Talonbooks Fall 2012 Catalogue by Talonbooks

Talonbooks PO 2076 Vancouver, BC V6B 3S3 Canada

www.talonbooks.com

Printed in Canada

Ta lonbook s |

FALL 2012

F2012_cat_cover:Layout 1

4/11/12

11:52 AM

Page 2

Talonbooks Awards and Prizes, Recent Highlights 2012 BC Book Prize: Garry Thomas Morse, Discovery Passages (Finalist) Lambda Literary Award: Jane Rule, Taking My Life (Finalist)

2011 BC Book Prize: Ken Belford, Decompositions (Finalist) BC Book Prize: George Bowering, My Darling Nellie Grey (Finalist) BC Book Prize: Stephen Collis, On the Material (Winner) Alcuin Book Design Award: Stan Douglas, ed., Vancouver Anthology (Honourable Mention)

Contents 1 12 13 16 26 34 54 64 70 73 74 76

New Releases Previously Announced Recent Releases Non-fiction Backlist Fiction Backlist Drama Backlist Poetry Backlist Booklist Index by Author Booklist Index by Title Booklist Index by Translator Sales Representation and Ordering Canadian Trade Terms and Returns Policy

Governor General’s Award, Poetry: Garry Thomas Morse, Discovery Passages (Finalist) Lambda Literary Award: Bryden MacDonald, With Bated Breath (Finalist) Robert Merritt Legacy Award: Wendy Lill (Winner) W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize: derek beaulieu, How to Write (Finalist) W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize: Weyman Chan, hypoderm (Finalist)

2010 BC Book Prize: Fred Wah, is a door (Winner) George Ryga Award: Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Finalist)

Talonbooks PO Box 2076 Vancouver, BC V6B 3S3 phone: (604) 444-4889 toll-free: (888) 445-4176 fax: (604) 444-4119 info@talonbooks.com www.talonbooks.com Receiving 278 East 1st Avenue Vancouver, BC V5T 1A6 phone: (604) 444-4889

Talonbooks

Governor General’s Award, Translation: Michel Tremblay, The Blue Notebook, translated by Sheila Fischman (Finalist) Carol Bolt Award for Drama: Joan MacLeod, Another Home Invasion (Finalist)

2009

G.S.T. is not included in Canadian prices quoted in this catalogue. G.S.T. # 88535-3235 All information in this catalogue is subject to change without notice.

Acorn-Plantos Award: Weyman Chan, Noise from the Laundry (Finalist) Ann Saddlemyer Award: Sherrill Grace, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock (Winner)

Catalogue cover illustration by Adeena Karasick and Safia Karasick Southey.

Governor General’s Award, Drama: Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Winner) Governor General’s Award, Drama: Joan MacLeod, Another Home Invasion (Finalist) Governor General’s Award, Translation: Thierry Hentsch, Empire of Desire, translated by Fred A. Reed (Finalist) Governor General’s Award, Translation: Stéphane Bourguignon, A Slight Case of Fatigue, translated by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott (Finalist) Jessie Richardson Award, Outstanding Original Script: Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Winner) Jessie Richardson Award, Sydney Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright: Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Winner) Libris Award, Small Press Publisher of the Year: Talonbooks (Finalist) ReLit Award, Poetry: Fred Wah, Sentenced to Light (Finalist)

We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council for the Arts, the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund, and the Province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit for our publishing activities.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 1

Talonbooks New Releases 1

Minor Episodes Major Ruckus garry thomas morse

Garry Thomas Morse has had two books of poetry published by LINEbooks, Transversals for Orpheus (2006) and Streams (2007); one collection of short fiction, Death in Vancouver (2009), published by Talonbooks; and two books of poetry published by Talonbooks, After Jack (2010) and Discovery Passages (2011) – finalist for the 2011 Governor General’s Award for Poetry and the 2012 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Grounded in the work of Arthur Rimbaud, Robert Desnos, Ezra Pound, Jack Spicer, Rainer Maria Rilke and his Native oral traditions, his work has been featured in a variety of publications, including Branch Magazine, Canadian Literature, the Capilano Review, CV2, dANDelion, filling Station, memewar, Poetry is Dead, subTerrain, Vancouver Review and West Coast Line. Morse is the recipient of the 2008 City of Vancouver Mayor’s Arts Award for Emerging Artist and has twice been selected as runner-up for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry.

In tribute to the surrealist narrative techniques of André Breton and Robert Desnos, Minor Episodes documents the serial adventures of Minor, the ubiquitous “everymogul” who embodies the economic one percent and keeps musically erotic quixotics on tap. Having entered a “rent in time” that gives each chapter an alternate reality, Minor swaggers through an undersea casino, an in-flight blockbuster, a bawdy Western and a Kafkaesque job hunt, cavorting with billboard queen Bébé Lala and country-music legend Faith Faith, when not dressing down his shifty sidekick, The Concierge, or haunting the intensely disinterested songstress Miss Sharp. Danger looms in the form of The Stropper, a serial killer fresh out of a shaving promotion, and an enigmatic ginger-beer icon who has retired from a satisfying life of culinary assassinations. Major Ruckus, a contrapuntal text and parody of the speculative fiction genre, celebrates the stylistic techniques of William S. Burroughs and Robert Anton Wilson, following a frenzied struggle by various parties to obtain an essential time-travel component, a struggle that includes psychic “dicks,” universal call-centre operators, Aboriginal eroticists, lubricant heiresses, rogue advertisement animations, alien sperm-bank clones and pornography censors, all to the horrified fascination of hapless meta-writer Oober Mann. But ultimately it is Carl Sagan who creates the most confusion, when his prudish doodle of a woman is sent into space aboard the Voyager probe, triggering a plan to “assist” Earth’s declining population through extraterrestrials in the guise of census takers. Minor Episodes and Major Ruckus introduce The Chaos! Quincunx novel series. Praise for Morse’s Death in Vancouver: “Garry Thomas Morse is an extraordinarily talented writer, and his Death in Vancouver is nothing less than a stunning accomplishment. It is work of prodigious erudition and imaginative daring, and it brings vividly to life (and death) the entangled narratives and sonantic richness of the global city.” – David Chariandy

ISBN 978-0-88922-697-5 Fiction 5.5 x 8.5; 304 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD September

Garry Thomas Morse’s After Jack, Death in Vancouver and Discovery Passages are also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 2

2 Talonbooks New Releases

Dispatches from the Occupation A History of Change

stephen collis

Stephen Collis is the author of four books of poetry, Mine (New Star, 2001); Anarchive (New Star, 2005), which was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize; The Commons (Talonbooks, 2008) – the latter two forming parts of the ongoing “Barricades Project”; and On the Material (Talonbooks, 2010), winner of the 2010 the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Noted for his seminal analyses of affinities between 20th-century poets, he has lectured widely on poetics and done numerous readings in Canada and the United States. Collis is also the author of two book-length studies, Phyllis Webb and the Common Good (Talonbooks, 2007) and Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and AnarchoScholasticism (ELS Editions, 2006). He is currently editing a collection of essays, Reading Duncan Reading, and continuing his work on “The Barricades Project.” A member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he teaches American literature, poetry and poetics at Simon Fraser University.

Somewhere at the core of almost every intellectual discipline is an attempt to explain change – why and how things change, and how we negotiate these transformations. These are among the most ancient of philosophical questions. In this collection of essays, award-winning poet Stephen Collis investigates how the Occupy movement grapples with these questions as it once again takes up the cause of social, economic and political change. Dispatches from the Occupation opens with a meditation on the Occupy movement and its place in the history of recent social movements. Strategies, tactics and the experiments with participatory democracy and direct action are carefully parsed and explained. How a movement for social, economic and political change emerges, and how it might be sustained, are at the heart of this exploration. Comprising the second section of the book is a series of “dispatches” from the day-to-day unfolding of the occupation in Vancouver’s city centre as the author witnessed it – and participated in it – first hand: short manifestos, theoretical musings and utopian proposals. The global Occupy movement has only just begun, and as such this book presents an important first report from the frontlines. Finally, Dispatches from the Occupation closes with a reflection on the city of Rome, written in the shadows of the Pantheon (the oldest continually-in-use building in the world). In something of a long prose-poem, Collis traces the trope of Rome as the “eternal (unchanging?) city,” from its imperial past (as one of the “cradles of civilization”) to the rebirth of Roman republicanism during the French Revolution and the era of modern social movements – right up to the explosive riots of October 2011. Woven throughout is the story of the idea of change as it moves through intellectual history. Praise for Collis’s On the Material: “ ‘commodity makes us / cancer when we think / constant growth is / the only answer’ This sentiment tucked inside the uprising against pathological corporate greed, and an ever-widening division between the haves and the have-nots, comes on the clear voice of a poet: genuine, necessary, intensely social, and deeply intelligent.” – Prairie Fire Review of Books

ISBN 978-0-88922-695-1 Non-fiction / Philosophy / Political Science 5 x 8; 224 pp; Trade paper; Photographs $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD August

Stephen Collis’s The Commons, On the Material and Phyllis Webb and the Common Good are also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 3

Talonbooks New Releases 3

Tracing the Lines Reflections on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural Politics in Honour of Roy Miki

Edited by

maia joseph, christine kim, larissa lai & chris lee

Larissa Lai is also a novelist and poet. Her first full-length poetry book, Automaton Biographies (Arsenal Pulp, 2009), was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize.

Passionate critic, principled citizen, attentive reader and editor, and energizing teacher – Roy Miki is all these and more, a poet whose writing articulates a moving body of work. The two main areas of his passionate research and writing – social critique and poetics – inform each other in these essays compiled to mark a milestone in the life of an important public intellectual. Contributors from across North America take Miki’s literary and artistic achievements as a starting point for analytical and creative reflections on key artistic, social and political movements of the second half of the 20th century. Essays on poetics by Daphne Marlatt, Fred Wah, George Bowering and Michael Barnholden, among others, explore topics from voice, to love, to translation. Mona Oikawa, Dave Gaertner, Phinder Dulai and Cindy Mochizuki write on social justice, placing Miki’s redress work in relation to the politics and art of other historical reparations. Ashok Mathur, Aayaka Yoshimizu, Mark Nakada, David Fujino and Hiromi Goto present various views of biotext, a term introduced by George Bowering in the late 1980s that refers to autobiographical text in between poetry and fiction. Jerry Zaslove, Susan Crean, Alessandra Capperdoni and Smaro Kamboureli discuss the public intellectual’s relationship to institutions from the university to city hall. The collection ends with an interview with Miki on interrelations between his photographic and poetic practices. Miki’s history reflects that of the West Coast’s literary world. Not only did he found the influential literary journal West Coast Line, but he has researched and written works on poets Roy Kiyooka, George Bowering and bp Nichol. Miki taught many of the poets and academics now working and writing on the West Coast.

Chris Lee is also the author The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature (Stanford University Press, 2012).

“Miki’s publications, cultural activities and social activism have demonstrated, and have done so over a long span of time, a dedication and commitment to change that are virtually unparalleled.” – Smaro Kamboureli

Editors Maia Joseph, Christine Kim, Larissa Lai and Chris Lee teach, research or write on the subject of ethnicity and Asian American literature in the English departments at the University of British Columbia and Simon Fraser University. Maia Joseph focuses on Canadian urban literature, urbanism and regionalism, the ethics and politics of artistic practice and the interdisciplinary theorization of space and community. Christine Kim researches Asian North American literature and theory, contemporary Canadian literature, feminist theory, print publics and diasporic writing.

“[The] ‘Tracing the Lines’ [symposium] spoke volumes to the varied public, institutional, and poetic spaces Miki has inhabited and extended throughout his prolific career.” – Mark Nowak

ISBN 978-0-88922-694-4 Non-fiction / Literary Criticism 6 x 9; 256 pp; Trade paper; Colour photos $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD October

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 4

4 Talonbooks New Releases

The Battle of Batoche British Small Warfare and the Entrenched Métis Second Edition

wa lt e r h i l d e b ra n d t Foreword by Jean Teillet

Walter Hildebrandt is known as both a poet and historian. A consultant on Aboriginal treaties, he is author of Views From Battleford: Constructed Visions of an Anglo-Canadian West and co-author of The Cypress Hills: The Land and Its People and The True Spirit and Original Intent of Treaty 7, which won the Gustavus Myers Award for outstanding work on intolerance in North America in 1997. Winnipeg from the Fringes, his eighth book of poetry, was published in 2011. An earlier volume, Where the Land Gets Broken, received the 2005 Stephen G. Stephensson Award for Poetry. Jean Teillet is a partner in the firm of Pape Salter Teillet, with offices in Vancouver and Toronto. Teillet specializes in Aboriginal rights litigation and negotiations, with a particular emphasis on Métis rights.

ISBN 978-0-88922-693-7 Non-fiction / History 10 x 8; 144 pp; Trade paper; Photos & maps $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD August

The Battle of Batoche is the best-known confrontation between Métis and British soldiers in the Northwest Resistance of 1885. It remains one of Canada’s most emotion-laden memories, chronicling an historic event equivalent to the 1863 battle of Gettysburg. After Batoche, everything changed for the Métis people and for Canada as well, especially in Quebec. The battle decided the future for the Métis people – mixed Cree or Anishinaabe and Scottish or French ancestry who populated the Red River region known today as modern Manitoba, North Dakota, and Minnesota. The battle was the climax of the federal government’s efforts to control the native and settler population of the West. It also changed attitudes in Quebec, which saw widespread outrage over the hanging of rebel leader Louis Riel following the battle; distrusting the Conservative government, French-speaking Quebecois began to feel safe only in Quebec and consequently limited their expansion into western Canada. Walter Hildebrandt’s chronicle of the battle, first published at the centenary of the Northwest Resistance in 1985, eloquently revisited and analyzed the strategies of both sides. This redesigned new edition adds sidebars and extended captions, as well as numerous maps and photographs that offer detailed description of the fateful battle. Sidebars focus in detail on topics related to the battle, including Louis Riel and Gabriel Dumont as leaders of the Métis resistance; nurse Kate Miller, Canada’s Florence Nightingale; Batoche as the site of the first-ever battlefield photos, taken on horseback during the battle; the Gatling gun as evidence of the newly industrial nature of warfare; and zareba warfare and riflepit trenches as foreshadowing of the trenches of World War One, among other topics. Recent historiography, in particular, on Métis and First Nations involvement, including the role of women and children, is incorporated into the text and notes and bibliography are updated. Foreword by Jean Teillet, great-grandniece of Louis Riel. “The Battle of Batoche: British Small Warfare and the Entrenched Métis is worth acquiring just for the quality of its introductory and concluding sections. Precise writing and perceptive analysis make this study a pleasure to read … Hildebrandt is one of the few authors that carefully places the events of 1885 in a national and international context.” – Manitoba History

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 5

Talonbooks New Releases 5

Against the Wind madeleine gagnon Translated by Phyllis Aronoﬀ & Howard Scott

Madeleine Gagnon has made a mark on Quebec literature as a poet, novelist and non-fiction writer. She decided at the age of twelve to be a writer, and after her early education with the Ursuline nuns, went on to study literature, philosophy and psychoanalysis at the Université de Montréal, the Sorbonne and the Université d’Aix-en-Provence, where she received her doctorate. Since 1969, she has published over thirty books while at the same time teaching literature in several Quebec universities. Her work in all genres combines passion, erudition, poetic vision and political commitment. Phyllis Aronoff holds a master’s degree in English literature. The Wanderer, her translation of La Québécoite by Régine Robin, won the 1998 Jewish Book Award for fiction. She and Howard Scott were awarded the 2001 Quebec Writers’ Federation Translation Award for The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701. Howard Scott is a literary translator who specializes in the genres of fiction and non-fiction. His translations include works by Madeleine Gagnon and Quebec science-fiction writer Élisabeth Vonarburg. In 1997, Scott received the prestigious Governor General’s Translation Award for his work on Louky Bersianik’s The Euguelion.

ISBN 978-0-88922-696-8 Fiction 5.5 x 8.5; 168 pp; Trade paper $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD September

Is an artist born, or rather, created by experience? From the moment in childhood when he is forced to take drastic action to defend his adoptive mother from a violent assault – the only maternal figure that he has ever known – it is evident that the life of Joseph Sully-Jacques is to be no ordinary life, and one marked by sorrow and adversity. Unable to cope with or even recognize the residual effects of his trauma in adolescence, Joseph retreats into an increasingly abstract world, one in which he must confront what he calls his “visions.” And when he hears of the death of his natural mother, this brings to the surface memories he had hoped were buried deep within him, and precipitates the form of various crises to come, particularly as he discovers and makes use of the artistic abilities revealed to his family during his psychiatric evaluation. After many more hardships, the young man does find meaning to the absurdities of life, ironically in the asylum, where he meets a virtuoso pianist whose condition prevents her from continuing to exercise her talents. They heal together through their mutual love, which will soon subsist upon nothing but memory and absence. During mournful years of raising his son alone, in his extensive adversaria, Joseph sets out to reconcile the contradictory themes in his life, including abandonment, madness, love and death. In spare, lucid prose, and in a style reminiscent of André Gide, Madeleine Gagnon invites the reader to experience the creation and development of an artist “in his own words” – Joseph’s gelid journal entries that are to become emphatic poetic laments – in a novel that chronicles the extreme destitution of Quebec in the years before World War Two and in abstract developing forms of artistic expression after years of uncertainty and loss. “[Gagnon is] someone in whom the boundary between inner and outer life is porous, her words are poetry and her ear for the words of others is poetry too. Everything she takes in from the world is filtered, processed, transformed by the insistent rhythms of the songs within her.” – Nancy Huston

Madeleine Gagnon’s My Name is Bosnia and Women in a World at War are also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 6

6 Talonbooks New Releases

This Poem adeena karasick

Adeena Karasick is a poet, media artist and the awardwinning author of seven books of poetry and poetic theory. Marked with an urban, Jewish, feminist aesthetic that continually challenges normative modes of meaning production, and engaged with the art of combination and turbulence of thought, her work is a testament to the creative and regenerative power of language and the infinite possibilities for pushing meaning to the limits of its semantic boundaries. Karasick has lectured and performed worldwide and regularly publishes articles, reviews and dialogues on contemporary poetry, poetics and cultural theory. She is professor of global literature at St. John’s University in New York.

This Poem is an ironic investigation of contemporary culture and the technomedia-saturated world in which we are enmeshed. Composed in the style of Facebook updates and extended Tweets, each section infuses itself with continuous shifting tones, styles and commentary, which are in turn provocative, emotive and deeply satiric. Mashing up the lexicons of Stein, Zukofsky, Shakespeare, Whitman, the recent ﬁnancial meltdown, semiotic theory, Lady Gaga, Derrida and Flickr streams, This Poem is a self-reﬂexive romp through the fragments of post-consumerist culture. Both celebrating and poking fun at contradictory trends, threads, webbed networks of information and desire, and the language of the “ordinary,” it opens itself with immediacy to the otherness of daily carnage. This Poem interrogates the tradition of the Canadian long poem, systematically and systemically accusing it of being a multi-platform interdisciplinary repository, an archive of fragments, updates, analysis, aggregates, treatises, advice, precepts, echoes and questions, unravelling into itself, in an ever-enfolding, luminous text of concomitance. Karasick’s serial poem textually proceeds in the tradition of such poets as George Oppen, bpNichol, Robert Duncan and Jack Spicer. “Karasick’s is less a poetry of ideas than ideas of poetry – plural, cascading, exuberant in their cross-fertilization of punning and knowing, theatre and theory.” – Charles Bernstein “[Karasick’s] writing is an extraordinary tour de force in the new paraliterary initiative of ‘fiction/theory’ that blends various genres and revels in their ‘contamination.’ ” – Canadian Book Review Annual

Adeena Karasick’s Amuse Bouche, Dyssemia Sleaze, The Empress Has No Closure, Genrecide, The House That Hijack Built and Mêmewars are also available from Talonbooks.

ISBN 978-0-88922-699-9 Poetry 5.75 x 8.75; 128 pp; Trade paper; Colour illustrations $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD August

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 7

Talonbooks New Releases 7

Theogony Works and Days hesiod Translated by C.S. Morrissey Foreword by Roger Scruton With an Essay by Eric Voegelin

C.S. Morrissey is a professor of philosophy at Trinity Western University, where he also teaches courses in the Latin language and in Greek and Roman history. He studied Greek and Latin at the University of British Columbia and has taught courses in these languages and in other classical subjects at Simon Fraser University. Morrissey specializes in philosophical theology and his recent focus has been on its genesis in the monotheistic speculations of Hesiod and Plato. He has also published on the mediaeval Latin philosophy of Thomas Aquinas and his commentatorial tradition, which includes John Poinsot, a.k.a. John of St. Thomas, from whom we may trace a foundational doctrine of signs for the interdisciplinary field of semiotics. Morrissey’s current research explores how Eric Voegelin’s philosophical studies of the historical processes of symbolization complement the pioneering interdisciplinary work by semiotician and linguist Thomas Albert Sebeok.

Philosopher C.S. Morrissey adapts Hesiod’s two great works, Theogony and Works and Days, taking into account the poet’s essential meditative insights that paved the way for the subsequent achievements of Greek philosophy, most notably of Plato, and thereby gave a distinctive shape to all of Western philosophy. Theogony recounts the genesis of the first generations of the Greek gods and recollects how Zeus used both force and persuasion to establish his cosmic reign of justice. Works and Days tells the story of the origin and ordination of human beings within this cosmos and their perennial struggle to win order from disorder in a world overwhelmed by harsh sorrows and injustice. In the wake of personal adversity and suffering, Hesiod was inspired by the Muses to sing out against the untruth of society and to disclose the truth about justice in the cosmos. Theogony, which won him his laurels in a poetic competition, begins by telling of how the Muses chose him as an individual vessel of inspiration, to be a rival to Homer and the old myths with a newer vision of the struggle for justice among the gods. In Works and Days, Hesiod includes these autobiographical details within a reflection on the two-fold role of competition in life: “the bad strife” is visible everywhere in the manifold forms of universal disorder, although “the good strife” is part of the struggle to maintain order in the wake of chaos and the primeval void. These new translations are contextualized with a foreword by distinguished philosopher Roger Scruton and an essay by the late philosopher and historian Eric Voegelin, who argues for the magnitude of Hesiod’s influence on Greek philosophy and Western history, and how his sublime contribution to literature has formed a signal bridge between myth and metaphysics. “We may look back to Hesiod’s poetry as representative of a cultural Golden Age when it was possible for a single work of literature to encompass the whole of traditional ‘wisdom’: high and low, ancient and modern, philosophical and poetic, practical and metaphysical.” – New Republic

ISBN 978-0-88922-700-2 Poetry 5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD September

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 8

8 Talonbooks New Releases

In Absentia m o r r i s pa n y c h

Playwright, actor and director Morris Panych has been described as “a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre.” In Absentia adds to the more than two dozen plays he has written, many of which have been translated and produced throughout the world. His plays have twice won the Governor General’s Award for Drama and he has won Vancouver’s Jessie Richardson Theatre Award fourteen times for acting and directing. He has directed more than eighty theatre productions and been nominated six times for Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award and three times for the Chalmers Award for his more than fifty acting roles in theatre, television and film. His classic 7 Stories continually ranks among the bestselling plays in Canada. For the 2012 Stratford Festival season, he and his partner, Ken MacDonald, have developed a musical about Robert Service entitled Wanderlust.

Four seasons after her husband Tom’s disappearance, Colette remains emotionally paralyzed, isolated in a country cottage. She waits in anguish, not knowing whether he is dead or alive, but clinging to hope. A young stranger in a jean jacket waves to her from the frozen lake – a sign? She emerges to give him her husband’s parka – strangely, the boy has a likeness to Tom. What is the stranger’s connection to her geologist husband, kidnapped more than a year before by leftist guerrillas in Colombia? How does this slyly seductive young stranger happen to show up at her home in rural Ontario, thousands of miles away? He seems to know more about Colette than he should, and as he slowly insinuates himself into her life, Colette’s attentive sister, Evelyn, and her helpful neighbour Bill become increasingly alarmed. Part mystery, part moving story of vanished love, In Absentia explores the notion of disappearance, articulated in very personal terms. Through the tough, time-shifting action of the play, Colette reflects on her marriage and past love, offering rich associative memories while also uncovering the hidden and inaccessible – that which is made to disappear from view. Guilt and grief, infidelity and infertility, loss and longing are the deeper subjects Panych explores here. At the same time, the play examines the desire to make connections in life – thoughts to deeds, intentions to outcomes – in scenes often enlivened by the playwright’s trademark humour. Cast of 3 men and 2 women. “This mystery story is a powerful meditation on the nature of lost love and grief, depicting a woman whose dire circumstances force her into deep contemplation of her marriage.” – McGill Daily “As heavy as it sounds and affecting as it is, [the play] has an uplifting vibrancy coming from an embracing narrative … While the story deals with profound loss, it’s much more about the redemptive power of love than the difficult process of grief.” – Sacramento Bee

ISBN 978-0-88922-702-6 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD September

Morris Panych’s Benevolence, The Dishwashers, Earshot, The Ends of the Earth, Girl in the Goldﬁsh Bowl, Lawrence & Holloman, Other Schools of Thought, 7 Stories, Still Laughing, The Trespassers, Vigil and What Lies Before Us are also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 9

Talonbooks New Releases 9

Seeds annabel soutar

Annabel Soutar is the artistic director of Porte Parole, a Montreal theatre company dedicated to creating and producing original documentary plays about contemporary social and political issues. Her first play, Novembre, debuted in 2000. Since then she has written 2000 Questions (2002) and contributed to Sante!, a seven-part documentary series (2003). An earlier docudrama, Sexy Concrete / Sexy béton (2009/2010), was set beneath the Turcot Exchange, a major stack freeway interchange built during the 1960s Montreal construction boom and now in poor condition, with pieces of concrete slabs occasionally falling on the more than 300,000 vehicles that use the interchange daily.

Part courtroom drama and part social satire, Seeds presents an intelligent portrait of farming and scientific communities in conflict and at the same time penetrates the complex science of genetically modified crops. The play documents the 2004 Supreme Court of Canada showdown between Saskatchewan farmer Percy Schmeiser and biotech multinational Monsanto Inc., a David-and-Goliath struggle that cast Schmeiser as the small-farmer underdog fighting the unscrupulous major corporation. Monsanto accused him of growing their genetically patented Round-up Ready canola seeds on his property without paying the licensing fee they require. Through a suspenseful labyrinth of legal conflicts regarding patent rights, scientific showdowns about GM food and property clashes between farmers and the biotechnology industry, Seeds asks the essential question: “Can you patent a living thing?” Or as Schmeiser famously asked, “Who owns life?” A most interesting aspect of the play is the ambiguity around the hero Percy Schmeiser. Is he a victim or an opportunist and selfpublicist? Certainly, he’s no innocent; as he keeps telling us, he’s an experienced politician, in fact an ex-mayor. He’s a believer who knows how to frame his beliefs to advantage. He can be grand and he can be petty – and as such he is antihero as much as hero. Named the top play of the decade by Rover Arts in its review of English theatre in Montreal between 2000 and 2010, Seeds takes us back to the seminal moment when a single farmer stood up to international agribusiness and almost won. Cast of 4 women and 3 men. “Soutar has done such a good job sowing the seeds of doubt that you wonder if this is nothing more than passionate rhetoric. Her play gives us plenty to think about, but leaves us to make up our own minds.” – Globe and Mail “Seeds is great journalism, and even better theatre.”

– Montreal Gazette

“Seeds has all the ingredients of a rile-you-up and make-you-think humdinger of a story.” – Hour

ISBN 978-0-88922-701-9 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 176 pp; Trade paper $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD October

“… one of the most impressive docu-dramas I’ve seen.”

– National Post

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 10

10 Talonbooks New Releases

Fronteras Americanas American Borders Second Edition

guillermo verdecchia

Guillermo Verdecchia is a writer of drama, fiction and film, and a director, dramaturge, actor and translator whose work has been seen and heard on stages, screens and radios across the country and around the globe. The author, or co-author, of, among other works, Citizen Suárez; Another Country; The Noam Chomsky Lectures and Insomnia (with Daniel Brooks); Fronteras Americanas; The Terrible but Incomplete Journals of John D.; bloom; A Line in the Sand (with Marcus Youssef); and the controversial Adventures of Ali & Ali and the Axes of Evil (with Camyar Chai and Marcus Youssef). He is a recipient of the Governor General’s Award for Drama, a four-time winner of the Chalmers Canadian Play Award, a recipient of Dora and Jessie Awards, and sundry film festival awards for his film Crucero / Crossroads, based on Fronteras Americanas and made with Ramiro Puerta.

Fuelled by equal parts outrage, intelligence and wit, Fronteras Americanas recreates one person’s struggle to construct a home between two cultures, while exploding the images and constructs built up around Latinos and Latin America. This one-person play works through bold juxtapositions and satiric reference points: Simón Bolívar and Speedy Gonzales; Columbus and Fodor’s travel guides; Ricky Ricardo and the Latin Lover; La Bamba and Placido Domingo; Carlos Fuentes and American drug-war movies. Verdecchia twirls stereotypes and clichés, offers comparative histories, examines myths and mysticism, and provides lessons in language and dancing. However, even as the ungovernable and surrealistic Fecundo Morales Secundo, or “Wideload,” edifies us about how sex between a “Latin” and a “Saxon” can be “a mind-expanding and culturally enriching experience,” eloquently quoting Octavio Paz and Federico García Lorca in direct response to contemporary struggles and injustices, he also transcends his role of “estereotype,” reaching a place beyond maps that are only metaphors where borders are more than divisions between countries and take on the most outlandish properties. In Verdecchia’s preface to the new edition, when examining his reasons for bringing forth a “refried” form of Fronteras Americanas in the 21st century, he indicates: There are, after all, people all over the globe living, crossing, resisting, defining, and defending linguistic, cultural, racial, gender, psychogeographical, cartographic, political and other borders. While the world has changed in many ways since I first wrote and performed it, the processes of migration, displacement, and globalization that informed the play’s creation have only accelerated. Some of us may lead more networked lives now, but the Border is alive and well and living all over the globe.

Cast of 1 man. “Funny, fast-paced, smart, and provocative”

ISBN 978-0-88922-705-7 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 80 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD September

– Globe and Mail

Guillermo Verdecchia’s Another Country / bloom and Citizen Suárez are also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 11

Talonbooks New Releases 11

Billy Bishop Goes to War Second Edition

j o h n g r ay with e r i c p e t e r s o n

John Gray is the author of a novel, many magazine articles, several stage musicals, a book on tattoos, Lost in North America: The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream (1994) and Local Boy Makes Good (1987), as well as the internationally acclaimed Billy Bishop Goes to War (1982) with Eric Peterson. He has contributed sixty-five satirical pieces for The Journal on CBC Television, and is a frequent speaker on cultural issues. Among his many awards are the Governor General’s Award for Drama, the Canadian Authors Association Award and the National Magazine Award. He lives in Vancouver. Eric Neal Peterson, stage, film and television actor is recognized as one of the early pioneers of the collective theatre movement in Canada during the 1970s. In 1976, he began working with John Gray, a playwright/director and fellow alumnus from Tamahnous Theatre, to create his most critically successful work, Billy Bishop Goes to War, a twoman show (Gray appeared as the narrator and pianist) in which he played more than a dozen characters.

