Non-Fiction
REDress: Art, Action, and the Power of Presence by Jaime Black-Morsette
The REDress project documents the comprehensive use of art installation to bear witness to the rippling pain of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit people.
Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour by Kate Beaton
A love letter to Cape Breton while also depicting the layers all communities behold, Beaton humbly discusses the importance of a support system, the art of being kind to yourself when you need to make difficult decisions, and the value of respecting your self-worth regardless of the financial gain.
One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity by Amy Fish
The first half of Fish’s book is a faithful narration of Stanley’s journey as a genealogist leading to the work he facilitated in reuniting missing family members – including Maria. The following section is Maria’s story and details her life and long search for her biological family.
elseship: an unrequited affair by Tree Abraham
This work is a remarkable achievement and a strong addition to the literature of love.
Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding Our Future Through the Wampum Covenant by Daniel Coleman
Those relationships are described in two treaties, represented in wampum belts and oral stories: the Two Row Wampum and the Covenant Chain. Those treaties, and much else, are the subject of this important, even necessary book.
Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc
This expansive, evocative, and insightful book is part memoir, part imaginative reconstruction of history.
Safekeeping: A Writer’s Guided Journal for Launching a Book with Love by Chelene Knight
While appearing to be a workbook, it is also a playbook and meditation for writers, as well as creatives.
What’s The Point? An Irreverent Guide to Point Pleasant Park by Steven Laffoley
As he wanders, “with thoughts of a hot Tim Hortons coffee…dancing in his head,” he reflects on everything from the seasons to the birds, from Hurricane Juan to Shakespeare By The Sea, from the battlements and the long-horned beetle to “the most common mammal in the park…the Canis lupus familiaris, the domesticated dog”.
40 Days and 40 Hikes: Loving the Bruce Trail One Loop at a Time by Nicola Ross
This book gives hikers concise one-page summaries of each loop, including maps, technical information about trail requirements, entrances and exits, interesting plants and animals to look for along the way. The accompanying text offers a well-researched recounting of the history, present circumstances and possible futures of the snake spine of land that rises through South-Central Ontario and is the Niagara Escarpment and of the Bruce Trail that follows it.
Women Who Woke Up the Law by Karin Wells
Women Who Woke Up the Law by Karin Wells provides an important historical overview of ten legal cases that advanced women’s rights in Canada.
On Book Banning by Ira Wells
Canada’s annual Freedom to Read Week takes place during the last week of February. With this year marking the 40th anniversary of this important observance, it seems most appropriate that this book, part of Biblioasis’ “Field Notes” series, should be published midway through the week when we pay closer attention to the banning of books.
G by Klara du Plessis and Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi
In G, Klara du Plessis and Khashayar “Kes” Mohammadi look at a single sound that connects two parts of the world that we rarely imagine in proximity, Iran and South Africa. They do so by exploring the voiceless uvular fricative and its close cousin, the voiced velar fricative, which are presented phonetically by the Greek letters chi (x) and gamma (ɣ) and are generally transposed into a roman alphabet as ch (e.g., loch) or kh (e.g., Khalil).
Throwback: The Imperilled Ocean by Laura Trethewey
Laura Trethewey’s The Imperilled Ocean: Human Stories from a Changing Sea is the perfect blend of entertainment and education.
Because Somebody Asked Me To: Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene by Guy Vanderhaeghe
The personas writers invent (often subconsciously) for their non-fiction usually attempt or pretend to show more or less of the private self. In Because Somebody Asked Me To, bemedaled and oft-rewarded Guy Vanderhaeghe favours a straight speaking tone, whether reviewing Richard Ford or talking to historians.
