixth book of poetry.
Patriarca is a poet whose voice has
not strayed from her first book, the awardwinning
Italian Women and Other Tragedies:
still direct, honest and lyrical. In this
collection she takes us on an extraordinary
quest for self and home as she encounters a
myriad of characters with uniquely mysterious faces.
Gianna takes the contradictions of human existence, the
ordinary acts of living, and spins them into a startling
prayer of redemption. She is pure feeling, and her poems are
fully mortal, completely compassionate. This collection is a
passionate woman’s voracious embrace of the pleasures and
the fears of life. She aims for the heart.
Garden Variety
by Lily Contento, Editor
90 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-42 or 0978280644
Lively and full of surprises, this
anthology is bursting with
unusual treatments of flowers
familiar as tulips and rarer than orchids.
From hothouse to backyard plot to the
ends of the globe, in elegant solitude or
aromatic profusion, flowers are
contemplated on these pages, and
mourned, admired, and thoroughly savoured by an
abundant variety of gifted poets, both established and
from the grass roots. A book for everyone who has ever
stopped a moment to smell the roses.
Interstellar
Allan Briesmaster
87 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-0-4 or 0978280601
Allan Briesmaster's 9th collection of poetry extends and deepens some of the main themes of his previous work: the ongoing relationship to the natural world, despite the evident degradation; the media that filter and re-present one's experiences as a 21st-century urbanized being; and the larger cosmos, surveyed in both scientific and imaginative terms, in an outward sweep, past other planets and moons, toward the mysterious “dark energy” at the frontiers of thought.
Room Tone
Gale Zoë Garnett
84 pages $16.95
ISBN 978-0-9782806-1-1 or 097828061X
Room Tone is an affectionately intimate behind-the-scenes look at filmmakers and filmmaking, through the eyes of Nica Lind, the gifted and photogenic daughter of a French Nouvelle Vague actress and a Swedish Cinematographer. Film-addicted at age 10, Nica enters “the family business” in her teens. When her success in Europe draws the notice of a powerful Hollywood agent, she goes to California and becomes a star in a hit TV series. Grateful for recognition, “insane amounts of money” and talented colleagues, Nica nonetheless feels out of place. Needing to be where the work she loves lives and where she is at home, both professionally and personally, she returns to Europe and to the new post-national cinema. Gale Zoë Garnett invests this character-rich homage to film life and art with clear-eyed love, wicked wit, and an insider's understanding.