One of Canada’s most successful and enduring musical plays, Billy Bishop Goes to War was first published in 1982 and went on to win the Los Angeles Drama Critics’ Award and the Governor General’s Award for Drama. In 2010, the celebrated story of the World War One flying ace – credited with seventy-two victories and billed as the top pilot in the British Empire – was revised to frame the original play as a retrospective. It is the same play it always was – the difference is in the telling. Billy Bishop now appears in his later years, reflecting on his wartime exploits, and on the business of war and hero making. Bishop’s reminiscence is not so much about the horror and death of war as it is about being young and intensely alive. “The prime of life / The best of men,” Bishop sings, “It will never be / Like this again.” A memory play about war, Billy Bishop has been going into battle onstage for more than thirty years. The Canadian classic is revisited in this second edition, where war is still a terrible thing, but some men say it was the greatest time of their lives. It’s about the ironies and the price of survival. The play format is deceptively simple with a solo narrator who assumes multiple roles while his piano-playing sidekick offers sardonic musical comments. Cast of 2 men. “Thirty years on, Billy Bishop still soars.”

– Globe and Mail

“[The play has] reasserted its right to be called one of the great works in the Canadian theatre canon.” – Toronto Star “Eric [Peterson, the lead actor] does it in pyjamas and it puts an entirely different spin on the whole thing. It’s very interesting, it’s less about war and more about life now.” – The Tyee

John Gray’s Local Boy Makes Good and Lost in North America are also available from Talonbooks.

ISBN 978-0-88922-689-0 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD August

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 12

12 Talonbooks Previously Announced

Imperial Canada Inc. Legal Haven of Choice for the World’s Mining Industries

a l a i n d e n e au lt & w i l l i a m sac h e r Translated by Fred A. Reed & Robin Philpot

Alain Deneault completed a research doctorate at the Centre Marc Bloch in Berlin and the Université de Paris 8, from which he received his PhD in philosophy. Deneault’s research and writing practices are diverse and often collaborative, focusing on how international financial and legal agreements foster the interests of “stateless” transnational corporations over those of nation-states and the interests of their human communities. William Sacher has worked throughout Europe, Africa and Latin America, and has published numerous articles and reports in the national and international press about the exploitation of natural resources and the politics of climate change. He holds a PhD from McGill in applied mathematics, specifically for the oceanic and atmospheric sciences. International journalist and literary translator Fred A. Reed is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Award for translation. Montreal-based author and translator Robin Philpot holds degrees in history and literature from the University of Toronto and has taught English and history in Africa.

ISBN 978-0-88922-635-7 Non-fiction / International trade 5.5 x 8.5; 320 pp; Trade paper $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD September

Imperial Canada Inc. sets out to ask a simple question: Why is Canada home to more than 70% of the world’s mining companies? Created by the British North America Act of 1867, Canada, rather than turning away from its colonial past, actively embraced, appropriated and perpetuated the imperial ambitions of its mother country. Two years later, it took possession of Rupert’s Land – all of the land draining into Hudson Bay – and the North-Western Territory from the Hudson’s Bay Company, three million hecatres of resources, and set about its nation-building enterprise of extending its Dominion “from sea to sea.” This Canadian imperial heritage continues to offer the extractive sector worldwide a customized trading environment that supports speculation, enables capital flows to finance questionable projects abroad, pursues a pro-active diplomacy which successfully promotes this sector to international institutions, opens fiscal pipelines to Caribbean tax havens, provides government subsidies and, most especially, offers a politicized legal haven from litigation. Traditionally rooted in Canadian law, the right to reputation effectively supersedes freedom of expression and the public’s right to information. Hence, Canadian “bodies corporate” (i.e., Canadian-based corporations) can sue for “libel” any and all persons or legal entities that quote documents or generate analyses of their corporate practices that they do not approve of. Even foreign academics have become hesitant about presenting their work in Canada for fear of prosecution. The authors of Imperial Canada Inc. meticulously research four factors that contribute to the answer to this question: Quebec’s and Ontario’s mining codes; the history of the Toronto Stock Exchange; Canada’s involvement with Caribbean tax havens; and, finally, Canada’s official role of promoting itself to international institutions governing the world’s mining sector. Praise for Deneault’s Paul Martin & Companies: “Here is a political book that does not rest with the satisfaction of having revealed certain secrecies, but persists in getting to the bottom of things … An essential read which goes beyond the scope of strict policy.” – Le Libraire

Alain Deneault’s Paul Martin & Companies is also available from Talonbooks.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 13

Talonbooks Recent Releases 13

Maleﬁcium

Modern Canadian Plays Volume One, Fifth Edition

martine desjardins Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

ISBN 978-0-88922-680-7 Fiction 5.5 x 8.5; 160 pp; Trade paper; 2nd printing $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Martine Desjardins delivers to readers of Maleﬁcium the unexpurgated revelations of Vicar Savoie, a heretic priest in 19th-century Montreal. Braving threats from the Catholic Church, Savoie violates the sanctity of the confessional in a confession-within-a-confession, in which seven penitents, each aﬄicted with a debilitating malady or struck with a crippling deformity, relates his encounter in the Near East with an enigmatic young woman whose lips bear a striking scar. As these men penetrate deep into the exotic Orient, each falls victim to his own secret vice. The men’s individual forms of punishment, revealed through the agency of the young woman, are wrought upon their bodies. “Lust, greed, retribution and shame – Maleficium reads like a fleshbound catalogue of my favourite sins.” – Jenn Farrell

Cold Comfort

Edited by j e r ry wa s s e r m a n

ISBN 978-0-88922-678-4 Drama / Anthology 6.75 x 9.75; 560 pp; Trade paper $49.95 CAD / $49.95 USD

This expanded ﬁfth edition of the classic Modern Canadian Plays sets out an even broader range of plays than previous editions. Includes updated or new introductions to each play. The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, George Ryga (1967); Les Belles Soeurs, Michel Tremblay (1968); Leaving Home, David French (1972); Sticks and Stones (The Donnellys, Part One), James Reaney (1973); Zastrozzi, George F. Walker (1977); Billy Bishop Goes to War, John Gray with Eric Peterson (1978); Balconville, David Fennario (1979); Blood Relations, Sharon Pollock (1980); Drag Queens on Trial, Sky Gilbert (1985); Bordertown Café, Kelly Rebar (1987); Toronto, Mississippi, Joan MacLeod (1987); Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning Juliet), Ann-Marie MacDonald (1988); Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Tomson Highway (1989); Lion in the Streets, Judith Thompson (1990); Life Without Instruction, Sally Clark (1991)

Turkana Boy

Growing Up Cold War jean-françois beauchemin gil mcelroy

ISBN 978-0-88922-684-5 Non-fiction / Autobiography / History 5.5 x 8.5; 272 pp; Trade paper; Photos $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

When his father died, award-winning poet and curator Gil McElroy was given a box of photographs that documented his father’s military career, which began in World War Two and continued through to the end of the Cold War. The senior McElroy helped to build Canada’s network of electronic defence, including the Distant Early Warning Line, a network of radar stations stretching along the Arctic coast. At the same time, Cold Comfort follows several narrative threads: McElroy’s experience of growing up as an itinerant military brat, who moved from one posting to another, and the military family’s attempts to hold together in the face of the father’s absence. It is also about the utter enigma that was the author’s father. Image by image, McElroy attempts to come to terms with the mysterious photographer, a man better understood by his military compatriots than by his own family.

Translated by Jessica Moore

ISBN 978-0-88922-690-6 Fiction 5.5 x 8.5; 144 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

In this contemplative novel-poem we share in the inner world of the grieving Bartolomé, who wanders and wonders, seeking to transcend the pain of losing his young son by encountering something larger than himself. Continuously occupied by the memory of his child, Bartolomé’s quest leads him from the city to the countryside and then to the edge of the ocean, where he marvels at the beauty of nature but cannot penetrate its mysteries. Through reference to the two-million-yearold “Turkana Boy,” the fossilized remains of a boy unearthed in near Lake Turkana, Kenya, Beauchemin addresses processes of memory and the long history of human evolution. “Beauchemin’s writing falls on us like a mist, like sorrow, slowly, in the soft nightfall of things.” – Radio Basse-Ville

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 14

14 Talonbooks Recent Releases

The Properties

Chinese Blue

colin browne

weyman chan

ISBN 978-0-88922-685-2 Poetry 6.75 x 9.25; 176 pp; Trade paper $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

ISBN 978-0-88922-681-4 Poetry 6 x 9; 128 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Poetry begins when the properties of things reveal themselves through language, that which has been called the veil that can pierce itself. The poems in The Properties record encounters between desire and the repressed or suppressed interstices of social, economic, political and unconscious forces. They’re alert to correspondences, attentive to the lines of force to which the poet’s family quietly assented in the contested place that is the northwest coast of North America.

In Chinese Blue, drawing upon more than two thousand years of ancient Chinese tradition that present diverse philosophical modes of being, the poet “character” sifts through the earth’s long history of geological layering and forgetting, grappling with the perpetual fragmentation of identity and notions of a creator, wading through visionary delineations of the modern city, numbed and soundly crushed between “the word and the thing.”

“From rhythm sticks of phrases and words, cross-cultural as well as deeply familial, Colin Browne musics together a powerful series of poems, a mnemonic for ‘lighting up the routes between worlds.’ Recurrent war thrums in the ‘lyre’ strings of the local, even in the cables of Vancouver’s soaring bridge … The Properties is a major work from a poet writing at the peak of both outrage and love.” – Daphne Marlatt

“Interwoven like richly suggestive translucent overlays of nerves, muscles and bones, Chinese Blue illuminates the forces of fathering, masculinity, Chinese heritage and global commerce scripting a body struggling to resist and redefine its source codes … This poetry vividly sounds the cross-currencies and necessary entanglements of the lyric in times of famine, polar meltdown, carbon credits and massive production of media trivia.” – Meredith Quartermain

Davie Street Translations

Specks Second Edition

d a n i e l z o m pa r e l l i michael m cclure Foreword by Paul E. Nelson

ISBN 978-0-88922-683-8 Poetry 6 x 9; 96 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Davie Street Translations is a witty, lively, documentary-style series of poems about gay male culture in Vancouver. With versiﬁed musical machismo following the San Francisco Renaissance poets, Daniel Zomparelli emphasizes an aesthetic sensibility that pervades the wireless shell of personal relations, facing up to HIV fears, drug culture, porn fantasy, gay bashing and the aftermath of love letters on Craigslist. “Davie Street Translations pulls you in. Zomparelli’s language is muscular, touchingly specific and surprisingly melodic; his images hit you between the eyes. Disarmingly brutal and beautiful, we recognize this hyper urban life driven by our heightened basic instincts, regardless of who we are. This is a book of poetry you won’t put down. You won’t forget.” – Betsy Warland

ISBN 978-0-88922-688-3 Poetry 6 x 9; 96 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Specks assumes the form of a blastula, oﬀering a poetic model of embryonic development that arises from the cellular division known as “cleavage.” These poems present groupings of ideas that mimic and challenge one another in a deep biological state. With mind aglow in recognition of muscular imagination and the intelligence of the sensorium in all its unapologetic tonality, McClure’s luminous journey leaps with the grace of Muhammad Ali and Fred Astaire, and tempts the reader into the mysterious abyss of dark energy that Federico García Lorca calls duende. “McClure’s poetry is a blob of protoplasmic energy.” – Allen Ginsberg

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 15

Talonbooks Recent Releases 15

Bolsheviki

Tombs of the Vanishing Indian

d av i d f e n n a r i o marie clements

ISBN 978-0-88922-687-6 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Set in a hotel bar in Montreal on Remembrance Day, Bolsheviki recounts stories from the trenches of World War One, as told by veteran Harry “Rosie” Rollins to a reporter. Rosie’s meandering monologue delivers a blistering de-gloriﬁcation of war as it shifts between his wartime recollections and the present day. The veteran’s clattering, fast-paced description of life – and death – on the front reproduces the chaotic sounds and rhythms of battle. This cutting-edge drama, profoundly in opposition to conventional histories of Canadian troops in World War One, debunks every sentimental notion of duty, heroism and warfare. Cast of 1 man. “Bolsheviki is vintage Fennario, gritty, authentic, touching, replete with one-liners, never boring … making its radical-pacifist point while paying due respect to veterans.” – Montreal Gazette

The Book of Esther

ISBN 978-0-88922-686-9 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 96 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Three young Native American sisters and their mother board a bus bound for California, leaving home as part of a 1950s government mandate to relocate reserve Indians to urban centres. In Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, Métis playwright Marie Clements dramatizes the emotional, psychological and social repercussions of this assimilation policy. The narrative interweaves with another historical injustice – the forced sterilization of thousands of Native women in the 1970s. Inspired by true events, the play is a poetic excavation of the lost stories of displaced Aboriginal people. Cast of 4 women and 3 men. “Tombs of the Vanishing Indian is often deeply touching, a piece of theatrical anthropology about the determined survival of a people, not its demise.” – Toronto Sun

Vigil Second Edition

leanna brodie Introduction by Eric Coates

ISBN 978-0-88922-682-1 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

m o r r i s pa n y c h

ISBN 978-0-88922-692-0 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 80 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

It’s June 1981. Farmers face a debt crisis with interest rates as high as 20 percent. More than 300 men are arrested following police sweeps of Toronto bathhouses, yet Pride Toronto launches its first gay-pride parade. Everything’s changing, including fifteen-year-old Esther, who escapes the family farm and runs away to the city. With the help of a brash young hustler and a gay activist who shelters street kids, she confronts her conservative-Christian parents – farmers on the brink of financial ruin – and begins to find her way home. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

Vigil is about a man returning – after 30 years – to sit with a female relative on her deathbed. Kemp, the protagonist, is an extremely self-centred and shallow person who uses acid wit and seemingly callous indifference to cover up the profound discomfort he experiences upon finding himself part of a death watch. Kemp’s problem is: She’s not dying fast enough. Through Kemp’s own errors and inattentiveness, the visit that he thinks will take a day or two stretches into a year, and he finds himself caring for his long-forgotten aunt Grace against his will. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

“Leanna Brodie’s play The Book of Esther is filled with tenderness, heart and humour. It is also an eloquent plea for understanding. It posits that people who feel they are very much on the opposite ends of the belief spectrum can learn to understand human difference.” – Sky Gilbert

“This is one of those rare, liberating plays that actually breaks a taboo. [Panych] gives voice to the silent thoughts that hover around many death-beds.” – National Post

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 16

16 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

ABC of Reading TRG

Bambi and Me

The New Canadian Criticism Series Peter Jaeger

Michel Tremblay

Edited by Frank Davey

Autobiographical pieces about how movies shaped the life of young Michel Tremblay.

Examines the writings of Steve McCaffery and bpNichol, with a special focus on their collaborative work as the Toronto Research Group (TRG). ISBN 978-0-88922-423-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1999; 160 pp; Illustrations

Translated by Sheila Fischman

American Notebooks

Baseball Love

A Writer’s Journey Marie-Claire Blais

George Bowering

Translated by Linda Gaboriau An album of finely drawn literary portraits of writers, musicians, artists and social activists who influenced the life and work of Blais in the 1960s. “Marvelously constructed … beautifully cadenced character studies.” – Books in Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-358-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1996; 208 pp

Bowering’s life in love and the game unfolds in a picaresque memoir of a road trip taken through the storied ballparks of the poet’s youthful dreams. “The indispensable George Bowering’s Baseball Love is a winning memoir cum love story, as Canada’s first poet laureate and his lady embark on a memorable – in every sense – baseball trope: the road trip.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-529-9; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2006; 256 pp

Anarcho-Modernism

Beyond Recall

Toward a New Critical Theory in Honour of Jerry Zaslove Edited by Ian Angus

Mary Meigs

Essays exploring key issues of politics and aesthetics in honour of the founding director of the Institute for the Humanities at Simon Fraser University.

Edited by Lise Weil A beautiful memoir that reads like the most exquisitely crafted fiction. Lambda Literary Award for Biography Finalist, 2006.

“One cannot deny the generosity of spirit which permeates this text …” – Canadian Literature

“Her real strengths are virtues of drama, colour … and passion that are distilled in succinct images.” – Globe & Mail

Anatolia Junction

Birth of a Bookworm

A Journey into Hidden Turkey Fred A. Reed

Michel Tremblay

As Fred A. Reed travels through the Middle East, the Balkans and Asia Minor, he concludes that Turkey’s Islamists are reappropriating the culture and beliefs that 70 years of secular fundamentalism have been unable to eradicate.

A tour of books that inspired Tremblay’s imagination.

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Globe & Mail Top 100 Books, 2003. “Quebec’s most celebrated living writer.” – Guardian (UK) “Destined to become a classic.”

– Globe & Mail

Annihilated Time

Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies

Poetry and Other Politics Jeff Derksen

Michel Tremblay

Essays that explore the ways in which poetry, visual art and critical practices encounter “the long present neoliberal moment” of the imperialist agenda of globalization.

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2006.

“Derksen raises the question of what it means to make art in the present moment in a new and exciting way.” – Sianne Ngai

“Tremblay’s knack for recalling and accessing his boyhood self is uncanny. Assorted Candies is short but sweet.” – Montreal Review of Books

Translated by Linda Gaboriau “The best of Tremblay can be found in these Assorted Candies …” ––Voir

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 17

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 17

The Box Closet

Canadian Drama and the Critics

Mary Meigs

Revised Edition Edited by L.W. Conolly

A narrative woven of her parents’ diaries and letters that integrates Meigs’s discoveries as a daughter and granddaughter. “Meigs creates a work of considerable insight and beauty.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-253-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1987; 224 pp; Photos

This lively, updated assortment of critical deliberations on contemporary Canadian drama is an ideal companion text to Modern Canadian Plays, Volumes One and Two. “Fascinating, entertaining, and instructive.” – Max Wyman ISBN 978-0-88922-359-2; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1987, 1995; 384 pp

bpNichol

Charles Olson at the Harbor

What History Teaches

Ralph Maud

The New Canadian Criticism Series

Stephen Scobie Edited by Frank Davey Scobie illuminates Nichol’s relationship to Dadaism, contemporary French literary theory and the writing of Gertrude Stein, positing a cogent argument for Nichol’s importance as a writer of fiction.

A repudiation of Tom Clark’s carelessly biased Charles Olson: The Allegory of a Poet’s Life, this diligently researched biography by long-time Olson scholar, friend and correspondent Ralph Maud redeems the reputation of one of the greatest American poets of the 20th century. “... a balanced and superbly rendered picture of one of America’s greatest poets.” – Peter Anastas

Bridges of Light

The Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors

Otto Landauer of Leonard Frank Photos, 1945–1980 Cyril E. Leonoff

Oliver N. Wells

This illustrated biography of one of the last great blackand-white photographers of the Pacific Northwest is also an extraordinary photo art book. Printed on wood-free paper. City of Vancouver Heritage Award of Merit, 1999.

Active ethnography through conversations, legends and articles. A naturalist’s guide to the Chilliwack Native people and their area. “Useful for the diligent novice.”

– BC Studies

Building the West

Circumstances Alter Photographs

The Early Architects of British Columbia Revised and Updated Edition Compiled and edited by Donald Luxton

Captain James Peters’ Reports from the War of 1885 Michael Barnholden

This award-winning revised edition tells the stories, discovers the hopes and aspirations, and celebrates the successes and accomplishments of the early architects of British Columbia.

In April 1885, Captain James Peters of the North West Field Force, took the world’s first battlefield photographs under fire at the battle of Fish Creek. He exposed a total of 70 glass plates there and at subsequent battles at Duck Lake and Batoche. These astonishing photographs are presented together here, with an essay by Michael Barnholden.

“For anyone who cares about the built environment, this book is a treasury – and a treasure.” – Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-554-1; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD ©2003, 2007; 560 pp; Photos and illustrations

The Burden of Office

Coast Salish Essays

Agamemnon and Other Losers Joseph Tussman

Wayne Suttles

Lucid, original and ultimately wise, this book is as much a work of literature as it is of philosophy. “These stories are meant to delight as well as instruct.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-265-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1989; 168 pp; 2nd printing

A careful selection from the work of one of the foremost ethnographers of the Pacific Northwest. “A major contribution to the study of the Indians of the Northwest Coast.” – Pacific Northwest Quarterly ISBN 978-0-88922-212-0; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1987; 336 pp; Photos, maps & illustrations; 4th printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 18

18 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

Conversations in Tehran

An English Canadian Poetics

Jean-Daniel Lafond & Fred A. Reed

Vol. 1 – The Confederation Poets Edited by Robert Hogg

Filmmaker Jean-Daniel Lafond and author Fred A. Reed document the fall of Mohammad Khatami’s reform movement through candid conversations with Iranian artists, journalists and political activists. “A society like ours, which flirts almost unconsciously with the bullies of ‘political correctness’ … needs men, women, writers, journalists, intellectuals like Fred A. Reed.” – CBC Radio-Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-550-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2006; 224 pp; Photos

With an introduction by D.M.R. Bentley Essays on poetic theory written by Canadian poets from the late 19th century to 1918 that articulate the specific social, cultural and political circumstances under which their poetry was created. “Never before or since in Canada have poetry, poetics, environment, identity and national distinctiveness been more closely intertwined.” – D.M.R. Bentley ISBN 978-0-88922-613-5; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©2009; 320 pp; Photos

Crimes and Mercies

An Error in Judgement

The Fate of German Civilians Under Allied Occupation, 1944–1950 James Bacque

The Politics of Medical Care in an Indian /White Community Dara Culhane

More than 9 million Germans died from deliberate Allied starvation and expulsion policies after WWII. At the same time, a food-aid program saved an estimated 800 million.

An analysis of the controversy surrounding the death of a Native child in Alert Bay, British Columbia.

“A scholar of great courage and perseverance who deserves to be heard.” – Dr. Dwight D. Murphey

“Successfully forces the liberal white reader to look beyond totem poles and quaint Indian baskets to our common history.” – Vancouver Sun

The Decline of the Hollywood Empire

Essays on George F. Walker

Hervé Fischer

Playing with Anxiety Chris Johnson

Translated by Rhonda Mullins Heralds the inevitable move from 35 mm to digital distribution, which has levelled the creative playing field between the towering Hollywood empire and marginalized independent artists and producers. Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2007. “AN ESSENTIAL READ. That sums up the importance of Fischer’s book …” – Le Canada français

The first book-length examination of the work of Canada’s most-produced and internationally recognized playwright, George F. Walker, who has not only created a substantial body of work, but also impressed it all with his unique “Walkeresque” stamp. ISBN 978-0-921368-82-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1999; 272 pp

The Edward Curtis Project

EX MACHINA

A Modern Picture Story Marie Clements & Rita Leistner

Creating for the Stage Patrick Caux & Bernard Gilbert

Marie Clements’s play dramatizes the creation of Edward Curtis’s 20-volume photographic and ethnographic record of the “vanishing” North American Indian. It is presented here alongside Rita Leistner’s parallel investigation of Curtis’s work, which questions the practice of documentary photography with the very medium under scrutiny. Features more than 100 colour photographs.

Translated by Neil Kroetsch

Empire of Desire

Gabriel Dumont Speaks

The Abolition of Time Thierry Hentsch

Revised and Updated Edition Gabriel Dumont

Translated by Fred A. Reed

Translated by Michael Barnholden

This second volume in Hentsch’s epic survey of the Western narrative tradition traces Western civilization’s quest for immortality across a further four centuries through an examination of works by Molière, Voltaire, de Sade, Rousseau, Hegel, Melville, Flaubert, Joyce, Proust and others.

This judicious interpretation of Louis Riel’s adjutant general’s memoirs offers a rare opportunity to view one of the central events in the history of the Métis through the eyes of one of their key heroes.

This full-colour book documents Robert Lepage’s dynamic creative arts company, Ex Machina, constantly on the move in search of new forms of storytelling. Its frenetic dynamism means the company must constantly move simultaneously between story draft and stagecraft as it invites audiences to witness its theatrical experiments.

“Fascinating.”

– Quill & Quire

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 19

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 19

George Bowering

In Plain Sight

Bright Circles of Colour

Reflections on Life in Downtown Eastside Vancouver Edited by Leslie A. Robertson & Dara Culhane

The New Canadian Criticism Series

Eva-Marie Kröller Edited by Frank Davey This first book-length study of Bowering explores the relationship between his work and the arts.

A remarkable collection of seven life stories from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, giving voice to women who are seldom heard on their own terms.

“Perceptive, highly readable account of the avant-garde scene in Canada.” – Vancouver Sun

City of Vancouver Book Award Finalist, 2005.

Great Lakes Suite

In the Company of Strangers

David W. McFadden

Mary Meigs

Specially revised and edited, and for the first time in one complete volume, Great Lakes Suite includes the collective record of three trips: A Trip Around Lake Erie, A Trip Around Lake Huron and A Trip Around Lake Ontario.

Based on the NFB production of The Company of Strangers, Meigs’s account of the film unfolds in an intricate meditation on time, old age and bonding.

“Consistently entertaining, consistently engaging.” – Toronto Star

“Her book on the film is exquisitely attuned to the interplay between art and life.” – Boston Globe

“Some of the most fascinating writing being done in this country.” – Windsor Star

QSPELL Award Winner for Non-fiction, 1992.

griddle talk

In the Midst

a yeer uv bill n carol dewing brunch Carol Malyon and bill bissett

Warren Tallman

A series of literary conversations between Malyon, who writes within the objective bounds of standard English usage, and bissett, one of contemporary writing’s most exotic practitioners, working with the visual forms of language in his own non-hierarchic, phonetic orthography.

Warren Tallman was catalyst, shelter and anchor to a whole generation of writers and poets, from the beat generation poets to the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E school writers. In these pieces, Tallman introduces the reader to a world of literary companionship that shaped the language and thought of late 20th-century North America.

A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend Ralph Maud

Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America

Boas, Teit, Hill-Tout, Barbeau, Swanton, Jenness, the luminaries of field research in British Columbia, are discussed, and their work in Indian folklore evaluated in this comprehensive survey of myth-collecting in British Columbia.

A Translation of Franz Boas’ 1895 Edition of Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Küste Amerikas Franz Boas

“Important not for what it might tell us about Indian culture in the past, but for what these myths may tell us about our society. This book goes some way toward that goal.” – Vancouver Sun

Edited and annotated by Randy Bouchard & Dorothy Kennedy

How to Write

Justice in Our Time

derek beaulieu

The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement Roy Miki & Cassandra Kobayashi

Containing 10 pieces of conceptual prose ranging from the purely appropriated through the entirely recomposed, beaulieu samples Laurence Sterne, Roy Lichtenstein, Agatha Christie and all the text within one block of his home.

“The equal of any heroic literature you’ll ever read … a stunning legacy.” – Vancouver Sun

How a community brought the issue of redress for the injustices of the 1940s to the forefront of public debate.

W.O. Mitchell Literary Prize Finalist, 2011.

“A powerful and moving testament to the successful efforts of the NAJC.” – Globe & Mail

“beaulieu produces some of the most baffling, oblique, unreadable – and absolutely logical and necessary – works of conceptual poetry.” – Craig Dworkin

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 20

20 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

Lasagna

Lost in North America

The Man Behind the Mask Ronald Cross & Hélène Sévigny

The Imaginary Canadian in the American Dream John Gray

A biography of the most notorious of the 1990 Oka warriors, leader of the Mohawk armed resistance. “The book’s 248 pages are, to put it simply, credible. Read this book – it will open your eyes too.” – Alberta Native News ISBN 978-0-88922-348-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1994; 248 pp; Photos

A personal, idiosyncratic tour of the collective work of art we call Canada. “More than just well written, entertaining and humorous, this book is also (gasp) moving.” – Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-350-9; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1994; 208 pp

The Lil’wat World of Charlie Mack

Making Theatre

Dorothy Kennedy & Randy Bouchard

A Life of Sharon Pollock Sherrill Grace

Dorothy Kennedy and Randy Bouchard record and recontextualize many Lil’wat stories as told to them by respected Lil’wat elder Charlie Mack over a two-decade period of friendship and ethnographic research.

The story of Pollock’s life from her family roots in New Brunswick through her pioneering years as a Canadian playwright to the present as she continues to make theatre.

“Kennedy and Bouchard act with subtlety as informative editors giving insight into their own development as ethnographers through the teachings of Charlie Mack.” – Canadian Literature

Winner Ann Saddlemyer Award, 2009.

Lily Briscoe

Margaret Atwood

A Self-Portrait Mary Meigs

A Feminist Poetics

A compelling autobiography about the exercise of will, friendships and dreaming. “A series of landscapes and life drawings, skillfully created.” – Humanities and Applied Arts ISBN 978-0-88922-195-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1981; 264 pp; Photos; 3rd printing

“Grace’s insightful exploration of … theatrical performance and the traces of Pollock’s successive re-inventions of herself is unrivalled.” – Patricia Demers

The New Canadian Criticism Series

Frank Davey Davey reveals Atwood’s extraordinary facility with language as well as her mistrust of it, and offers a “glossary” of recurrent Atwood images and symbols that unveil the hidden level in her writing. ISBN 978-0-88922-217-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1984; 178 pp; 2nd printing

Lions Gate

Meanwhile

Lilia D’Acres & Donald Luxton

The Critical Writings of bpNichol bpNichol

Like all great historic landmarks, the Lions Gate Bridge remains a source of powerful, sometimes illuminating, sometimes mysterious stories of the people and times which gave birth to it. Winner of the Vancouver Heritage Award; BC Historical Federation Writing Competition; Heritage Society of BC Award; City of Vancouver Book Award, 2000; BC Book Prize Finalist, 2000. ISBN 978-0-88922-416-2; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©1999; 160 pp; Cloth; Photos & illustrations; 2nd printing

Edited by Roy Miki A thoughtful and provocative 30-year record of Nichol’s approaches to textual production. “Almost 15 years after his untimely death, Nichol is being recognized as a major Canadian literary figure.” – National Post ISBN 978-0-88922-447-6; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©2002; Photos & illustrations; 496 pp

Living by Stories

The Medusa Head

A Journey of Landscape and Memory Harry Robinson

Mary Meigs

Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire

A sensitive psychological portrait of a stormy three-way lesbian relationship.

This third collection documents how the arrival of whites forever altered the Salish cultural landscape.

