Kevin Spenst’s much-anticipated debut collection of poetry opens as a coming-of-age narrative of lower-middle class life in Vancouver’s suburb of Surrey, embroidered within a myriad of pop- and “post-Mennonite” culture.

Nathaniel G. Moore follows up his 2014 ReLit Award win for Savage with a diverse collection of short fiction, his first — Jettison, featuring stories which dangle somewhere between horror and romance.

Just Like a Real Person is a story about broken cars and broken people. A story of intoxication, sobriety, and potent memories of a woman in a yellow sundress. But, it’s also a story about love that asks what it means to finally feel, after years of feeling nothing but numb.

PRAISE FOR KASPOIT!
“…Reminds me of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange in its inventive language and insular
world of violence; also Beckett and Mamet in the lowlife characterizations, back-andforth dialogue, and the sheer absurdity.”
—Myna Wallin, A Thousand Profane Pieces

“…compelling, sickening, and, ultimately, hits what is most likely closest to the truth about what happened there than anything else that’ll get out in the world. Kaspoit! puts me in mind of A Clockwork Orange (the book), for its neologisms and violence/bleakness, and Pulp Fiction (the movie) for the unrelenting violence, so
much so that we become inured to it.”
—Janis Harper, Body Breakdowns

“…there is a well-executed gloom that maybe owes a tip of the hat to Harry Crews or
Flannery O’Connor, or maybe a drunken Hawthorne. The dialogue never grinds or
presents an obstacle—it runs smooth, which is a must considering its importance
to the story. In many ways it is the story.”
—Phillip D. Alexander, The Next Rainy Day

Melissa Bull’s debut short story collection The Knockoff Eclipse hums with the immediacy of distant and future worlds. Firmly rooted in the streets and landmarks of Montreal and its many neighbourhoods and subcultures, Bull’s characters shine with the dirt of digging just deep enough.

A strangely unified collection, unsettling and surprising, Knucklehead resides where the lines between real and imagined blur. Giles’s penetrating view and unsentimental honesty shape these stories and push the reader’s expectations of the “ordinary.” These are mature and compelling narratives that encapsulate everything great about short fiction. They freeze a moment, but upon closer examination reveal something more, a message that resonates long after that story has been read.

Simon Roy first saw The Shining when he was ten years old and was mesmerized by a particular line in the movie spoken by Dick Hallorann, the chef of the Overlook Hotel, while he is giving the family an orientation tour of the facilities. Hallorann seems to speak directly to Danny (and Simon Roy) while in the middle of enumerating the stock of the hotel’s pantry to Danny’s mother. He glances at Danny and the words cross telepathically into the boy’s mind: “How’d you like some ice cream, Doc?”

Ever since Europeans first laid claim to the Squamish Nation territory in the 1870s, the real estate industry has held the region in its grip. Its influence has been grotesquely pervasive at every level of civic life, determining landmarks like Stanley Park and City Hall, as well as street names, neighbourhoods — even the name “Vancouver” itself. Land of Destiny explores that influence, starting in 1862, with the first sale of land in the West End, and continuing up until the housing crisis of today.

The Least You Can Do Is Be Magnificent: Selected & New Writings is a generous gathering of Venright’s most enduring and extraordinary poems, including the revised and expanded “Manta Ray Jack and the Crew of the Spooner”— the most outlandish and hilarious seafaring tale since Lewis Carroll’s The Hunting of the Snark. This volume also features an in-depth examination of Venright’s work by scholar Alessandro Porco.

Leaving Mile End is Jon Paul Fiorentino’s seventh collection of poetry and tenth book—a collection of poems that documents the daily din and clatter of cafés, galleries, and dive bars that make up Mile End in Montreal, perhaps the most artistically vibrant neighbourhood in the world.