Talonbooks Spring 2012 catalogue by Talonbooks

Spring

2012

Talonbooks

Talonbooks Awards and Prizes, Recent Highlights 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) Governor General’s Award, Poetry: Garry Thomas Morse, Discovery Passages (Finalist) Lambda Literary Award, Drama: Bryden MacDonald, With Bated Breath (Finalist) Robert Merritt Legacy Award: Wendy Lill (Winner)

Contents 1 14 17 26 34 54 63 69 72 73 75

New Releases 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

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) 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 Acorn-Plantos Award: Weyman Chan, Noise from the Laundry (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

Ann Saddlemyer Award: Sherrill Grace, Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock (Winner) Governor General’s Award, Drama: Kevin Loring, Where the Blood Mixes (Winner) Governor General’s Award, Drama: Joan MacLeod, Another Home Invasion (Finalist)

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.

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.

Talonbooks New Releases 1

Maleficium Martine Desjardins Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

Martine Desjardins was born in the Town of Mount Royal, Quebec. The second child of six, she started writing short stories when she was seventeen. After earning a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Italian studies from the University of Montreal, she went on to complete a master’s degree in comparative literature, exploring humour in Dostoevsky’s The Devils. She worked as an assistant editor-in-chief at ELLE Québec magazine for four years before leaving to devote herself to writing. She now works as a freelance rewriter, translator and journalist for the current affairs magazine L’actualité. A three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation, Fred A. Reed has translated works by many of Quebec’s leading authors, as well as by Nikos Kazantzakis and other modern Greek writers. Award-winning author and literary translator David Homel also works as a journalist, editor and screenwriter. He was born in Chicago in 1952, but left for Europe at the end of the tumultuous 1960s. He settled in Montreal in 1980. He worked at a variety of industrial jobs before beginning to write fiction in the mid-1980s.

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

Martine Desjardins delivers to readers of Maleficium the unexpurgated revelations of Vicar Jerome Savoie, a heretic priest in nineteenthcentury Montreal. Braving threats from the Catholic Church, Savoie dares to violate the sanctity of the confessional in this confession-withina-confession, in which seven penitents, each afflicted with a debilitating malady or struck with a crippling deformity, relates his encounter 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. One treks through Ethiopia in search of wingless locusts. Another hunts for fly-whisks among the clove plantations of Zanzibar. Yet others bargain for saffron in a Srinagar bazaar, search for the rarest frankincense and pursue the coveted hawksbill turtle in the Sea of Oman. Two more seek the formula for sabon Nablus in Palestine or haggle over Persian carpets in the royal gardens of Shiraz. The men’s individual forms of punishment, revealed through the agency of the young woman, are wrought upon their bodies. Baroque in its complexity, Kafka-like in its inexorable mechanics, Maleficium by turns astonishes, amuses and beguiles. Then author Martine Desjardins’s Vicar Savoie—as in any confession worth its communion wafer—saves the best (or worst) for last. Maleficium won the Prix Jacques Brossard and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award (French Fiction), the Prix des libraires du Québec, the Prix des cinq continents de la Francophonie and the Prix France–Québec. “[Martine Desjardins] has dared to write a book unlike any other, dipping her pen in the ink of a bygone day, before nature and its mysteries had been deciphered; when desire loomed with dark and frightening power. The result is an extraordinary festival of the senses. —Voir “Maleficium is an orgiastic celebration of our five senses … Drawing on explorers’ diaries, medical reference manuals, entomological textbooks and reference works on the varying professions of those who have confided their secret sins to their parish priest, the novel at the same time impressions the reader with its rigorous attention to detail.” —Le Libraire

Martine Desjardins’s All That Glitters, A Covenant of Salt and Fairy Ring are also available from Talonbooks.

2 Talonbooks New Releases

Modern Canadian Plays Volume One, Fifth Edition

Edited by Jerry Wasserman

Professor of English and theatre at the University of British Columbia, Jerry Wasserman has written and lectured widely on Canadian theatre, modern fiction, dramatic literature, theatre history and blues music; edited the twovolume anthology Modern Canadian Plays, a standard course text now in its fifth edition; made more than two hundred appearances on stage, film and television (often as one of the bad guys); and served for more than twenty years as a drama critic for CBC Radio’s Afternoon Show before switching to print reviews for the Province. He is currently the editor of Vancouverplays.com, an informative website that provides up-to-date listings and reviews of local theatre performances.