“An unsparing account of love, jealousy and hate.” – Toronto Star

“Whenever I need to be reminded that language is magic and that stories can change the world, I go to Robinson.” – Thomas King

“Shaped with intelligence, honesty and humor.” – Ottawa Citizen

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 21

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 21

Muthologos

Outsider Notes

Lectures and Interviews, Revised Second Edition Charles Olson

Feminist Approaches to Nation State Ideology, Writers / Readers and Publishing

Edited by Ralph Maud

The New Canadian Criticism Series

Charles Olson once defined “muthologos” as “what is said about what is said.” Revised and expanded.

Lynette Hunter

“Document[s] the processual nature and intellectual hunger that situate [Olson’s] poetic imagination not only in the poem but in the range of perception that can be talked about ‘with some life.’” – Fred Wah

Tough-minded reappraisals of canonicity, modernism, postmodernism, marginality and post-coloniality in Canadian writing.

Edited by Frank Davey

Nature Power

Paul Martin & Companies

In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller Second Edition Harry Robinson

Sixty Theses on the Alegal Nature of Tax Havens Alain Deneault

Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire

Translated by Rhonda Mullins

Features tales of the shoo-MISH, or “nature helpers.”

A piercing look at what it means when a Canadian prime minister puts his own private interests first.

BC Book Prize Winner, 1993. “Epic, mesmerizing tales by a great Okanagan storyteller that lift [one] eerily and movingly, into a different world.” – Michele Landsberg, Toronto Star

“Stands as an example and a rebuke to the watery discourse that passes for ‘political’ commentary in the anglophone press …“ – Geist

NEWS

Peregrinations

Postcards from the Four Directions Drew Hayden Taylor

Conversations with Contemporary Artists Robert Enright

In this collection of short humorous essays originally written for the popular media, playwright, novelist and screenwriter Drew Hayden Taylor sends his readers fascinating and exotic postcards from his globe-trotting adventures, always on the lookout for the NEWS about Aboriginal peoples around the world.

Informed and considered interviews with the most influential artists of our time. Enright takes us into the environments, both imaginative and actual, that have shaped their personal and artistic histories.

No Plaster Saint

Performing National Identities

The Life of Mildred Osterhout Fahrni Nancy Knickerbocker

International Perspectives on Contemporary Canadian Theatre Edited by Sherrill Grace & Albert-Reiner Glaap

A crusading socialist and an absolute pacifist, Mildred Osterhout Fahrni walked with J.S. Woodsworth, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King. The extraordinary story of one of Canada’s pioneer peacemakers. ISBN 978-0-88922-452-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2001; 288 pp; Photos

“Marvellous interviews … the mind and the world of the artist flooded with light.” – Arthur Danto

A collection of 18 original essays on contemporary Canadian theatre by scholars and drama specialists in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Great Britain, Hungary and Japan. ISBN 978-0-88922-475-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2003; 324 pp; Photos

Other Losses

Persian Postcards

An Investigation into the Mass Deaths of German Prisoners at the Hands of the French and Americans after World War II James Bacque

Iran After Khomeini Fred A. Reed

This third edition updates Bacque’s research into KGB archives, which meticulously documents proof that nearly one million German POWs died in U.S. and French camps between 1944 and 1949. “A hornet’s nest …”

“An excellent guide to the people, religion, politics and world view of modern Iran.” – Military Intelligence Professional Bulletin “Both accessible to the uninitiated and a valuable resource.” – Quill & Quire “Assumptions about Iran shattered.”

– Toronto Star

– Globe & Mail

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 22

22 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

Phyllis Webb and the Common Good

Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History

Poetry / Anarchy / Abstraction Stephen Collis

The Politics of Playing in Toronto D.A. Hadfield

“As much about Webb as about the cultural and political milieu of her time, this book is necessary reading for anyone interested in Canadian poetry and the ethics of writing as criticism.” – Smaro Kamboureli

Hadfield traces the process of creating a theatrical “success” and investigates how the politics involved influences what we perceive as “good” playwriting.

The Pleasure of the Crown

A Record of Writing

Anthropology, Law and First Nations Dara Culhane

An Annotated and Illustrated Bibliography of George Bowering Roy Miki

An in-depth analysis of the 130-year history of the Aboriginal title issue in British Columbia, focusing in particular on the Gitksan and Wet’suwet’en case.

Traces the development of poet laureate Bowering’s many writings through four decades.

“Explores fundamental questions … The Pleasure of the Crown is a book that everyone interested in ‘justice for all’ will want to read.” – Vancouver Sun

Gabrielle Roy Prize Winner, Best Critical Book in English.

Poet to Publisher

The Recovery of the Public World

Charles Olson’s Correspondence with Donald Allen Edited by Ralph Maud

Essays on Poetics in Honour of Robin Blaser Edited by Charles Watts & Edward Byrne

Documents Olson’s influence on The New American Poetry, Allen’s visionary and revolutionary anthology.

“An extraordinary contribution to this field.” – Canadian Library Journal

A collection of texts and talks which address the work of poet Robin Blaser.

“The letters make fascinating reading for their commentary on writers … and literary issues from 1957 to 1969 …” – Canadian Literature

“Poets and thinkers describe his work, assess his accomplishments and contribute reflections on the literary projects and subjects Blaser has helped to construct.” – Publishers Weekly

The Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories

The Salish People

The Original Tsimshian Texts of Henry Tate Edited and annotated by Ralph Maud

Volume I: The Thompson and the Okanagan Charles Hill-Tout

Henry W. Tate, who died in 1914, was an important Tsimshian informant to ethnographer Franz Boas.

Edited by Ralph Maud

The first volume of a four-volume set rich in stories and factual information on the Salish people of the Pacific Northwest. ISBN 978-0-88922-148-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1978; 176 pp; Photos, maps & illustrations; 2nd printing

Rational Geomancy

The Salish People

The Kids of the Book-Machine The Collected Research Reports of the Toronto Research Group, 1973–1982 Steve McCaffery & bpNichol

Volume II: The Squamish and the Lillooet Charles Hill-Tout

Edited by Steve McCaffery Reports on translation, the-book-as-machine and the search for non-narrative prose. ISBN 978-0-88922-300-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©1992; Photos & illustrations; 320 pp; 2nd printing

Edited by Ralph Maud Includes the Origin Myth as recounted by a storyteller whose mother saw Captain Vancouver sail into Howe Sound in 1792. ISBN 978-0-88922-149-9; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1978; 176 pp; Photos, maps & illustrations

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 23

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 23

The Salish People

Strange Comfort

Volume III: The Mainland Halkomelem Charles Hill-Tout

Essays on the Work of Malcolm Lowry Sherrill Grace

Edited by Ralph Maud Stories of the people of the Fraser Valley from Vancouver to Chilliwack, with the earliest account of BC archaeological sites.

Strange Comfort collects Grace’s best essays on writer Malcolm Lowry, exploring his most important themes: the role of the artist, the nightmare of history, the pressures of memory, the need to protect the garden of our world.

The Salish People

Subject to Change

Volume IV: The Sechelt and the South-Eastern Tribes of Vancouver Island Charles Hill-Tout

Renee Rodin

Edited by Ralph Maud

Comprising stories that sketch the resonant heights and depths of an autobiography, Subject to Change is a series of self-portraits along the road of a life well lived.

“The rescuing of unorthodox anthropology from the conspiracy of silence that academics have woven around it.” – Vancouver Sun

“… a delightful testament to the complexity of people and the many roles we play in our lifetimes.” – Telegraph-Journal

Salonica Terminus

Takeover in Tehran

Travels into the Balkan Nightmare Fred A. Reed

The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture Massoumeh Ebtekar

In his extensive travels in the Balkans, Reed encounters a landscape inscribed with a shocking testimony of ethnoracialist aspirations.

as told to Fred A. Reed

“The good and evil aspects of nationalism … [A] compassionate account of one of the world’s most difficult regions.” – Toronto Star

A revealing first-hand insider account by Iran’s first female vice-president, Massoumeh Ebtekar, of the 1979 revolutionary student movement which captured the American Embassy in Tehran.

Shattered Images

Taking My Life

The Rise of Militant Iconoclasm in Syria Fred A. Reed

Jane Rule

Discusses all of the major Islamic faiths in its search for the origins of contemporary fundamentalist movements. “A striking intellectual travelogue … a useful contribution to the literature of interfaith dialogue.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-485-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©2003; 260 pp; map

Discovered among her papers as a handwritten manuscript, Jane Rule’s moving, witty memoir of the first two decades of her life probes in emotional and intellectual terms the philosophical questions that were to preoccupy her throughout her literary career. Afterword by Linda M. Morra. Lambda Literary Award Finalist, 2012. “A beautiful piece of dryly ironic writing, deeply thought out and intellectually honest.” – Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-673-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2011; 288 pp; Photos

Signs of Literature

The Terror of the Coast

Language, Ideology and the Literary Text Kenneth James Hughes The history of language as a made thing – a linguistic and structuralist primer.

Land Alienation and Colonial War on Vancouver Island and the Gulf Islands, 1849–1863 Chris Arnett

“It’s tough reading but worth a look if you’re into the study of words.” – Vancouver Province

An extensively detailed reconstruction of the war between the First Nations and Vancouver Island’s colonial government.

“A scholarly, yet compelling account of a neglected and shameful chapter in BC’s history.” – CBRA ISBN 978-0-88922-318-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1999; 382 pp; Photos, maps & illustrations; 2nd printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 24

24 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

textual vishyuns image and text in the work of bill bissett Carl Peters Drawing on aesthetic manifestos, modern poetics and film theory, Carl Peters locates bill bissett’s textual and visual work within the larger context of art history, criticism and practice. “textual vishyuns is not only a book on bill bissett, but also a way of bringing modernist thought and vision together without taking either apart.” – Jerry Zaslove ISBN 978-0-88922-661-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©2011; 224 pp; Colour photos

Timothy Findley and the Aesthetics of Fascism Intertextual Collaboration and Resistance The New Canadian Criticism Series

Anne Geddes Bailey Edited by Frank Davey Investigates the troubling relationship between narrative meaning and representations of violence within Timothy Findley’s novels. ISBN 978-0-88922-386-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1998; 256 pp

Theatre and AutoBiography

Too Good to Be True

Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice Edited by Sherrill Grace & Jerry Wasserman

Alcan’s Kemano Completion Project Bev Christensen

This groundbreaking exploration of an increasingly prominent interdisciplinary realm draws on a wide range of contemporary theorists and playwrights. The breadth of styles and performances discussed here is extraordinary.

Examines the question of who is to control North America’s vital water and power resources in the 21st century. BC Book Prize Finalist, 1996. “This is an essential story, and a fascinating one” – Books in Canada

Then We Were One

Tracing the Paths

Fragments of Two Lives Fred A. Reed

Reading =/ Writing The Martyrology Edited by Roy Miki

Shocked by his brother’s death from injuries sustained in the Vietnam War, Fred Reed sets out on a journey of personal discovery. By way of Iran in the aftermath of the Revolution, the Anatolian highlands of the mystic Said Nursi, and in pursuit of ancient and modern iconoclasts, he comes under the spell of Islam. In its embrace he find renewed brotherhood; in its discipline, liberation.

A wide spectrum of readings of bpNichol’s challenging and innovative long poem. “A stimulating companion to those reading, and rereading, Nichol’s quirky, honest, and experimental work.” – Books in Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-256-4; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1988; 344 pp

They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia Annie York, Richard Daly & Chris Arnett “An invaluable record … of a vanishing culture.” – Toronto Star “[A] combination of academic exposition and plainfolks narrative that entertains while it educates.” – Georgia Straight ISBN 978-0-88922-331-8; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD ©1993; 320 pp; Cloth; Photos & illustrations

Transmission Difficulties Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology Ralph Maud Ralph Maud delves into the mystery of Boas’s alleged “translations” of the stories gathered by his chief Tsimshian informant, Henry Tate. “A useful contribution to BC anthropology.” – Victoria Times-Colonist

This Is My Own

Truth or Death

Letters to Wes and Other Writings on Japanese Canadians, 1941–1948 Muriel Kitagawa

The Quest for Immortality in the Western Narrative Tradition Thierry Hentsch

Edited by Roy Miki

Translated by Fred A. Reed

Letters written following the uprooting of the JapaneseCanadian community in late 1941.

Governor General’s Translation Award Winner, 2005.

“This collection is skillfully woven together.” – Amerasia Review

“A work of great depth, magnificently written.” – Le Devoir

QWF Translation Award Winner, 2005.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 25

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 25

Twelve Opening Acts

Vancouver Anthology

Michel Tremblay

Revised Second Edition Edited by Stan Douglas

Translated by Sheila Fischman An account of Tremblay’s discovery of the theatre, from his first recognition at the age of six of how the imagination is actually a public construct, to his winning of a drama competition with his first play. Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2002. ISBN 978-0-88922-466-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©2002; 192 pp

Essays on the institutional politics of art, from the 1991 lecture series Vancouver Anthology. Contributors include Marcia Crosby, Sara Diamond, Maria Insell, Robert Linsley, Robin Peck, Nancy Shaw, Keith Wallace, Scott Watson, Carol Williams and William Wood. This redesigned edition features new colour reproductions and a new afterword by Stan Douglas. Co-published with the Or Gallery. Alcuin Book Design Award Honourable Mention, 2011. ISBN 978-0-88922-614-2; $35.00 CAD / $35.00 USD ©1991, 2011; 320 pp; Cloth; Colour photos

Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand

Women in a World at War

Oral Traditions of the Hul’q’umi’num’ Coast Salish of Kuper Island and Vancouver Island Beryl Cryer

Seven Dispatches from the Front Madeleine Gagnon

Compiled and edited by Chris Arnett

Governor General’s French Non-Fiction Award Finalist, 2001.

A vital collection of writings collected during the Depression, first published in Victoria’s oldest newspaper.

Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott

“An engrossing and delightful book.” – Georgia Straight

“An extraordinary work … the book crosses borders of country, culture and language to touch fundamental truths in lyrical and haunting prose …” – Quill & Quire

Vancouver

Write It on Your Heart

A Visual History Bruce Macdonald

The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller Harry Robinson

This stunning full-colour historical atlas brings alive Vancouver’s first 14 decades.

Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire

City of Vancouver Book Award Winner, 1993. “Bruce Macdonald breaks new ground with an impressive multi-disciplinary atlas.” – Globe & Mail

“An important addition to Canadian literature … In reading Robinson, one is virtually forced to read the story out loud, thereby closing the circle, the oral becoming the written becoming the oral.” – Thomas King

BC Book Prize Finalist, 1993.

BC Book Prize Finalist, 1990.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 26

26 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

All That Glitters

The Bicycle Eater

Martine Desjardins

Larry Tremblay

Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Haunted by the iron jealousy of their commanding officer, Dulac and Nell must risk everything to pursue their desires.

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2006.

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2005. “Compels and disturbs, leaving us with questions about chance and fate, love and war.” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-520-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2005; 160 pp; Illustrations

Governor General’s French Fiction Award Finalist, 2003. “There is something poetic about the way the narrative slips back and forth as easily as a dream, transcending the limits of linear thinking.” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-528-2; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2005; 228 pp

And Other Stories

The Black Notebook

Edited by George Bowering

Michel Tremblay

Taking the theme of postmodernity one step further with 23 short stories edited by Canada’s first poet laureate: Alexis, Arnason, Atwood, Blaise, Bowering, Burnham, Cohen, Dorsey, Elliot, Farrant, Fawcett, Findley, Fraser, Goto, King, Laferrière, Mayr, Rooke, Schoemperlen, Thomas, Verdecchia and Watson.

Translated by Sheila Fischman

A young waitress recounts her trials and surprising allies in a lifelong battle against social stigma. “Emerges as a powerful character study, a social history – as always with Tremblay, the political content is there, but always as an organic element of the story …” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-543-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2006; 224 pp

The Angel of Solitude

The Blue Notebook

Marie-Claire Blais

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Laura Hodes

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Eight lesbian women strive to achieve an all-female utopia within which homophobia and their own pasts and differences are abolished.

In this third instalment of the Notebook trilogy, Fine Dumas’s Boudoir is shut down and Céline must return to waitressing at the Sélect, where she meets a gorgeous musician and begins a sexual and loving relationship for the first time. As she has done twice before, Céline records the events and adventures of her life in a notebook, but now steps outside herself, using a narrator to tell her story.

The Athabasca Ryga

The Breakdown So Far

George Ryga

M.A.C. Farrant

Edited by E. David Gregory

Farrant continues her assault on the unaccountably disaffected and disillusioned of the Western world with her eighth volume of extremely short stories.

From his farm-boy childhood to his struggles as a classconscious wage labourer, Ryga’s early work is offered in a collection of essays, short stories, plays and novels. “It makes you want to read and re-read everything the man ever wrote.” – Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-276-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1990; 224 pp

The Baldwins Serge Lamothe Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel Set in the post-apocalyptic future, this is a novel of fragments that represents contemporary prose at its most daring and experimental. “Serge Lamothe’s novel falls under the sign of utter creative freedom and is filled with word and language play, evocative imagery and poetic moods.” – Le Devoir ISBN 978-0-88922-544-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©2006; 96 pp

ReLit Award Nominee, 2008. “If, as Nabokov advises, the monster of grim common sense must be ‘shot dead,’ then Farrant is, indeed, a crack shot.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-556-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2007; 160 pp

Cambodia A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow Brian Fawcett Investigative fictions that examine the intentions of the information revolution. “Cambodia is urgent, blunt, difficult – and vitally necessary.” – Canadian Forum ISBN 978-0-88922-237-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1986; 208 pp; 9th printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 27

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 27

Capital Tales

Crossing the Continent

Brian Fawcett

Michel Tremblay

A collection of stories that form tough, uncompromising portraits of people discovering the illusions they live by.

Translated by Sheila Fischman

In this, the first of the Crossings novels, which give the backstory to the characters of Tremblay’s Chronicles series, young Nana embarks on an epic train journey from her grandparents’ Prairie farm to Montreal, when the mother who left her five years before calls her “home.” “The empathy and tenderness that Tremblay has for his characters is evident on every page.” – Le Devoir ISBN 978-0-88922-676-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2011; 272 pp

Chameleon & Other Stories

Darwin Alone in the Universe

Bill Schermbrucker

M.A.C. Farrant

A collection of short stories from the point of view of a young man growing up in Kenya during the time of Mau Mau.

A brilliant collection of satirical short stories.

“Farrant is better at startling us with unnerving, often misanthropic, visions of everyday life than perhaps any other Canadian writer.” – Globe & Mail “M.A.C. Farrant is a wonderful writer of domestic comedy.” – Bill Richardson, CBC “A brave iconoclast …”

– Publishers Weekly

The Circus Performers’ Bar

Death in Vancouver

David Arnason

Garry Thomas Morse

Witty and formally innovative stories that examine social, political and sexual assumptions with an ironic eye.

This brilliant collection of avant-garde fiction reveals edgy new voices that reflect the cultural simultaneity of our cosmopolitan everyday.

“Morse’s particular genius is his ability to deliver pitch perfect equivalences of whatever he touches or touches him … not mere impressions or impersonations but rather powerful transversals that combine with but do not displace.” – LINE Magazine ISBN 978-0-88922-607-4; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2009; 320 pp

Citizen Suárez

Death of the Spider

Guillermo Verdecchia

Michèle Mailhot

Short stories about people travelling, wandering or lost between countries and languages – people caught between the impulse to flee and the desire to belong.

Translated by Neil B. Bishop Introduction by Marie-Claire Blais

“At times hilarious, at times moving. A great read!” – Ariel Dorfman

Governor General’s French Fiction Award Winner for Le Passé Composé, 1990.

“Humorous and strongly political …” – Vancouver Magazine

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 1992.

A solitary woman’s interior journey of self-discovery.

A Covenant of Salt

Desert of the Heart

Martine Desjardins

Jane Rule

Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

Two women meet and fall in love in Reno, Nevada. Set in the late 1950s, this classic of lesbian eroticism is Jane Rule’s first novel.

“Mining from the past, Desjardins extracts treasures without ‘getting caught,’ and surfaces like a breath of fresh air. A Covenant of Salt marries literary traditions in a sleek gothic ceremony, silvery salt sprinkled like confetti and the Saint Lawrence coursing through.” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-566-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2007; 160 pp

“Cool, clear-eyed, compassionate and unsentimental.” – Margaret Laurence, Globe & Mail “An intelligent and utterly believable novel.” – Joyce Carol Oates ISBN 978-0-88922-301-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1964, 1991; 224 pp; 5th printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 28

28 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon

The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant

Douglas Glover

Michel Tremblay

Urbane, stylish and slightly offbeat stories that touch on the myth-making many of us call reality. “Glover is preoccupied with the complicated inter-weavings of good and evil, and he juggles language superbly.” – Globe & Mail “Glover … seeks to combine a metaphysical approach and style with the nitty-gritty details of daily life. It works.” – Books in Canada

Translated by Sheila Fischman Tremblay’s first novel is an affectionate and funny chronicle of the lives of a family in Plateau Mont-Royal. CBC Canada Reads Finalist, 2009. “A comic tour de force covering one day in the life of a Montreal street.” – University of Toronto Quarterly ISBN 978-0-88922-190-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1981; 256 pp; 9th printing

Down the Road to Eternity

Fearless Warriors

M.A.C. Farrant

Revised Second Edition Drew Hayden Taylor

Indelibly marked by wit, humour, irony, playfulness and a blend of parody and science fiction, these stories celebrate the literary imagination as an antidote to the popular media. “Short and sharp, wacky and wonderful.” – Globe & Mail “M.A.C. Farrant is a trapeze artist of the imagination, swinging over the existential void.” – BC Bookworld ISBN 978-0-88922-615-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2009; 288 pp; Illustrations

By degrees dramatic, shocking, tender, affirmative and tragic, each of these stories takes on a different cliché of inter-racial and inter-cultural relations, all of them suffused with the incomparable wit, generous humour, critical edge and profound emotional empathy of a master storyteller. “Taylor’s … stories will make you cringe, cry, and when you really need it, laugh a little.” – Windspeaker ISBN 978-0-88922-597-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1998, 2008; 192 pp; 2nd printing

The Duchess and the Commoner

The First Quarter of the Moon

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Sheila Fischman

This third volume in the Chronicles of the Plateau MontRoyal – an epic series of novels which imagines the lives of the characters of Tremblay’s plays – deals with an explicitly gay thematic: Tremblay’s metaphor for the Québécois desire for a more glamorous identity on the world stage.

The fifth novel in the Chronicles of the Plateau Mont-Royal juxtaposes the childhood experiences of the fat woman’s son and his gifted cousin.

“Touching and extra-real.”

– Quill & Quire

Dürer’s Angel

The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky

Marie-Claire Blais

Karen X. Tulchinsky

Translated by David Lobdell

This sweeping, epic novel takes us inside the life of one immigrant Jewish family, from the pivotal 1933 Toronto race riots through the war years and into the early 1950s, creating a stunning fictional statement of a defining moment for a family, a city and a nation struggling with ideas of freedom, tolerance and identity in a world broken by war.

This third novel in the trilogy of Pauline Archange expresses her desire to translate the events of her life into words. “A writer who stands head and shoulders above her contemporaries.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-111-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1976; 112 pp; 2nd printing

Fairy Ring

George Ryga

Martine Desjardins Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

The Prairie Novels Edited by James Hoffman

A compulsively readable, beautiful and dark novel of stormy relationships and all-consuming desires.

This collection includes Hungry Hills, Ballad of a Stonepicker and Night Desk.

Governor General’s Translation Award Winner, 2001. “Fairy Ring sets up familiar targets, tilts at them with wonderful panache and scores weirdly compelling hits.” – Globe & Mail

“…propelled by compassion and moral outrage, but also by a peculiar and personal awareness of the life and death of human cultures and the values they contain.” – Globe & Mail

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 29

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 29

Get on Top

Hell & Other Novels

David Homel

Beverley Daurio

In this startlingly original and penetrating novel, the Messiah appears as a woman who shows up in rural America instead of Jerusalem, preaching moral licence, not repentance.

In these haunting, often chilling short stories, Daurio maps the subatomic space of contemporary alienation.

“Wonderfully evocative images … well worth reading.” – Quill & Quire “Poetic in their brevity and chilling in their intensity.” – Aritha van Herk ISBN 978-0-88910-421-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1990; 160 pp

Go Figure

Heroine

Réjean Ducharme

Gail Scott

Translated by Will Browning

A woman tries to negotiate her personal passage from Quebec’s politically turbulent 1970s to the threatening bleakness of the 1980s.

A hauntingly beautiful tale of a Montreal couple alienated from each other after suffering the miscarriage of twins. Governor General’s French Fiction Award Finalist, 1994. “Boasts complex flavours that are so savoury and sustaining you may be compelled to go back for seconds …” – Montreal Review of Books

“Each page steams with images, echoes, actions and reactions … a magnificent view of a woman’s perception of life, love and la belle province.” – Toronto Star

The Happiest Man in the World and Other Stories

The Hunting Ground

David Arnason

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A witty, articulate raconteur takes a hilarious yet compassionate look at the new male consciousness taking shape in a “post-feminist” world.

Remarkably engaging stories recounted by different residents of a northern Canadian village that face a gradual but devastating transformation.

“A wonderful book.”

“[Lise Tremblay presents] a fictional world in precise, lucid language of a simple, graceful fluidity. A world in which the spirit of being is laid bare.” – Le Devoir

– Globe & Mail

Lise Tremblay

Harry’s Fragments

In the Shadow of the Vulture

A Novel of International Puzzlement George Bowering

George Ryga

In a parody of a thriller novel, Harry the Hack, newly recruited literary spy, follows a mystery woman seeking wisdom and sanity. “Deconstructs the sexy spy thriller in a clever pastiche of literary styles.” – Ottawa Citizen

Set in the desert at the Mexico–U.S. border, this novel deals with the hope and despair of immigrant labourers. “A striking novel that wrestles with important and difficult problems.” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-233-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1985; 288 pp

The Heart Laid Bare

Judith’s Sister

Michel Tremblay

Lise Tremblay

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A fusty academic has fallen in love with a young actor who works as a salesman while waiting for his big break; however, the academic must learn to make room in his life for the actor’s four-year-old son. This is Tremblay’s first novel to be inspired by experiences from his own life.

In this moving coming-of-age novel set in the summer of 1968, a twelve-year-old girl contemplates with dread her impending high school enrolment.

“[A] simply written, but highly topical and touching tale.” – London Times

“Explores the delicate passage from childhood to adolescence, that critical period in life which … often contains the seeds of the inevitable betrayals of friends, neighbourhood and social background.” – Le Devoir

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 30

30 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

Latakia

Miss Take

Audrey Thomas

Réjean Ducharme

A brilliant and intense journey through a relationship, and through language and myth, spanning three continents.

Translated by Will Browning

Teenagers Miles and Chateaugué have run away to Montreal, where they construct a chaste life for themselves. They form a suicide pact to preserve their fleeting innocence but their refusal of the adult world soon confronts physical need. “To read Ducharme … is to get luxuriously lost in a chaotic mass of simultaneous, tangential and sometimes conflicting ideas.” – Rain Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-669-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2011; 272 pp

Like a Child of the Earth

Mother of the Grass

Jovette Marchessault

Translated by Yvonne M. Klein

The first volume of Jovette Marchessault’s autobiographical trilogy.

The second volume of Marchessault’s turbulent autobiographical trilogy.

Prix France-Québec Winner, 1976.

“Has enlarged the dimensions of the autobiographical novel by introducing elements of myth and visionary experience.” – Gloria Orenstein

Main Brides

Motortherapy

Gail Scott

Bill Schermbrucker

The portrait of a woman who is facing the end of the century and creating a history of the present that lifts her out of fear.

A frank and intensely personal book about human relationships.

“Gail Scott has an extraordinary ability to compress scenic observations … into short, jewel-like notations.” – Hugh Hood “Scott is one of the most gutsy writers around.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88910-456-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1993; 240 pp

“[Stories] stir and shift with deftly-rendered subtleties which at their best recall … Norman Levine and … Alice Munro.” – Quill & Quire “One of the best works of fiction of 1993.” – U of T Quarterly ISBN 978-0-88922-330-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1993; 176 pp

Mile End

Mrs. Blood

Lise Tremblay

Audrey Thomas

Translated by Gail Scott

“Mrs. Blood wears her nerve ends outside her skin like an updated Katherine Mansfield heroine – and responds intensely to her external environment and to her subconscious. The effect is to create a vivid impression of a personality in crisis … A spectacular tour de force, this.” – New York Times Book Review

A chilling and masterful look at the interior landscapes of psychosis which mirror so perfectly the emptiness of the exterior surfaces they reflect. Governor General’s French Fiction Award Winner, 1999. ISBN 978-0-88922-467-4; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2002; 144 pp

Mimosa

My Career with the Leafs & Other Stories

Bill Schermbrucker

Brian Fawcett

An authentic recreation through sweeping prose of an extraordinary life set against the turbulent backdrop of colonial Africa.

Fawcett’s first book of stories examines growing up, and learning – literally and figuratively – the rules of the game.

BC Book Prize Winner, 1988. “It’s an impressive debut … deceptively subtle and finely crafted.” – Globe & Mail “Intelligent, humane … universal and accessible.” – Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-254-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1988; 320 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:19 PM

Page 31

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 31

My Name Is Bosnia

The Painter’s Wife

Madeleine Gagnon

Monique Durand

Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott

Translated by Sheila Fischman

A young woman escapes the genocide in her homeland in search of a peaceful new life.

An extraordinary novel about art and passion inspired by the lives of two great artists, Evelyn Rowat and René Marcil.

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist, 2007. “Movingly captures the transformative effect of war on human consciousness …” – Publishers Weekly

“Resonant, ethereal, poignant. Here is a novel of rare aesthetic intelligence.” – La Provence (France)

“In Gagnon’s deft hands the narrative is stirring but never maudlin.” – Quill & Quire

“A delight!”

– Nuit blanche

News from Édouard

Piercing

Michel Tremblay

Larry Tremblay

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

This fourth novel in the Chronicles of the Plateau MontRoyal follows Édouard, the fat woman’s brother-in-law, as he explores Paris.

Three tales spin a web of suspense, impending violence and tragedy that haunt the sleek façade of a city. The three stories in this volume are linked through a shared subtext – that in contemporary urban environments, the only way people break through alienation is through some form of violence.

“Michel Tremblay’s long labour of love … is a lasting study of and tribute to his own working-class origins that should stand in time as a literary landmark.” – Toronto Star ISBN 978-0-88922-435-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©2000; 224 pp; 2nd printing

novel

The Rain Barrel

bill bissett

George Bowering

In this “novel with konnecting pomes n essays,” bill bissett interweaves fact and fiction – what is considered the conventionally real with the imagined – creating a narrative for the reader that is redolent with surprise and discovery.

Ten years in the making, these stories display Bowering’s meticulous attention to the details of his craft.

