Featuring:
barangay: an offshore poem by Adrian De Leon
Everything Turns Away by Michelle Berry
The Endless Garment by Marguerite Pigeon
Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls by Daniel Scott Tysdal
Please help us welcome these fabulous new books into the world on November 23, 2021 at 7:00 P.M.
About The Books
barangay: an offshore poem by Adrian De Leon
As beautiful and varied as an archipelago, barangay is an elegant new collection of poetry from Adrian De Leon that gathers in and arranges the difficult pieces of a scattered history. While mourning the loss of his grandmother who "lived, loved and grieved in three languages," De Leon skips his barangay, which is both a boat and an administrative unit in the Philippine government, over the history of both his family and a nation. In these poems De Leon considers the deadly impact of colonialism, the far-reaching effects of the diaspora from the Philippines and the personal loss of his ability to speak Ilokano, his grandmother's native tongue. These are spare, haunting poems, which wash over the reader like the waves of the ocean the barangays navigated long ago and then pull the reader into their current like the rivers De Leon left behind.
Everything Turns Away by Michelle Berry
On September 11th, 2001, the world changed. For Sophie and Paul, it started with a disastrous dinner party. For the babysitter, it started with waking in a dark kitchen and recognizing the smell of blood. For everyone else it started with a plane flying into the World Trade Center. In this tautly written domestic thriller Michelle Berry weaves together the story of two couples whose lives are about to be unraveled by the murder of a neighbour, a babysitter that has gone missing and the aftermath of the collapse of the World Trade Center. Everything Turns Away is a haunting exploration of marriages and what tears them apart, of what happens to people during shocking events and of how everything can change in an instant. Filled with richly drawn characters, a web of thwarted desires and multiple motives, Everything Turns Away, is riveting until the very end.
The Endless Garment by Marguerite Pigeon
In a fresh and unique look at epic poetry, Marguerite Pigeon has created what may be a new classic. With equal parts love of the art form and social critique, Pigeon ranges over time and space in a series of long poems that delve into the history and impact of fashion. Guided, and haunted, by a series of ghosts, from Coco Chanel to Gypsy Rose Lee to Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Pigeon's narrator moves through the floors of a grand existential department store, comprehending, reinventing and questioning her approach to, and understanding of, fashion. At times manic, at times surreal and always needle sharp, The Endless Garment is an extraordinary work of imagination that every reader will want to try on.
Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls by Daniel Scott Tysdal
In this heart-twisting collection of short stories, Daniel Scott Tysdal delves deep into the human experience. From the middle-aged man involved in a suicide cult to the young woman trying to write a poem for a friend who has recently died, to the daughter of a man who loses everything on a theme park, these stories are filled with beautifully drawn and often profoundly flawed characters. Throughout the collection, Tysdal looks unflinchingly at the darkness of society, at suicide, at internet trolls, at violence, but the powerful empathy of his writing brings significance to even the most tragic moments. These stories have intricate and unexpected plots, filmic descriptions and crisp writing, but what will stay with the reader is the way Wave Forms and Doom Scrolls breaks the reader's heart and then puts it back together again filled with compassion for these lost souls.
About The Authors
Adrian De Leon is a writer and educator from Manila by way of Scarborough, Ontario. He is the author of Rouge (2018) and co-editor of FEEL WAYS: A Scarborough Anthology (2021), both published by Mawenzi House. His poetry and nonfiction have appeared in The Puritan, Joyland Magazine and Catapult. His research has been featured in VICE, the Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, ABC Nightline, The Guardian and Rolling Stone. Adrian currently lives in Los Angeles, where he is an Assistant Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California.
Michelle Berry is the author of three books of short stories and five previous novels. Her short story collection I Still Don’t Even Know You won the 2011 Mary Scorer Award for Best Book Published by a Manitoba Publisher and was shortlisted for a 2011 ReLit Award, and her novel This Book Will Not Save Your Life won the 2010 Colophon Award and was longlisted for the 2011 ReLit Award. Her writing has been optioned for film and published in the UK.
Berry was a reviewer for the Globe and Mail for many years, and teaches online for the University of Toronto and is often a mentor at Humber College. Berry now lives in Peterborough, ON, where she operates an independent bookstore, Hunter Street Books.
Marguerite Pigeon writes poetry and fiction. Her previous books are Inventory (Anvil Press), Some Extremely Boring Drives (NeWest) and Open Pit (NeWest). Untangling her arm’s-length preoccupation with clothes has been an odyssey. Spiritually northern Ontarian, she lives in Vancouver, where she works as a freelance editor and writer through her business, Carrier Communications.
Daniel Scott Tysdal is the ReLit Award-winning author of three books of poetry, the poetry textbook The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems (Oxford University Press) and the TEDx talk "Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life)." His short fiction has earned a number of honours, including the Thomas Morton Prize for Fiction and runner up for the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award. His short film adaptations of his stories "Humanity's Wing" and "Wave Form" have screened internationally. He teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough.