Books
The Alchemy of Paradise
A curator confronts grief, loss, and mortality by arranging the fragments of her life—objects, memories, impressions—into a fragile order. Set in contemporary England, with Venice shimmering at its core, The Alchemy of Paradise is novel of ideas told through poetic essays and reflections, exploring the tension between collecting and transmuting, order and disorder. In the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s collections, and in dialogue with writers like W.G. Sebald and Patti Smith, it meditates on the ways that art and imagination allow us to chart personal maps through the universal yet individual territories of loss, offering curation itself as a restless, ongoing practice of creation and renewal.
Buy: Invisible Publishing | Indigo | Amazon
The Fairy Tale Museum
Structured as a series of interconnected galleries, The Fairy Tale Museum is a curiosity-cabinet-as-novel that showcases the original, spectacular, grotesque, endearing, and otherworldly. You'll meet bird-headed lovers, a cyborg cyclops, a fortune teller, revolutionary ventriloquists' dummies, a narcoleptic vampire, Eros and Thanatos, and a host of woodland creatures. This is a book that celebrates hybrids, creativity, and transformation – a manifesto against putting ourselves into boxes that limit who we can be and what is possible.
Buy: Invisible Publishing | Indigo | Amazon
How the Blessed Live
Part Egyptian myth, part Alice in Wonderland, How the Blessed Live tells the story of twins Lucy and Levi and their father, Daniel. On an isolated island in Lake Ontario, Daniel desperately mourns for his dead wife, while Levi and Lucy grow up ever more entwined in their enchanted childhood of fairy tales and rhymes. But when a fissure in the fragile cocoon of the family explodes into a chasm, each of the three is hurled in a different direction. Soon, there emerges a geographical triangle – Vancouver, Montreal, the island – that also maps out the terrain of love and the territory of family.
Buy: Coach House Books | Indigo | Amazon
Anthologized Works
All Sleek and Skimming
If any proof were needed that literature for young adults has come of age, Lisa Heggum has provided it in this extraordinary anthology, which demonstrates – once and for all – the inextricable connection between young adult and adult literature. Older teens and adults will recognize the commonalities of their interests and experiences in these superbly realized and selected short stories. Bravo!
– Michael Cart, Booklist columnist and Founding Editor of Rush Hour
Buy: Orca Book Publishers | Indigo | Amazon
First Writes
First Writes explores the trepidations and triumphs of becoming a published author. In it, Canadian writers describe their "first writes" experiences by writing openly, sometimes scathingly and often hilariously, of their expectations, insecurities, humiliations, and triumphs at every stage of publication.