“These essays are rich with information about bissett, but most importantly they revive and re-examine significant moments from his life and career. It is a must-read.” – Broken Pencil ISBN 978-0-88922-671-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2011; 176 pp; Illustrations

“Enough irony, subversion and playfulness for any postmodern fan.” – Books in Canada “Bowering’s sure touch brings uncanny overtones even to tales that would seem in synopsis to be shaggy-dog stories …” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-345-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1994; 272 pp

Nuri Does Not Exist

Real Mothers

Sadru Jetha

Audrey Thomas

In these beautifully crafted and understated stories, Nuri comes of age on the fabled “spice island” of Zanzibar. We accompany him on his quest to understand how servitude transcends slavery and fealty transcends servitude.

Short stories about mothers and the politics of the family.

“These stories are for … anyone who admires a writer in masterly control of her material.” – Globe & Mail “Thomas demands more of her readers than most writers, but the rewards are much greater too.” – Books in Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-191-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1981; 176 pp; 3rd printing

The Pagan Wall

The Red Notebook

David Arnason

Michel Tremblay

Written in the tradition of Umberto Eco and Manuel Puig, The Pagan Wall is a first novel by one of Canada’s master storytellers.

Translated by Sheila Fischman

The second in the Notebook trilogy follows Céline Poulin as she becomes hostess in a transvestite bordello. Tremblay celebrates how it is possible for Céline to embrace her difference and to flourish with transcendent eloquence and compassion. “Tremblay’s characters don’t merely exist, they live out complex, sprawling lives.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-588-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©2008; 288 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 32

32 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

Scattered in a Rising Wind

Some Night My Prince Will Come

Jean Marc Dalpé

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Translated by Sheila Fischman

The rush of events in a small-town apocalypse is recorded barely at the edge of syntax, with a teeming imagination always just ahead of the ability to articulate.

This urban epic of love and desire brings us a burlesque world of transgression and madness, where pleasures are far from simple, and love is somewhat less than pure. An evocative account of romantic adventure stamped with Tremblay’s signature wit and ironic humour.

The School-Marm Tree

Songs My Mother Taught Me

Howard O’Hagan

Audrey Thomas

A novel about mountains by one of Canada’s greatest writers on nature, depicting the “presence” in mountains and the heart’s desire to go beyond mountains.

Republished with a new introduction, this is Audrey Thomas’s classic coming-of-age novel about madness, loneliness, despair and escape.

“Testimony to O’Hagan’s intelligence as a novelist.” – Globe & Mail

“Traps in amber that strange distant decade of the Forties.” – George Woodcock, Maclean’s

“As basic and enduring a tale as a Greek tragedy.” – Vancouver Province

The Secret Journal of Alexander Mackenzie

The Strange Truth About Us A Novel of Absence M.A.C. Farrant

Brian Fawcett An industrial biography that investigates personal myths and the great “machines” that drive the world to the abyss of development. BC Book Prize Finalist, 1986. “A wonderful book.”

– Kootenay Reporter

A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions and speculations, The Strange Truth About Us attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned Western world. “M.A.C. Farrant is a master of the literary equivalent of a waking dream, creating subtle insurrections disguised as prose.” – Toronto Star ISBN 978-0-88922-668-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2011; 216 pp

Shinny’s Girls and Other Stories

Summerland

Mary Burns

George Ryga

These stories all re-examine the myths of mother-daughter relationships, both in the classical sense of “myth” and in the modern sense of “myth” (lies about relationships).

Edited by Ann Kujundzic

“An accomplished and memorable collection.” – Katherine Govier “Blood bonds, Burns seems to be saying, are usually obscured by routine … and it takes a crisis … to force consciousness of those bonds.” – Canadian Literature

Summerland presents largely unpublished selections from essays, short stories, plays, novels and poems that George Ryga wrote in Summerland, British Columbia, from 1963 until his untimely death in 1987. ISBN 978-0-88922-313-4; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©1992; 448 pp

A Slight Case of Fatigue

Tchipayuk

Stéphane Bourguignon

or The Way of the Wolf Ronald Lavallée

Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott Eddy is in existential crisis. He once had an enviable life, but now he’s separated from his wife, estranged from his son and his garden’s grown wild – like the rest of his life. Written in multiple voices, with keen psychological insight, this examination of relationships and past wounds is filled with raucous warmth and humanity – and dark humour.

Translated by Patricia Claxton A sweeping historical novel about the collision of Native and colonial cultures. Winner of the Prix Jules-Verne, Prix Champlain and the Prix Riel. Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 1994.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 33

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 33

Theme for Diverse Instruments

The Time Being

Jane Rule

Mary Meigs

Jane Rule’s first collection of short stories.

An affair born of a correspondence with a distant admirer leads the lovers to an arranged meeting in Australia.

“Jane Rule’s work compares very well with the best fiction being written anywhere.” – Globe & Mail “Rule weaves a delicate pattern … that culminates in a self-portrait which depicts a woman who has confronted sex, career, money, identity, etc., and emerged as a loving, honest person.” – Canadian Literature

“The reader is left with an elaboration of the impulse towards, and the slow collapse of, a love affair … Meigs has also left us in the company of two unforgettable women.” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-374-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1997; 160 pp

Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel

Trees Are Lonely Company

Michel Tremblay

This collection of O’Hagan’s short fiction includes stories spanning the decades of his experience as mountain guide, gentleman adventurer and storyteller.

Translated by Sheila Fischman In this second Plateau Mont-Royal novel, three schoolgirls live the mysteries of their rites of passage. “Includes some subtler melodies in counterpoint to the main theme of this symphonic masterpiece.” – Vancouver Sun

Howard O’Hagan

A Thing of Beauty

White Pebbles in the Dark Forests

Michel Tremblay

Jovette Marchessault

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Translated by Yvonne M. Klein

A coda to his great Chronicles of the Plateau Mont-Royal cycle of novels. Tremblay creates, with grace and tenderness, a fictionalized account of the death of his own mother.

The third novel in Marchessault’s autobiographical trilogy: a reconciliation between women and men, children and parents, animals and humans.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 34

34 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

All Fall Down

Larry Tremblay

Wendy Lill

Translated by Chantal Bilodeau

A “crucible-inspired” drama surrounding an inquiry into a doubtful molestation incident in a small-town daycare. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

A theatre director draws inspiration from Lincoln’s assassination to stage the schizophrenia of America. Absurd, hilarious and haunting, this play asks the question: How can we ever know who we are and what is true when the world we know is shifting beneath us? Cast of 3 men. “Explores the wellsprings of psychic and social violence.” – Canadian Encyclopedia ISBN 978-0-88922-649-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2010; 96 pp

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1994. “Lill’s masterful, soberingly intelligent play … goes beyond its surface subject – pedophilia.” – Theatrum ISBN 978-0-88922-336-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1994; 128 pp

Adrift

All the Verdis of Venice

Marcus Youssef

Normand Chaurette

In this play inspired by the novel Adrift on the Nile, by Egyptian Nobel laureate Naguib Mahfouz, a group of urban Egyptian hipsters engages in debates about secularism and “fundamentalism” with tragic consequences.” Cast of 4 women and 6 men.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

“Adrift highlights the way we suffer the same losses over and over again, raining revenge on revenge. Our struggle, in essence, never changes.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-585-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2008; 128 pp

Cast of 1 woman and 4 men. “Invites its audience to think about the nature of self and its socio-cultural construction, as well as the nature of fame, the role of cultural iconography, but doesn’t presuppose answers. The play is never didactic, and more enjoyable for it.” – Rain Taxi ISBN 978-0-88922-442-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©2000; 112 pp

The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil

alterNatives

A Divertimento for Warlords Marcus Youssef, Guillermo Verdecchia & Camyar Chai

Native activists and environmentally concerned vegetarians are invited to a dinner party, where irreconcilable cultural differences clash over moose roast and vegetarian lasagna. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

This hard-hitting and hilarious satire inverts the clichés that define the geopolitics of the Middle East. Cast of 4 men. “[A] clever, cutting cabaret act … that entertains as it tries to enlighten …” – Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-516-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2005; 128 pp; 4th printing

Drew Hayden Taylor

Albertine in Five Times

Amigo’s Blue Guitar

Michel Tremblay

Joan MacLeod

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A college student’s life changes when he chooses to sponsor a Salvadoran refugee as a class project. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

Tremblay presents the powerful story of one woman, Albertine, at five different times in her life. Together, the five Albertines provide a moving portrait of an extraordinary “ordinary” woman in this Chalmers Award–winning play. Cast of 6 women. “A remarkable play … The conception is brilliant.” – New Statesman

Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 1991. “Theatre of exceptional power … [A] subtle, often funny and ultimately moving play.” – Maclean’s ISBN 978-0-88922-371-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1990, 1997; 96 pp; 3rd printing

Albertine in Five Times

And So It Goes

Michel Tremblay

George F. Walker

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

The parents of schizophrenic Karen discover her life as a drug-addicted prostitute, and its threats both real and invisible. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

The powerful story of one woman, Albertine, at five different times in her life. Cast of 6 women. “The right play at the right time … A story of life, told by Tremblay with immense compassion.” – Toronto Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-234-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©1986; 80 pp; 7th printing

“Walker’s questions are, as always, more philosophical than political, and the answers are hidden far from sight in the dark corners and alleyways of the urban landscape … Oh – and did I mention it’s a comedy?” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-654-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2010; 128 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 35

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 35

Another Country / bloom

Banana Boots

Guillermo Verdecchia

David Fennario

Two plays, one on Argentina’s Dirty War of 1976–83, the other on hope flowering in the midst of destruction, constitute an unsparing interrogation of a world perpetually at war. Another Country cast: 3 women and 2 men. bloom cast: 2 women and 4 men.

A one-man-show/memoir in which Fennario recounts, with astonishing insight and wit, the phenomenon of taking his famous bilingual play, Balconville, to Belfast on a British/Canadian cultural mission. Cast of 1 man.

“Verdecchia … know[s] how to modulate emotional tones beautifully … bloom is a poetic look at a world where hope must grow in sandy soil.” – NOW

Another Home Invasion

BASH’d

Joan MacLeod

A Gay Rap Opera Chris Craddock & Nathan Cuckow

In this perceptively poignant play, the word “another” conveys both its meanings – something commonplace and something entirely different; MacLeod questions who the real perpetrators are of the heartless betrayal against the elderly Jean and her ailing husband. Cast of 1 woman. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2009. “A startling commentary on aging and elder care.” – CBC ISBN 978-0-88922-622-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2009; 64 pp

The angelic personae of a gay-bashing victim and his avenging lover enthrall audiences with the rap opera rhymes of their tragic tale. Cast of 2 men. GLAAD Media Award, Outstanding N.Y. Theater, 2007. “BASH’d shows its rage, its grief and its driven, heartfelt determination.” – New York Times ISBN 978-0-88922-656-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2011; 96 pp

Assorted Candies for the Theatre

Beating the Bushes

Michel Tremblay

Steven Bush

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Steven Bush is on a mission to confront the skeletons in his family closet. Did his very own cousins occupy the White House? What can he, a distant relation of the “Bushes” do to redeem the family name? This stand-up comedy, rant, political protest and call to action is a brash theatrical tour de force. Cast of 1 man.

An exquisite remembrance of childhood past in Montreal’s Plateau Mont-Royal neighbourhood, adapted and recrafted to the stage. Cast of 3 women and 4 men. “It’s vintage Tremblay (out-Prousting Proust), filled with primal privations and inspirations of awe, a family’s love and terrors … the whole enthralling works.” – Globe & Mail

“This is less satire than entertaining polemic, leavened by memoir.” – Globe & Mail

The Baby Blues

Les Belles Soeurs

Drew Hayden Taylor

Revised Michel Tremblay

A highly wrought farce of patrimony in a stifling, politically correct, post-colonial milieu of “fancy dancers” of every stripe on the powwow trail. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

“A rowdy and often moving journey off the highway and onto the dirt roads of memory.” – NOW

Raucous, reckless and ribald, Les Belles Soeurs celebrates the working-class lives of 15 Montreal women. It was the first play written in the vernacular French of Quebec to achieve popular success and critical acclaim. Cast of 15 women.

Balconville

Benevolence

David Fennario

Morris Panych

Canada’s first bilingual play set on the balconies of Montreal. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.

Full of excruciating twists of fate and malice, this dark comedy of “trading places” resonates with uncomfortable truths about how we see (or don’t see) the people we live with every day. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

Chalmers Award Winner for Best Canadian Play, 1979. “Balconville is a work of genius. It’s angry, bitter, cruel and funny.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-145-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1980; 128 pp; 9th printing

“A lethal mixture of black humour and social observation. When it comes to sparkling, erudite, bitchy dialogue, Panych, as a playwright, has few equals.” – Toronto Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-584-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2008; 128 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 36

36 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

The Berlin Blues Drew Hayden Taylor Concluding Taylor’s Blues Quartet, German developers here show up on the “Otter Lake Reserve” proposing “OjibwayWorld,” a Native theme park designed to attract Europeans tourists to this destination resort. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

The Boy in the Treehouse / Girl Who Loved Her Horses Drew Hayden Taylor

“This can be taken as a funny series of events. Those hoping for something deeper can find allegories and metaphors running through history.” – LA Splash

In The Boy in the Treehouse, Simon pursues a vision quest in an attempt to reclaim his mother’s First Nations heritage. In Girl Who Loved Her Horses, a non-status girl finds people on the Reserve understand her remarkable talent and strong spirit more than those around her. The Boy in the Treehouse cast: 1 woman and 4 men. Girl Who Loved Her Horses cast: 2 women and 3 men.

Bethune

Burning Vision

Rod Langley

Marie Clements

Set in landscapes which move from Detroit to China, Bethune is a study of how one man’s vision may shape the world. In this play, Rod Langley attempts to chronicle the journey of Dr. Norman Bethune toward his final destiny. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.

Dene miners, radium painters and people of Hiroshima labour under the false sun of uranium, which poisons their relationships to the earth and to each other. Cast of 5 women and 12 men.

Canada–Japan Literary Award Winner, 2004. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2003. “[A] brave new play that bombards the senses and fires up the mind.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-472-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2003; 128 pp; 5th printing

Boiler Room Suite

The Buz’Gem Blues

Rex Deverell

Drew Hayden Taylor

The broken lives and the heroic struggle for joy of two “tramps” in a hotel boiler room. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.

The third play in Taylor’s ongoing zany, often farcical examination of both Native and non-Native stereotypes in what is to become what he calls his “Blues Quartet.” Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

Canadian Authors Association Drama Award Winner, 1978. “A beautiful tragicomic look at a couple of losers.” – NBC

“He skewers liberal and native stereotypes, preferring to deal on a more human level.” – Hamilton Examiner

Bonjour, Là, Bonjour

Can You See Me Yet?

Revised Michel Tremblay

Timothy Findley

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco A beloved brother returns to his family. Cast of 6 women and 2 men. “Theatre does not often touch the heart the way this succeeds in doing.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-252-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1982, 1990; 92 pp; 3rd printing

A search for sanctuary in an Ontario insane asylum in 1938. Cast of 7 women and 4 men. “Seems to me to be an astonishing work, richly textured, sombre, and yet possessing a relieving wit.” – Margaret Laurence ISBN 978-0-88922-119-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1977; 176 pp; 2nd printing

Bordertown Café

Les Canadiens

Kelly Rebar

Rick Salutin

Young Jimmy faces a dilemma: embrace the hero of American popular myth as embodied by his father, or engage the task of building a different identity, embodied by his mother “on the Canadian side of nowhere.” Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Introduction by Ken Dryden

“[A] humorous, human, touching and recognizable look at one family’s search for individual identity.” – Hamilton Spectator

“An examination of the Canadiens has never been mastered so well.” – Montreal Gazette

A play that uses hockey and the “team to beat” as metaphors for the history of Quebec and Canada. Cast of 7 men. Chalmers Award Winner for Best Canadian Play, 1977.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 37

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 37

Cariboo Magi

Colours in the Dark

Lucia Frangione

James Reaney

Hilarious drama ensues when a bedraggled troupe of players heads into the wilds of the Cariboo to perform a Christmas pageant. Set in the gold rush era, Cariboo Magi is an unabashed celebration of the power of theatre to renew our lives and banish our cares. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

A theatrical portrayal of the mosaic of experiences that form a childhood. Cast of 2 women, 2 men, 1 girl and 1 boy.

“A beautifully written tribute to the strength of the human spirit.” – Vancouver Sun

Carmela’s Table

The Concise Köchel

A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part II Vittorio Rossi

Normand Chaurette Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Italian war veteran Silvio now lives in Montreal with his new family and his mother. Deeply traumatized by his wartime experiences, Silvio’s gradual unravelling ultimately threatens to destroy his family. Cast of 3 women and 2 men. “Second time out, the volatile Rosato family still offers passion through familial drama.” – Variety.com ISBN 978-0-88922-594-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2008; 128 pp; Photos

A lifetime’s devotion to the music of Mozart conceals a gruesome secret. Cast of 4 women. “The situation and dialogue are intriguing … The play may be difficult, but Chaurette’s unnerving climax should lead to heated and extended discussions in the lobby after the play is over.” – Stage Directions ISBN 978-0-88922-518-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2005; 96 pp

The Carpenter

Consecrated Ground

A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part III Vittorio Rossi

George Boyd

This heart-wrenching but beautifully cathartic story of a family coming to grips with itself unfolds with unmistakably poignant honesty. Cast of 4 women and 5 men.

In 1965, Africville, Canada’s largest and oldest black community was razed. What was lost to the politicians of Halifax was an inconvenience, an eyesore. What was lost to the people whose roots ran deep through the community was an entire way of life. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.

“Rossi’s plays represent the heftiest addition to the Canadian dramatic canon since David French’s Mercer Cycle or George F. Walker’s East End Plays.” – CBC

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2000.

Chimera

Copper Thunderbird

Wendy Lill

Marie Clements

This compelling drama by a former parliamentary critic for persons with disabilities explores the ethical controversy and public policy surrounding reproductive technologies, particularly cross-species chimeras. Cast of 2 women and 5 men.

A multi-layered and visionary drama of a life wracked by both triumph and ordeal, based on the persona of famed Ojibway artist Norval Morrisseau. Cast of 5 women and 4 men.

“The play comes at a propitious time.”

“Marie Clements … is building a powerful reputation for her innovative approaches to … theatre on aboriginal themes.” – Vancouver Sun

– The Scientist

“Consecrated Ground is the heir of fierce, vengeful, and epic activism.” – George Elliott Clarke

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2008.

Cold Comfort

Corker

Jim Garrard

Wendy Lill

The third in Garrard’s quartet of “bondage” plays explores the complex relationships among three characters at the geographic centre of Canada. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.

Corker uses the familiar but difficult and treacherous 19thcentury device of representing the family as a microcosm of the nation state. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

“A remarkable achievement … a solid and memorable show.” – Toronto Star

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1999.

“Sheer genius!”

– Arts National, CBC Radio

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 38

38 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

The Coronation Voyage

Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra

Michel Marc Bouchard

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Translated by John Van Burek

Will a Montreal Mafioso sacrifice his young son for safe conduct to England? Cast of 6 women and 8 men.

Two interweaving monologues on the sacred and the profane. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

“Tackles the themes of sacrifice and forgiveness, the interpretation of history, the lost (i.e., sacrificed) generation, innocence, family and love.” – La Presse

“One of the best plays of Michel Tremblay.”

“Brilliant, artful, satirical.”

– Fugues

“A hauntingly powerful evening of theatre.” – Vancouver Express

– CBC Radio

Crabdance

Dancock’s Dance

Beverley Simons

Guy Vanderhaeghe

A woman forces the men in her life into assuming the stereotypical privatized roles of husband, lover, father and son. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.

Shell-shocked, judged unfit for society and haunted by the sins of war, Lieutenant John Carlyle Dancock finds himself committed to an insane asylum where he cannot escape the confines of righteous authority or his own conscience. Cast of 1 woman and 5 men.

“An unusual and searing play about a woman caught in a cage of frustration and neglect …” – Vancouver Sun “One of the most theatrical contemporary plays that I have ever read.” – Malcolm Black ISBN 978-0-88922-016-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1972; 128 pp; 7th printing

Cruel Tears

Dead White Writer on the Floor

Ken Mitchell

Drew Hayden Taylor

An innovative “country opera” set in Saskatoon, with a captivating parallel to Shakespeare’s Othello. Cast of 5 women, 10 men and a band.

A funny yet thought-provoking play about identity politics in which Pocahontas, Tonto and other First Nations characters rewrite their stereotyped roles. Cast of 3 men and 5 women.

“A unique and astonishing dramatic event.” – Calgary Herald “A brilliantly original theatre piece.” – Montreal Star

“Abstract theatre is not generally associated with comedy … but judging by the laughter issuing from the packed house at Magnus’ opening night of the show, it is also dropdead hilarious.” – The Argus

Cul-de-sac

The Death of René Lévesque

Daniel MacIvor

David Fennario

Introduction by Daniel Brooks

An astonishingly profound and prophetic political drama that delivers the powerful and cathartic stillbirth of a nation, stripped of both pity and fear. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

Through this dazzling one-man show we understand that everyone’s story inevitably reflects the preconceptions they bring to its telling. Cast of 1 man. Siminovitch Prize in Theatre Finalist, 2005. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2005. “Wickedly funny.”

– National Post

“When a final analysis is made of 20th-century Canadian theatre, the most significant political playwright will undoubtedly be David Fennario.” – CBRA ISBN 978-0-88922-480-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2003; 72 pp

Cyrano de Bergerac

Democracy

Edmond Rostand

John Murrell

Translated by John Murrell

In the midst of the American Civil War, Walt Whitman and Ralph Waldo Emerson discuss the past, the future, life, love and what it means to be human. Cast of 4 men.

An epic and heroic tale that has enchanted generations, in an English prose translation that is immanently readable and stageable. Cast of 5 women, 12 men and many minor characters. “[Cyrano de Bergerac is a] brilliant … unforgettable … impressive achievement …” – Edmonton Journal ISBN 978-0-921368-43-4; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD ©1995; 160 pp

Alberta Writers’ Guild Prize Winner for Drama. “Even the simplest lines have a quiet eloquence … soft explosions of the heart.” – Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-921368-28-1; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD ©1991; 64 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 39

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 39

Diplomacy

The Driving Force

Tim Carlson

Michel Tremblay

Nominally about North American military involvement in Middle East wars, this graphic, conflict-fuelled drama scrutinizes the part the media plays in manufacturing our private reactions to foreign policy. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

“It’s a rare thing – the well-argued blast of political outrage. – Globe & Mail

“The text is as severe, intense and implacable as the reality of each character.” – CBC Radio-Canada

The Dishwashers

La Duchesse de Langeais & Other Plays

Morris Panych

Michel Tremblay

Haplessly determined to have his own miserable authority vindicated, chief dishwasher Dressler presides over the steam-choked basement of an upscale restaurant, tyrannizing his co-workers with his rants of pride of craft and Marxist rhetoric. Cast of 3 men.

Translated by John Van Burek

“Funny, sad, strange and uplifting, sometimes in the same breath …” – Vancouver Sun

“The plight of the Duchesse mirrors the plight of a society.” – Canadian Literature

Divinity Bash / nine lives

The Dunsmuirs

Bryden MacDonald

Alone at the Edge Rod Langley

Bryden MacDonald’s most extreme venture into the world of the theatre to date: a play in which everything, and therefore nothing, is sacred. Cast of 3 women, 5 men and 1 transgendered person. “A carnivalesque expression of contemporary zeitgeist.”

The stormy and angst-filled relationship between Claude and his father, Alex, is compellingly played out with cruel and disconsolate irony in an Alzheimer’s ward. Cast of 2 men.

A collection of five short plays by Quebec’s best-known playwright: La Duchesse de Langeais; Berthe; Johnny Mangano and His Astonishing Dogs; Surprise, Surprise; and Gloria Star.

The first play in this saga of one of Canada’s wealthiest and most ruthless families. Cast of 2 women and 6 men. “The story of the Dunsmuirs is a hell of a tale that’s got everything.” – Victoria Times-Colonist

– CBC

Doctor Thomas Neill Cream

The Dunsmuirs

(Mystery at McGill) David Fennario

A Promise Kept Rod Langley

In 1876, Jack the Ripper, a.k.a. Canadian Dr. Cream, graduated from McGill’s Faculty of Medicine. Cast of 4 women and 6 men.

A dark family secret emerges in this second play about the wealthy and ill-fated Dunsmuir family. Cast of 3 women and 6 men.

Arthur Ellis Award Nominee, 1994.

“The writing is tight and lively.” – Victoria Times-Colonist

Down Dangerous Passes Road

Earshot

Michel Marc Bouchard

Morris Panych

Translated by Linda Gaboriau Fifteen years after the death of their father, three brothers get together and drive out to the place where it happened: an old fishing spot on the river down Dangerous Passes Road. Cast of 3 men.

Doyle has a very funny problem: he hears too much. He can hear the most intimate details of the lives of everyone living in his apartment building. He blames his hypersensitive condition on a physical abnormality, but we’re not so certain. Cast of 1 man.

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2000.

“A superbly mounted Panych attack.” – National Post

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 40

40 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

The East End Plays

The Ends of the Earth

Part I George F. Walker

Morris Panych

Contains the Governor General’s Award–winning Criminals in Love (1984), Better Living (1986) and Escape from Happiness (1987). With an introduction by Jerry Wasserman.

Panych’s brilliant tale reminds us all that fear can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Cast of 2 women and 3 men. Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 1994. “Panych’s witty script is full of laughs and packed with action.” – Globe & Mail

“One of theatre’s most important voices.” – Maclean’s

The East End Plays

Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout

Part II George F. Walker

Tomson Highway

Three plays exploring characters living in extremity include Beautiful City, Love and Anger and Tough! “Walker writes with unprecedented directness … [His] characters think and feel out loud in a perpetual present-tense fever because life, and often more, is on the line.” – Village Voice

Based on the signing of the Laurier Memorial, this play is a ritualized retelling of how the Native peoples of British Columbia lost their land, rights and language – in one of the most tragic cases of cultural genocide to emerge from the history of colonialism. Cast of 4 women. “The play is both laugh-out-loud funny and a precarious high-wire act …” – Globe & Mail

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

Esker Mike and His Wife, Agiluk

George Ryga

Herschel Hardin

A lyric documentary about a young Native girl who comes to the city only to die on Skid Row. Cast of 5 women and 15 men.

A classic tragedy about Inuit life and how it is affected by white settlers, priests and government officials. Cast of 6 women and 9 men.

“Scenes of shattering impact … and passages of a purity and intensity that catch you off guard and keep you there.” – Washington Post “It was – and remains – a play for all seasons and for all peoples.” – Vancouver Province ISBN 978-0-88922-000-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1970; 128 pp; 26th printing

“A fascinating, moving, and ultimately a very beautiful play.”

The Edward Curtis Project

Espresso

A Modern Picture Story Marie Clements & Rita Leistner

Lucia Frangione

– CBC

“The play presents the different Eskimo attitude to human life and hence to human relationships.” – Canadian Literature

Sexy, provocative and challenging, Espresso inverts the Catholic stereotypes of feminine sexuality to boldly examine their corresponding masculine sexual emblems of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man. “Espresso is a high-quality blend of bitter, dark comedy and subtle literary complexities that packs a strong punch.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-495-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2004; 96 pp; 2nd printing

En Pièces Détachées

The Execution

Michel Tremblay

Marie-Claire Blais

Translated by Allan Van Meer

Translated by David Lobdell

The life of a working-class family on “The Main” in East End Montreal. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.

Two school boys plot and enact the murder of a classmate. Cast of 3 women and 17 men.

“Tremblay courageously insists on the relevance and dilemma of neo-colonial French Canada.” – Books in Canada

“A brilliant play about the maturation of evil.” – CHQM

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 41

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 41

The Fairies Are Thirsty

For Home and Country

Denise Boucher

Leanna Brodie

Translated by Alan Brown

The rise of an urban and radicalized feminist agenda in the latter part of the 20th century leads to a head-on collision with its much more conservative, rural roots in the Women’s Institute, founded in 1897. Cast of 16 women and 3 men.

Three women – a housewife, a whore and the Virgin Mary – fight to break out of the stereotypes in which they have been imprisoned for years. Cast of 3 women. “A powerful script and an important play.” – Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-200-7; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1982; 64 pp; 4th printing

The Faraway Nearby

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again

John Murrell

Michel Tremblay

Georgia O’Keeffe resigns herself to an old age spent alone in the auburn and tawny light of her beloved Faraway mountains, in the desert’s dangerous energies and its desolate beauty, until a stranger enters her life. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Tremblay offers glimpses of himself and his mother at five different stages of their lives together. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man. “In Quebec, a new Tremblay play is like a fresh tablet from Moses.” – Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-389-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©1998, 96 pp; 4th printing

Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass

Forever Yours, Marie-Lou

Tom Hendry

Michel Tremblay

Set in Winnipeg in 1945, this CBC-commissioned work looks at postwar Canada through the eyes of a kid just out of high school. “There I was just out of high school, all eager for the future, and there was the road to the future stretching out in front of me like fifteen miles of broken glass.” Cast of 2 women and 9 men.

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

“Defines a uniquely Canadian experience that expands to the universal.” – Kootenay Reporter

“One of Tremblay’s infinitely hot and dense family dramas …” – Globe & Mail

15 Seconds

400 Kilometres

François Archambault

Drew Hayden Taylor

Translated by Bobby Theodore

The third play in Taylor’s hilarious and heart-wrenching identity-politics trilogy. Janice Wirth, an urban professional who has discovered her roots as the Ojibway orphan Grace Wabung, is pregnant and must come to grips with the question of her true identity. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.

A young female advertising copywriter, her sports-fan ex-boyfriend, a Gen-X welfare-bum loser and his brother with cerebral palsy. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men. Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2000.

Raw and brutal, Tremblay’s penetrating analysis of a Quebec family unit remains one of the great plays of this country’s dramatic literature. Cast of 3 women and 1 man. “Brilliantly insightful, uncompromising drama.” – Detroit News

“Funny, thought-provoking, poignant, and often dark … ” – CBRA

“Sharply written … Warm and funny.” – Halifax Daily News

The Fighting Days

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists

Wendy Lill The polarities of public and private lives, and issues of racism and pacifism in the suffragette movement. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.

Normand Chaurette Translated by Linda Gaboriau

“An unusually insightful investigation of social conscience.” – Arts Manitoba

A dramatized inquiry in which five geologists are interrogated on the death of one of their colleagues in the Mekong Delta. Cast of 1 woman and 6 men.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 42

42 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

George Ryga

Gordon

The Other Plays Edited by James Hoffman

Morris Panych

“Hoffman provides an effective and multifaceted description for the student seeking a quick understanding of Ryga’s stature as a playwright.” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-500-8; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©2004; 416 pp

Gordon and his former cellmate, Carl, break into Gordon’s family home, wherein they confront some very disturbing metaphors. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men. “A beautifully dark and chillingly funny exploration of … the implications of bringing children into this world.” – Segal Centre for the Performing Arts ISBN 978-0-88922-664-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2011; 128 pp

Gideon’s Blues

The Great Wave of Civilization

George Boyd

Herschel Hardin

The profound humanity of Boyd’s characters reminds us that while neither drug abuse nor the breakdown of the traditional family is exclusive to the black community, racism accelerates their destructive effects in ghastly measures. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.

