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A spinster in love with a tobacco-smoking ghost. A lonely one-eyed monster who wanders the desert. A Medieval saint who delights in her " miraculous ruine." In Little Fortified Stories, award-winning writer Barbara Black conjures a microcosm of characters that defy convention. In these very short stories, curious worlds are encapsulated like a series of snow globes, swirling with deep emotion and teeming with strangeness. Inspired by art, music, alcoholic spirits, and what Black calls " authentic fabrications" from her own ancestry, these eclectic tales are told with an eye to the absurd. Buzzing with hypnotic intensity, Little Fortified Stories presents a world in which everything is theatre and the regular rules don't apply.

Following a devastating leg injury that would leave her with an acutely crooked knee, Bronwyn Preece embarks on an ambitious and immersive journey into a remote area of Northern BC. Written on the trail, knee deep in high water is a chronicle of the most physically challenging experience following her accident--a two-week-long horse expedition--and an impassioned ode to the breathtaking beauty of the backcountry. As she journeys through melting mountains and rising rivers, Preece encounters new moments of thwarted plans and questioned ethics that parallel her personal path of healing, both physical and emotional. These poems are an account of one woman's movement into a deeper understanding of self. She grapples with her role as a settler in the unceded lands that provide her with so much comfort and attachment, as well as her own fragility and strength in relation to the terrains she explores. Through struggles and celebrations, lessons and longings, knee deep in high water is a love letter to the trail, and to returning home.

What does it mean to feel at home? In his groundbreaking debut collection Exit Wounds, Indo-Canadian poet Tariq Malik weaves together history and myth with his own family's experiences of immigration to uncover what it truly means to belong. Whether he is recalling his childhood memories of the death of his father, imagining himself as a dead soldier lost in the sands of the Kuwaiti desert, or drawing upon his family's experience of 'three wars and migrations, ' Malik's moving search for home will resonate with anyone who has ever felt at odds with a dominant monoculture. Malik's poetry combines traditional Punjabi mythology and First Nations' symbolism with contemporary events that have shaped the lives of immigrants: 9/11, RCMP violence, war. The result is a defiant triumph of the plurality of minority experiences--a poetic chorus of immigrants and their descendants coming home to the truth and power of their many worlds.

THIS UNLIKELY SOIL, the sophomore collection from Lambda Literary Award finalist Andrea Routley, is a quintet of linked novellas exploring the failures of kindness and connection among a rural west-coast community of queer women. In Midden, Naomi, recently split from Rita and apathetically venturing into online dating, sifts through the remains of past relationships after Rita accuses her of emotional abuse. In Appropriate Behaviour, Freddie, suffering from a brain injury, seeks resolution with a neighbour after his dog bites her, but a lifetime of mixed messages yields disastrous results. In Guided Walk, Miriams latest clumsy infatuation pushes her to change her life, to finally come out on a guided walk with her cousin. When her cousin beats her to it, Miriam descends into pettiness before finding her way out of the woods. THIS UNLIKELY SOIL, a finalist for the 2020 Malahat Review Novella Prize, is the story of Elana, who, following the sudden death of her mother, attempts to manufacture a meaningful relationship with a former partners teenaged son. The quintet concludes with Damage, the sequel to Midden. Told from Ritas perspective, this story explores classist exploitations within many relationships and asks what our responsibilities are in saying no.

Emily & Elspeth follows two women and their unique paths to love... and each other. Catherine McNeil's latest collection is a delightful romp through South America, the imagined inner-workings of Frida Kahlo's relationship(s), and Vancouver bedrooms. Through poems that flirt with the intersections of desire, art, and commitment, she pieces together Emily and Elspeth's relationship as playfully as she takes it apart. Along the way, Emily & Elspeth brings you to places both intimate and unexpected: a belly where a uterus used to be; a girl matador facing off against a bull; and "fat, honeyed days, swollen with desire" that risk being destroyed by the nefarious aims of a government spy. Weird, wonderful, and slightly dangerous, this is a queer love story that's anything but typical.

A new generation of old-growth defenders and activist-poets, from kindergarten to grade twelve, express their love and respect for trees. In Worth More Growing, youth, from kindergarten through grade twelve, share their love and respect for trees. Speaking to our changing climate, this new generation of old-growth defenders express their observations, anger, kinship, hope, and sorrow. This unique anthology includes a wide range of voices--Indigenous, settler, immigrant, and even international youth. Worth More Growing is a necessary anthology highlighting the importance of nature to a generation that will experience the ongoing consequences of climate change.

