Books published by Biblioasis

On his fifteenth birthday, in the summer of 1880, future science-fiction writer M.P. Shiel sailed with his father and the local bishop from their home in the Caribbean out to the nearby island of Redonda—where, with pomp and circumstance, he was declared the island’s king. A few years later, when Shiel set sail for a new life in London, his father gave him some advice: Try not to be strange. It was almost as if the elder Shiel knew what was coming.Try Not to Be Strange: The Curious History of the Kingdom of Redonda tells, for the first time, the complete history of Redonda’s transformation from an uninhabited, guano-encrusted island into a fantastical and international kingdom of writers. With a cast of characters including forgotten sci-fi novelists, alcoholic poets, vegetarian publishers, Nobel Prize frontrunners, and the bartenders who kept them all lubricated while angling for the throne themselves, Michael Hingston details the friendships, feuds, and fantasies that fueled the creation of one of the oddest and most enduring micronations ever dreamt into being. Part literary history, part travelogue, part quest narrative, this cautionary tale about what happens when bibliomania escapes the shelves and stacks is as charming as it is peculiar—and blurs the line between reality and fantasy so thoroughly that it may never be entirely restored.

A defense of the dying art of losing an afternoonand gaining new appreciationamidst the bins and shelves of bricks-and-mortar shops.Written during the pandemic, when the world was marooned at home and consigned to scrolling screens, On Browsings essays chronicle what weve lost through online shopping, streaming, and the relentless digitization of culture. The latest in the Field Notes series, On Browsing is an elegy for physical media, a polemic in defenseof perusing the world in person, and a love letter to the dying practice of scanning bookshelves, combing CD bins, and losing yourself in the stacks.

A journalist and folklorist explores the truths that underlie the stories we imagineand reveals the magic in the everyday.Ive always felt that the term fairy tale doesnt quite capture the essence of these stories, writes Emily Urquhart. I prefer the term wonder tale, which is Irish in origin, for its suggestion of awe coupled with narrative. In a way, this is most of our stories. In this startlingly original essay collection, Urquhart reveals the truths that underlie our imaginings: what we see in our heads when we read, how the sight of a ghost can heal, how the entrance to the underworld can be glimpsed in an oil painting or a winter stormor the onset of a loved ones dementia. In essays on death and dying, pregnancy and prenatal genetics, radioactivity, chimeras, cottagers, and plague, Ordinary Wonder Tales reveals the essential truth: if you let yourself look closely, there is magic in the everyday.

An outrageously comic novel documents a middle-aged writer and mother's grappling with mid-life crisisher husband's and her own.Preoccupied with her fledgling literary career, intent on the all-consuming consolations of philosophy, and scrambling to meet the demands of her four children, the acutely myopic and chronically inattentive Vita Glass doesnt notice that herhouse and her marriage are competing to see which can fall apart fastest. Shecan barely find time for her writing career, and just when her newfound success in vegetable erotica is beginning to take off.Our heroines only tried and trusted escape is the blissful detachment of Keith's hairdressing salon, but when her husband leaves the country, unannounced, she decides to do likewisein the opposite direction, and with their children. Drawn from the pages of Vitas journal, this outrageously comic novel documents Vita's passage through a mid-life crisis and explores all the ways we deceive each other and ourselves.

The remarkable true story of the rise and fall of one of North America's most influential media moguls.When George McCullagh bought The Globe and The Mail and Empire and merged them into the Globe and Mail, the charismatic 31-year-old high school dropout had already made millions on the stock market. It was just the beginning of the meteoric rise of a man widely expected to one day be prime minister of Canada. But the charismatic McCullagh had a dark side. Dogged by the bipolar disorder that destroyed his political ambitions and eventually killed him, he was all but written out of history. It was a loss so significant that journalist Robert Fulford has called McCullaghs biography one of the great unwritten books in Canadian historyuntil now.In Big Men Fear Me, award-winning historian Mark Bourrie tells the remarkable story of McCullaghs inspirational rise and devastating fall, and with it sheds new light on the resurgence of populist politics, challenges to collective action, and attacks on the free press that characterize our own tumultuous era.

The annual collection of the best Canadian short fiction, selected by an accomplished and influential guest editor.

FINALIST FOR THE 2020 NELSON BALL PRIZE"e;In a dark time,"e; wrote Theodore Roethke, "e;the eye begins to see"e;-and with Braille Rainbow, Mike Barnes reveals both darkness and the light that shines beyond it. Beginning with a suite of poems completed before and immediately following his admission to a psychiatric unit as a young man, Barnes's quiet lyricism and formal sensitivity capture those moments of perception that remind us how to see.Please note that the text of this book is not produced in braille.

The storied annual collection of the best Canadian short fiction selected by accomplished and influential guest editors.

The twelfth installment of Canada's annual volume of essays showcases diverse nonfiction writing from across the country.

Shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction PrizeHomage to Jean Genets antihero and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy,Querelle of Roberval, winner of the Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.As a millworkers strike in the northern lumber town of Roberval drags on, tensions start to escalate between the workersbut when a lockout renews their solidarity, they rally around the mysterious and magnetic influence of Querelle, a dashing newcomer from Montreal. Strapping and unabashed, likeable but callow, by day he walks the picket lines and at night moves like a mythic Adonis through the ranks of young men who flock to his apartment for sex. As the dispute hardens and both sides refuse to yield, sand stalls the gears of the economic machine and the tinderbox of class struggle and entitlement ignites in a firestorm of passions carnal and violent. Trenchant social drama, a tribute to Jean Genets antihero, and a brilliant reimagining of the ancient form of tragedy, Querelle of Roberval, winner of Frances Marquis de Sade Prize, is a wildly imaginative story of justice, passion, and murderous revenge.