The Great Wave of Civilization is about the destruction of the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy by the 19th-century liquor trade in Montana and Alberta. Little Dog of the Northern Blackfoot tribe vs. Snookum Jim, free trader, I.G. Baker, merchant prince of Fort Benton, and the rest of the “great wave of civilization.” Cast of 5 women and 13 men.

Girl in the Goldfish Bowl

The Gull

Morris Panych

Daphne Marlatt

It’s into the goldfish bowl of a dysfunctional family that the audience peers with acute recognition, hysterical laughter and an overwhelming sense of the creative healing power of the imagination. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.

With a Japanese translation by Toyoshi Yoshihara

Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 2004. “An uncommon, quirky blend of humour and compassion …” – National Post

Performed in classical Noh style, The Gull, set in the aftermath of wartime Japanese-Canadian internment, dramatizes the historical link between the fishing village of Steveston, BC, and the coastal village of Mio, Japan. Cast of 1 woman, 4 men and a chorus. Winner of the 2008 Uchimura Naoya Prize. “A masterpiece.”

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum

Halo

A Stage Play Based on the Novel by Sheldon Currie Wendy Lill

Josh MacDonald

A story of the ill-fated love between a wandering musician social-idealist and a Cape Breton coal miner’s daughter. Cast of 2 women and 3 men. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1996. “… a tender, romantic triumph over the genre …” – Eye Weekly ISBN 978-0-88922-369-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1996; 128 pp; 7th printing

– UNESCO

When an image of Jesus appears on the side of a Tim Hortons restaurant, the town inhabitants are challenged to ask difficult questions about faith, life and love. Cast of 3 women and 4 men. Merritt Theatre Award Nominee for Best Play, 2004. “Halo successfully melds faith, drama and humour … very funny and quite moving.” – Halifax Daily News ISBN 978-0-88922-469-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2002; 128 pp; 3rd printing

Goodnight Disgrace

Heaven

Michael Mercer

George F. Walker

From his wheelchair in a nursing home, Conrad Aiken recalls his long, stormy relations with Malcolm Lowry. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.

Instantly recognizable multicultural characters play out their coincidental relationships in a park on the outskirts of a city. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

“Knocked out by the richness of its language.” – Vancouver Sun

“Leavened with Walker’s dizzying sense of humour. It is also shot through with hot anger at an uncaring society and with compassion for the disenfranchised and the spiritually maimed.” – Toronto Star

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 43

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 43

Hellfire Pass

The Impromptu of Outremont

A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part I Vittorio Rossi

Michel Tremblay Translated by John Van Burek

Silvio Rosato shows up at the house of his estranged father and meets the family he raised in Chicago after leaving Silvio in Italy 36 years ago. Cast of 3 women and 4 men. Winner of the 2006 Montreal English Critics’ Circle Award. “A powerful, memorable drama …”

– Variety

Three sisters have an “impromptu” and re-examine their personal and social problems. Cast of 4 women. “A clear delineation of the problems faced by any colonial culture.” – Vancouver Province ISBN 978-0-88922-185-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1981; 96 pp; 3rd printing

The Heretic

Impromptu on Nuns’ Island

John Murphy

Michel Tremblay

“If there is a God, why would He create us? If He’s perfect, all-knowing, there’s nothing he can gain from us.” Murphy’s play, centred around the playwright’s assumed persona of “Jesus Murphy,” opens up a discourse where creation interrogates religion, atheists engage believers, and secularists confront theists. Cast of 1 man.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

“A scary, brave and ferocious attack on JudeoChristian religion and its doctrines.”

– CBC

In an impromptu get-together in an opera diva’s Nuns’ Island penthouse, on the afternoon of her return from Paris, her celebrity mother and her idealistic daughter lie in wait for her. Cast of 3 women and 1 man. Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2002. ISBN 978-0-88922-470-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2002; 96 pp

Homechild

In a World Created by a Drunken God

Joan MacLeod

Drew Hayden Taylor

Between 1860 and 1930, over 80,000 unaccompanied British children were “exported” to Canadian factories and farms, often exploited there as indentured child labourers. Cast of 5 women and 3 men.

This play by one of Canada’s best-loved Native playwrights raises powerful questions that transcend issues of culture, race and history, cutting to the ethical quick of what it means to be human in a chaotic world stripped of the comfortable security of identity politics. Cast of 2 men.

The Hope Slide / Little Sister

In Piazza San Domenico

Joan MacLeod

Steve Galluccio

In The Hope Slide, natural disaster becomes a metaphor for the AIDS crisis. Winner of a 1993 Chalmers Award. Cast of 1 woman.

This comedy of misunderstandings that takes place in bustling 1952 Naples recounts how one broken engagement ripples throughout friends and family, affecting each of their lives in different ways. Cast of 4 women and 4 men.

“A passionate and rich examination of the human condition’s precariousness.” – Victoria Times-Colonist Little Sister, MacLeod’s first script for young audiences, tackles the issues of self-image, weight preoccupation and eating disorders. Cast 3 women and 2 men. ISBN 978-0-88922-411-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1999; 128 pp

“Three cheers for light-hearted entertainment! Billed as a romantic comedy inspired by Feydeau, Goldoni and Sophia Loren, it bears the mark of all three, with a dash of trademark Galluccio.” – Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-674-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2011; 128 pp

Hosanna

In the Eyes of God

Michel Tremblay

Raul Sanchez Inglis

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

A vicious and unsparing look at the talent agencies that remake the Hollywood stars out of the willing clay of their own flesh. Cast of 3 women and 4 men.

A transvestite’s illusion of herself is shattered when she goes to a costume party dressed up as Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra. Cast of 2 men. “Written by a real playwright who can write poetic prose, handle literary technique and create character.” – New York Post

“[This] terrific play … is one of the most vicious exposes of Hollywood venality, misogyny and the social Darwinism that drives the star-making machinery that you’ll ever see.” – Vancouver Province

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 44

44 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

In the Eyes of Stone Dogs

The Lady Smith

Daniel Danis

Andrew Moodie

Translated by Linda Gaboriau Before fleeing her eccentric island community, Djouke is determined to discover the mystery of her paternity. Cast of 4 women and 5 men.

Rather than confront her husband when she sees him with another woman, a blues singer follows the woman and insinuates herself into the other woman’s life. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.

“A skillful blend of lyricism and cruelty, of the tragic and the poetic …” – Voir

“No question, playwright Andrew Moodie has a gift for naturalism.” – Toronto Star

“Strange, haunting and unforgettable.” – Stage Directions

“Amusingly inventive.”

– Globe & Mail

Jacob’s Wake

Lawrence & Holloman

Michael Cook

Morris Panych

A Maritime family’s tragedy, set in a raging storm. Cast of 2 women and 5 men.

Lawrence and Holloman, a hapless nerd and a loquacious salesman, meet by chance. From this fleetingly irritating and insignificant encounter comes a viciously murderous and incredulously bizarre plot. Cast of 2 men.

“A powerful play, deeply rooted in its regional context, but universal enough to appeal to an audience anywhere.” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-097-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©1975; 144 pp; 6th printing

Je me souviens

Legoland

Lorena Gale

Jacob Richmond

In this powerful dramatic monologue, Lorena Gale reconstructs for the audience her childhood and the experience of coming of age as an African Canadian in Montreal. Cast of 1 woman.

When Mom and Dad are busted for growing pot, Penny and Ezra Lamb embark on the wild road trip that comprises this vaudeville-inspired one-act play. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2002.

“Legoland is like a variety show version of South Park.” – Globe & Mail

Jitters

The Leisure Society

David French

François Archambault

This sophisticated backstage comedy opens on the night of a preview of a new play. Within minutes, the audience is plunged into the world of the theatre, a world of loves and hates, easily bruised egos, contradictory interpretations of role and script – all complicated by crises and all magnified by opening night “jitters.” Cast of 3 women and 6 men.

Translated by Bobby Theodore

A dark and thoroughly contemporary comedy. Cast of 2 women and 2 men. “A vicious, erotically charged spectacle full of cynical disdain and gripping pathos.” – Montreal Gazette “A dark, twisted and brilliant take on modern marriage …” – Calgary Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-531-2; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2005; 96 pp

Joe Beef

Life Without Instruction

David Fennario

Sally Clark

Desperately poor immigrants find refuge in Montreal’s legendary barkeep, Joe Beef. Cast of 5 women and 5 men.

A woman’s struggle for freedom, identity and dignity. Cast of 3 women and 5 men.

The United Steel Workers’ Union Pauline Julien Prize Winner, 1987.

“Sally Clark’s great talents as a playwright are her seemingly effortless ability to shift from light to dark and her finely tuned understanding of life’s rich ambiguities.” – Toronto Star

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 45

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 45

A Line in the Sand

The Madonna Painter

Guillermo Verdecchia & Marcus Youssef

Michel Marc Bouchard

A young Palestinian is befriended, then tortured and murdered by Canadian soldiers during Operation Desert Storm. Cast of 3 to 5 men.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Chalmers Best New Play Award Winner, 1997. “[A] powerful story …”

– CBRA

To protect his village from the Spanish flu epidemic, a young Quebec priest commissions a church fresco of the Virgin Mary by a wandering Italian painter. The presence of the foreign artist, his choice of a local virgin to serve as a model and the frighteningly strange nature of his work upsets the lives and changes the fate of the entire community. Cast of 4 women and 3 men. ISBN 978-0-88922-641-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2010; 96 pp

Listen to the Wind

The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr

James Reaney

Jovette Marchessault

Two stories intertwine and illuminate the relationship of life to its creative dream. Cast of 4 women, 4 men, 1 girl and 1 boy.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

“Keeps reminding us that the way through our world of sickness and breakdown is play.” – Profiles in Canadian Drama

“A worthy trip home for one of Canada’s greatest painters.” – Globe & Mail

Marchessault evokes the doubts, the trials and the joys of this singular existence. Cast of 3 women and 1 man.

Local Boy Makes Good

La Maison Suspendue

John Gray

Michel Tremblay

Three musicals by John Gray: 18 Wheels, Rock and Roll and Don Messer’s Jubilee.

Translated by John Van Burek

Canadian Authors Association Drama Award Winner, 1988 (Rock and Roll).

A rich, emotional, sweeping drama of anger and sorrow spanning three generations. Cast of 3 women, 4 men and 1 boy.

“John Gray is the most original artist working in the musical theatre in this country.” – Globe & Mail

Chalmers Award Winner, 1990.

Lost Souls and Missing Persons

Mambo Italiano

Sally Clark

Steve Galluccio

A comic, biting, surreal investigation of the question of self and identity in the North American middle class. Cast of 9 women and 11 men.

Outrageous pathos and hilarity is unleashed when Nino informs his very traditionally Italian parents that he is gay. A perfect balance of fast-paced comedy and poignant drama that explores family dynamics and the vast spaces between the old world and the new. Cast of 4 women and 3 men.

“A full and resounding resonance.”

– Theatrum

Ludwig & Mae

Marcel Pursued by the Hounds

Louis Patrick Leroux

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Shelley Tepperman & Ellen Warkentin

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

Three plays include Embedded, which establishes Ludwig and Mae’s Strindbergian relationship; Apocalypse, a monodrama in which Ludwig stages his own suicidal ceremonial; and Redemption, Mae’s testimonial, where she finally comes into her own. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

How our “innocent” childhood games and fantasies come back to haunt us in adult life. Cast of 4 women and 1 adolescent male.

“audacious avant-garde spectacles …”

– Jane Moss

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 46

46 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Marion Bridge

Mom’s the Word

Daniel MacIvor

Linda A. Carson, Jill Daum, Alison Kelly, Robin Nichol, Barbara Pollard & Deborah Williams

Includes screenplay and stage play. Cast of 3 women. “In some ways, this moving drama, which tiptoes toward sentimentality without ever reaching it, is the most surprising play that [MacIvor’s] ever written. When was the last time you saw a drama about three distinct, complex women that had nothing to do with their relationships with men?” – New York Times ISBN 978-0-88922-552-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1999, 2006; 192 pp; 3rd printing

Humorous stories, bittersweet monologues, poetic reflections and revelatory anecdotes about motherhood. Cast of 6 women. “I’d almost forgotten what it’s like to enjoy a show this much.” – Georgia Straight ISBN 978-0-88922-431-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©2000; 112 pp; 2nd printing

Memories of You

Moo

Wendy Lill

Sally Clark

The life of Elizabeth Smart pivoted on a turbulent affair that produced four children and her one book. This is a portrayal of the book as a record of one great life lived. Cast of 4 women and 1 man.

When the feisty and rebellious Moragh (Moo) MacDowell meets the intriguing Harry Parker, she decides nothing will ever separate them. Harry has been running ever since. Cast of 5 women and 3 men.

“Beautifully written … its pleasure, its sensuality and its pain. A courageous and profoundly moving play … ” – Robert Enright, CBC

Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award Winner, 1990.

Miss Julie

1949

August Strindberg

David French

An adaptation by David French

Newfoundland joins Confederation in the continuing saga of the Mercer family. Cast of 6 women, 6 men and 2 boys.

A riveting adaptation of a theatre classic about an affair between the daughter of a count and the count’s manservant. Cast of 2 women and 1 man. “Direct, accessible and strangely contemporary, [this adaptation of] Miss Julie is a … blast of dramatic fresh air which retains its provocative power.” – Halifax Chronicle Herald

Modern Canadian Plays

The Noam Chomsky Lectures

Volume I Edited by Jerry Wasserman

Daniel Brooks & Guillermo Verdecchia

This fourth edition contains The Ecstasy of Rita Joe, Fortune and Men’s Eyes, Les Belles Soeurs, Leaving Home, 1837: The Farmer’s Revolt, The St Nicholas Hotel, Zastrozzi, Billy Bishop Goes to War, Balconville, Doc, Drag Queens on Trial and The Occupation of Heather Rose. ISBN 978-0-88922-436-0; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD ©2000; 464 pp; 7th printing

An innovative, multi-layered deconstruction of mass media and politics. Cast of 2 men. Chalmers Award Winner, 1992. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1992. “A … sharp and funny ‘lecture’ on cultural politics and political culture.” – Now “An anti-imperialist primer.”

– Socialist Worker

Modern Canadian Plays

Nothing to Lose

Volume II Edited by Jerry Wasserman

David Fennario

This fourth edition contains Bordertown Café, Polygraph, Moo, The Orphan Muses, 7 Stories, Dry Lips Oughta Move to Kapuskasing, Amigo’s Blue Guitar, Lion in the Streets, Never Swim Alone, Fronteras Americanas, Harlem Duet and Problem Child. ISBN 978-0-88922-437-7; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD ©2001; 408 pp; 7th printing

Working-class survivors of the 1960s stage a workers’ sitdown strike. Cast of 9 men. “Restores one’s faith in theatre as a medium of continuing vitality and relevance.” – Southam News Service ISBN 978-0-88922-121-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1977; 144 pp; 2nd printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 47

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 47

The Occupation of Heather Rose

Other Schools of Thought

Wendy Lill

Morris Panych

Young, naive and inadequately trained nurse Heather Rose arrives in a remote Native community hoping to improve the lives of its residents, but ends up utterly disillusioned by the impotence of her interventions. Cast of 1 woman.

Dramas that encourage adults to reflect on their past and young people to reflect on their future: Life Science, 2B WUT UR and Cost of Living.

“An achingly honest reminder of the naively enthusiastic attempts that each of us has made to wade bravely into unfamiliar territory.” – Toronto Star

Omniscience

Paradise by the River

Tim Carlson

Vittorio Rossi

The play begs the question of how many of our freedoms have been lost to the institutions engaged in surveillance “for our own protection.”Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

After Canada officially declares war with Italy, Romano, a recent immigrant, is arrested without charge in his own home. Cast of 2 women and 8 men.

“This assault on the modern media makes a clever stab at warning its audience of what’s to come on this crazy granite planet …” – Vancouver Sun

“Tale of imprisoned Italians delivers explosive, full throttle energy … he succeeds at giving authentic voice to a specific community.” – Montreal Gazette

“Never less than intelligently provocative …” – Georgia Straight

On the Job

Paradise Garden

David Fennario

Lucia Frangione

On Christmas Eve the workers in a Montreal shipping room get drunk and go on strike. Cast of 8 men.

The McKinnons have fallen on hard times and must sell half of their generations-old West Coast estate to a Turkish immigrant family. Cast of 1 woman and 4 men.

Chalmers Award Winner for Best Canadian Play, 1976. “Vibrates with the rough and ready energy of a street fight.” – Quill & Quire

“Playwright and actor Lucia Frangione enters risky emotional territory in Paradise Garden.” – Georgia Straight

One Crack Out

Past Perfect

David French

Michel Tremblay

Charlie Evans, a pool shark, has two days to pay off a debt or have his legs broken by a psychotic debt collector who is also having an affair with his wife. Cast of 2 women and 8 men.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Unleashing the dark secret of her being, Albertine, one of Tremblay’s most unforgettable heroines, sets out to reconquer the beau she has lost to her younger sister. Cast of 3 women and 2 men. “The really scary, or beautiful, part is how much Albertine there is in every one of us.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-493-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2004; 96 pp

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth

Playing Bare

Drew Hayden Taylor

Dominic Champagne

A Native woman who was adopted by a white family struggles to acknowledge her birth family. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Translated by Shelley Tepperman

James Buller Award for Playwright of the Year, 1997.

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1994.

Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Small Theatre Division, 1996.

“It celebrates theatre by paying tribute to Godot, one of its most brilliant gems.” – Vancouver Sun

A mordant satire on the relation between theatre and life. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 48

48 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

The Power Plays

The Riddle of the World

George F. Walker

David French

First published as a trilogy in 1986, The Power Plays contains Gossip (1977), Filthy Rich (1979) and The Art of War (1983). These three plays showcase the development and the culmination of Walker’s film-noir style.

A stockbroker and an ex-priest get together to console themselves after being abandoned by their mates and are forced to come to terms with their fragile natures as men. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.

“Walker has an eye for the ridiculous and an imagination that packs his plays with action.” – New York Times

“French is one of Canada’s most acclaimed playwrights and an accomplished explorer of the power of memory.” – Quill & Quire

The Queens

Rose

Normand Chaurette

Tomson Highway

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A musical set on the Wasaychigan Hill Reserve in 1992. The battle for the future of the community builds to a shattering climax. Cast of 10 women and 7 men.

The shifting passions and ambitions of six women drawn from Shakespeare’s theatre. Cast of 6 women. “This is a theatre of allusions, metaphysical playwriting of a literary richness which has yet to find its equal in Quebec drama.” – Le Devoir ISBN 978-0-88922-403-2; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1998; 96 pp

“Tomson Highway has been a groundbreaking, foundational dramatist – the inaugural voice of a generation of First Nations playwrights in Canada.” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-490-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2003; 160 pp; 2nd printing

The Real World?

Saga of the Wet Hens

Michel Tremblay

Jovette Marchessault

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

A play within a play. A young playwright draws on his family as the raw material for his first work. Cast of 4 women and 3 men.

Four Quebec women writers meet at the centre of a fabulous vortex. Cast of 4 women.

“A virtuoso piece of writing by a master craftsman.” – Toronto Star

“Potent feminist literature.”

– Quill & Quire

“[Marchessault’s] fiction is lyrical and heartfelt, her drama literary, allusive, and absolutely original.” – Books in Canada

The Refugee Hotel

Saint Frances of Hollywood

Carmen Aguirre

Sally Clark

More than a dark comedy about a group of Chilean refugees who arrive in Vancouver in 1974 after Pinochet’s coup, this play is Carmen Aguirre’s attempt to give voice to refugee communities from all corners of the globe. Cast of 5 women, 5 men, 1 girl , 1 boy and 1 male dancer.

The tragic life of Frances Farmer, the raucous, idealistic, non-conforming movie star of the 1930s and 1940s. Cast of 4 women and 4 men.

“It is this mix of fact and fantasy that Clark has captured so brilliantly and used to striking advantage … the effect is brutally chilling.” – Variety “A searing tragedy …”

– Toronto Star

Remember Me

Sainte-Carmen of the Main

Michel Tremblay

Translated by John Stowe

Translated by John Van Burek

Two ex-lovers meet and compare and confess their fears and disillusionments. Cast of 2 men.

A play about cultural identity and cultural awakening based on a country and western singer of Montreal’s “The Main.” Cast of 4 women, 13 men and a chorus.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 49

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 49

Sainte-Marie among the Hurons

7 Stories

James W. Nichol

Morris Panych

A play about the conscience of a priest during the disastrous mission the Jesuits made to the Huron Indians in the 17th century. Cast of 11 men.

In this fast-paced, sophisticated and hilarious play, a man’s contemplation of suicide leads to a charming and surprising ending. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

“The play has a burning sincerity … A fascinating glimpse of two totally different cultures.” – Ottawa Citizen

Winner of 6 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, 1989.

“One of the best plays of the ’80s.”

– CBC

Salt-Water Moon

The Shape of a Girl / Jewel

David French

Joan MacLeod

The third book of the Mercer family saga. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man.

The Shape of a Girl examines the code of silence and tacit complicity that surrounded the sensationalized murder of Reena Virk by school-aged bullies in 1997. Cast of 1 girl.

Winner of the Canadian Authors Association Drama Award, Dora Mavor Moore Award, Hollywood DramaLogue Critics Award and ACTRA Award. “A gem of a play … affecting, funny and as evocative as a dream.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-257-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©1988; 88 pp; 7th printing

“Brilliant.”

– Globe & Mail

Jewel is based on the real-life catastrophe of the 1982 sinking of the Ocean Ranger, an oil rig off the coast of Newfoundland. Cast of 1 woman. ISBN 978-0-88922-460-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2002; 96 pp; 9th printing

The Satchmo’ Suite

Silver Dagger

Hans Böggild & Doug Innis

David French

A black cellist invokes the ghost of Louis Armstrong to help him with a difficult passage from Bach’s Six Suites for Solo Cello. The highly mythologized spirit of “the father of jazz himself” takes form in the cellist’s hotel room, where the lives of the characters intertwine and begin to play off each other. Cast of 1 man.

French delivers a thriller guaranteed to have audiences perched on the edge of their seats. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.

“An irresistible meeting of music and drama, The Satchmo’ Suite really swings.” – Montreal Gazette

Arthur Ellis Award Nominee, 1994. “[A] meta-murder mystery.” – Canadian Theatre Review

Schoolhouse

Sisters

Leanna Brodie

Wendy Lill

Full of warmth and poignant humour, this drama set in a one-room schoolhouse evokes a way of life shared by generations of rural North Americans, exploring timeless themes of rejection, of compassion, of damage, of hope. Cast of 5 women and 7 men.

A tough, uncompromising look at a convent-run Native residential school. The soul-destroying devastation caused by these institutions from the point of view of the nuns running the school. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.

“A thoughtful … well-crafted … beautifully inspired piece … compelling and richly rural.” – Citizen

“A moving theatrical experience.”

– Theatrum

The Seagull

Six Plays by Mavor Moore

Anton Chekhov

Mavor Moore

Translated by David French

In these theatre pieces stripped to the essentials of character sketches in quick, subtle lines, the emphasis is on the performer’s resources as an actor, rather than the externals of scene changes and stage contexts.

A revitalization of a Russian theatre classic. Cast of 5 women and 8 men. “Witty, while preserving the historical integrity of the characters … French’s effective translation should make this edition the favoured teaching and acting version in North America.” – Canadian Theatre Review ISBN 978-0-88922-324-0; $16.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1993; 112 pp; 4th printing

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 50

50 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Skydive

Still Laughing

Kevin Kerr

Morris Panych

Two brothers reconnect after many years of separation to fulfill a life-long ambition to go skydiving. Yet we realize that something is being subverted as we watch this highstakes adventure occur in the final seconds of a daring adventure gone horribly wrong. Written for one ablebodied and one differently-abled actor. Cast of 2 men.

Just for laughs, Morris Panych updated three comedy classics from a century ago: Gogol’s The Government Inspector, Feydeau and Desvallières’s Hotel Peccadillo and Schnitzler’s The Amorous Adventures of Anatol.

Soldier’s Heart

Studies in Motion

David French

Kevin Kerr

Esau Mercer, a veteran of WWI, tries to persuade his alienated 16-year-old son, Jacob, not to leave. Slowly Esau’s devastating and unsparing account of what secrets lie in his soldier’s heart brings father and son together. Cast of 3 men.

Adultery, jealousy, murder and an abandoned child haunt the life of photographer Eadweard Muybridge. Cast of 5 women and 7 men.

“When it comes to playwriting, David French is perhaps … the most celebrated in English Canada.” – Globe & Mail

Somewhere Else

Suburban Motel

George F. Walker

Contains Walker’s own selection of his early plays that matter, that for him have stood the test of time: Beyond Mozambique (1974), Zastrozzi (1977), Theatre of the Film Noir (1981) and Nothing Sacred (1988).

Six plays that take place in the same hotel room: Problem Child, Criminal Genius, Risk Everything, Adult Entertainment, Featuring Loretta and The End of Civilization.

“No other living playwright pushes the boundaries of comedy as far, with often stunning results.” – Chicago Sun Times

“We’re back in the strange world of George Walker, where humour and horror waltz drunkenly around in each other’s arms.” – Washington Post

Song of the Say-Sayer

The Tale of Teeka

Daniel Danis

Michel Marc Bouchard

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Three brothers strive to unite and care for their ailing sister after the death of their adoptive parents. Cast of 1 woman and 3 men.

A play set in rural Quebec in the 1950s in which a battered child, Maurice, seeks refuge in a fantasy world. Cast of 1 man and 1 boy.

“At once sinister and hilariously funny, darkly ominous and positively hopeful …” – Canadian Theatre Review

“A play so achingly beautiful, restrained and moving that it clings to the heart and mind long after the last words are spoken.” – Vancouver Sun

Spectacle of Empire

Talking Bodies

Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France Edited by Jerry Wasserman

Larry Tremblay

Arguably the first North American play, this edition includes the original French script, two English translations, Ben Jonson’s Masque of Blackness and an extensive historical and critical introduction.

Translated by Sheila Fischman A collection of Larry Tremblay’s four memorable solo performances for the stage: A Trick of Fate, Anatomy Lesson, The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi and Ogre. With an introduction by Jane M. Moss.

“The French play by Lescarbot is a significant literary and cultural artifact …” – Dalhousie Review

“The Dragonfly of Chicoutimi is surely unique … This is a play that laments rather than preaches …” – Globe & Mail

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 51

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 51

That Summer

The Trial of Judith K.

David French

Sally Clark

A woman returns to the cottage country of Ontario where, 32 years before, she vacationed with her family. Cast of 5 women and 2 men.

Roughly based on Kafka’s The Trial, this black comedy transforms the lead character into a modern business woman who finds herself accused of an unknown crime. Cast of 4 women and 3 men.

“That Summer is a lyrical and beautifully constructed meditation on the passage of time and the transition from one generation to the next. David French is a playwright at the height of his powers.” – CBRA ISBN 978-0-88922-439-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2000; 128 pp; 3rd printing

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1991. “The futility of the individual before a dehumanizing bureaucracy has never been so funny.” – Toronto Tonight ISBN 978-0-88754-465-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1985; 122 pp

That Woman

The Trigger

Daniel Danis

Carmen Aguirre

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Based on the author’s own experience as a victim of the Paper Bag Rapist, The Trigger is a play written for anyone who has ever dealt with sexual violation and who continues to live with it at their core. Cast of 5 women.

The story of a woman sent away from her family by her brother the Bishop after she is found exploring her sexuality at age 17. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men. “It is a tale of heartbreak spun out of an endless golden thread called hope.” – See Magazine ISBN 978-0-88922-399-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1998; 96 pp

“The Trigger is a knockout … intelligent, powerful, funny, horrific, theatrically stunning and utterly free of victimology.” – Jerry Wasserman ISBN 978-0-88922-591-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2008; 64 pp

Tiln & Other Plays

Twenty Years at Play

Michael Cook

A New Play Centre Anthology Edited by Jerry Wasserman

This collection of eight of the finest plays produced by Vancouver’s New Play Centre marks the company’s 20th year. “Wasserman provides a fascinating history of the NPC … This book is essential.” – BCLA Reporter ISBN 978-0-88922-275-5; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1990; 346 pp

Toronto, Mississippi

Two Plays

Joan MacLeod

George Woodcock

Drawing from MacLeod’s experience working with mentally handicapped adults and children, this play celebrates the personal challenges of both self-destruction and selfaffirmation so vital to the process of identity creation. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

This volume contains two uniquely Canadian stories of exile: The Island of Demons and Six Dry Cakes for the Hunted.

“See this play and fall in love.”

“Voices from the past that haunt us still.” – Essays in Canadian Writing

– Georgia Straight

The Trespassers

2000

Morris Panych

Joan MacLeod

Poignant, thought-provoking and sharply sardonic, The Trespassers focuses on the relationship between 15-yearold Lowell, and his grandfather, Hardy. Lowell is no average teenager and Hardy is no conventional role model – much to the consternation of Lowell’s born-again mother, Cash. Cast of 2 women and 3 men.

The relationships of the young, the aging and the middleaged, and between urban life and nature at the end of the millennium. Cast of 3 women and 2 men.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 52

52 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Unity (1918)

Walsh

Kevin Kerr

Sharon Pollock

In the fall of 1918, a world ravaged by four years of war was suddenly hit by a mysterious and deadly plague. As fear of the dreaded “Spanish” flu begins to fill the town of Unity with paranoia, drastic measures are taken. Cast of 6 women and 3 men.

A historical documentary of Sitting Bull’s exile in Canada after the Montana massacre at Little Big Horn. Cast of 3 women and 11 men. “Undefinable magic that is the essence of art.” – Ottawa Citizen

Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 2002. “[A] work of powerful and moving familiarity …” – Globe & Mail

The Unnatural and Accidental Women

Wanted

Marie Clements

Sally Clark

A surrealist dramatization of a notorious 30-year murder case involving many mysterious deaths in the “Skid Row” area of Vancouver. Cast of 11 women and 2 men.

Set during the Klondike gold rush, Wanted is a celebration of one woman’s determination to triumph over all who seek to possess her in a harsh social climate of chaos, opportunism, raw desire, greed and lust. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

“A beautifully presented and acted play …” – Raven’s Eye “An impressive, powerful work.”