This fifth edition of the classic Modern Canadian Plays sets out an even broader range of plays than previous editions. Spanning the years 1967 to 2010, the two volumes of this anthology will ultimately include thirty plays with introductions and bibliographies by theatre critic Jerry Wasserman. The plays in the first volume date from 1967 to 1991, and outline an indigenous Canadian drama emerging from its colonial roots to celebrate a rising nationalism. But more to the point, the plays in this edition carry with them a distinct flavour of adventurousness in a juxtaposition that is strikingly, even wildly, various—plays that can only be said to cohere around the difficulty of amorphous notions such as social justice, cultural belonging and the existence of a collective past. Modern Canadian Plays continues to stand as the standard anthology for Canadian drama—for good reason. The plays in Volume One include: 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)

Jerry Wasserman’s Modern Canadian Plays (Volume One, Fourth Edition), Modern Canadian Plays (Volume Two, Fourth Edition) and Spectacle of Empire are also available from Talonbooks. ISBN 978-0-88922-678-4 Drama / Anthology 6.75 x 9.75; 496 pp; Trade paper $49.95 CAD / $49.95 USD April

Talonbooks New Releases 3

Cold Comfort Growing Up Cold War

Gil McElroy

Gil McElroy grew up on air force bases across Canada and in the United States. His poems and other works have been published in countless periodicals throughout North America since the late 1970s. His published poetry collections include Ordinary Time (2011), Last Scattering Surfaces (2007), NonZero Definitions (2004) and Dream Pool Essays (2001), all with Talonbooks. In 2002, Dream Pool Essays was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. McElroy also works as an art critic and independent curator, organizing exhibitions for public art galleries and museums and writing art criticism. His show St. Art: The Visual Poetry of bpNichol pays tribute to one of the great poets of the twentieth century. McElroy received the 2001 Christina Sabat Award for Art Criticism for Ground States: The Visual Contexts of bpNichol.

When his father died, award-winning poet and curator Gil McElroy was given a box of photographs that documented his father’s military career. Beginning in the Second World War and continuing right 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 from Alaska to Baffin Island. Established in the early 1950s, the DEW Line was to provide advance warning of an aircraft or missile attack. The complexities of the electronic defence systems are offered here in an informative, yet accessible, manner. Photographs and text add to the scant documentation of building the DEW Line. 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. Further, Cold Comfort provides the backstory to McElroy’s most recent collection of poems, Ordinary Time, which offers an unsettling history of the utter failures of these remote surveillance technologies to make “our” world either better known or reliably predictable. This book will particularly appeal to military veterans, fellow military brats and general readers interested in Canada’s military history. Gil McElroy’s Dream Pool Essays, Last Scattering Surfaces, NonZero Definitions and Ordinary Time are also available from Talonbooks.

ISBN 978-0-88922-684-5 Non-fiction / Autobiography / Military history 5.5 x 8.5; 288 pp; Trade paper; Photos $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD May

4 Talonbooks New Releases

Turkana Boy Jean-François Beauchemin Translated by Jessica Moore

Jean-François Beauchemin has been called “one of the best-kept secrets” of Quebecois literature. He is the recipient of the 2005 Prix France-Québec / Jean Hamelin for Le jour des corneilles and the 2007 Prix des libraires for La fabrication de l’aube. Most recently, Beauchemin wrote a trilogy of semi-autobiographical books exploring “the tragic beauty of the world,” which, like Turkana Boy, explore grief, wonder and the nature of the soul. Le Jour des Corneilles is presently being adapted as an animated film. He lives in Sainte-Anne-des-Lacs, Quebec, and writes works of fiction, autobiography and poetry—none of which has previously been translated. Jessica Moore is an author and translator. Her first poetry collection, Everything, Now, part lyric, part memoir, is forthcoming in 2012 from Brick Books. She is a former Lannan writer-in-residence and winner of a 2008 PEN America Translation Award for her translation of a selection from Turkana Boy. Her poems and translations have appeared in ARC, CV2, The Antigonish Review, Cenizo and The Literary Review. Jessica Moore is a member of the Literary Translators’ Association of Canada, where she worked while completing her master’s degree in translation studies.

