Books published by Hidden Brook Press

  Kathleen Whelan writes with one of the most unique voices in Canadian literature I've ever heard. These stories are surreal and yet they don't fit cleanly into the surrealist genre. These stories are also real without being realist and, at the same time, absurd in the tradition of Kafka and Beckett. They are absurdly real. Perhaps, the best description of Whelan's style is absurd-realism, but the truth is Things I Will Tell You When I'm Dead is so original it defies all genre categories; it surprises and unsettles like a strange, yet somehow beautifully crafted dream.Jacob Scheier,Governor General Award winning author of‘More to Keep us Warm’ (ECW Press, 2007) Kathleen Whelan’s distinctive voice shines through in Things I Will Tell You When I am Dead, her first book of stories. Readers of Whelan’s work have been waiting for her debut collection, and the waiting is finally over. The appealing directness of Whelan’s prose, her startling images and irreverence—Whelan’s stories both wrench the heart and clench the gut in often hilarious stories that are relayed in a wildly entertaining and startling, moving style that is uniquely Kathleen Whelan’s.J. Jill Robinsonauthor of the novel ‘More in Anger’and four collections of short stories. Kathleen Whelan lives in her own, strangely slanted world – much like the rest of us. The difference is, she knows how to open the door to her world, even if only a crack, and invite you to peek in. If you’re brave enough, you might actually enter. But don’t enter if you’re looking for some kind of redemption. Do it with an open mind and you’ll encounter a fear that borders on elation and that will tear you open and make you cry, either with sorrow, or with joy, and often with both simultaneously.Kathleen’s sentences are ragged at the edges, like strips of cloth flapping in the wind, they twine together, then shiver apart, suggesting a chaos that never quite materializes, but also never ceases to threaten the narrative.I read a lot of these stories years ago and was awestruck and mystified by Kathleen’s way. I didn’t know exactly how she did it, but I wanted more… and she was kind enough to share more with me. Reading these stories again now, I am still mystified. Kathleen reminds me that it is still possible for me to be lost. It’s okay to be lost. Lost is a valid, and often wondrous place to be.Ken Sparlingis the author of six novels,has been shortlisted for the Trillium Award. 

byzantine proceeds through shallow breaths and heavy swells. Individual poems change their tenor, their voice, their perspective, and their concerns even as the collection builds a continuity of experiences and reflections on various contexts, historical and contemporary, and perspectives or voices. The collection oversees at least three generations: poet, father, grandfather. It moves from Canada to Cyprus. It heaves through academic prose and notes and it flits through soft reflections. This book is Greek and English. Historical and modern. Coy, sad, and ideological. The collection merits reading from front to back. It is something like a novel, deconstructed with respect to character, setting, and plot. Yet the title reveals a great deal about its content. Byzantium is an enigma, as characterized popularly, when it is regarded at all. Put simply, it was the continuation of the Roman Empire post its move to Constantinople from Rome and post its Christianization in the fourth century. Intricate court life. Mystical hierarchies and structures. Decline and fall. Byzantium is a space remember largely through negative connotation in the western world and through mythologizing and memory in the eastern world. Byzantium is a space of historical lore, spiritual exercise and patience, and intellectual efflorescence. The poet standing at his window could very well be overlooking the Bosphorus in contemporary Istanbul. He looks at the world around him, the world past, and the world he could only imagine through stories, and weaves his tale accordingly.

Rosemary Aswani's book, Rain Dance, tells the story of a young girl in Kenya and her perceptions of and relationship with the rain - its moods, its sounds, its rhythmic nature. Through the eyes of a child, we see how the music of the rain can be both comforting and joyful. Colourful, woodcut illustrations by talented artist, Elizabeth Webb complete this fine work. With vocabulary suitable for an older child, this delightful little book is sure to please. Richard Patz, Teacher Rain Dance is a beautifully illustrated fireside story from Kenya. A realistic thunderstorm experience for the reader! Suggestions for classroom use/Curriculum: 'Literacy' - Reading Comprehension Strategy of 'Visualizing' (descriptions paint a picture for the reader) - 'Character Builds' trait: Courage (overcoming fears, bravery) 'The Arts' - Music: creating a soundscape of the thunderstorm - Drama: creating tableaux of 4-5 key events in the story - Dance: movements to represent various parts in the story...Create a 'Rain Dance' Social Studies - Study storytelling traditions from around the world (discuss storytelling similarities to folktales and fairy tales in Canada) - Rewrite a story you remember hearing from your childhood (especially at Hess as most students come from different countries/cultures) Recommended Grade Levels: This book would be fantastic for Grade 2, especially because Grade 2 studies 'Traditions Around the World' (storytelling). However, it would be appropriate for all Primary grades (K-3). Amy Onat, Hamilton-Wentworth District School Board, Hess Street School, Grade 2