– Eye Weekly

The Ventriloquist

Warriors

Larry Tremblay

Michel Garneau

Translated by Keith Turnbull

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Theatre of innovation. Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Warriors enters the world of advertising where even if the product is war, it is still a product that can be sold. Cast of 2 men.

“What lingers is a degree of delight at Tremblay’s ability not so much to weave a storyline as to unravel one with such finesse and beauty.” – Toronto Sun “This is the best new Quebec play in many years.” – CBC Radio-Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-536-7; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2006; 64 pp

The Vic

WASPs

Leanna Brodie

Sally Clark

The Vic creates an ensemble of eight ethnically diverse women ranging in age from their teens to their fifties, each of them eager to claim the entitlement they feel their status as victim has “naturally” conferred upon them. Cast of 8 women.

A play about the elements of our constructed tribal identities: incest, fashion, fetishism, style, populist art, amateur psychobabble and a fascination with the other. Cast of 4 women and 2 men.

Waiting for the Parade

The Weekend Healer

John Murrell

Bryden MacDonald

Set in Calgary during WWII, five women work for the war effort while their men are away. Cast of 5 women.

The disappearance of a young man acts as a catalyst for a drama that questions the nature of family and “traditional values.” Cast of 2 women and 1 man.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 53

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 53

Westray

Whereverville

The Long Way Home Chris O’Neill & Ken Schwartz

Josh MacDonald

Although the Westray mine is dangerously mismanaged, a young father descends under the ground again to support his family. Cast of 2 women and 3 men. “Crisp, thoughtful, and entertaining, and every bit deserving of a standing ovation.” – Ottawa Citizen ISBN 978-0-88922-491-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1994, 2004; 96 pp

On the evening of Loam Bay’s vote on resettlement, schoolteacher Abby Shea, herself “from away,” must struggle with her own phantom attachment to the community before casting her deciding vote. Cast of 1 woman and 4 men. “Fresh and direct, with clear-eyed compassion and a surprising amount of humour.” – Halifax Daily News ISBN 978-0-88922-506-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2004; 96 pp

Whale Riding Weather

Willful Acts

Bryden MacDonald

Margaret Hollingsworth

A faded old man finds his life slipping away from him along with his young male lover, who meets a new, younger man. Cast of 3 men.

An expanded and updated collection of Margaret Hollingsworth’s best known and most popular plays, including The Apple in the Eye, Everloving, Diving, Islands, War Babies and Commonwealth Games.

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1994. “Powerfully written …”

– Toronto Star

What Lies Before Us

With Bated Breath

Morris Panych

Bryden MacDonald

Two–time Governor General’s Award–winning playwright Panych has turned Waiting for Godot into a comedy while simultaneously heightening the profound existential questions it asks. Cast of 3 men.

A poignant look at the disappearance of a shy, young gay man who starts a new life in the big city. Caught in the cynical and brutalizing cash-economy of the city’s red light district, he retreats ever further into a world of fantasy and anonymity. Cast of 3 women and 3 men.

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2007. “Panych is … ambitious, talented, funny, feared, beloved … and altogether impossible to ignore.” – Toronto Life

Lambda Literary Award Finalist, 2011.

Where the Blood Mixes

Written on Water

Kevin Loring

Michel Marc Bouchard

Can a person survive their past; can a people survive their history? Irreverently funny and brutally honest, this play about loss and redemption takes us to the bottom of a river, to the heart of a People. Cast of 2 women and 4 men.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 2009. “Where the Blood Mixes … was the best of a stream of plays tackling [the Residential Schools’] disastrous legacy.” – Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-608-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2009; 96 pp; 4th printing

“Quite stunning … full of one-liners and dark poetry.” – Daniel MacIvor

A group of seniors struggles to rescue and rewrite their memories when torrential rains wash away all records of their past. Cast of 3 women and 3 men. “A profound reflection on memory and on the act of writing … told with Michel Marc Bouchard’s characteristic humour and poetry.” – CBC ISBN 978-0-88922-492-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2004; 96 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 54

54 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

After Jack

b leev abul char ak trs

Garry Thomas Morse

bill bissett

An homage to poet Jack Spicer and a tribute to his concept of the serial poem, this bristling polyphony jostles the reader with dark undertones.

“Themes of love, lust and the degradation of nature’s order. bissett captures the loneliness of his characters and often the black humour that they reckon from their situations. His syntax at first seems like a wall to understanding but once on the other side the bricks become windows to a fantastic imagination.” – filling Station

“In After Jack … translation crosses boundaries of space, time, culture and language, laying the common property of the poem bare – and gasping for air. Take a deep breath. Now dive back in.” – Stephen Collis ISBN 978-0-88922-630-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2010; 184 pp

All Is Flesh

Back to the War

Yannick Renaud

Frank Davey

Translated by Hugh Hazelton

A careful archaeology of the catalogue of innocence assembled by a youthful imagination blossoming during WWII.

The first English translation of this acclaimed Québécois poet. Includes the book-length prose-poem collections Taxidermy and The Disappearance of Ideas. Afterword by Étienne Lalonde. “Renaud’s poetic phrasing is finely chiselled, down to the ellipses which give rise to the book’s most powerful thoughts.” – Voix et images ISBN 978-0-88922-672-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2011; 160 pp

“Davey has given us a rare album of verbal photographs …” “A haunting poetic memoir …”

– Arc

– abcbookworld.com

Amuse Bouche

Bardy Google

Adeena Karasick

Frank Davey

Mashing up the lexicon of war with post-industrial consumerism, haute cuisine, couture, language, Eros and desire, Karasick’s sixth book is at once dark and satirical, exuberant and amorously rigorous.

Bardy Google reinvents poetry’s formal boundaries within the frame of our wired world. With only one hidden exception, this book was constructed through Frank Davey’s use of specifically devised Internet searches. Because the content of the Internet, and the search-engine priorities assigned to it change continuously, these texts are unique and unrepeatable.

“Her writing is an extraordinary tour de force in the new paraliterary initiative of ‘fiction/theory’ that blends various genres and revels in their ‘contamination.’” – CBRA ISBN 978-0-88922-604-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2009; 108 pp; Colour photos & illustrations

Asian Skies

Blonds on Bikes

Ken Norris

George Bowering

In this third book of Norris’s travel trilogy, he searches for the spiritual “inside passage,” the illusory transcendence of “a passage to India” from the post-industrial world, setting out for that most foreign of shores to the West: Asia.

Characteristic of Bowering’s other work, this book is largely made up of sequences. The longest one, the title poem, is a composition of daily riffs during an autumn in Denmark and Italy. “Pictures” is an album of verbal portraits by a husband and wife who see differently. There is a series of tributes to other writers on special occasions.

“In this series of poems, Norris … provides a crafty indictment against societal ills and imbalances without appearing on the surface to do so.” – Garry Thomas Morse

“Bowering … can turn a reader’s head inside out with the turn of a phrase.” – Ottawa XPress

Aurora

bpNichol Comics

Sharon Thesen

bpNichol

Sharon Thesen’s poems express the pleasure and magic of a language fully engaging the world, rewarding the reader with daily moments transformed into visions of grace.

Edited by Carl Peters

“In mind and heart and laughter, it’s a big book, full of surprises.” – Robin Blaser

“Nichol engages in visual wordplay and defies the conventional restraints of space and structure in comic books.” – National Post

Nichol’s comics (1960–1980) informed his work in other genres as well as the work of other writers.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 55

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 55

Bread and Salt

The Commons

Renee Rodin

Stephen Collis

Bread and Salt – what you bring for luck to a new house – is a joyous affirmation of vision and courage in hard times.

Tearing down (intellectual) property’s fencing, Collis’s poems demonstrate that what we call, in less inspired moments, “allusion,” “borrowing,” or even (pretentiously) “intertextuality” is just what poetry itself proves time and again: our languages are common. Shared. Un-enclosable.

Cartouches

Cultural Mischief

Lola Lemire Tostevin

A Practical Guide to Multiculturalism Frank Davey

The recent deaths of her father and several friends at the time of a trip to Egypt have led the author to write about the essential relation between language and death. “Lola Lemire Tostevin is an incisive, intelligent, and sharply observant writer …” – Quarry “Lovely, nape-tingling work.”

– Books in Canada

A collection of prose poems on the hyperbolic absurdities of multiculturalism in action. “Finally, what’s left is an irresistible, irrepressible read that’s bound to raise eyebrows.” – Monday Magazine ISBN 978-0-88922-364-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1996; 144 pp

The Centre

Decompositions

Poems 1970–2000 Barry McKinnon

Ken Belford

“Barry McKinnon’s great skills as a poet make substantial all that living meets with and defines, and must finally accept willy-nilly …” – Robert Creeley “His poems are a radical ‘placing’ of a poetics, but also an act of displacing language from civics … [McKinnon is] absolutely central to Canadian poetics.” – American Book Review ISBN 978-0-88922-497-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©2004; 192 pp

Belford’s careful (de)compositions disclose the land as a complex living organism, articulate the names of it, see the whole of it, with a vision and voice that is unique and new. BC Book Prize Finalist, 2011. “[Belford’s poems] read with the kind of inevitability of image and rhythm that makes other poets grit their teeth with envy.” – Margaret Atwood ISBN 978-0-88922-631-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2010; 96 pp

Change Room

Discovery Passages

Mark Cochrane

Garry Thomas Morse

The body is here fetishized by the creative power of desire to the point where the love of perfection crosses the boundaries of gender and polity.

First Nations poet Garry Thomas Morse sets out to recover the appropriated, stolen and scattered world of his ancestral people, the Kwakwaka’wakw, from Alert Bay to Quadra Island to Vancouver.

“Mark Cochrane is a glorious writer.”

– Quill & Quire

Governor General’s Poetry Award Finalist, 2011. BC Book Prize Finalist, 2012. “A master of tonal balance, a virtuoso composer with an ear for epic contrast ...” – Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-660-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2011; 128 pp; Colour photos; 2nd printing

The Collected Books of Artie Gold

Dominican Moon

Compiled & edited by Ken Norris & Endre Farkas

Ken Norris

A collection of Artie Gold’s eight published books of poetry. “Don’t come to these poems expecting to find a reference to the world, or a reference to Artie Gold’s world of feeling & perceptions. Be prepared to step into a world. The poem is, as Jack Spicer said to Lorca, ‘a collage of the real.’” – George Bowering ISBN 978-0-88922-652-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©2010; 304 pp

Composed like a dark novel-in-verse, the second book in Norris’s travel trilogy is an unsettling story of the deficiencies of love steeped in a clash of cultures between the third world and the first. “Ken Norris … has been hailed as Canada’s premier romantic poet.” – Toronto Star “One of the best poets of his generation.”

– Matrix

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 56

56 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

Down Time

A Few Words Will Do

Jeff Derksen

Lionel Kearns

Proposes a social self that is able to recognize the ironies and restrictions we live in without returning to a garrison mentality.

When one person writes “this is what happened, this is what I know,” any reader stands in for the absent “I” or “eye” of that text. This inescapable process of language, preoccupies Kearns in these brief but concentrated pieces.

BC Book Prize Winner, 1991. “Wrenching intellectual and emotional dislocation that redefines the act of reading.” – Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-278-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©1990; 92 pp; 3rd printing

“Lionel Kearns has been hovering over our poetry scene for years. Now we have his selected poems at last, and the bird has landed.” – George Bowering ISBN 978-0-88922-558-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2007; 128 pp; Illustrations

Dream Pool Essays

Fifty

Gil McElroy

Ken Norris

An active multiple streaming of apparently disparate sources: astronomy, theoretical cosmology and quantum physics, and the literary and visual arts.

Among its widely diverse poetic forms, the book constructs odes, elegies, sonnets and long poem sequences, as Norris travels from Maine to Santo Domingo, from Phnom Penh to Montreal, and from the shorelines of the Caribbean to the banks of the Mekong River.

Gerald Lampert Memorial Award Finalist, 2002. “The expected subjects of faith, work, nature, solitude, and writing itself are represented with clarity and beauty.” – Canadian Literature

“He is, in short, a poet, and a good one.” – Hiram Poetry Review

Dwell

Five Star Planet

Jeff Derksen

David W. McFadden

An ironically revealing, humorous and analytic book.

This third volume in McFadden’s Terrafina Trilogy – which began with Gypsy Guitar and There’ll Be Another – is shaped by a wealth of poetic forms.

Alberta Writers’ Guild Award Finalist, 1994. “[A] canny text, astute and sharp. This is a brilliant mind at work, dwelling in, dwelling on.” – Books in Canada “Language that’s resolute in its probe for meaningful co-ordinates.” – Fred Wah ISBN 978-0-88922-328-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1993; 108 pp; 2nd printing

“Two qualities … shine in all his works – a laser-like and sometimes uncomfortable honesty and his childlike sense of wonder.” – Windsor Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-468-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2002; 136 pp

Dyssemia Sleaze

Floating Up to Zero

Adeena Karasick

Ken Norris

Cf. SEMA, unit of meaning: i.e. Dyssemia: (flawed information reception) Sleaze / sli:z/ v. Rough with projecting fibres.

Incisive and light in their touch, these poems meditate on the here and now: the present moment, precariously balanced between a certain frozen past and an uncertain fluid future.

Bumbershoot Most Adventurous Publication Award Winner, 2000. “Her most visually compelling, over-the-top collection to date.” – Publishers Weekly ISBN 978-0-88922-434-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2000; 96 pp; Colour illustrations; 2nd printing

The Empress Has No Closure

fractal economies

Adeena Karasick

derek beaulieu

The Empress Has No Closure contains, as a centre-piece, the “Alefbet Transfers,” a meditative, spacial explication of the 22 figures of the Hebrew alphabet.

beaulieu pushes the limits of poetry and poetics, challenging the status quo of the genre and the politics of language itself.

“All of it hums with intellectual energy, much of it is even funny.” – Books in Canada

“Never read a book of concrete poetry before? This might be the one to hook you.” – FFWD

“An impressive deconstruction of language and meaning …” – Canadian Literature

“Represent[s] truly the best of beaulieu’s poetic practice.” – Prairie Fire Review of Books

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 57

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 57

Genrecide

Gypsy Guitar

Adeena Karasick

David W. McFadden

Explores through play and pun the intersection of multiple cultures, codes, idioms and constructs that have an impact on female identity.

100 poems of love and betrayal – all presented in the unmistakable McFadden style.

“Beautiful linguistic carnage …”

“An exhilarating immersion in a uniquely bizarre and irrepressible imagination.” – Canadian Literature

“Bridging the genre gap …” “Visually striking … ”

– Word – The Link – Jewish Post and News

Governor General’s Poetry Award Finalist, 1988.

gifts

Hanging Fire

rob mclennan

Phyllis Webb

Unifying this book is the persona of the lover: as an intimate; as an interruption of the determinative self; as an unattainable weightlessness; and as the gravitational pull of the landscape itself.

Astonishingly beautiful entrances into the personae of lost companions who reappear, animated by a voice in love with the music of their speaking.

“rob mclennan is one of the best contemporary poets in Canada.” – Barry McKinnon

“Few poets take us through the disasters of the world … with such exquisite moral precision.” – Rosemary Sullivan

Glengarry

harvest

rob mclennan

a book of signifiers rob mclennan

Glengarry is a memory book composed of three parts, in which each new poem appears as “an illusion against destructive slide,” because “what else is human hope but momentarily borne.” “mclennan is a poet of place, always finding his voice out of the material of his surroundings, the continuity of its existence through history.” – Ottawa Xpress

What is harvested here are the signifiers for journeys: tickets, postcards, letters – recording unseemly haste, enforced idleness, losing one’s way and sometimes finding it again. “For mclennan, there are no rules. His poetry defies convention or classification” – Room Magazine

Going Home

Hotel Montreal

Ken Norris

New and Selected Poems Ken Norris

The whole manufactured unreality of our world falls away in these poems, leading us both toward and away from being “at home” in the present. “[Norris] is profoundly original, open and vulnerable, with a unique personal note that speaks to the heart of the reader.” – Poetry Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-573-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2007; 192 pp

Selections from 19 groundbreaking books of poetry that draw together the very best of Norris’s lyric poetry from a 25-year period, while offering the reader an indispensible panoramic view of the work of a poet at the height of his creative powers. “Unlock[s] a chrysalis of perplexity, awe, joy, and revelation …” – Montreal Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-456-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2001; 160 pp

Ground Water

The House That Hijack Built

Colin Browne

Adeena Karasick

Investigates the elements of the spiritual topography of the 20th century and closely examines the conventional symbology passed on to the poet/map-maker by his ancestors.

Explores the possibilities of meaning production when language is pushed to its limits of normative semantic patterns. Includes a homolinguistic “trans’elation” of the Sefer Yetzirah.

BC Book Prize Finalist, 2003.

“Perhaps the strangest, most irreverent and utterly shameless of possible responses to a tragedy, Karasick’s is also, finally, deeply and compellingly human.” – Publishers Weekly

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 58

58 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

hypoderm

is a door

notes to myself Weyman Chan

Fred Wah

Chan’s idea for this book is simple – approach the world as metaphor, and it will come to you. hypoderm is a manifesto of intimations, observations and recognitions of mortality that get under the poet’s skin.

Grounded in his encounter with the smashed and broken doors along the hurricane-devastated waterfront of Telchac Puerto on the Yucatàn peninsula, Fred Wah’s prize-winning poetry watches both sides of the doorway – for the sudden question, the sudden turn, the sudden opening.

“hypoderm … maps the borders and the fence; the lines between friends and family, between forgive and forget.” – derek beaulieu

BC Book Prize Winner, 2010.

I. Another. The Space Between

Kerrisdale Elegies

Selected Poems Jamie Reid

George Bowering

“Without a doubt, [is a door] is a dazzler … thoughtful, playful and stunningly skillful.” – Globe & Mail

“Jamie Reid’s later political writing packs a punch, often a dada-esque one … No topic falls beyond Reid’s scope …” – BC Bookworld

Bowering responds to Rilke’s Duino Elegies. In the intertextuality of these two great works can be found postmodern writing that is self-aware, where the other is discovered in the process of the writer writing.

“[Reid] engages readers in a conversation, asking them always to try to make their neighbourhood, their city, their world a better place …” – Georgia Straight

“A lyricism that is spring-sweet and without boast or threat … Bowering has poured all his considerable power into one vessel, and he must be read.” – Globe & Mail

th influenza uv logik

th last photo uv th human soul

bill bissett

Canada’s most linguistically innovative poet takes on the “linear binary traps” of conventional logic, history and politics.

bill bissett has remained on a permanent world tour for over 30 years; he wrote this book while on a European reading circuit that included performances in London, Manchester, Cardiff, Dublin, Paris, Mainz, Trier and Berlin.

inkorrect thots

Last Scattering Surfaces

bill bissett

Gil McElroy

When bill bissett thinks “inkorrect thots” anything can happen.

These poems map out zones of interaction which took place in the “surface of last scattering” – the first formation of matter in the universe.

BC Book Prize Winner, 1993. “bissett could be our (Canadian, late 20th-century) answer to e.e. cummings.” – Whig Standard ISBN 978-0-88922-303-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1992; 136 pp; Illustrations; 2nd printing

ReLit Longlist, 2008. “A master of the craft … [McElroy] is very, very intelligent and his ear is infallible.”

– Arc

The Invisibility Exhibit

Limbo Road

Sachiko Murakami

Ken Norris

Murakami’s first book of poetry, written in the political and emotional wake of Vancouver’s “Missing Women,” this project investigates the troubled relationship between a marginalized neighbourhood’s “invisible” populations and the city that surrounds them.

Limbo Road – as divorce journal, meditation, travel poem – chronicles the search for the new beloved.

Governor General’s Poetry Award Finalist, 2008. “An articulate and expertly rendered protest against the violence of erasure.” – Jon Paul Fiorentino ISBN 978-0-88922-579-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2008; 84 pp; 2nd printing

“I get a better sense, a tragic and painful sense, of the age we are living in than I do from the daily and nightly broadcasts of world news … profoundly original, open and vulnerable … speaks to the heart of the reader.” – Louis Dudek, Poetry Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-401-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1998; 160 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 59

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 59

Love and Savagery

narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane

Des Walsh

bill bissett

This finely crafted book of poems, adapted to a feature film in 2009, is a sustained adoration of the beloved that echoes the work of the troubadours. The unnamed Irish woman of this collection leads the narrator on a spiritual quest from the streets of St. John’s to the seemingly impenetrable evergreen thickets of Ireland.

Through narrative, non-narrative, sound, song, meditation, metaphysical, spiritual, political and visual poems, bissett explores the fragility and incompletion of all narratives.

“Touches on the great themes of humanity … in bissett’s inimitable way.” – Monday Magazine “bissett is one of the leading performance poets in Canada.” – Flak Magazine ISBN 978-0-88922-507-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©2004; 144 pp; Illustrations

loving without being vulnrabul

The New Long Poem Anthology

bill bissett

Second Edition Edited by Sharon Thesen

Poems that tell stories on many different levels: through sound, visual images, political insights, non-narrative fusion and linguistic music. “Anybody who’s never heard [bissett] really ought to, because you’ll never think of poetry the same way after you hear him.” – Citylife

Features the work of Blaser, Bowering, Brand, Carson, Derksen, Dudek, Dewdney, Friesen, Hartog, Kiyooka, Kroetsch, Marlatt, McCaffery, McFadden, McKay, McKinnon, Mouré, Nichol, Ondaatje, Robertson, Stanley, Tostevin, Villemaire, Wah and Webb.

Mêmewars

News & Smoke

Adeena Karasick

Selected Poems Sharon Thesen

Mêmewars is a book writing against itself.

“Mêmewars is electricity in language, eccentricity at its best … This book makes eye contact with she and with me. It reminds me how being a reader can be exciting.” – Nicole Brossard

“A compact and beautifully designed collection, nicely fleshed out with a broad selection of poems previously published only in journals and periodicals, not to mention its tantalizing sampling of new fare. Many will discover plenty to admire in News and Smoke.” – Toronto Star

The Moustache

Noise from the Laundry

Memories of Greg Curnoe George Bowering

Weyman Chan

BC Book Prize Finalist, 1994.

Bowering and Greg Curnoe became friends when their art was in its youth, and for 26 years they grew up parallel, inside each other’s work. “Documents a friendship through the kinship of the creative spirit.” – Kitchener-Waterloo Record ISBN 978-0-88910-457-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1993; 128 pp; Photos

Weyman Chan’s poems elaborate his singular and solitary work on the renaissance of the contemporary lyric form. Governor General’s Poetry Award Finalist, 2008. Alberta Literary Awards Short List, 2009. “The deepest blues on prairie snow are Weyman Chan’s inks, his pen as precise and as elusive as the silken threads of a ‘tiny spider.’” – Sharron Proulx-Turner ISBN 978-0-88922-626-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2008, 2009; 104 pp

My Darling Nellie Grey

NonZero Definitions

George Bowering

Gil McElroy

Stalled on a novel he was writing, Bowering thought he needed a challenge, so he made a New Year’s resolution: write a poem for every day of 2006, adhering to a different set of poetic conventions for each month. The result of this uncompromising personal and formal discipline is one of the most fascinating books of poetry ever written.

The language of poetics emerges into the light of the purely formalist and luminous “definitions” of things and their movements as they engage in the ceaseless metamorphosis of replication in all of their endlessly unfolding possibilities.

– Arc

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 60

60 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

northern wild roses / deth interrupts th dansing

peter among th towring boxes / text bites

bill bissett His rejection of the limiting conventions ofwritten language has allowed bissett to foreground the appearance of any linguistic event as a living performance.

bissett’s deliciously comic interrogation of the socio-political events towering around us like so many boxes we need constantly to imagine our way out of, is counterpoised in this collection by a recurring dream of a future locked in a global war.

“[bissett’s] poetry addresses the limitless discussion of the boundaries between the personal and the political.” – National Post

BC Book Prize Winner, 2003.

bill bissett

On the Material

Popular Narratives

Stephen Collis

Frank Davey

Structured in three parts, On the Material is a meditation on geography, socio-economics, the body and grief.

This book of prose poems strips down the codes and conventions that make up our society’s “popular narratives.” A revealing and witty, exploded view of our culture.

BC Book Prize Winner, 2011. “On the Material is a fine, smart book, indeed … a profound testing of the ability of an innovative poetry (and innovative poet) to address the most urgent and emotional of subjects” – Hank Lazer

“Risqué metaphors … scandalously unpoetic … a powerful alternative to the orthodoxy of poetic beauty.” – Smaro Kamboureli

Ordinary Time

Post-Prairie

Gil McElroy

An Anthology of New Poetry Edited by Jon Paul Fiorentino & Robert Kroetsch

These poems set out to give shape to time. The collection opens with childhood memories of impending Cold War Armageddon. The second section, counted on the Julian calendar, discovers that our movement through space gives time dimensionality. The last section works with the Anglican lectionary to make manifest the arc of a complete yearlong cycle of both “sacred” and “ordinary” time.

25 individual talents come together in this groundbreaking collection for a rare literary event: the transition of a cultural identity primarily rooted in place to one that is rooted in a rapidly fragmenting, technology-based globalization.

Pacific Windows

The Rap Canterbury Tales

Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka Roy K. Kiyooka

Baba Brinkman

Edited by Roy Miki The most important poetic works of Kiyooka. Association for Asian American Studies Outstanding Book Award Winner, 1998. “All of Kiyooka’s writing … was made up of exquisite moments.” – Ottawa XPress

Hip-hop artist Brinkman resurrects Chaucer’s brilliant stories into visible and audible contemporary forms. “It’s a fun, crisp, non-literal translation of Chaucer’s work that, at its very best, captures the verve and stylized rhymes of its inspiration.” – Bloomsbury Review ISBN 978-0-88922-548-0; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©2006; 352 pp; Illustrations; 3rd printing

Pell Mell

Rebuild

Robin Blaser

Sachiko Murakami

Pell Mell, the middle voice, the syntax meeting its astonishments in its forward stride looking backwards, imagining an image nation where the heart is always torn, to pieces possessed by the other(s).

Sachiko Murakami approaches the urban centre through its inhabitants’ greatest passion: real estate, where the drive to own engages the practice of tearing down and rebuilding.

“These are angry poems. Proud and angry. But smart and quirky, too, daring us to tear up our death pledge to real estate, and rethink our citizenship in scandalous cities.” – Meredith Quartermain ISBN 978-0-88922-670-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2011; 96 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 61

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 61

The Richard Brautigan Ahhhhhhhhhhh

Selected Poems

rob mclennan

The Vision Tree Phyllis Webb

Thoroughly grounded in the media culture of television and film, mclennan’s language casts a deceptively familiar veil over the breadth and depth of reading which inform this work.

Poetry distinguished by its attention to form and thought. Governor General’s Poetry Award Winner, 1982.

Archibald Lampman Award Finalist, 2000.

“Phyllis Webb … is one of the finest poets now writing in Canada.” – Books in Canada

“Just the right combination of details … carefully crafted, each line shifting the image slightly …” – Books in Canada

scars on th seehors

Selected Writing

bill bissett

As Elected bpNichol

bissett’s metric performs a kind of absence of narrative intent that lets everyone and everything speak for itself. As bissett puts it, “eye dont have 2 invent th world iumalredee in it.”

Selections from visual poetry to translations by one of the most important poets in the 20th century writing in English.

“I find his work … very spiritual, very funny, and very astute.” – Alma Lee

“bpNichol’s work is the most courageous body of work in Canadian literature.” – Frank Davey

Selected Poems

Selected Writing

The Arches Frank Davey

Net Work Daphne Marlatt

Selections from seven of this important poet and editor’s long poems.

Poetry and prose with an instantaneous recognition of perceptions and thought.

“Possesses a concentrated power that is rarely evident.” – Montreal Gazette

“Confronts political realities on the level in which they impinge upon people’s lives.” – Montreal Gazette

Selected Poems

Sentenced to Light

Beyond Even Faithful Legends bill bissett

Fred Wah

This volume represents the most definitive and comprehensive selection of bissett’s writing from the 1960s and 1970s, in voices “erotik, politikul, humorous, lyrikul, sound-vizual, narrative, meditative, konkreet, collage, nd song-chants.“ “Represents a literary revolution.”

An astonishing series of unique collaborative image-text projects, Sentenced to Light privileges its poetic and formal textual space outside most of the images that are its original twins and offers the reader a glimpse of the dialectic of larger conversations, the unpredictable, improvisatory bavardage that whispers between words and pictures in an intrinsically poetic space.

Selected Poems

The Shovel

Loki Is Buried at Smoky Creek Fred Wah

Colin Browne

Poems of landscape, language and memory from Wah’s earlier books. “Wah’s poems continually return us to the act of communion and the realization of our shared, not individual, life.” – Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-177-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1980; 128 pp

In this extraordinary book, Colin Browne inverts the traditional ways we define and privilege forms of the English language; self-expression becomes prosaic, the recording of history poetic. ReLit Award Short List, 2008. “The epic sweep of pieces is impressive, at times rapturous. They are worth digging for.” – Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-574-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2007; 192 pp; Photos

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 62

62 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

The Singer’s Broken Throat

ths is erth thees ar peopul

Des Walsh

bill bissett

Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland & Labrador Heritage and History Award Finalist, 2005.

The quest in this latest fusion of song, sound, performance and visual poetry from bill bissett is for a human condition outside the perpetual terror of the 21st century.

“Alternatively tender and bitter, this collection is at once a prayer for love’s endurance and a lament for a nation …” – Fiddlehead

ReLit Award Nominee, 2008.

“Walsh is, and always has been, Newfound-land’s poet.” – Sunday Independent

“His poetry addresses the limitless discussion of the boundaries between the personal and the political.” – National Post

Sticks & Stones

time

George Bowering

bill bissett

George Bowering’s first book of poetry. With a preface by Robert Creeley and original line drawings by Gordon Payne.

In time, bissett explores the Heraclitean flux of life and fleeting nature of the universe and, specifically, love in the non-particular universal sense. time is question-and-answer period, asking how much time we have for our fellow humans and how much time we have for our planet and how much time we have for our shared love. The answer is quite simply so long as there is language, so long as there are words dancing in space, so long as there is time.

“His feeling for form, for poetry as something made, is what gives his early pieces their ability to endure.” – Vancouver Province ISBN 978-0-88922-268-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©1989; 64 pp; Illustrations

sublingual

Transnational Muscle Cars

bill bissett

Jeff Derksen

sublingual is perhaps the most highly structured yet of bissett’s “textual visions.” Its first seven poems construct a Genesis, beginning with a poem of birth – our pre- or sublingual first breath, a phenomenological gesture of recognition, of both being and belonging, in and of the world. Following this short creation story, the book continues to unfold in luminous and lucid delight.

“Plays ‘chicken’ with postmodernism, hurtling itself with its hard, glossy, and state-of-art body in a challenge to see who will swerve first.” – Sianne Ngai

There’ll Be Another

Triage

David W. McFadden

Cecily Nicholson

Three books in one: Heavy-Hearted in Havana, Sex with a Sixteen Year Old and Anonymity Suite Part II.

