Prairie books NOW

07/26/2023

Alice Major's latest poetry collection from Turnstone Press spans the globe and millennia, weaving together past, present, future.

“I think the widespread tendency for human societies to imagine narratives about ‘end times’ may be a way of trying to cope with the existential conflict between knowing we’ll certainly die, but not knowing when our end will actually come."

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/with-six-takes-on-the-apocalypse-and-meditations-on-anger-knife-on-snow-is-oddly-hopeful

07/24/2023

Remedies for Chiron is the debut poetry collection from m. patchwork monoceros.

“The remedies – the short pieces that open each chapter – grew out of reconnecting with past poems and reflecting on the wisdom I didn’t know I was harbouring at the time."

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/remedies-include-returning-to-grief-and-the-love-it-grows-from-for-winnipeg-poet

07/20/2023

As humanity faces climate change, we’ll certainly need the resources of the information age to survive it. But what if those resources weren’t available? What if electronic records were as fragmented and incomprehensible to future generations as hieroglyphics?

Award-winning Ontario writer-artist Bill Slavin explores these questions in his new graphic novel, Secrets of Jarrow.

“The future world of the Crow books gives my imagination free rein as I imagine a world in decay. That suits my own temperament as, visually, I love to draw old buildings and ruins and things that are about to fall down.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/cli-fi-mystery-questions-our-digital-dependence-and-survival-amid-decay

07/19/2023

The creative fodder for Winnipeg author Sarah Klassen’s second novel, The Russian Daughter, came from a story told by her mother about a childless couple who made two attempts at adoption, both ending sadly.

“My idea was to write about the human desire for children and family and the complications that might frustrate such desires,” she says.

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/complicated-desire-for-family-foregrounds-tale-set-in-early-1900s-mennonite-town

07/17/2023

As the first full-length offering from Corinna Chong since her well-received debut novel Belinda’s Rings in 2013, The Whole Animal, her debut short story collection, has been a long time coming.

“I’m fascinated by enigmatic child characters,” Chong admits. “I think children are often vivid reflections of our own most deep-seated hopes and fears, perhaps because they can be so honest and unencumbered by social expectations. In this way they are great vehicles for forcing characters to confront their internal conflicts head-on.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/for-corinna-chong-short-forms-offer-experimentation-space-for-enigmatic-child-characters

07/13/2023

In The Book of Rain, award-winning Edmonton-area author Thomas Wharton tells a riveting tale of the impact that human choices have on our world.

“The Park is based on real-world environmental catastrophe sites, but what I really wanted to suggest was that the Park is nature ... Nature is beauty and life-sustaining wonder, but it’s also danger, contamination, radiation, and deep strangeness.”

Read more at prairiebooksnow.ca.

06/07/2023

The Spring/Summer issue of Prairie books NOW is available to read online, and is making its way across Manitoba, Alberta, and Saskatchewan as well.⁠
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You can read each article individually, or flip through the pdf if you prefer a print-like experience: https://prairiebooksnow.ca/

01/13/2023

Racism in Southern Alberta and Anti-Racist Activism for Change, edited by University of Lethbridge academics Caroline Hodes and Glenda Tibe Bonifacio, is a collection of works by scholars and activists.

Organized into three sections – Everyday and Institutional Racisms, Belonging/Un-Belonging, and Policing and Carceral Logics – the book includes personal narratives, ethnographical studies, critical discussions, dialogues, oral histories, and even poetry. This range of forms makes it valuable for scholars, but also accessible and engaging for general readers.

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/anti-racist-scholars-activists-call-for-dramatic-reinvention-of-how-we-see-ourselves-others

01/12/2023

Amy Kaler on her account of the COVID-19 pandemic, Until Further Notice: A Year in Pandemic Time (University of Alberta Press):

“I think everyone who’s been through this pandemic has had the experience of realizing that they’ve got a friend or family member or a tree in their forest who deeply and passionately disagrees with their understanding of pandemics and politics.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/professors-essays-an-introspective-addition-to-pandemic-time-capsule

12/10/2022

Judith Silverthorne on her middle-years time-travel adventure, The Treasure Box (Your Nickel's Worth Publishing)

“I wanted to do a different kind of time-shift book that was ancestral, skipping a few generations maybe, but [that] had a strong connection to the present,” she says.