In RIVER OF MISTS, best-selling author and award-winning historian Geoff Mynett returns to the Skeena River community of Hazelton to shed new light on the wide spectrum of characters who left their mark on the area. Delving as far back in time as the early 1820s, Mynett covers over a century of change in the small community which, due to its location at the forks of the Skeena and Bulkley rivers and proximity to mountain ranges, seems destined to be a hub of activity -- always industrious, often prosperous, and occasionally scandalous -- while maintaining the charming nature of a small town. The characters in RIVER OF MISTS may not be those traditionally associated with the written history of the region now known as Hazelton, BC. Here are the stories of those whose lives left some mark on the community -- visitors like Hudsons Bay Company trader Simon McGillivray, Western Union Telegraph medical officer George Chismore, and famed painter Emily Carr; and the lesser-known pioneers, prospectors, and long-time residents like HBC agent turned local business owner Thomas Hankin, and Bishop William Ridley and Jane Ridley, founders of the Hazelton Queek, named after the whistling mountain marmot. Combining folksy, small-town charm and meticulous research, Mynetts River of Mists: People of the Upper Skeena, 1821-1930 is a whimsical and informative chronicle of a century in the heart of Northern BC.

Explore behind the scenes of the riskiest search and rescue operations in North America. Rescue Me takes you behind the scenes of some of North America's riskiest search and rescue operations. Author Cathalynn Labonté-Smith shares real-life stories as told by volunteer members of Search and Rescue teams, who find the lost and rescue the injured in the most extreme conditions and situations the wilds of North America throw at them. From rescuing avalanche victims in blinding snowstorms, to climbing into vehicles teetering on cliff edges to free passengers from mangled metal, or crossing wafer-thin ice to save an injured cross-country skier, these thrilling first-hand accounts will forever change how you prepare for your next outdoor adventure. Labonté-Smith uncovers everyday dangers, from the unexpected risks of familiar urban settings to the extreme conditions in North America's wilderness. Deserving of a place both on your bookshelf and in your backpack, Rescue Me is a must-read book that could save your life.

Writer and educator Mary Bomford describes the formative years of her life working as a teacher in Zambia, and the long-lasting impact those years imprinted upon her. At the age of 21, Canadian teacher Mary Bomford and her husband of just eight weeks embarked on a journey that would directly alter their careers, their marriage, and their family. That journey would trace an invisible but palpable thread through the rest of their lives. Enticed by dreams of adventure, in 1969 Mary and her husband Larry moved to Lundazi, a town near the eastern border of Zambia to work as CUSO volunteers in a secondary school. At the time, the country, a nation newly independent after decades of colonialism, was looking for volunteers to fill the teacher shortage until enough young Zambians had completed their teacher training. New to marriage, teaching, and Zambia, Mary embarks on a profound journey connecting them to the country, their students, and their colleagues. Zambia gave them the experience of a second home, filled with moments of delight in the beauty of the area and enriched by the culture of the Zambian people. Years later, Mary reflects on her experiences of the landscape, culture, and people in the hopeful time following independence. Red Dust & Cicada Songs is an exploration of the deep and lasting connection she still feels for her time in Zambia.

In the style of Gumboot Girls and Dancing in Gumboots, Dancing on Mountains is an inspiring collection of firsthand stories from women of the Kootenays and Sinixt and Ktunaxa Nations. Dancing on Mountains is a collection of inspiring and eclectic stories written by women from across geography and time, each of whom has been drawn to take root in the mystic, beautiful Kootenays. In their own words, these women--teachers, artists, musicians, writers, entrepreneurs, and environmentalists--share stories that embody the spirit of the Kootenays. From fleeing the US draft alongside the men of the 60s and pushing against traditional gender roles and sexism, to reclaiming Indigenous identities, calling out environmental threats, and fighting for our climate today, these stories span the spectrum of human experience. Thoughtful, heartwarming, and delightfully entertaining, Dancing on Mountains is a celebration of the brilliant, radical essence of the women of the Kootenays.