Triage documents the resilience of people refusing disposability on the brutal margins of society, and articulates commonalities in their struggle to resist interventions of commercial enterprise in their lives.

This Tremor Love Is

Vermeer’s Light

Daphne Marlatt

Poems 1996–2006 George Bowering

This Tremor Love Is is a memory book – an album of love poems spanning twenty-five years, from Marlatt’s first writing of what was to become the opening section, A Lost Book, to its latest, most recent sequences. BC Book Prize Finalist, 2002. ReLit Award Nominee, 2002. ISBN 978-0-88922-450-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2001; 112 pp; 2nd printing

“Harrowing and heartbreaking, these pages walk the tightrope of sentiment without falling into sentimentality … [T]he volume is characterized by the terse honesty, purity of voice, and wry humour that are Bowering’s trademark … It’s a tour de force, and a window into the mind of one of Canada’s most significant poets.” – Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-565-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2006, 2007; 224 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 63

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 63

what’s left rob mclennan Presents us with cues and clues to the poet’s compositional strategies. “mclennan works with a genuine verbal invention and his cultural ephemera laid out in pastiche make a strong impression.” – University of Toronto Quarterly “mclennan is one of the most promising voices of his generation …” – Toronto Star ISBN 978-0-88922-498-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©2004; 144 pp

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 64

64 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Booklist Index by Author

Barnholden, Michael

All books are published in trade paperback unless otherwise indicated.

Boas, Franz

Beauchemin, Jean-François

Turkana Boy The Refugee Hotel

Verdecchia

Bouchard, Michel Marc

19 The Coronation Voyage

978-0-88922-629-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Angus, Ian

Brooks, Daniel & Guillermo

49 The Noam Chomsky Lectures

978-0-88922-648-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-539-8; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-591-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD How to Write

Böggild, Hans & Doug Innis The Satchmo’ Suite

48 beaulieu, derek

978-0-88922-650-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD fractal economies

The Trigger

978-0-88922-553-4; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

978-0-88922-690-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Aguirre, Carmen

For Home and Country

978-0-88922-508-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Circumstances Alter Photographs: Indian Myths & Legends from the Schoolhouse 49 Captain James Peters’ Reports from North Pacific Coast of America: 978-0-88922-571-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD the War of 1885 17 A Translation of Franz Boas’ The Vic 52 Indianische Sagen von der NordCloth: 978-0-88922-621-0; $35.00 CAD / $35.00 USD Pacifischen Küste Amerikas 19 978-0-88922-459-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-405-6; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Browne, Colin 38 Ground Water

978-0-88922-422-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-465-0; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Down Dangerous Passes Road 39 The Properties 14 Anarcho-Modernism: Toward a New Belford, Ken 978-0-88922-440-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-685-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Critical Theory in Honour of Jerry Decompositions 55 The Madonna Painter 45 The Shovel 61 Zaslove 16 978-0-88922-631-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-457-5; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-641-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Tale of Teeka

bissett, bill

978-0-88922-574-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-410-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Burns, Mary 54 32 53 Shinny’s Girls and Other Stories 978-0-88922-433-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Written on Water 978-0-88922-272-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-427-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD th influenza uv logik 978-0-88922-492-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 58

Archambault, François 15 Seconds

b leev abul char ak trs

The Leisure Society

44 978-0-88922-357-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-531-2; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD inkorrect thots 58

Arnason, David The Circus Performers’ Bar

978-0-88922-303-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

27 th last photo uv th human soul

978-0-88922-218-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-322-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Bush, Steven

Boucher, Denise The Fairies Are Thirsty

41 Beating the Bushes

978-0-88922-200-7; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-647-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Bourguignon, Stéphane

32 C loving without being vulnrabul 59 A Slight Case of Fatigue The Happiest Man in the World and 978-0-88922-596-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-372-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Other Stories 29 Carlson, Tim 978-0-88922-269-4; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD narrativ enigma / rumours Bowering, George Diplomacy 39 uv hurricane 59 The Pagan Wall 31 And Other Stories 26 978-0-88922-611-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-312-7; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-507-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Arnett, Chris

The Terror of the Coast: Land 978-0-88922-532-9; $17.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Alienation and Colonial War on novel 31 Vancouver Island and the Gulf 978-0-88922-671-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Islands, 1849–1863 23 peter among th towring boxes / text 978-0-88922-318-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD bites 60 Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand: Oral 978-0-88922-464-3; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Traditions of the Hul’q’umi’num’ scars on th seehors 61 Coast Salish of Kuper Island and 978-0-88922-387-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Vancouver Island 25 Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful 978-0-88922-555-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Legends 61 978-0-88922-172-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

sublingual

978-0-88922-589-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Bacque, James Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944–1950

978-0-88922-451-3; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Omniscience

northern wild roses / deth interrupts Baseball Love th dansing 60

ths is erth thees ar peopul

978-0-88922-557-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

time 18

978-0-88922-567-1; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-653-1; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Blais, Marie-Claire

978-0-88922-562-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-529-9; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

54 Carson, Linda A. et al. 978-0-88922-381-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Mom’s the Word

Blonds on Bikes

Harry’s Fragments

978-0-88910-387-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-431-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Caux, Patrick & Bernard Gilbert

Kerrisdale Elegies

58 EX MACHINA: Creating for the 978-0-88922-590-9; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Stage 18 The Moustache: Memories of Greg 978-0-88922-617-3; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Curnoe 59 978-0-88910-457-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

My Darling Nellie Grey

59 Playing Bare

978-0-88922-634-0; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

The Rain Barrel

Champagne, Dominic

31 Chan, Weyman

978-0-88922-345-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Chinese Blue

Sticks & Stones

978-0-88922-681-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-268-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD hypoderm

Vermeer’s Light: Poems 1996–2006

978-0-88922-335-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-637-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

62 Noise from the Laundry

978-0-88922-565-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-626-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Other Losses: An Investigation into American Notebooks: A Writer’s Boyd, George the Mass Deaths of German Chaurette, Normand Journey 16 Prisoners at the Hands of the Consecrated Ground, 2nd ed. 37 All the Verdis of Venice 34 978-0-88922-358-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD French and Americans after World 978-0-88922-666-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-442-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Angel of Solitude 26 War II 21 Gideon’s Blues 42 The Concise Köchel 37 978-0-88922-337-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-665-4; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Bailey, Anne Geddes

Dürer’s Angel

978-0-88922-111-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-496-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Brinkman, Baba

978-0-88922-518-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists 41 60

Timothy Findley and the Aesthetics of The Execution 40 The Rap Canterbury Tales Fascism: Intertextual Collaboration 978-0-88922-400-1; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-103-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-548-0; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD and Resistance 24 The Queens 48 978-0-88922-386-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Blaser, Robin Pell Mell

Brodie, Leanna

60 The Book of Esther

978-0-88922-601-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-403-2; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-682-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 65

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 65

Chekhov, Anton The Seagull

Craddock, Chris & 49

978-0-88922-324-0; $16.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Christensen, Bev Too Good to Be True

Paul Martin & Companies: Sixty Theses on the Alegal Nature of BASH’d 35 Tax Havens 978-0-88922-656-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

24 Cross, Ronald & Hélène Sévigny

Farrant, M.A.C. 21 The Breakdown So Far

978-0-88922-538-1; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-556-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

27 Deneault, Alain & William Sacher Darwin Alone in the Universe Lasagna: The Man Behind the Mask 978-0-88922-471-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of 20 Down the Road to Eternity: New & Choice for the World’s Mining 978-0-88922-348-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Selected Fiction 28 Industries 12

Clark, Sally 44

978-0-88922-347-9; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Nathan Cuckow

978-0-88922-354-7; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Life Without Instruction

Deneault, Alain

Cryer, Beryl Mildred

978-0-88922-635-7; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

978-0-88922-615-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

The Strange Truth About Us: A Novel 45 Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand: Oral Derksen, Jeff of Absence 32 978-0-88922-397-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Traditions of the Hul’q’umi’num’ Annihilated Time: Poetry and Other 978-0-88922-668-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Moo 46 Coast Salish of Kuper Island and Politics 16 978-0-88754-476-7; $12.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Vancouver Island 25 Fawcett, Brian 978-0-88922-612-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Saint Frances of Hollywood 48 978-0-88922-555-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Down Time 56 Cambodia: A Book for People Who 978-0-88922-366-0; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Find Television Too Slow 26 Culhane, Dara 978-0-88922-278-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Trial of Judith K. 51 978-0-88922-237-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD An Error in Judgement: The Politics of Dwell 56 978-0-88754-465-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Capital Tales 27 Medical Care in an Indian / White 978-0-88922-328-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Wanted 52 978-0-88922-221-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Community 18 Transnational Muscle Cars 62 978-0-88922-503-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD My Career with the Leafs & Other 978-0-88922-246-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-473-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD WASPs 52 Stories 30 The Pleasure of the Crown: 978-0-88922-398-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Desjardins, Martine 978-0-88922-199-4; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Anthropology, Law and First 26 The Secret Journal of Alexander Nations 22 All That Glitters Clements, Marie 978-0-88922-520-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Mackenzie 32 978-0-88922-315-8; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Burning Vision 36 A Covenant of Salt 27 978-0-88922-227-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-472-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Lost Souls and Missing Persons

Copper Thunderbird

978-0-88922-566-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Fairy Ring

978-0-88922-568-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Tombs of the Vanishing Indian The Unnatural and Accidental Women

978-0-88922-521-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Clements, Marie & Rita Leistner

Scattered in a Rising Wind

978-0-88922-484-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-432-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Collis, Stephen

Song of the Say-Sayer

Maleficium

A History of Change: Dispatches from the Occupation 2 978-0-88922-695-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Hell & Other Novels

The Death of René Lévesque

Vancouver Anthology, 2nd ed.

Cloth: 978-0-88922-614-2; $35.00 CAD / $35.00 USD

Doctor Thomas Neill Cream (Mystery at McGill) 39 978-0-88922-332-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-482-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88910-421-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Gabriel Dumont Speaks

978-0-88922-480-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

29 Joe Beef

978-0-88922-121-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

On the Job

978-0-88922-625-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-291-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

30 Nothing to Lose

29 Dumont, Gabriel

Davey, Frank

978-0-88922-396-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-669-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

55 Daurio, Beverley

Banana Boots

978-0-88922-687-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-399-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Miss Take

978-0-88922-580-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-145-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-137-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

50 Ducharme, Réjean 51

Balconville

Bolsheviki: A Dead Serious Comedy

Douglas, Stan 44

Fennario, David

Boiler Room Suite

978-0-88922-419-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Go Figure

That Woman

978-0-88922-680-7; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Deverell, Rex

Dalpé, Jean Marc

978-0-88922-519-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Cochrane, Mark

The Commons

Cloth: 978-0-88922-416-2; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern Picture Story 18, 40 Danis, Daniel 978-0-88922-642-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD In the Eyes of Stone Dogs Change Room

978-0-88922-449-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

15 D’Acres, Lilia & Donald Luxton

978-0-88922-686-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Lions Gate

978-0-88922-102-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Findley, Timothy

Can You See Me Yet? 36 54 Durand, Monique 978-0-88922-119-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 31 978-0-88922-514-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Painter’s Wife 978-0-88922-632-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-535-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Fiorentino, Jon Paul & 54 Phyllis Webb and the Common Good: Bardy Google Robert Kroetsch 978-0-88922-636-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Poetry / Anarchy / Abstraction 22 Cultural Mischief 55 Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New 978-0-88922-559-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD E 978-0-88922-364-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Poetry 60 Conolly, L.W. Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics Ebtekar, Massoumeh, with 978-0-88922-523-7; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Canadian Drama and the Critics, 20 Fischer, Hervé Fred A. Reed Revised Edition 17 978-0-88922-217-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD The Decline of the Hollywood Empire 978-0-88922-359-2; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story Popular Narratives 60 18 of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture Cook, Michael 978-0-88922-285-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-545-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 23 61 Jacob’s Wake 44 Selected Poems: The Arches On the Material

60 Back to the War

978-0-88922-097-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Tiln & Other Plays

978-0-88922-107-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-174-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-443-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Frangione, Lucia

Enright, Robert

Cariboo Magi 37 978-0-88922-527-5; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Peregrinations: Conversations with 40 Contemporary Artists 21 Espresso 978-0-921368-67-0; $24.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-495-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 66

66 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Paradise Garden

47 Grace, Sherrill &

978-0-88922-658-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Albert-Reiner Glaap

Hill-Tout, Charles

Performing National Identities: The Salish People (ed. Ralph Maud) International Perspectives on Jitters 44 Vol. I: The Thompson and Contemporary Canadian Theatre 21 the Okanagan 22 978-0-88922-242-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-475-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 1949 46 978-0-88922-148-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Vol. II: The Squamish and the Lillooet 978-0-88922-266-3; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Grace, Sherrill & 22 One Crack Out 47 Jerry Wasserman

French, David

Karasick, Adeena Amuse Bouche Dyssemia Sleaze

978-0-88922-434-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

The Empress Has No Closure

978-0-88922-307-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-149-9; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-488-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-604-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing 57 Vol. III: The Mainland Halkomelem 23 Genrecide and Performing Lives in Theory and 978-0-88922-370-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-150-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-487-2; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Practice 24 The House That Hijack Built 57 Vol. IV: The Sechelt and the Salt-Water Moon 49 978-0-88922-540-4; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-511-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD South-Eastern Tribes of 978-0-88922-257-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 59 Vancouver Island 23 Mêmewars Silver Dagger 49 Gray, John 978-0-88922-344-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 45 978-0-88922-151-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-325-7; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Local Boy Makes Good This Poem 6 978-0-88922-248-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Soldier’s Heart 50 Hogg, Robert 978-0-88922-699-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Lost in North America: The Imaginary 978-0-88922-463-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD An English Canadian Poetics Canadian in the American Dream That Summer 51 Vol. I: The Confederation Poets 18 Kearns, Lionel 20 978-0-88922-439-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 56 978-0-88922-613-5; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD A Few Words Will Do The Riddle of the World

978-0-88922-350-9; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Billy Bishop Goes to War, 2nd ed.

Gagnon, Madeleine Against the Wind My Name Is Bosnia

978-0-88922-689-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-696-8; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-542-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Hadfield, D.A.

Women in a World at War: Seven Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic Dispatches from the Front 25 History: The Politics of Playing in 978-0-88922-483-4; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Toronto 22 978-0-88922-563-3; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Gale, Lorena Je me souviens

In Piazza San Domenico

43 The Great Wave of Civilization

978-0-88922-674-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Mambo Italiano

45 Hendry, Tom

Indian Myths & Legends from the Homel, David North Pacific Coast of America: Get on Top 29 A Translation of Franz Boas’ 978-0-7737-6048-6; $22.95 CAD / $18.95 USD 1895 Edition of Indianische Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen Hughes, Kenneth James Küste Amerikas 19 Signs of Literature 23 The Lil’wat World of Charlie Mack 20

Hunter, Lynette

978-0-88922-640-1; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Studies in Motion Unity (1918) 43

978-0-88922-561-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Cold Comfort

978-0-88922-587-9; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ABC of Reading TRG

Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon

Kitagawa, Muriel 24

Cloth: 978-0-88922-231-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

The Abolition of Time

Glover, Douglas

978-0-88922-461-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

This Is My Own

Garrard, Jim 37

978-0-88922-592-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Inglis, Raul Sanchez

978-0-88922-638-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-282-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Empire of Desire:

978-0-88922-201-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Kerr, Kevin Skydive

In the Eyes of God

52 Hentsch, Thierry

978-0-88922-553-4; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

978-0-88922-236-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-096-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Garneau, Michel Warriors

Bouchard

978-0-88922-385-1; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-363-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-106-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-494-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass

53 Kennedy, Dorothy & Randy

978-0-88922-018-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Galluccio, Steve

Willful Acts

Outsider Notes

44 Hardin, Herschel

978-0-88922-453-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Esker Mike and His Wife, Agiluk

978-0-88922-558-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Hollingsworth, Margaret

Gray, John, with Eric Peterson

Kiyooka, Roy K.

18 Jaeger, Peter

16 Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka 60 978-0-88922-423-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Truth or Death: The Quest for Immortality in the Western Narrative Tradition 24 Jetha, Sadru 978-0-88922-509-1; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD Nuri Does Not Exist

Hesiod

978-0-88922-378-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Knickerbocker, Nancy

978-0-88922-655-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD No Plaster Saint: The Life of Mildred

Osterhout Fahrni 21 978-0-88922-452-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 7 Johnson, Chris Gold, Artie 978-0-88922-700-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Essays on George F. Walker: Playing Kröller, Eva-Marie with Anxiety 18 The Collected Books of Artie Gold 55 Highway, Tomson 978-0-921368-82-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD George Bowering: Bright Circles of 978-0-88922-652-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Colour 19 Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout 40 978-0-88922-228-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Grace, Sherrill Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock

Theogony / Works and Days

978-0-88922-525-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Joseph, Maia, et al.

48 Tracing the Lines: Reflections on Contemporary Poetics and Cultural 978-0-88922-490-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Politics in Honour of Roy Miki 4

978-0-88922-306-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Rose 20

978-0-88922-586-2; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

Hildebrandt, Walter

Strange Comfort: Essays on the Work of Malcolm Lowry 23 The Battle of Batoche: British Small Warfare and the Entrenched Métis 978-0-88922-618-0; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 3 978-0-88922-693-7; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-694-4; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

L Lafond, Jean-Daniel & Fred A. Reed Conversations in Tehran

978-0-88922-550-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 67

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 67

Lamothe, Serge The Baldwins

MacDonald, Bryden 26 Divinity Bash / nine lives

978-0-88922-544-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

43 The Medusa Head

978-0-88922-582-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-210-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

43 The Time Being 33 978-0-88922-408-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Hope Slide / Little Sister 978-0-88922-411-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-374-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 52

The Weekend Healer

Langley, Rod Bethune

Homechild 39

978-0-88922-088-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

49 978-0-88922-360-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Shape of a Girl / Jewel 978-0-88922-460-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 53

Whale Riding Weather

Mercer, Michael Goodnight Disgrace

51 978-0-88922-353-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Toronto, Mississippi 978-0-88922-238-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Dunsmuirs: Alone at the Edge 39 978-0-88922-583-1; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD With Bated Breath 53 978-0-88922-297-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 51 Miki, Roy 978-0-88922-651-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 2000 The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept 39 978-0-88922-373-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD A Record of Writing 22 978-0-88922-304-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD MacDonald, Josh Cloth: 978-0-88922-263-2; $39.95 CAD / $34.95 USD Halo

Lavallée, Ronald

42 Mailhot, Michèle

27 978-0-88922-469-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Death of the Spider Tchipayuk: or The Way of the Wolf 32 978-0-88922-298-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Whereverville 53 978-0-88922-338-7; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD 978-0-88922-506-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Malyon, Carol & bill bissett

Leonoff, Cyril E.

McElroy, Gil

Bridges of Light: Otto Landauer of Cold Comfort: Growing Up Leonard Frank Photos, 1945–1980 Cold War 17 Cloth: 978-0-88922-376-9; $39.95 CAD / $34.95 USD

Leroux, Louis Patrick Ludwig & Mae

978-0-88922-336-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-569-5; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Corker

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum

978-0-88922-606-7; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Marchessault, Jovette

56 Like a Child of the Earth

Miki, Roy & Cassandra Kobayashi Justice in Our Time: The Japanese Canadian Redress Settlement 19 Cloth: 978-0-88922-292-2; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-261-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-499-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Mother of the Grass

Ordinary Time

Mitchell, Ken

McFadden, David W.

978-0-88922-213-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Moore, Mavor

Morse, Garry Thomas

19 Marlatt, Daphne 57

978-0-88922-271-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-280-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-382-0; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD The Gull

978-1-55331-002-0; $14.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Six Plays by Mavor Moore 56 White Pebbles in the Dark Forests 33

978-0-88922-468-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

42 Gypsy Guitar

Moodie, Andrew

30 The Lady Smith

978-0-88922-267-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-675-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Saga of the Wet Hens

41 Great Lakes Suite

978-0-88922-226-7; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-256-4; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

58 The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr Cruel Tears 38 978-0-88922-575-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-120-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 45 NonZero Definitions 59 978-0-88922-314-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

37 Five Star Planet

978-0-88922-394-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

The Fighting Days

Dream Pool Essays

978-0-88922-454-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Lill, Wendy

Chimera

978-0-88922-684-5; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

45 Last Scattering Surfaces

978-0-88922-623-4; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

All Fall Down

griddle talk: a yeer uv bill n carol dewing brunch

Tracing the Paths: Reading =/ Writing The Martyrology 24

42 After Jack

978-0-88922-630-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-616-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-250-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Selected Writing: Net Work 27 61 Death in Vancouver 46 There’ll Be Another 62 978-0-88922-607-4; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-175-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-369-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Memories of You

978-0-88922-489-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

The Occupation of Heather Rose

978-0-88922-593-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Sisters

978-0-88922-289-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Loring, Kevin Where the Blood Mixes

978-0-88922-608-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Luxton, Donald Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia

978-0-88922-361-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD This Tremor Love Is

MacIvor, Daniel Cul-de-sac

The Centre: Poems 1970–2000

978-0-88922-554-1; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

mclennan, rob gifts

Murakami, Sachiko The Invisibility Exhibit

978-0-88922-579-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

60 978-0-88922-189-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Rebuild 978-0-88922-670-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Poet to Publisher: Charles Olson’s Correspondence with Donald Allen Murphy, John 22 The Heretic 978-0-88922-486-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Stories

978-0-88922-595-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-605-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD The Porcupine Hunter and Other

Glengarry

978-0-88922-697-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-576-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Legend 55

978-0-88922-497-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Minor Episodes / Major Ruckus

978-0-88922-552-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and

McKinnon, Barry

978-0-88922-660-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-450-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

38 Maud, Ralph

978-0-88922-515-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Charles Olson at the Harbor

Marion Bridge

62 Discovery Passages

22 Murrell, John

38 978-0-88922-333-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Democracy 57 Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas 978-0-921368-28-1; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD

978-0-88922-662-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

harvest: a book of signifiers

McCaffery, Steve & bpNichol

978-0-88922-455-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the The Richard Brautigan Book-Machine 22 Ahhhhhhhhhhh 978-0-88922-300-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Specks, 2nd ed.

978-0-88922-688-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Vancouver: A Visual History

Cloth: 978-0-88922-311-0; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD

61 63

978-0-88922-498-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

MacLeod, Joan Amigo’s Blue Guitar

Macdonald, Bruce

24 The Faraway Nearby Waiting for the Parade

Meigs, Mary Beyond Recall

978-0-88922-183-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-505-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

The Box Closet

978-0-88922-253-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

34 In the Company of Strangers

19 Nichol, bp

54 978-0-88922-294-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD bpNichol Comics 35 Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait 978-0-88922-448-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 20

978-0-88922-371-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Another Home Invasion

978-0-921368-56-4; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD

978-0-88922-430-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-424-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

what’s left

McClure, Michael

and Tsimshian Mythology

978-0-88922-622-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-195-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 68

68 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of Lawrence & Holloman 44 Richmond, Jacob Summerland 32 bpNichol 20 978-0-88922-392-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Legoland 978-0-88922-313-4; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD 44 978-0-88922-447-6; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Other Schools of Thought 47 978-0-88922-610-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Selected Writing: As Elected 61 978-0-88922-346-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD S Robertson, Leslie A. & 978-0-88922-176-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 7 Stories 49

Nichol, James W. Sainte-Marie among the Hurons

978-0-88922-281-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-147-5; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Nicholson, Cecily Triage

978-0-88922-624-1; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Trespassers, The 62

978-0-88922-692-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Norris, Ken 54

What Lies Before Us

978-0-88922-560-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-633-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Dominican Moon

55 Peters, Carl

978-0-88922-526-8; $17.95 CAD / $15.95 USD textual vishyuns: image and text in

Fifty

Going Home

Walsh

978-0-88922-215-1; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

O’Hagan, Howard

978-0-88922-254-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Motortherapy

978-0-88922-330-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-502-2; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Rodin, Renee

Subject to Change

Scobie, Stephen

Scott, Gail Heroine

978-0-88922-415-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

55 Main Brides 23

978-0-88922-644-9; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88910-456-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Simons, Beverley

32 Bordertown Café 33

978-0-88922-327-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

O’Neill, Chris & Ken Schwartz 53

978-0-88922-477-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Carpenter: A Carpenter’s Trilogy, Strindberg, August A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part III Miss Julie 37

Reed, Fred A. Anatolia Junction: A Journey into Hidden Turkey

978-0-88922-609-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Hellfire Pass: A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A Suttles, Wayne Chronicle in Three Plays, Part I 43 Coast Salish Essays 16

978-0-88922-426-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Iran After Khomeini

978-0-88922-393-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Rostand, Edmond

Muthologos: Lectures and Interviews, Salonica Terminus: Travels into the Cyrano de Bergerac 38 Tallman, Warren 2nd ed. 21 Balkan Nightmare 23 978-0-921368-43-4; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD In the Midst 978-0-88922-368-4; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-485-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

27 Taylor, Drew Hayden 978-0-88922-301-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD alterNatives

978-0-88922-428-5; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-276-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-441-4; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Taking My Life

Panych, Morris

978-0-88922-308-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Shattered Images: The Rise of Militant Rule, Jane Iconoclasm in Syria 23 Desert of the Heart

978-0-88922-212-0; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-564-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Paradise by the River 21

978-0-88922-351-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-639-5; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

978-0-88922-549-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-491-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Persian Postcards:

Olson, Charles

978-0-88922-701-9; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-594-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Rebar, Kelly

978-0-88922-129-1; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Westray: The Long Way Home

Mimosa

Crabdance 38 37 Rossi, Vittorio 978-0-88922-016-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-001-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Carmela’s Table: A Carpenter’s Trilogy, Soutar, Annabel A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part II Listen to the Wind 45 Seeds 9 37 978-0-88922-002-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Trees Are Lonely Company

978-0-88922-367-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

58 Reaney, James 978-0-88922-401-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Colours in the Dark

The School-Marm Tree

978-0-88922-208-3; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-522-0; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Nature Power: In the Spirit of an Okanagan Storyteller

Bread and Salt

978-0-88922-456-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Limbo Road

Chameleon & Other Stories

Wickwire

24 Write It on Your Heart: bpNichol: What History Teaches 17 The Epic World of an Okanagan 978-0-88922-661-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-220-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Storyteller 25

978-0-88922-573-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Hotel Montreal: New and Selected Poems

Schermbrucker, Bill

978-0-88922-504-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

56 Pollock, Sharon

978-0-88922-659-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-513-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Living by Stories: A Journey of Landscape and Memory

978-0-88922-122-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

the work of bill bissett

978-0-88922-479-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Floating Up to Zero

Salutin, Rick

51 Robinson, Harry & Wendy

978-0-88922-628-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-657-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Vigil, 2nd ed.

Asian Skies

Dara Culhane

In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Still Laughing: Three Adaptations by 49 Downtown Eastside Vancouver 19 Les Canadiens Morris Panych 50

Takeover in Tehran: 35 978-0-88922-673-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD The Baby Blues The Inside Story of the 1979 U.S. 978-0-88922-406-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Embassy Capture 23 Theme for Diverse Instruments 33 978-0-88922-584-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 36 978-0-88922-443-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-060-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD The Berlin Blues The Dishwashers 39 978-0-88922-581-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Then We Were One: Fragments of 978-0-88922-524-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Ryga, George The Boy in the Treehouse / Girl Who Two Lives 24 Earshot 39 The Athabasca Ryga 26 Loved Her Horses 36 978-0-88922-667-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Benevolence

978-0-88922-444-5; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

The Ends of the Earth

40 Reid, Jamie

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

978-0-88922-334-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD I. Another. The Space Between:

Girl in the Goldfish Bowl

978-0-88922-481-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Gordon

978-0-88922-664-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

In Absentia

Selected Poems

978-0-88922-702-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-000-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

58 George Ryga: The Other Plays

978-0-88922-512-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-672-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

In the Shadow of the Vulture

978-0-88922-597-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

29 400 Kilometres

978-0-88922-233-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-663-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

28 Fearless Warriors, 2nd ed.

978-0-88922-501-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-462-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

42 Dead White Writer on the Floor

978-0-88922-500-8; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

George Ryga: The Prairie Novels

Renaud, Yannick

8 All Is Flesh

40 The Buz’Gem Blues

978-0-88922-517-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 69

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 69

In a World Created by a Drunken God Birth of a Bookworm 16 A Thing of Beauty 33 Wasserman, Jerry 43 978-0-88922-476-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-390-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Modern Canadian Plays: 978-0-88922-537-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD The Black Notebook 26 Twelve Opening Acts 25 Vol. I, 4th ed. 46 NEWS: Postcards from the 978-0-88922-543-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-466-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-436-0; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD Four Directions 21 The Blue Notebook 26 Modern Canadian Plays: Tulchinsky, Karen X. 978-0-88922-643-2; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-619-7; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Vol. II, 4th ed. 46 The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky 28 Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies 978-0-88922-437-7; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD 978-0-88922-646-3; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD 47 16 Modern Canadian Plays: 978-0-88922-384-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-541-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Tussman, Joseph Vol. I, 5th ed. 13 Bonjour, Là, Bonjour 36 The Burden of Office: Agamemnon 978-0-88922-678-4; $49.95 CAD / $49.95 USD Thesen, Sharon 978-0-88922-252-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD and Other Losers 17 Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Aurora 54 Crossing the Continent 27 Theatre of Neptune in New France 978-0-88922-265-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88910-471-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 50 978-0-88922-676-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD The New Long Poem Anthology, 978-0-88922-547-3; $21.95 CAD / $21.95 USD Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra 38 2nd ed. 59 V Twenty Years at Play: A New Play 978-0-88922-184-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-438-4; $39.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Centre Anthology 51 The Driving Force 39 Vanderhaeghe, Guy News & Smoke: Selected Poems 59 978-0-88922-417-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-530-5; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The Duchess and the Commoner

Thomas, Audrey

Dancock’s Dance

978-0-88922-533-6; $16.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-418-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-275-5; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Watts, Charles & Edward Byrne

The Recovery of the Public World 22 Verdecchia, Guillermo 30 La Duchesse de Langeais & Other 978-0-88922-388-2; $39.95 CAD / $29.95 USD 978-0-88922-167-3; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 35 Plays 39 Another Country / bloom Mrs. Blood 30 978-0-88922-570-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Webb, Phyllis 978-0-88922-104-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-319-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD En Pièces Détachées 57 27 Hanging Fire 40 Citizen Suárez Real Mothers 31 978-0-88910-391-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-391-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-092-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-191-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant Fronteras Americanas: American Selected Poems: The Vision Tree 61 Songs My Mother Taught Me 32 Borders, 2nd ed. 10 978-0-88922-202-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 28 Latakia

978-0-88922-329-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Tostevin, Lola Lemire Cartouches

978-0-88922-355-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Tremblay, Larry Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

Verdecchia, Guillermo & Marcus

978-0-88922-352-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Youssef

For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again 41 A Line in the Sand Forever Yours, Marie-Lou

34 26

Wah, Fred

43 is a door

Y 58

978-0-88922-445-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Impromptu on Nuns’ Island

43 978-0-88922-177-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-470-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Sentenced to Light 61

978-0-88922-536-7; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD La Maison Suspendue

The Hunting Ground

978-0-88922-534-3; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Judith’s Sister

978-0-88922-295-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Tremblay, Lise

978-0-88922-677-7; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Marcel Pursued by the Hounds

978-0-88922-326-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

News from Édouard

978-0-88922-435-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Past Perfect

Mile End

Assorted Candies for the Theatre

35 Some Night My Prince Will Come

978-0-88922-123-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

31 978-0-88922-296-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-620-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-645-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD The Impromptu of Outremont 43 Selected Poems: Loki Is Buried at Talking Bodies 50 978-0-88922-185-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Smoky Creek 61 52

Woodcock, George

Piercing

The Ventriloquist

978-0-88922-255-7; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-425-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-528-2; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Hosanna

The Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors

Two Plays

978-0-88922-349-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Wells, Oliver N.