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

In this contemplative novel-poem, Jean-François Beauchemin invites us to share in the inner world of the grieving Mr. Bartolomé, who, following the mysterious disappearance of his young son, wanders and wonders, seeking to transcend his pain by encountering something larger than himself. Continuously occupied by the memory of his lost son, 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-year-old “Turkana Boy,” the fossilized remains of a boy found in 1984 near Lake Turkana, Kenya, Beauchemin addresses processes of memory and the long history of human evolution. Beauchemin’s character Bartolomé sees in the lives of the boys—separated by nearly two million years—a kind of twin destiny. Has the passage of millennia changed the intensity of human feeling at the loss of blood relations? “Who knows what they had felt? Had the same emotions, those associated with incommensurable loss, broken their bodies, as they had his? Over and above morphological differences sculpted by the passage of millennia, was there something resembling a permanence of feeling, a sort of eternity for the murmuring of the heart, transmitted through the ages by the bonds of blood?” Turkana Boy offers a poignant examination of grieving and one man’s search for understanding. This surrealist narrative is punctuated with magnificent musings on the world and startling questions about what it means to be alive. “An excellent novel and an extremely beautiful reflection that will move the reader deeply.” —Radio-Canada “The universe of Jean-François Beauchemin’s novels is haunted by the ghost of childhood—its naiveté and purity as much as its cruelty and wildness.” —Voir “Beauchemin’s writing falls on us like a mist, like sorrow, slowly, in the soft nightfall of things.” —Radio Basse-Ville

Talonbooks New Releases 5

The Properties Colin Browne

Writer, filmmaker, teacher, critic and poet Colin Browne is the author of Abraham (Brick Books, 1987), the critically acclaimed collection of poetry Ground Water (Talonbooks, 2002), which was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2002 and a BC Book Prize in 2003, and The Shovel (Talonbooks, 2007), which was shortlisted for the 2008 ReLit Award. Browne was an editor of Writing magazine and co-founder of the Kootenay School of Writing. Browne has made films for the National Film Board, is co-founder of the Praxis Centre for Screenwriters and is active in the preservation and conservation of archival film through the establishment of an archive of western Canadian sound and moving images. His documentary films include Father and Son and White Lake, which was nominated for a Genie Award for Best Feature Length Documentary. His 2003 documentary portrait of jazz musician Linton Garner, Linton Garner: I Never Said Goodbye, screened at the Vancouver International Film Festival and aired on CBC’s Opening Night. Colin Browne teaches production, screenwriting and the history of film at Simon Fraser University’s School for the Contemporary Arts.

Poetry begins when the properties of things—and the correspondences among them—reveal themselves through language. Language is the veil that can pierce itself. The poems in The Properties are a record of 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. All times and places exist simultaneously. The texts in The Properties range from a twenty-first-century visitation by Herman Melville at a diner in New York City to an unknown history of the Lions Gate Bridge that begins in the Coast Salish village of Xwemelch’stn and ends with an assassination in Egypt. Igor Stravinsky, Sigmund Freud, Stefan Zweig, Duke Ellington, Jeanne d’Arc, Walter Guinness, George Bowering, André Breton (who sought out “the interior voice within each human being”) and more appear. Several texts continue the exploration of the documentary form begun in The Shovel. These plaited histories begin as improvisations and gleanings. The title piece, “Kingfisher Annex, or The Properties,” is a companion to the music drama The Kingfisher. A poem in honour of Browne’s mother breaks a silence. A piece about his great-aunt becomes a poem about Richard Strauss. Included are the words sung for a screening of Carl Dreyer’s 1928 film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc, for which contemporary Vancouver-based composer Stefan Smulovitz wrote a luminous score. A manifesto celebrates the stick. There are works that return to sound poetry and repetition. Throughout, short lyrical fragments juxtapose longer texts in anticipation of a kind of capillary action. Praise for Colin Browne’s The Shovel: “The epic sweep of pieces is impressive, at times rapturous. They are worth digging for.” —Quill & Quire

Colin Browne’s Ground Water and The Shovel are also available from Talonbooks. ISBN 978-0-88922-685-2 Poetry 6.75 x 9.75; 192 pp; Trade paper; Illustrations $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD April

6 Talonbooks New Releases

Chinese Blue Weyman Chan

Weyman Chan was born in Calgary, Alberta, in 1963, to immigrant parents from China. He wrote his first poem when he was thirteen years old, and since has published poems and short stories in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies. He won the 2001 National Magazine Awards silver prize for his poem “At Work,” and the 2003 Alberta Literary Award for his first book of poetry, Before a Blue Sky Moon. His second book, Noise from the Laundry, was a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Poetry Award and the 2009 Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry.