In Kechika Chronicler, award-winning historian Jay Sherwood delves into the diaries of reclusive packer William Freer to uncover daily life in one of the most remote areas of BC. Willard Freer lived in remote areas of northern BC for most of his life. Born in Kamloops in 1910 and raised in the Peace River country, Freer came to the Kechika River valley in 1942, where he worked for a number of years with famed packer and guide Skook Davidson. He then built a cabin about 35 kilometres to the north and spent the rest of his life in the valley, and at Fireside, an Alaska Highway lodge near the junction of the Kechika and Liard rivers. By all accounts, Freer was a quiet, introverted person, who faithfully kept a daily diary from 1942 to 1975. Most of the entries are brief, but cumulatively they provide a detailed record of life in northern BC and southern Yukon Territory. Due to his proximity to the famed Alaska Highway and the historic Davie Trail, Willard encountered many of the Indigenous people who lived, worked, and travelled through the Kechika valley, as well as casual visitors, bush pilots, government survey parties including the Geological Survey of Canada, major mining companies, and branches of the US Army in northern BC during World War II. Willard Freer's diaries are the most extensive written record of daily life in a remote region of BC.

In Talking to the Story Keepers, writer and journalist Sage Birchwater gathers dozens of stories spanning decades in the Cariboo Chilcotin. These stories reflect on the story keepers themselves as well as our collective humanity, tying everything from the small moments, heroic deeds, and colourful characters, to the greater significance of our histories. Each story contains insight, wisdom, knowledge, or entertainment, connecting the past to the present and shaping the future in each telling; each story provides a sense of perspective of where we come from, and prepares us for how we might proceed forward. Talking to the Story Keepers also offers an image of a changing landscape, identifying the quiet or forgotten stories swept aside by colonization. From the tale of the Old Emmanuel United Church congregation singing "Onward Christian Soldiers" from the pews as the 65-year-old church was dragged across the river to a new location, to the Ulkatcho community search for missing local Tory Jack, which was successfully led to its conclusion by a clever horse, each story builds a portrait of time, place, and of the story keepers that protect these histories for the next generation.

Poets, both settler and Indigenous, pay tribute to trees through reflections on the past, connections to the present, and calls for the protection of our future. In Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees, celebrated poets and activists pay homage to the ghosts of lost forests and issue a rallying cry to protect remaining ancient giants and restore uncolonized spaces. Themes of connection, ecology, grief, and protection are explored through poems about trees and forests written by an impressive number of influential poets, several of whom have attended the recent Fairy Creek blockades and still others who defended old growth ecosystems in Clayoquot Sound nearly 30 years ago. Contributors include ninth Parliamentary Poet Laureate Louise Bernice Halfe-Sky Dancer, GG winner Arleen Paré, Canadian icon bill bissett, Griffin Poetry Prize winner Eve Joseph, ReLit Award winner Patrick Friesen, Order of Canada and Order of the Rising Sun recipient Joy Kogawa, Vancouver Poet Laureate Fiona Tinwei Lam, Harold Rhenisch, Jay Ruzesky, John Barton, Kate Braid, Kim Trainor, Kim Goldberg, Pamela Porter, Patricia and Terence Young, Russell Thornton, Sonnet L'Abbé, Susan McCaslin, Susan Musgrave, Tom Wayman, Trevor Carolan, Yvonne Blomer, Zoe Dickinson, and the late Pat Lowther.

In his latest collection, Secwépemc rancher and renowned poet Garry Gottfriedson explores the fraught mechanics of contemporary masculinity, politics, and love. Bent Back Tongue is a raw examination of love, identity, politics, masculinity, and vulnerability. Through sharp honesty and revealing satire, Gottfriedson delves into Canadian colonialism and the religious political paradigms shaping experiences of a Secwépemc First Nations man. This is a book that tears through deceptions that both Canada and the church impose on their citizens. Gottfriedson tackles the darkest layers of a shared colonial history; at the same time, the poems in Bent Back Tongue are a celebration of love, land, family, and the self.

Go "beneath the coal dust" to discover the unexpected stories surrounding the Elk Valley and Crowsnest Pass. In Beneath the Coal Dust, author Wayne Norton digs deep, exploring the fascinating and sometimes sobering stories of the mining communities in the Elk Valley and the Crowsnest Pass. In this new collection, Norton chooses mainly a micro view, focusing on the stories that are specific to this isolated and unique geographic region. These tales span from the notorious red-light district of Fernie to women's ice hockey in the 1920s, to the civic financial crisis caused by the Home Bank collapse, the regional history of breweries and prohibition, and the experiences and amazing fortitude of both Chinese and Syrian immigrants in what was a predominantly white settler town. This is a book about the local past, intended for those interested not necessarily in the broad sweep of national history, but rather in the smaller stories that are specific to this remote and historically rich area. And instead of dealing with the core regional narrative surrounding the coal industry, these explorations reveal some of what has been neglected and hidden "beneath the coal dust," as the title suggests.

