PreviewsIssue 85, Fall/Winter 2024-25

  • Mars on Earth

    Wanderings in the World’s Driest Desert

    Mark Johanson

    In this book, written as a series of epitaphs, Dueck shares sometimes hilarious, often heartbreaking, usually harrowing, and always mortifying bits of his life – the things he’s done that he’d really rather no one knew about until long after he’s dead, but which he can’t keep inside any longer.

  • 10:10

    Michael Trussler

    In ekphrastic poems and prose reminiscences centring on life-changing works of art, and in fluid descriptions of colour, birds, and landscapes, Trussler has crafted an astonishing historical poetry of witness, seeing beyond the surface of the horrors of the Holocaust and the beauty of a sun setting through smoke.

  • 1939

    Jani Lauzon, Kaitlyn Riordan

    A group of students in a fictional Indian residential school in Ontario are chosen to perform a Shakespeare play for the King and Queen’s tour of Canada in 1939. The rehearsals and performance give the students the opportunity to regain some of their stolen cultural practices and identity as they show that they understand Shakespeare better than their teacher ever will.

  • a body more tolerable

    Jaye Simpson

    Exploring Indigenous grief, trans identity, and frustrated desires in ferocious and vulnerable ways, this poetry collection is full of mythos, fairy tales, allusion, and magic, conjuring multiverses and pulsating with yearning and possibility.

  • A Life in Pieces

    Jo-Ann Wallace

    Bits of a rich life are excavated, with memories often prompted by places or objects, in this wise and thought-provoking memoir that moves from a childhood in Montreal in the 1950s and 1960s, to young adulthood in Toronto in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and then into a professional life in Edmonton from the 1990s through the 2000s, ending with tenderness and awe in the wake of a cancer diagnosis.

  • Hummingbird / Aamo-binashee

    Jennifer Leason, Norman Chartrand (Translator)

    With vibrant illustrations and poetic language, this book tells how the ancestors and the teachings of the hummingbird messengers they send can save young ones who are caught in the Windigo’s darkness and feeling alone and not good enough.

  • After We Drowned

    Jill Yonit Goldberg

    Set in 1984 Louisiana and told in the voices of 15-year-old Jesse and his father, Emmett, this Southern Gothic–style novel about environmental crisis and poverty tells how a family unravels afer the oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico explodes, with Emmett drinking and leaving, and Jesse struggling to become a man.

  • Aga Khan

    Bridge between East & West

    During his reign of over 60 years, the current Aga Khan of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, Shah Karim al-Husseini, has been a champion of pluralism and diversity, and has worked to reduce extremism and radicalism. In this latest biography, Ladha describes his contributions, particularly his close connections with Canada where he has established world-renowned institutions in Ottawa, Edmonton, and Toronto.

  • AIM High

    Growing the Motivational Potential of Youth Psychological Assessment

    Jacqueline Pei, Lia Daniels

    Using the AIM Model (Assessment for Intervention and Motivation), the authors provide a framework on which all those involved in psychological assessment of children and youth can organize and evaluate their existing practices.

  • All Our Ordinary Stories

    A Multigenerational Family Odyssey

    Teresa Wong

    This understated yet poignant graphic memoir explores the complicated family dynamics of a Chinese immigrant family and the cultural, historical, language, and personality barriers to intimacy, as well as the power of storytelling, in a journey through time and place beginning with Wong’s mother’s stroke in 2014 and going back to her mother’s and father’s lives during China’s Communist and Cultural Revolutions.