“I also wanted to make it a little more complex, incorporating what’s happening in the world in current times, as well as have a strong subplot about prejudicial attitudes and bullying against those trying to fit into a world that is different from the one they left behind.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/time-travel-adventure-dives-into-ancestral-history-to-explore-migration-hardship

12/09/2022

Myrna Kostash on her memoir, Ghosts in a Photograph (Newest Press):

“In the end we all inherit the family photographs. And we learn things about our past that keep on speaking to us long after the people in the photographs are no longer among the living.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/archival-deep-dive-into-ukranian-family-history-considers-settler-narrative

12/09/2022

Alongside Vietnamese culture, Linda Trinh says she wanted her debut chapter book series from Annick Press “to reflect and highlight the complexities of kids’ experiences,” especially for kids from historically marginalized communities.

“It’s important to me to write these types of stories because unfortunately, kids do face these things in real life – discrimination, prejudice, hate, violence – as they are trying to figure out who they are.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/debut-chapter-book-series-highlights-vietnamese-culture-complexity-of-kids-experiences

12/08/2022

Dee Hobsbawn-Smith on her debut novel, Danceland Diary (Radiant Press):

“Like my central character Luka, I returned to the family farm to live in Saskatchewan as an adult, albeit an older one. And also like Luka, my maternal family are off-colony Hutterites.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/strong-willed-characters-navigate-multigenerational-family-dynamics-investigate-disappearance

12/08/2022

Jackie Traverse on her latest colouring book, Resilience: Honouring the Children of Residential Schools (Fernwood Publishing):

“Sometimes people don’t have access to getting teachings from our Elders and Medicine People in the community – so for them to learn something through a book, by spending a quiet moment with someone they love or even alone – that’s the real medicine right there.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/colouring-book-paired-with-teachings-can-offer-quiet-time-healing-connection-and-more

12/05/2022

Darla Contois on her multidisciplinary play, The War Being Waged (J. Gordon Shillingford):

“This play at its heart is about family,” she says. “It’s about how modern-day colonialism still comes between us. The best way I knew how to tell that story was through the women because no matter what we’ve been through, we will always fight for our families.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/tale-follows-3-generations-of-indigenous-womens-art-activism-survival-through-acts-of-love

12/05/2022

Debbie Patterson on her play, How It Ends (Playwrights Canada):

“With this play, I really wanted to help the audience begin to contemplate their own deaths. I really believe there’s a lot of growth and transformation possible through the contemplation of one’s own mortality. It seems a shame to wait until the 11th hour to begin that growth and transformation.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/play-moves-from-traditional-to-surreal-settings-drawing-audience-in-to-consider-mortality

12/04/2022

Skylar Kay on her debut poetry collection, Transcribing Moonlight (Frontenac House):

“By subverting haibun expectations, I introduce marginalized topics – gender dysphoria, hormone replacement therapy, navigating sexuality – to a traditional form. Seasons change, lunar cycles wax and wane, and I accept the transitions in my own life.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/skylar-kay-pairs-marginalized-topics-with-form-traditionally-used-for-travel-journals

12/03/2022

Sixty-Seven Ontological Studies (Freehand Books) pairs Jan Zwicky's poems with Robert Moody's photographs.

"To our minds, the poems and the photographs are separate entities. Each poem and each photograph is an ontological study in its own right and speaks for itself.” -Robert Moody

“In composing the poems, I was attempting to pay attention to reality, and it seems to me that this is very much what Robert achieves with his photographs: attention to reality.”
-Jan Zwicky

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/collaboration-between-photos-and-poems-illuminate-search-for-meaning-magic

12/03/2022

Michael Afenfia hopes this book “will speak to and for all the brave men and women who come to this country every day and who are either too ashamed or afraid to tell their stories or share their experiences.”

Leave My Bones in Saskatoon (Griots Lounge) is Afenfia's 6th novel.

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/novel-set-in-nigeria-canada-highlights-untold-stories-of-transnational-migration

12/02/2022

Suzette Mayr on her latest novel, The Sleeping Car Porter (Coach House Books):

“I am so not interested anymore in reading or writing yet another fiction about Black suffering or about q***r people being lonely or punished because they’re q***r.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/black-q***r-joy-and-deliberately-hidden-history-brought-to-life-in-playful-poetic-style

12/02/2022

H&A Christensen on their new action-packed story, Stealing John Hancock (Turnstone Press):

“As JP settles into adulthood, his past haunts him and his need to do something grand in life becomes more urgent in his mind and leads to a recklessness that finds him in his current catastrophic predicament.”