Barkerville Lives On! First published in 1969, Barkerville Days is the nearest thing we have to a definitive history of one of the world's most colourful gold rushes. It has taken more than a hundred years for the first truly extensive and carefully researched story of Barkerville and its Cariboo goldfields to be placed between covers of a comprehensive volume. This book, rich in fact and anecdotal history, is the work of a do-it-yourself miner-historian, a mining man who talked the language of the last of the originals and their first descendants. A dedicated gatherer of the authoritative story of the Cariboo, centering on Barkerville, Fred Ludditt has done for that area what another Mitchell Press author, the late Walter R. Hamilton, did for the Klondike in his book The Yukon Story. Here is the priceless product of interviews which can never be done again. It is the story of how Billy Barker's claim suddenly sprouted the lusty town of Barkerville far inland from the sea in the upper headwaters of British Columbia's famed Fraser River. Barkerville Camp, which in its heyday was the most populous place on the continent west of Toronto and north of San Francisco, will live on in these pages for posterity to know.

Award-winning poet Arleen Paré pays homage to the work of lesbian Syrian American poet Etel Adnan. If books come from books, as David W. McFadden has claimed, then Time Out of Time is a clear example, arising, very deliberately as it does, out of Etel Adnan's astonishing collection entitled Time. The poems in Time Out of Time are in love with the poems in Adnan's Time and, it seems, Paré has fallen in love with Time's author, Etel Adnan, the internationally renowned poet and painter--or perhaps it is that she has merely fallen in love with Adnan's words. Paré's poems mirror the form, the rhythm, the shape, the short, brief lines in her own spare missives that are the poems in Time. This mirroring increases the intensity of Time Out of Time, creating a rare intimacy in Paré's collection. Paré's work pays homage to Adnan's work. Both collections pay homage to the world of the lesbian in the twenty-first century and to the world of the small poem. Using clear, crisp, well-defined language in visibly defined geometries, in "stanza after sweet-smelling stanza," Paré attempts to examine the trials of this new century, the hush around the word lesbian, the hush of the world's general collapse.

In this unflinching and whimsical collection, Victoria's former poet laureate Yvonne Blomer explores death, disability, and the fate of our imperilled world. In The Last Show on Earth, Yvonne Blomer gathers the diverse characters and distinct moments from everyday life, its tragedies, and triumphs, and begins to imagine them in a circus as side shows and exhibitions of the unusual. In her latest collection, Blomer borrows from museum dioramas, the paintings of Robert Bateman, and the animal portraits in National Geographic to question and explore the human element in the lives and survival of other species. In poems that are at times unflinchingly dark yet playful, Blomer balances on a tightrope of grief and hope as she traces the lines from motherhood and caring for aging parents to caring for our planet and its endangered creatures--the whale, the elephant, the wolf, the polar bear--as they face ongoing environmental destruction. In The Last Show on Earth, we are all performers under the bright striped tent or packed on the circus train heading toward an unknown destination.

Award-winning poet Sarah de Leeuw considers the ways in which words and languages form and embolden coloniality and create unequal imaginings of--and power in--place. In Lot, award-winning poet and essayist Sarah de Leeuw returns to the landscape of her early girlhood to consider the racial complexities of colonial violence in those spaces. Following loosely as a companion to Skeena (Caitlin Press, 2015), Lot is written entirely of couplets, mirroring the two main islands of Haida Gwaii, and draws on lyric traditions, assemblage, and investigative poetry techniques to re-imagine geological and anthropological data, re-read colonial documents, and interrogate the role of language in centering stories of white supremacy on and about the islands. Written in a time of ostensible Truth and Reconciliation in lands now called Canada, a time when the Government of British Columbia has declared support for the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples but continues to arrest Indigenous peoples in their homes and on unceded lands, Lot draws a firm, and yet poetic, line between historic and present-day white-Euro-colonial violence. Through structure, form, and sound, the poems in Lot insist on the possibilities of poetry to create better worlds, to utter something anew.

With enormous care and unquenchable daring, Rhona McAdam explores our relationship to the living world and challenges the constraints of contemporary poetry in her latest collection, Larder. Fully immersed in the organic world, Larder is at once an elegant transcription of the spiritual nourishment that comes from our embrace of the earth and of the inevitable loss in our unwillingness to embrace sustainability. In her latest collection, McAdam navigates the dark places of human movement through the earth and the exquisite intricacies lingering in backyard gardens and farmlands populated by insects and pollinators, all the while returning to the body, to the tune of staccato beats and the newly discovered symmetries within the human heart.

In the Blood traces the relationship of two brothers through childhood to adulthood and in and out of institutions to reveal the intricate, often hidden bonds that are broken and forged by the effects of mental illness. In his debut full-length collection, former City of New Westminster Poet Laureate Alan Hill delivers a deeply revealing and heartfelt depiction of a lifetime of mental illness--both his own and that of his brother. In the Blood traces the brothers' relationship from childhood to adulthood, and how his brother's diagnosis became inextricably intertwined with Hill's own mental health struggles. As his brother spends much of his life in and out of institutions, Hill grapples with his own guilt, shame, and loss. Moving from the past to the present and back again, In the Blood is a search for meaning and comfort in the confusion of childhood and the untethered searching of adulthood. With stark vulnerability, Hill reveals the intricate and often hidden bonds that are both broken and established by mental illness and pushes toward a form of relief, release, and recovery.

Off-beat, provocative, philosophical, Music from a Strange Planet traces the fault lines of identity and emotional attachment. Grief, tenderness, and longing soak the pages, admitting the reader into the intimate places of the heart: An awkward child envisions herself as a darkling beetle; an unemployed business analyst prefers water-walking over "rebranding" himself; after being kidnapped, a psychologist rejects the idea of marrying herself; and in the squatters' district, a biogenetically-altered couple visits an attic to observe a large cocoon. From the ruins of a dystopian city to the inner self-created landscapes of a coma victim, this unique story collection places characters at the core of their vulnerabilities. With a masterfully crafted tone and a register that ranges from contemplative to comic, the subversive, immersive stories in this collection brim with humanity. Expect your planet to tilt a little to the strange after reading this engaging, vivid and incisive collection of stories.

At thirty-eight years old, Ruthie finds herself newly unemployed, freshly single, sleeping on a friend's couch and downing a bottle of wine each night. Having overstayed her welcome and desperate for a job, Ruthie responds to David's ad: he's looking for someone to drive his aging mother, Kay, and her belongings from PEI to Vancouver. Ruthie thinks it's the perfect chance for a brief escape and a much-needed boost for her empty bank account. But once they're on the road, Kay reveals that she's got a list of stops along the way that's equal parts sightseeing tour, sexual bucket-list, and trip down memory lane. As David prods for updates and a speedy arrival to his home in Vancouver, Kay begins to share details about a long-lost love and Ruthie takes a detour to play matchmaker, but finds herself caught up in a web of well-intentioned lies. With the road ahead uncertain, and the past and present colliding, will Ruthie be able to forge a new path? Heartfelt and humorous, The List of Last Chances follows a pair of reluctant travel companions across the country, into an unexpected friendship, new adventures, and the rare gift of second chances.

Taking the name of a nervous system disorder that causes involuntary shaking, Essential Tremor undertakes an exploration of the body that holds disruption at its heart. The captivating and timely poems in Essential Tremor attend to many bodies--the body of the world, changing, unreachable, at times momentarily illumined; the human body, loved, ill, mourning, passing or passed from this world; and the divine body, questioned, encountered and not, sought by people from the margins in the body of a biblical palimpsest. In her third collection, award-winning poet Barbara Nickel blends sonnets in sequences and scattered stand-alones with more formal innovations and extensions--erasures of the notes accompanying da Vinci's anatomical drawings, lines found from Beethoven's autopsy, and the musings of poet isolating in the midst of a twenty-first-century pandemic. Nickel asks her readers to consider the many facets of the body, how it finds the words, lines and poems that together form an essential life, a gift among our deepest wounds and terrors.

Within us all are questions of identity, belonging, and connection. Beth Kope's third poetry collection, Atlas of Roots, is a work of the heart that uncovers the many facets of adoption. In poems that both witness and question, Kope shares her own quest to uncover family history and answers--finding her adoption records, questioning her parent's choices, and the truth of her own conception. Moving beyond the personal, Atlas of Roots shares other stories of adoption through the voices of other adoptees and parents of both relinquished and adopted children. In seeking a name and one's own story, Kope has written a striking and courageous narrative of adoption.