"Award-winning Indigenous author Harold R. Johnson discusses the promise and potential of storytelling. Approached by an ecumenical society representing many faiths, from Judeo-Christians to fellow members of First Nations, Harold R. Johnson agreed to host a group who wanted to hear him speak about the power of storytelling. This book is the outcome of that gathering. In The Power of Story, Johnson explains the role of storytelling in every aspect of human life, from personal identity to history and the social contracts that structure our societies, and illustrates how we can direct its potential to re-create and reform not only our own lives, but the life we share. Companionable, clear-eyed, and, above all, optimistic, Johnson's message is both a dire warning and a direct invitation to each of us to imagine and create, together, the world we want to live in."--

In ten vividly told stories, Shimmer follows characters through relationships, within social norms, and across boundaries of all kinds as they shimmer into and out of each others lives.Outside a 7-Eleven, teen boys Veeper and Wendell try to decide what to do with their night, though the thought of the rest of their lives doesnt seem to have occurred to them. In Laurel Canyon, two movie stars try to decide if the affair theyre having might mean they like each other. When Byron, trying to figure out the chords of a song he likes, posts a question on a guitar website, he ends up meeting Jessica as well, a woman with her own difficult music. And when the snide and sharp-tongued Twyla agrees to try therapy, not even she would have imagined the results.

Hail, The Invisible Watchman is haunted poetryOlivers formal schemes are as tidy as a picket-fence and as suggestive; behind the charm of rhyme is a vibrant, dark exploration of domestic and social alienation.The poems in Hail, the Invisible Watchman are as tidy as a picket-fenceand as suggestive. Behind the charms of iambs lurks a dark exploration of domestic and social alienation. Metered rhyme sets the tone like a chilling piano score as insidiousness creeps into the neighbourhood. A spectral narrator surveils social gatherings in the town of Sherbet Lake; community members chime in, each revealing their various troubles and hypocrisies; an eerie reimagining of an Ethel Wilson novel follows a young woman into a taboo friendship with an enigmatic divorce. In taut poetic structures across three succinct sections, Alexandra Olivers conflation of the mundane and the phantasmagoric produces a scintillating portrait of the suburban uncanny.

For poetry readers, but also those interested in racial history, the African diaspora, and the transnational racial dynamics of North America. Genre: Fraser employs dramatic monologue and research into the eräs lexicon: he compiled his own dictionary of words, particularly slang, to ensure verisimilitude and authenticity of voice Editorial comps include Rita Dove¿s Thomas and Beulah, The Voyage of the Sable Venus by Robin Coste-Lewis, the Louisiana poems of Yusef Komunyakaa, and the monologues of Ai. Born in Grenada, Fraser is a dual Grenadian-Canadian citizen. His work has appeared widely in Canadian literary journals as well as in Best Canadian Poetry, and he is a past winner of the CBC Poetry Prize.

“This is a book,” writes guest editor Souvankham Thammavongsa, “about what I saw and read and loved, and want you to see and read and love.” Selected from work published by Canadian poets in magazines and journals in 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2021 gathers the poems Thammavongsa loved most over a year’s worth of reading, and draws together voices that “got in and out quickly, that said unusual things, that were clear, spare, and plain, that made [her] laugh out loud … the voices that barely ever survive to make it onto the page.” From new work by Canadian icons to thrilling emerging talents, this year’s anthology offers fifty poems for you to fall in love with as well.Featuring:Margaret AtwoodKen BabstockManahil BandukwalaCourtney Bates-HardyRoxanna BennettRonna BloomLouise CarsonKate CayleyKitty CheungDani CoutureKayla CzagaŠari DaleUnnati DesaiTina DoAndrew DuBoisPaola FerranteBeth GoobieNina Philomena HonoratLiz HowardMaureen HynesGeorge K IlsleyEve JosephIan KetekuJudith KrauseM Travis LaneMary Dean LeeCanisia LubrinRandy LundyDavid LyYohani MendisPamela MosherSusan MusgraveTéa MutonjiBarbara NickelOttavia PaluchKirsten PendreighEmily Pohl-WearyDavid RomandaMatthew RooneyZoe Imani SharpeSue SinclairJohn StefflerSarah Yi-Mei TsiangArielle TwistDavid Ezra WangPhoebe WangHayden WardElana WolffEugenia ZuroskiJan Zwicky

Longlisted for the 2022 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in PoetrySet against the backdrop of a post-moratorium St. John's, Newfoundland, The Debt explores tensions between tradition and innovation, and between past and present in a province unmoored by loss and grief. The Debt is about development and change, idleness and activism, ecological stewardship, feminism, motherhood, the personal and the political. It is also about resistance?against the encroaching forces of greed and capitalism, even against the accumulated notions of the self. The poems are an argument for community and connection in an age increasingly associated with isolation of the individual. The Debt explores the dues we all owe: to nature, to those who came before us, and to one another.

From sandlots to major league stands, two fans set out to recapture their love of the game.

In a nameless Hungarian town, teenagers on a competitive swim team occupy their after-training hours with hard drinking and fast cars, hash cigarettes and marathons of Grand Theft Auto, the meaningless sex and late-night exploits of a world defined by self-gratification and all its attendant recklessness. Invisible to their parents and subject to the whims of an abusive coach, the crucible of competition pushes them again and again into dangerous choices. When a deadly accident leaves them second-guessing one another, they're driven even deeper into violence. Brilliantly translated into breakneck English by Ildik Nomi Nagy, Dead Heat is a blistering debut and an unforgettable story about young men coming of age in an abandoned generation.

Halloween might seem like the spookiest time of year, but Charles Dickens and other great ghost story writers felt otherwise!