The World is But a Broken Heart by Michael Maitland
The eleven interconnected stories in The World Is But a Broken Heart follow the Fitzpatricks, a blue-collar family constantly followed by bad luck.
First Book
Anna Lee-Popham: Empires of the Everyday
An ambitious and wholly original poetry collection that examines the ways that life is confined and sometimes defined by the city and the ubiquity and invisibility of state violence.
Cradle and Spoon: Poems by Kate Spencer
With, at times, spiraling self-awareness, Spencer writes herself into a new mode: the post-confessional.
Wolf Sonnets by R.P. LaRose
In his commanding poetry debut, Wolf Sonnets, R. P. LaRose undoes the sonnet’s classical constraints, retooling the form for current political circumstances.
Full Moon of Afraid and Craving by Melanie Power
From a darkly humorous perspective, this book charts a young person’s navigation of narrow definitions of faith, femininity, and family.
This is the House that Luke Built by Violet Browne
This Is the House That Luke Built deftly explores existential questions about what it means to be alive.
We Have Never Lived On Earth: Stories by Kasia Van Schaik
Kasia Van Schaik’s debut story collection follows the journey of Charlotte Ferrier, a child of divorce raised by a single mother in a small town in British Columbia after moving from South Africa.
Full Fadom Five by David C.C. Bourgeois
In Full Fadom Five the past is always present, and the characters always at the mercy of their legacies: those they carry forward, and those they try to leave behind.
Maker by Jim Upton
Nicole Fortin is on the cusp of realizing a long-held dream when her life takes a sudden turn. Instead of participating in the Olympic Games, she finds herself struggling to master the challenging physical demands of her job in an aerospace plant and win the confidence of her male colleagues.
The Joanne Gallant Interview
Joanne Gallant is a pediatric nurse, wife and mother. She recently wrote her first book, A Womb in the Shape of a Heart, a memoir about her numerous miscarriages in her attempts to have children. A review of her book can be found here. It will be released by Nimbus Publishing in September 2021. She lives in Nova Scotia.
Home of the Floating Lily: Stories by Silmy Abdullah
Set in both Canada and Bangladesh, the eight stories in Home of the Floating Lily follow the lives of everyday people as they navigate the complexities of migration, displacement, love, friendship, and familial conflict.
We, Jane by Aimee Wall
There is so much to say about Aimee Wall’s debut novel We, Jane. In a tight 200 pages, Wall’s poetic prose chronicles the complicated relationships between women of different generations and life experiences. Through these connections, readers are exposed to the complex geography of reproductive rights and to legacies of local knowledge.
Dirty Birds by Morgan Murray*
In late 2008, as the world’s economy crumbles and Barack Obama ascends to the White House, the remarkably unremarkable Milton Ontario – not to be confused with Milton, Ontario – leaves his parents’ basement in Middle-of-Nowhere, Saskatchewan, and sets forth to find fame, fortune, and love in the Euro-lite electric sexuality of Montreal.
Throw Down Your Shadows by Deborah Hemmings
What does it mean, to do the wrong thing for the right reasons? 16-year-old Winnie, the self-reliant narrator of Deborah Hemming’s taut novel Throw Down Your Shadows, is about to learn that painful lesson. It’s summer, 2005. Winnie lives with her artist mother, Ruth, in Gaspereau, a small rural community next door to Wolfville, in Nova …
Pedestal by Gareth Mitton
About the Author: Born in Rochdale, England, Gareth Mitton is a lifelong writer and creator, now based in Moncton, New Brunswick. He is a published essayist, blogger and author, whose short story Watcher, a 2017 ScreenCraft Cinematic Short Story semi-finalist, was featured in the 2019 anthology, Dystopia from the Rock. Pedestal is his first novel. …
