Featuring:

Wait Softly Brother by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer

The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us: New Chinese Canadian Fiction edited by Dan K. Woo

Letters to Little Comrade by Dan K. Woo

Adventurize Your Summer! by Chris Pannell

Gills by Ayomide Bayowa

Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin by Jake Byrne

Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead: New and Selected Poems by Catherine Graham.

Please help us welcome these fabulous new books into the world on June 13, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Tranzac Club, 292 Brunswick Ave, Toronto, ON M5S 2M7.

About The Books

𝗪𝗮𝗶𝘁 𝗦𝗼𝗳𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗕𝗿𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿 𝗯𝘆 𝗞𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗿𝘆𝗻 𝗞𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗯𝗿𝗼𝘂𝘄𝗲𝗿

From lost siblings to the horrors of war to tales of selkie wives, Wait Softly Brother is filled with questions about memory, reality and the truths hidden in family lore.

After twenty years of looping frustrations Kathryn walks out of her marriage and washes up in her childhood home determined to write her way to a new life. There she is put to work by her aging parents sorting generations of memories and mementos as biblical rains fall steadily and the house is slowly cut off from the rest of the world. Lured away from the story she is determined to write – that of her stillborn brother, Wulf – by her mother’s gift of crumbling letters, Kathryn instead begins to piece together the strange tale of an earlier ancestor, Russell Boyt, who fought as a substitute soldier in the American Civil War. As the water rises, and more truths come to the surface, the two stories begin to mingle in unexpected and beautiful ways. In this elegantly written novel Kuitenbrouwer deftly unravels the stories we are told to believe by society and shows the reader how to weave new tales of hope and possibility.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗶𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘀 𝗛𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗡𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘁𝗼 𝗗𝗼 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗨𝘀: 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗖𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗱𝗶𝗮𝗻 𝗙𝗶𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗲𝗱𝗶𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗯𝘆 𝗗𝗮𝗻 𝗞. 𝗪𝗼𝗼

The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us is an anthology of fascinating and singular short stories from some of the best Chinese Canadian authors writing today.

Assembled by Dan K. Woo, who was named a Canadian author to watch by CBC in 2022, the stories in the anthology span a wide variety of Chinese Canadian voices, experiences and styles. The collection has contributions from established writers such Sam Cheuk, Sheung-King and Lydia Kwa; up-and-coming voices such as Isabella Wang and even a story available for the first time in English from Bingji Ye. From the practiced fielding of family questions by young women in a Hong Kong living room to a child’s ghost searching for a way to move to the next world to a family living with the unsettling sounds of constant explosions an industrial district on the edges of Beijing, each story is a stunning window into a world new to many North American readers. The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us is a powerful and elegant collection of stories that works to redefine Chinese Canadian writing.

𝗟𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝘁𝗼 𝗟𝗶𝘁𝘁𝗹𝗲 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗲 𝗯𝘆 𝗗𝗮𝗻 𝗞. 𝗪𝗼𝗼

In this new edition of Dan K. Woo’s debut novel we meet Little Comrade, a young woman at the mercy of the fates in the fictional country of Qina. Framed as an advice booklet, Letters to Little Comrade takes us on a dystopic journey that circles around Little Comrade’s attempts to find happiness and purpose in her life, whether by finding fulfilling work, finding love, by pleasing her parents or by leaving her country. With chapter titles such as “Keep Calm, There Is Hope,” “Exercise Is Healthy for the Spirit” and “Too Much Romance Is Unproductive” the author moves effortlessly between the bracing tone of a self-help book and the bleak story of Little Comrade. Woo also skilfully weaves in social commentary on gender relations, worker exploitation and government propaganda, with matter-of-fact descriptions and fatherly advice. The resulting book is a captivating and tragic story with a nameless, yet unforgettable, heroine.

𝗔𝗱𝘃𝗲𝗻𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗶𝘇𝗲 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗦𝘂𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗿! 𝗯𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗿𝗶𝘀 𝗣𝗮𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗹𝗹

Award-winning poet Chris Pannell’s latest collection, Adventurize Your Summer!, is a wide-ranging look at travel, art and life. The author writes poems about the “Eastern Migrating Tourist,” and the indifference of the waters of the Nile, with many stops in between. Pannell gives equal time to great paintings and to the retired cab driver on dialysis; he is as adept writing about the Beach Boys as describing the cafés of Lisbon. Hopscotching through time and space, the poems in Adventurize Your Summer! are a study in humanity, filled with keen observation, touched with both sorrow and the wry observation that life is never what is promised in the marketing copy.

𝗚𝗶𝗹𝗹𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗔𝘆𝗼𝗺𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗕𝗮𝘆𝗼𝘄𝗮

Gills is a reform of the author’s first chapbook Stream of Tongues; Watercourse of Voices with a mass of poem logged in stanzaic ventilations for aerobic installations of many-a-­narrative, dramatic and quip lyrical substance; to pratically pore on and/or keen over the bearing of every liquid our body leaks. With a diasporean nearness to a socio-economic system of debt, the poems are the author’s bubble shares amongst the millions of immigrants trying all to uphold either the repiratory, skin or kidney normalcy (keeping head above the water).

𝗖𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗯𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗸𝗵𝗲𝗲𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻 𝗯𝘆 𝗝𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗕𝘆𝗿𝗻𝗲

Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin is a swirl of energy, emotion and observation that takes the reader across the world on a Carmen Sandiego–like journey as well as deep into the complexities of modern queer life. Unabashedly sexual, and embracing a wide range of styles and tones, Byrne’s poems move easily from lines of love and desire to sharp critiques of capitalism and war, and the co-opting of queer culture by them both. These are destabilizing poems, poems filled with glittering imagery and ideas and questions and truths, poems that share the poet’s longing to live in a time that is not “as cruel and unjust / As every other time has been before it.”

𝗣𝘂𝘁 𝗙𝗹𝗼𝘄𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗔𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱 𝗨𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗣𝗿𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗻𝗱 𝗪𝗲'𝗿𝗲 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱: 𝗡𝗲𝘄 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗦𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗣𝗼𝗲𝗺𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗖𝗮𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗮𝗵𝗮𝗺

Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead is a beautiful collection of Catherine Graham’s award-winning poetry. Spanning twenty years of writing these poems trace Graham’s arc from ARC Poetry Magazine’s initial observation that “Graham is a young poet whose work should be closely attended to” to the Toronto Star writing “Catherine Graham’s seventh book of poetry is an intricate reverie.” Poems within this collection circle around profound themes, including family, healing, loss and love, but they are written with a delight in the natural world, a delicate line and ethereal imagery. Here, birds are gathered in bouquets, a ghost is a fold in the mind and the snow holds light. Put Flowers Around Us and Pretend We’re Dead is a must-have volume from a much-loved poet.