Poems and short stories mingle in this provocative memoir that simultaneously explores and re-imagines one young woman’s pursuit of excitement in a world of drugs, booze, boys, rock and roll. On the border of Detroit and Windsor the stories Bridget Ryan recreates from her past reveal the immense pressures and pursuits that surround youth, beauty, and the need to win big and live fast. Tennis tournaments riddled with hallucinogenic episodes, romantic first sightings with Ferris Wheels on the horizon and tragedy lurking in further conquests, these short narratives create an overall journey through some of life’s greatest obstacles. Bitches With Problems re-appropriates the strength women are often denied through an objectifying gaze and gives the protagonist and her many fascinating female cohorts an agency and a power wrought through sheer survival, conflict, and hard-won camaraderie.

Blurbs:44 WordsIn her new book, And With Thy Spirit, award-winning poet and mystic, April Bulmer, speaks in the tongues of many women based on her visions of past lives. Even her favourite tree is a familiar old soul and "bows his stiff knees/ to weather."198 WordsAnd With Thy Spirit is a new book of poetry in which author, April Bulmer, unravels the story of her soul like gauze from a bandaged wound. Confident in the Eastern philosophy of reincarnation: the concept that we begin a life after biological death in a new body (human, animal or spiritual), she describes the garden of women who bloom like damp blossoms from her fertile womb. She recalls the stories of their roots, the energy of their suns and moons. Life after life, the Lord has taken her, often in the dim "when shadows genuflect/ on buffalo skin." A feminine soul deeply entrenched in Native culture and ritual her God limps for her like "an old coyote/ past miracle sites/ and stones of pagans./ Through fallen fields/ where the living send/ their prayers." Her women have also enjoyed the company of many men. Lucille Sky, for instance, walks the river with her lover their "souls speaking tongue: canoes and fish/ and the God of blood." She wants Johnny Nanticoke's brown hand on her breast "like a shadow/ on Grandmother Moon." April's ghostly incarnations often come to her in "the moments before sleep," their hair wild with dream.

A story for all ages, Alone: a Winter in the Woods quickly engages the reader in thirteen year-old John Turner''s adventures. Forced to grow up quickly, while left alone on the family''s land grant in a virtually unsettled township, in the winter of 1797, John has to overcome devastating isolation and loneliness. With only a couple of oxen, a pregnant cow, a handful of chickens and his dog to keep him company, everyday tasks become ten times more difficult than they were while Pa was still with him, building their tiny cabin. Meanwhile John''s mother has adopted the orphaned Joséphine, who keeps a journal recording the life of the Turners and her own experiences, while the family waits for Pa to return to Adolphustown to escort his wife and young children up the lake to the new settlement once spring allows water traffic to start up again. This tale explores the differences between family life and expectations in the eighteenth century and the present, as John and Joséphine reflect on what home, family, and friendship mean to them and struggle to find the courage, determination and faith needed to face the future. Alone: a Winter in the Woods is written in the spirit and quality of Fredrick Philip Grove''s, Governor General Award winning novel, "Settlers of the Marsh". Felicity Sidnell Reid brings the Young reader a spell binding pioneer life story of survival. The young reader will be captivated by vivid descriptions of the northern landscape. This historically accurate story of endurance will be equally enjoyed by girls and boys of any age.

"We are reading our way out of sadness." So writes Linda Rogers in her fine poem, "Paper Stairs." And as our relationship with home and family is a complicated and varied one, Ursula Pflug''s Hidden Brook Press anthology They Have to Take You In, provides the reader with ample evidence of the profound complexity of blood and clan. The Welsh word "hiraeth" translates roughly as "longing for home," and yet there are those for whom home is not so positive and the fine line between being homesick and being sick of home is just as often not so fine. "I remember being put out on the street/ΓÇ¿at the age of nine or ten/ΓÇ¿by my father for reasons that still remain a mystery/ even to me," writes Darryl Salach in his poem, "On the Road". None of the mushy sentimentality, false memory and treacly greeting-card nostalgia for these writers-no, these writers are interested in the healing truths we tell when writers are writing their way out of sadness for the sake of love. Herein they tell the entire grumble of the story, sometimes in memoir, sometimes in fiction, sometimes in a poem, but never in the candy-coated dithyrambs that populate the pages of those ''chicken soup for the soul'' books. This anthology is filled with serious truth, the kind that goes deep and heals from well within the wound. John B. Lee Poet Laureate of Brantford, Poet Laureate of Norfolk County