Drawing on more than two thousand years of ancient Chinese tradition that present diverse philosophical modes of being, whether it be the spiritual teachings of Kong Zi or Lao Tzu, the military dicta of Sun Tzu or the complex sensibilities expressed by poets such as Ssu-ma Hsiang-ju, Li Bai, Du Fu and Wang Wei in the wake of a tumultuous imperial government, Weyman Chan restates these concerns of the past while addressing other “first world problems” in our own contemporary era. In Chinese Blue, the poet “character” sifts through the earth’s long history of geological layering and forgetting, grappling with the perpetual fragmentation of identity. The poet struggles with the prospect of any inky blots that suggest the finished work of a creator, subject to expediencies—ambition, romance, betrayal—that leave us flawed and human, taking the reader on a spiritual quest burdened by an endless sea of flotsam. In a stoic attempt to reconcile biological drives with a stance of nonpresence and to find a place beyond “perpetual worry” where he can accept ancestral mistakes while tentatively channelling the voices of advertising that condition our vernacular and massage our minds— offering a cliché happy ending to what remains of our physical existence—the poet finds himself wading through jazzily visionary delineations of the modern city, numbed and soundly crushed between “the word and the thing.” Here is Weyman Chan at his most fiercely ironic, tracing a lineage he interprets subconsciously and through the intricacies of its raw genetic material, with keenly biting language that echoes the rhythms of Qu Yuan in contemplation of his own mortality beside the flowing waters of impermanence: I would prefer to jump into the river and be entombed in the stomachs of fishes than to bow while purity is defiled by vulgar pestilence.

“Chan is as fragile as a dandelion seed ball and as strong as granite. He knows that we possess little besides the air in our lungs and the blood in our veins, and we must take tender care of those around us.” —ARC Poetry

ISBN 978-0-88922-681-4 Poetry 6 x 9; 112 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD April

Weyman Chan’s hypoderm and Noise from the Laundry are also available from Talonbooks.

Talonbooks New Releases 7

Davie Street Translations Daniel Zomparelli

Daniel Zomparelli is editor-in-chief of Poetry Is Dead magazine and recipient of the 2011 Pandora’s Collective Publishers of Magazines Award. The fourth issue of Poetry Is Dead, “Vancouver: Influence,” was a key feature at the Vancouver 125 Poetry Conference in 2011. Zomparelli is also program coordinator for the Megaphone magazine Community Creative Writing Program, which offers free creative writing classes for low-income and homeless people. He writes for and works with several magazines across Vancouver, including Geist, Megaphone, Sad Mag, Granville Online and, formerly, Adbusters. Davie Street Translations is Zomparelli’s first book of poems.

To the street that is a village, Daniel Zomparelli conveys a liveliness and wit that rhetorically towel-flicks its way from the sardonic bathhouse banter of ancient Rome to the cinematic musical machismo of the poets of the San Francisco Renaissance, with each poem “translating” another chapter in his documentary of gay male culture in Vancouver. To the tune of mononymous deities Beyoncé, Madonna, Barbra and Gaga, this home-brewed Catullus flirts with the very concept of “translation,” not only representing the movement and conversion of event, time and idea to the written word, but also deploying a crafty methodology that in the style of Robin Blaser and Jack Spicer emphasizes an aesthetic sensibility and musicality that pervades the pretty wireless shell of personal relations. These are also letters to the anonymous, the proud, the panicky, the petrified and particularly the lonely, written everywhere—upon ripped bodies and diner napkins, upon bathroom stalls, and in Craigslist personals and Miss Lonelyhearts columns. Ranging from the rhapsodic to the epigrammatic with his dangerously experimental narrative that snorts the alphabet, Daniel Zomparelli imbues the fast-paced drug and party culture of Davie Village’s young gay males with grand poignancy and pathos. Stitching serial poems into this imaginary patchwork in the fashion of Robert Duncan, with drag queens and porn fantasy figures in tow, Zomparelli brashly faces up to fears of HIV and gay bashing. On this poetic street that is a universe, we turn away from violence, “dance fight, or turn it into a musical / West Side-like.” With poetic tributes to his Vancouver idols Billeh Nickerson, George Stanley and Michael V. Smith, Zomparelli demonstrates, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, that the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience. “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 978-0-88922-683-8 Poetry 6 x 9; 96 pp; Trade paper; Illustrations $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD April