Read more from the Fall/Winter issue at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/action-packed-story-revolves-around-identity-theft-and-one-mans-worst-day-ever

12/01/2022

Leslie Greentree on her short fiction collection, Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For:

“There are recurring themes of death and loss, themes of artistic expression, themes of presentation of self, of the political and the personal, threaded through a variety of stories and voices. And through it all, flawed, flailing people.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/leslie-greentree-returns-with-well-crafted-takes-on-politics-abortion-loneliness-and-disaster

11/10/2022

Our Fall/Winter issue is now in print and finding its way to your favourite Prairie booksellers, libraries, and more.⁠
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Meanwhile, you can browse the issue pdf or read the full articles online at www.prairiebooksnow.ca.

08/22/2022

Nicola I. Campbell on Spíləxm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, Resurgence (Portage & Main Press):

“As an Indigenous writer, these english ideologies are a tradition situated in oppression and control. They silence and devalue the voices of Indigenous writers – rhythms, cadence, flow, and especially languages that do not fit the colonizers’ expectations – while also completely destroying Indigenous languages around the world.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/memoir-an-ode-to-indigenous-elders-with-hope-for-helping-others-to-heal

08/18/2022

Chantal Fiola on Returning to Ceremony (University of Manitoba Press):

"I had distanced myself from the Roman Catholic Church because I didn’t feel like I was nurtured there as a Michif person, as a woman, as a Two-Spirit person.” And when she started going to ceremonies, she felt that “all parts of me were nurtured and encouraged.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/scholar-studies-metis-spirituality-to-help-reconnect-people-to-the-healing-power-of-ceremony

08/17/2022

Premee Mohamed on The Annual Migration of Clouds (ECW Press):

“I was aiming at a disease that might strenuously attempt to alter the host’s body in a way to preserve its own existence,” she explains, “which means that those infected with it find themselves wondering whether it also affects their mind, and whether they can trust their thoughts, memories, emotions, and reactions.”

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/novella-asks-what-world-could-become-if-people-dont-take-climate-change-seriously

06/21/2022

Please watch for the new issue of Prairie books NOW in the Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba home-subscriber edition of The Globe and Mail on Wednesday, June 22!

https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/issue/issue-80-spring-summer-2022

Prairie books NOW is a widely-read publication dedicated to promoting books by Prairie publishers and writers. PbN is available free-of-charge at bookstores, libraries and many other venues throughout the Prairies and across Canada.

06/03/2022

Georgina Beaty on The Party Is Here:

“We’re already dealing with the cascading impacts of global warming, so I wanted to write stories where climate change is a ‘natural’ part of the characters’ lives, where the extremes that are the new normal are integrated rather than left out. I’m engaged in making the large-scale policy change that’s needed to address the reality of global warming,” Beaty says.

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/beaty-threads-hope-for-a-better-future-through-collection-examining-impacts-of-global-warming

06/02/2022

Our Spring/Summer issue is now online and out in the world!

You can read the full pdf version or browse the articles online at prairiebooksnow.ca.

The magazine is also available free of charge at many libraries and bookstores across the Prairies.

Happy summer reading!

05/16/2022

Jane Cawthorn and E.D. Morin discuss Impact: Women Writing After Concussion.

“Sometimes recovery is a tough slog to get you somewhere you never really wanted to be. But there you are. And there is good in this new place. You are still worthy in this place and still have value. Sometimes recovery means acceptance. Sometimes it means figuring out how to do the things you want to do in a new way. It’s not easy, but the capacity to adapt is important.” -Cawthorn

“When we talk about concussion, we automatically tend to think about men in professional sport,” says Calgary-based Morin. “Women play sports, too, and some of our writers got concussed playing hockey, soccer, and roller derby. There are skiing and cycling accidents as well.” -Morin

Read more at https://prairiebooksnow.ca/articles/view/anthology-explores-womens-concussions-grapples-with-meaning-of-recovery