978-0-88922-375-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-389-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-649-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Heart Laid Bare

The Bicycle Eater

978-0-88922-705-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-190-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

The First Quarter of the Moon

978-0-88922-577-0; $29.95 CAD; $29.95 USD

978-0-88922-654-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

The East End Plays: Part I

Chris Arnett They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever 24 Cloth: 978-0-88922-331-8; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD

Youssef, Marcus

Walker, George F. And So It Goes

York, Annie, Richard Daly &

Adrift

978-0-88922-585-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

40 Youssef, Marcus, Guillermo

978-0-88922-413-1; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Verdecchia & Camyar Chai

40 The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the 978-0-88922-467-4; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-404-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD aXes of Evil 34 The Real World? 48 Heaven 42 978-0-88922-516-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Tremblay, Michel 978-0-88922-260-1; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-429-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 31 Albertine in Five Times (translated by The Red Notebook The Power Plays 48 Gaboriau) 34 978-0-88922-588-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Z 978-0-88922-414-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 48 978-0-88922-627-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Remember Me Somewhere Else 50 Albertine in Five Times (translated by 978-0-88922-219-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Zomparelli, Daniel 978-0-88922-402-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Van Burek & Glassco) 34 Sainte-Carmen of the Main 48 Davie Street Translations 14 Suburban Motel 50 978-0-88922-234-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-181-9; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-572-5; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-493-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-510-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The East End Plays: Part II

978-0-88922-412-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Walsh, Des

16 Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Love and Savagery 59 Hanging Angel 33 978-0-88922-380-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-599-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-198-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD The Singer’s Broken Throat Les Belles Soeurs 35 62 Bambi and Me

978-0-88922-302-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-478-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-683-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 70

70 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title

Booklist Index by Title A ABC of Reading TRG, 16 Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, 34 Adrift, 34 Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, The, 34 After Jack, 54 Against the Wind, 5 Albertine in Five Times (translated by Gaboriau), 34 Albertine in Five Times (translated by Van Burek & Glassco), 34 All Fall Down, 34 All Is Flesh, 54 All That Glitters, 26 All the Verdis of Venice, 34 alterNatives, 34 American Notebooks, 16 Amigo’s Blue Guitar, 34 Amuse Bouche, 54 Anarcho-Modernism, 16 Anatolia Junction, 16 And Other Stories, 26 And So It Goes, 34 Angel of Solitude, The, 26 Annihilated Time, 16 Another Country / bloom, 35 Another Home Invasion, 35 Asian Skies, 54 Assorted Candies for the Theatre, 35 Athabasca Ryga, The, 26 Aurora, 54

B b leev abul char ak trs, 54 Baby Blues, The, 35 Back to the War, 54 Balconville, 35 Baldwins, The, 26 Bambi and Me, 16 Banana Boots, 35 Bardy Google, 54 Baseball Love, 16 BASH’d, 35 Battle of Batoche, The, 3 Beating the Bushes, 35 Belles Soeurs, Les, 35 Benevolence, 35 Berlin Blues, The, 36 Bethune, 36 Beyond Recall, 16 Bicycle Eater, The, 26 Billy Bishop Goes to War, 11

Birth of a Bookworm, 16 Black Notebook, The, 26 Blonds on Bikes, 54 Blue Notebook, The, 26 Boiler Room Suite, 36 Bolsheviki, 15 Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies, 16 Bonjour, Là, Bonjour, 36 Book of Esther, The, 15 Bordertown Café, 36 Box Closet, The, 17 Boy in the Treehouse, The / Girl Who Loved Her Horses, 36 bpNichol Comics, 54 bpNichol: What History Teaches, 17 Bread and Salt, 55 Breakdown So Far, The, 26 Bridges of Light, 17 Building the West, 17 Burden of Office, The, 17 Burning Vision, 36 Buz’Gem Blues, The, 36

C Cambodia, 26 Can You See Me Yet?, 36 Canadian Drama and the Critics, 17 Canadiens, Les, 36 Capital Tales, 27 Cariboo Magi, 37 Carmela’s Table, 37 Carpenter, The, 37 Cartouches, 55 Centre, The: Poems 1970–2000, 55 Chameleon & Other Stories, 27 Change Room, 55 Charles Olson at the Harbor, 17 Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors, The, 17 Chimera, 37 Chinese Blue, 14 Circumstances Alter Photographs, 17 Circus Performers’ Bar, The, 27 Citizen Suárez, 27 Coast Salish Essays, 17 Cold Comfort, 37 Cold Comfort: Growing Up Cold War, 13 Collected Books of Artie Gold, The, 55 Colours in the Dark, 37 Commons, The, 55 Concise Köchel, The, 37 Consecrated Ground, 37 Conversations in Tehran, 18 Copper Thunderbird, 37 Corker, 37

Coronation Voyage, The, 38 Covenant of Salt, A, 27 Crabdance, 38 Crimes and Mercies, 18 Crossing the Continent, 27 Cruel Tears, 38 Cul-de-sac, 38 Cultural Mischief, 55 Cyrano de Bergerac, 38

English Canadian Poetics, An, 18 Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, 40 Error in Judgement, An, 18 Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk, 40 Espresso, 40 Essays on George F. Walker, 18 EX MACHINA, 18 Execution, The, 40

F D Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra, 38 Dancock’s Dance, 38 Darwin Alone in the Universe, 27 Davie Street Translations, 14 Dead White Writer on the Floor, 38 Death in Vancouver, 27 Death of René Lévesque, The, 38 Death of the Spider, 27 Decline of the Hollywood Empire, The, 18 Decompositions, 55 Democracy, 38 Desert of the Heart, 27 Diplomacy, 39 Discovery Passages, 55 Dishwashers, The, 39 Divinity Bash / nine lives, 39 Doctor Thomas Neill Cream, 39 Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Saskatoon, 28 Dominican Moon, 55 Down Dangerous Passes Road, 39 Down the Road to Eternity, 28 Down Time, 56 Dream Pool Essays, 56 Driving Force, The, 39 Duchess and the Commoner, The, 28 Duchesse de Langeais & Other Plays, La, 39 Dunsmuirs, The: Alone at the Edge, 39 Dunsmuirs, The: A Promise Kept, 39 Dürer’s Angel, 28 Dwell, 56 Dyssemia Sleaze, 56

E Earshot, 39 East End Plays, The: Part I, 40 East End Plays, The: Part II, 40 Ecstasy of Rita Joe, The, 40 Edward Curtis Project, The, 18, 40 Empire of Desire, 18 Empress Has No Closure, The, 56 En Pièces Détachées, 40 Ends of the Earth, The, 40

Fairies Are Thirsty, The, 41 Fairy Ring, 28 Faraway Nearby, The, 41 Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, The, 28 Fearless Warriors, 28 Few Words Will Do, A, 56 Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass, 41 15 Seconds, 41 Fifty, 56 Fighting Days, The, 41 First Quarter of the Moon, The, 28 Five Books of Moses Lapinsky, The, 28 Five Star Planet, 56 Floating Up to Zero, 56 For Home and Country, 41 For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, 41 Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, 41 400 Kilometres, 41 fractal economies, 56 Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists, 41 Fronteras Americanas, 10

G Gabriel Dumont Speaks, 18 Genrecide, 57 George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour, 19 George Ryga: The Other Plays, 42 George Ryga: The Prairie Novels, 28 Get on Top, 29 Gideon’s Blues, 42 gifts, 57 Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, 42 Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, The, 42 Glengarry, 57 Go Figure, 29 Going Home, 57 Goodnight Disgrace, 42 Gordon, 42 Great Lakes Suite, 19 Great Wave of Civilization, The, 42 griddle talk, 19 Ground Water, 57

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 71

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title 71

Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend, A, 19 Gull, The, 42 Gypsy Guitar, 57

K Kerrisdale Elegies, 58

L H

Lady Smith, The, 44 Lasagna, 20 Halo, 42 last photo uv th human soul, th, 58 Hanging Fire, 57 Happiest Man in the World and Other Last Scattering Surfaces, 58 Latakia, 30 Stories, The, 29 Lawrence & Holloman, 44 Harry’s Fragments, 29 Legoland, 44 harvest, 57 Leisure Society, The, 44 Heart Laid Bare, The, 29 Life Without Instruction, 44 Heaven, 42 Like a Child of the Earth, 30 Hell & Other Novels, 29 Lil’wat World of Charlie Mack, The, 20 Hellfire Pass, 43 Lily Briscoe, 20 Heretic, The, 43 Limbo Road, 58 Heroine, 29 Line in the Sand, A, 45 History of Change, A, 2 Lions Gate, 20 Homechild, 43 Listen to the Wind, 45 Hope Slide, The / Little Sister, 43 Living by Stories, 20 Hosanna, 43 Local Boy Makes Good, 45 Hotel Montreal, 57 Lost in North America, 20 House That Hijack Built, The, 57 Lost Souls and Missing Persons, 45 How to Write, 19 Love and Savagery, 59 Hunting Ground, The, 29 loving without being vulnrabul, 59 hypoderm, 58 Ludwig & Mae, 45

I I. Another. The Space Between, 58 Imperial Canada Inc., 12 Impromptu of Outremont, The, 43 Impromptu on Nuns’ Island, 43 In a World Created by a Drunken God, 43 In Absentia, 8 In Piazza San Domenico, 43 In Plain Sight, 19 In the Company of Strangers, 19 In the Eyes of God, 43 In the Eyes of Stone Dogs, 44 In the Midst, 19 In the Shadow of the Vulture, 29 Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America, 19 influenza uv logik, th, 58 inkorrect thots, 58 Invisibility Exhibit, The, 58 is a door, 58

J Jacob’s Wake, 44 Je me souviens, 44 Jitters, 44 Joe Beef, 44 Judith’s Sister, 29 Justice in Our Time, 19

M Madonna Painter, The, 45 Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr, The, 45 Main Brides, 30 Maison Suspendue, La, 45 Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock, 20 Maleficium, 13 Mambo Italiano, 45 Marcel Pursued by the Hounds, 45 Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics, 20 Marion Bridge, 46 Meanwhile, 20 Medusa Head, The, 20 Mêmewars, 59 Memories of You, 46 Mile End, 30 Mimosa, 30 Minor Episodes / Major Ruckus, 1 Miss Julie, 46 Miss Take, 30 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. I, 4th ed., 46 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. II, 4th ed., 46 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. I, 5th ed., 13

Mom’s the Word, 46 Moo, 46 Mother of the Grass, 30 Motortherapy, 30 Moustache, The, 59 Mrs. Blood, 30 Muthologos, 21 My Career with the Leafs & Other Stories, 30 My Darling Nellie Grey, 59 My Name Is Bosnia, 31

N narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane, 59 Nature Power, 21 New Long Poem Anthology, The, 59 NEWS, 21 News & Smoke, 59 News from Édouard, 31 1949, 46 No Plaster Saint, 21 Noam Chomsky Lectures, The, 46 Noise from the Laundry, 59 NonZero Definitions, 59 northern wild roses / deth interrupts th dansing, 60 Nothing to Lose, 46 novel, 31 Nuri Does Not Exist, 31

O Occupation of Heather Rose, The, 47 Omniscience, 47 On the Job, 47 On the Material, 60 One Crack Out, 47 Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth, 47 Ordinary Time, 60 Other Losses, 21 Other Schools of Thought, 47 Outsider Notes, 21

P Pacific Windows, 60 Pagan Wall, The, 31 Painter’s Wife, The, 31 Paradise by the River, 47 Paradise Garden, 47 Past Perfect, 47 Paul Martin & Companies, 21 Pell Mell, 60 Peregrinations, 21 Performing National Identities, 21 Persian Postcards, 21

peter among th towring boxes / text bites, 60 Phyllis Webb and the Common Good, 22 Piercing, 31 Playing Bare, 47 Pleasure of the Crown, The, 22 Poet to Publisher, 22 Popular Narratives, 60 Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories, The, 22 Post-Prairie, 60 Power Plays, The, 48 Properties, The, 14

Q Queens, The, 48

R Rain Barrel, The, 31 Rap Canterbury Tales, The, 60 Rational Geomancy, 22 Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History, 22 Real Mothers, 31 Real World?, The, 48 Rebuild, 60 Record of Writing, A, 22 Recovery of the Public World, The, 22 Red Notebook, The, 31 Refugee Hotel, The, 48 Remember Me, 48 Richard Brautigan Ahhhhhhhhhhh, The, 61 Riddle of the World, The, 48 Rose, 48

S Saga of the Wet Hens, 48 Saint Frances of Hollywood, 48 Sainte-Carmen of the Main, 48 Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, 49 Salish People, The, Vol. I, 22 Salish People, The, Vol. II, 22 Salish People, The, Vol. III, 23 Salish People, The, Vol. IV, 23 Salonica Terminus, 23 Salt-Water Moon, 49 Satchmo’ Suite, The, 49 scars on th seehors, 61 Scattered in a Rising Wind, 32 Schoolhouse, 49 School-Marm Tree, The, 32 Seagull, The, 49 Secret Journal of Alexander Mackenzie, The, 32 Seeds, 9

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 72

72 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title

Selected Poems: The Arches, 61 Selected Poems: Beyond Even Faithful Legends, 61 Selected Poems: Loki Is Buried at Smoky Creek, 61 Selected Poems: The Vision Tree, 61 Selected Writing: As Elected, 61 Selected Writing: Net Work, 61 Sentenced to Light, 61 7 Stories, 49 Shape of a Girl, The / Jewel, 49 Shattered Images, 23 Shinny’s Girls and Other Stories, 32 Shovel, The, 61 Signs of Literature, 23 Silver Dagger, 49 Singer’s Broken Throat, The, 62 Sisters, 49 Six Plays by Mavor Moore, 49 Skydive, 50 Slight Case of Fatigue, A, 32 Soldier’s Heart, 50 Some Night My Prince Will Come, 32 Somewhere Else, 50 Song of the Say-Sayer, 50 Songs My Mother Taught Me, 32 Specks, 14 Spectacle of Empire, 50 Sticks & Stones, 62 Still Laughing, 50 Strange Comfort, 23 Strange Truth About Us, The, 32 Studies in Motion, 50 Subject to Change, 23 sublingual, 62 Suburban Motel, 50 Summerland, 32

T Takeover in Tehran, 23 Taking My Life, 23 Tale of Teeka, The, 50 Talking Bodies, 50 Tchipayuk, 32 Terror of the Coast, The, 23 textual vishyuns, 24 That Summer, 51 That Woman, 51 Theatre and AutoBiography, 24 Theme for Diverse Instruments, 33 Then We Were One, 24 Theogony / Works and Days, 7 There’ll Be Another, 62 Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel, 33 They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever, 24

Thing of Beauty, A, 33 This Is My Own, 24 This Poem, 6 This Tremor Love Is, 62 ths is erth thees ar peopul, 62 Tiln & Other Plays, 51 time, 62 Time Being, The, 33 Timothy Findley and the Aesthetics of Fascism, 24 Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, 15 Too Good to Be True, 24 Toronto, Mississippi, 51 Tracing the Lines, 4 Tracing the Paths, 24 Transmission Difficulties, 24 Transnational Muscle Cars, 62 Trees Are Lonely Company, 33 Trespassers, The, 51 Triage, 62 Trial of Judith K., The, 51 Trigger, The, 51 Truth or Death, 24 Turkana Boy, 13 Twelve Opening Acts, 25 Twenty Years at Play, 51 Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand, 25 Two Plays, 51 2000, 51

U Unity (1918), 52 Unnatural and Accidental Women, The, 52

V Vancouver: A Visual History, 25 Vancouver Anthology, 25 Ventriloquist, The, 52 Vermeer’s Light, 62 Vic, The, 52 Vigil, 15

W Waiting for the Parade, 52 Walsh, 52 Wanted, 52 Warriors, 52 WASPs, 52 Weekend Healer, The, 52 Westray, 53 Whale Riding Weather, 53 What Lies Before Us, 53 what’s left, 63 Where the Blood Mixes, 53 Whereverville, 53

White Pebbles in the Dark Forests, 33 Willful Acts, 53 With Bated Breath, 53 Women in a World at War, 25 Write It on Your Heart, 25 Written on Water, 53

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 73

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Translator 73

Booklist Index by Translator Aronoff, Phyllis & Howard Scott Against the Wind, 5 My Name Is Bosnia, 31 A Slight Case of Fatigue, 32 Women in a World at War, 25

Barnholden, Michael Gabriel Dumont Speaks, 18

Bertz, Dietrich Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America, 19

Bilodeau, Chantal Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, 34

Bishop, Neil B. Death of the Spider, 27

Brown, Alan The Fairies Are Thirsty, 41

Browning, Will Go Figure, 29 Miss Take, 30

Claxton, Patricia Tchipayuk, 32

Fischman, Sheila Bambi and Me, 16 The Bicycle Eater, 26 Birth of a Bookworm, 16 The Black Notebook, 26 The Blue Notebook, 26 Crossing the Continent, 27 The Duchess and the Commoner, 28 The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, 28 The First Quarter of the Moon, 28 The Heart Laid Bare, 29 News from Édouard, 31 The Painter’s Wife, 31 The Red Notebook, 31 Some Night My Prince Will Come, 32 Talking Bodies, 50 Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel, 33 A Thing of Beauty, 33 Twelve Opening Acts, 25

French, David

Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies, 16 The Concise Köchel, 37 The Coronation Voyage, 38 Down Dangerous Passes Road, 39 The Driving Force, 39 For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, 41 Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists, 41 The Hunting Ground, 29 Impromptu on Nuns’ Island, 43 In the Eyes of Stone Dogs, 44 Judith’s Sister, 29 The Madonna Painter, 45 The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr, 45 Past Perfect, 47 Piercing, 31 The Queens, 48 Saga of the Wet Hens, 48 Scattered in a Rising Wind, 32 Song of the Say-Sayer, 50 The Tale of Teeka, 50 That Woman, 51 Warriors, 52 Written on Water, 53

The Baldwins, 26 A Covenant of Salt, 27 Fairy Ring, 28 Maleficium, 13

Reed, Fred A. & Robin Philpot Imperial Canada Inc., 12

Scott, Gail Mile End, 30

Stowe, John Remember Me, 48

Tepperman, Shelley Playing Bare, 47

Tepperman, Shelley & Ellen Warkentin Ludwig & Mae, 45

Theodore, Bobby 15 Seconds, 41 The Leisure Society, 44

Turnbull, Keith The Ventriloquist, 52

Van Burek, John

Hodes, Laura

Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra, 38 La Duchesse de Langeais & Other Plays, 39 The Impromptu of Outremont, 43 La Maison Suspendue, 45 Sainte-Carmen of the Main, 48

The Angel of Solitude, 26

Van Burek, John & Bill Glassco

Klein, Yvonne M.

Albertine in Five Times, 34 Les Belles Soeurs, 35 Bonjour, Là, Bonjour, 36 Forever Yours, Marie-Lou, 41 Hosanna, 43 Marcel Pursued by the Hounds, 45 The Real World?, 48

Hazelton, Hugh All Is Flesh, 54

Like a Child of the Earth, 30 Mother of the Grass, 30 White Pebbles in the Dark Forests, 33

Kroetsch, Neil EX MACHINA, 18

Lobdell, David Dürer’s Angel, 28 The Execution, 40

Moore, Jessica Turkana Boy, 13

Morrissey, C.S. Theogony / Works and Days, 7

Mullins, Rhonda The Decline of the Hollywood Empire, 18 Paul Martin & Companies, 21

Miss Julie, 46 The Seagull, 49

Murrell, John

Gaboriau, Linda

Reed, Fred A.

Albertine in Five Times, 34 All the Verdis of Venice, 34 American Notebooks, 16 Assorted Candies for the Theatre, 35

Empire of Desire, 18 Truth or Death, 24

Cyrano de Bergerac, 38

Reed, Fred A. & David Homel All That Glitters, 26

Van Meer, Allan En Pièces Détachées, 40

Yoshihara, Toyoshi The Gull, 42

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 74

74 Talonbooks Sales Representation and Ordering

North American Sales Representation

Ordering Information

IN CANADA

Publishers Group Canada

Raincoast Books (Publishers Group Canada) 2440 Viking Way, Richmond, BC V6V 1N2

Head Office 300–76 Stafford Street, Toronto, ON M6J 2S1 tel: (416) 934-9900 · fax: (416) 934-1410 toll free: (800) 747-8147 www.pgcbooks.ca Sales in Atlantic Canada Lori Richardson Publishers Group Canada 300–76 Stafford Street, Toronto, ON M6J 2S1 tel: (416) 934-9900 ext. 207 · fax: (416) 934-1410 lori@pgcbooks.ca Sales in Ontario & Quebec Martin and Associates Sales Agency 594 Windermere Avenue, Toronto, ON M6S 3L8 tel: (416) 769-3947 · fax: (416) 769-5967 toll free: (866) 225-3439 memartin@interlog.com · margots@istar.ca Christa Yoshimoto 7 Beaumaris Court, Waterdown, ON L0R 2H6 tel: (905) 317-5056 · fax: (866) 431-9542 christayoshimoto@sympatico.ca

Ordering toll free: tel: (800) 663-5714 · fax: (800) 565-3770 customerservice@raincoast.com Book Manager & Wordstock EDI tel: (604) 323-7138 · toll free: (800) 661-5450 Telebook: SAN S1150871

IN THE USA Consortium Book Sales & Distribution 1094 Flex Drive Jackson, TN 38301-5070 tel: (800) 283-3572 fax: (612) 647-2632 orderentry@perseusbooks.com Returns: Consortium Book Sales & Distribution 193 Edwards Drive Jackson, TN 38301-7795 tel: (800) 343-4499 fax: (800) 351-5073

IN THE UK, IRELAND & EUROPE Sales in British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan & Manitoba Michael Reynolds and Associates 210–30 East 6th Avenue, Vancouver, BC V5T 1J4 tel: (604) 688-6918 · fax: (604) 687-4624 pubrep@telus.net Heather Parsons 414 13th Avenue NE, Calgary, AB T2E 1C2 tel: (403) 233-8771 · fax: (403) 233-8772 heather.parsons@shaw.ca

IN THE USA Consortium Book Sales & Distribution The Keg House 34 Thirteenth Avenue NE, Suite 101 Minneapolis, MN 55413-1007 toll free: (800) 283-3572 · local: (612) 746-2600 fax: (612) 746-2606 Pubnet: SAN 631760X info@cbsd.com www.cbsd.com

General Inquiries Moira McCann Perseus Books Group 69-70 Temple Chambers 3-7 Temple Avenue London, UK EC4Y 0HP tel: 020-7353-7771 Ordering Bill Bailey 16 Devon Square Newton Abbot Devon, UK TQ12 2HR tel: 01-626-331-079 info@billbaileypubreps.co.uk

IN AUSTRALIA & NEW ZEALAND Scribo International Camilla Dorsch Sales & Marketing Equinox Centre, 18 Rodborough Road Frenchs Forest NSW, Australia 2086 tel: 02-9021-8179 camilla.dorsch@scribo.com.au

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 75

Talonbooks Sales Representation and Ordering 75

Ordering Information continued … IN LATIN AMERICA & THE CARIBBEAN Alison Smith Publishers Group Worldwide 841 Broadway, 4th Floor New York, NY 10003 tel: (212) 614-7970 alison.smith@pgw.com

IN INDIA, NEPAL, BANGLADESH, SRI LANKA & THE MALDIVES Sharad Mohan Yamuna-311, Agrasen Awas 66, I.P.Extension, Patparganj Delhi, India 110092 tel: +91-11-4218-2212 · mobile: +91-98107-90604 sharad.pgw@gmail.com

IN SOUTH AFRICA Nicky Stubbs Book Promotions 101 De Waal Road Diep River Cape Town, South Africa 7800 tel: +27 21 707 5700 enquiries@bookpro.co.za

IN THE MIDDLE EAST Ray Potts Polfages Villautou, France 11420 tel: 33 468 604 890 ray@pim-uk.com

FOR ALL OTHER TERRITORIES & GENERAL INQUIRIES IN THE PHILIPPINES Jaime C. Gregorio 408 Cornell Street Southpointe Townhomes, L.P. Leviste Village Barangay Merville, Paranaque City, Philippines 1700 tel: (632) 822-1108 jaimecarogregorio@gmail.com

Sara McDermott Publishers Group Worldwide 841 Broadway, 4th Floor New York, NY 10003 tel: (212) 614-7981 sara.mcdermott@perseusbooks.com

INDIVIDUAL ORDERS IN CHINA, HONG KONG & TAIWAN Wei Zhao 2-1-503 UHN International 2 Xi Ba He Dong Li, Chaoyang District Beijing, China 100028 tel: 136-8301-8054 wzbooks@aol.com

IN JAPAN & KOREA Gilles Fauveau 2-3-25, 9F Kudanminami Chiyoda-Ku Tokyo, Japan 102-0074 tel: 81-3-32640144 gfauveau@rockbook.net

IN THAILAND, INDONESIA, CAMBODIA, VIETNAM & LAOS June Poonpanich 476/3 Soi Ladprao 47 Wangtonglang Bangkok, Thailand 10310 tel: 08-96603397, 02-5388318 june.p@live.com

Talonbooks PO Box 2076, Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 3S3 tel: (604) 444-4889 · toll free: (888) 445-4176 fax: (604) 444-4119 info@talonbooks.com www.talonbooks.com Individual orders may be placed through the Talonbooks website (PayPal) or by calling our office directly at the numbers above. G.S.T. is not included in Canadian prices quoted in this catalogue. G.S.T. # R88535-3235 All information in this catalogue is subject to change without notice.

F2012_cat:1

9/13/12

3:20 PM

Page 76

76 Talonbooks Canadian Trade Terms and Returns Policy

CANADIAN TRADE TERMS TRADE DISCOUNT

RETURNS POLICY

Retail Discount Under $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% Over $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40%

1. All books purchased from us may be returned to us for full credit, unless otherwise indicated, between 3 months (min.) to 1 year (max.) from date of invoice. If a publisher should change distributors, notices will be placed in the appropriate trade journals regarding the shortened return period. Permission to return books is not required. 2. Returns will be credited in full only if accompanied by an accurate packing slip which shows the following: invoice numbers and dates, ISBN and list price of title, discounts and quantities of each title returned. “Returns” must be marked on the outside of the box. Please number the boxes. 3. Books must be returned in re-saleable condition. We cannot accept books in unsaleable condition whether shop-worn, inkpriced, stickered or sticker-damaged. Outdated annuals, titles for which we no longer have Canadian rights and books not purchased from us will not be accepted. 4. Travel guides and annuals: old editions are full-cover strippable for credit for 3 months after the publication date of a new edition (send full front and back covers). Current editions are not strippable and must be returned whole-copy. 5. Other revised editions: Whole-copy returns will be accepted for up to 3 months after a new edition has been issued. 6. Books ineligible for credit will be returned at the customer’s expense. Unacceptable returns are shipped in the same manner as new books. 7. We cannot be responsible for goods either not received by us or damaged in transit. 8. BookExpress titles purchased from Raincoast are returnable up to 6 months from the invoice date and are subject to a 15% restocking fee. Invoice numbers must be quoted: a 5% penalty of the net total will be applied if invoice numbers are not provided. BookExpress Calendars are sold at a 40% discount and are nonreturnable (see BookExpress catalogue for more details). 9. We do not accept returns sent freight collect.

Note: Talon, BookExpress, Raincoast and Publishers Group Canada can be combined to meet minimum requirements. New & Recent Releases (single title discount) Quantity Discount 25–49 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42% 50–249 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43% 250–499 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44% 500–999 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45% 1000 + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46% Backlist (single title discount) Quantity Discount 1–10 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . see trade discount above 11 + . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25%

LIBRARY DISCOUNT Retail Discount Under $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20% Over $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40%

SCHOOLS AND EDUCATIONAL SALES Retail Discount Under $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10% Over $150.00 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30%

FREIGHT Booksellers and wholesalers whose shipments are valued at $400 net or more will receive free freight on ground shipments within Canada, as will those whose net purchases from Raincoast, Publishers Group Canada and BookExpress combined total at least $100,000 per year. Otherwise, all terms are FOB our warehouse. Customers may opt for a minimum value on backorder shipments to avoid higher shipping costs for single items. Call customer service for more details on this and also on our expedited shipping options.

CLAIMS

Customers who qualify may apply for prepaid or net following terms upon completing a credit application. New accounts will be opened on approval of credit. If you have any questions, contact the credit department.

Damaged books, short shipments or errors must be reported in writing to customer service within 20 days of receipt of shipment. Raincoast will not arrange to pick up damaged claims. Damaged books must be returned in full via a traceable method to ensure proof of delivery. Whole book returns only, no cover returns. Include a copy of the invoice with a description of the damage and a claim to credit the return shipping. For additional assistance, please contact customer service at 1-800-663-5714.

CREDIT TERMS

ELECTRONIC AND ONLINE ORDERING

Payment is due at the end of the month following date of invoice (e.g., all June invoices are due on July 31). Overdue accounts are subject to an interest charge of 1.5% per month, 18% per annum.

If your store is using a system that can order electronically or if you would like to order online or check your orders online at our B2B website http://services.raincoast.com, or to obtain information on electronic ordering, please call our customer service department at 1-800-663-5714.

NEW ACCOUNTS

SPECIAL ORDERS Titles not regularly stocked may be special ordered under our usual terms. Please allow 6–8 weeks for delivery. The Canadian price is based on cost at time of delivery and cannot be guaranteed at time of order.