“Zomparelli’s knowledge of place and community is profound, while his dedication to his own poetic vision is unwavering.” —Rachel Rose

8 Talonbooks New Releases

Specks Second Edition

Michael McClure

Michael McClure is a novelist, musician, playwright and poet who came to prominence in the 1950s as a central figure of the beat generation. McClure’s recent books are Of Indigo and Saffron: New and Selected Poems (University of California Press, 2010) and Mysteriosos and Other Poems (New Directions, 2010). He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Guggenheim Fellowship, an Obie Award for Best New American Play, a Rockefeller Grant for Playwriting, the Josephine Miles Literary Award and the Alfred Jarry Award. He has written more than twenty plays, which are regularly performed in the United States and abroad. The notorious The Beard became a touchstone for anti-censorship lobbyists when its first performaces in San Francisco and Los Angeles in 1965 were raided by police and the actors charged with obscenity. Michael McClure often performs his poetry with Doors keyboardist Ray Manzarek accompanying on piano. The pair have worked together on several albums. McClure has also collaborated with composer Terry Riley; their recent album is I Like Your Eyes Liberty. McClure wrote the pop song “Mercedes Benz” with Janis Joplin and beat poet Bob Neuwirth. He is married to the sculptor Amy Evans McClure.

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

Widely noted for the popularity of his dynamic performances, Michael McClure has been celebrated since his first poetry event. At twenty-two years old, in San Francisco’s legendary Six Gallery, McClure, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg gave their first poetry reading—Ginsberg read “Howl” that night. McClure’s writing followed his deepening environmental awareness and biological studies, and he became an outspoken advocate, through his essays, music, theatre and novels, for the protection of all living beings. When McClure’s Specks was first published in 1985 by Talonbooks, it was a revelation in terms of its transcending the proprioceptive poetic methodology of Charles Olson and entering an Aristotelian realm of metaphysical questions that alchemically combined matters both scientific and mystical. In this much-anticipated return, with incisive and bombastic projective verse, McClure’s stance in the face of futurity is even more topical, as the senses of the physical-poetic body explore its properties, powers and limitations, expanding forth as the benevolent love child of its own consciousness. Specks assumes the form of a blastula, offering a poetic model of embryonic development that arises from the cellular division known as “cleavage.” Specks presents 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

“McClure’s poetry and prose is one of the more remarkable achievements in recent American literature.” —Times Literary Supplement

Talonbooks New Releases 9

Bolsheviki A Dead Serious Comedy

David Fennario

Lauded as the first anglophone, working-class playwright in Canada, David Fennario was born in Verdun, Quebec, in 1947 and raised in the neighbourhood of Pointe-SaintCharles. In the 1960s, he changed his name from Wiper to Fennario, a reference to lyrics in Bob Dylan’s “Pretty Peggy-O.” Fennario dropped out of high school after one year and worked in various unskilled jobs before ending up in Toronto in 1966. Fennario recalls that “school was a drag. My working experience turned me into a raving Red calling for world revolution. The process of becoming a political activist gave me the confidence to be a writer. Up to then, I thought only middle-class people could become artists, because they were not stupid like working-class people, who were working-class because they were stupid. But reading socialist literature convinced me that working-class people can change themselves and the world around them. We are not chained to fate, Freud, God, gender or a genetic code. We can make ourselves into what we want. I’ve been trying my best to do that ever since, and have had some success as a playwright and a prose writer.”

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

Set in a hotel bar in Montreal on Remembrance Day, Bolsheviki has World War I–veteran Harry “Rosie” Rollins telling young reporter Jerry Nines about his experience in the trenches. Rollins recalls men pissing their pants, losing limbs and planning a revolt against their officers. The character of Rosie Rollins is based on World War I–veteran Harry “Rosie” Rowbottom, who was wounded at Vimy Ridge. Fennario taped an interview with Rowbottom in 1979 in the old “King Eddy” Hotel in Toronto over a bottle of Bushmills whiskey. Rosie’s meandering monologue delivers a blistering de-glorification of war as it shifts back and forth between his wartime recollections and the present. The veteran’s clattering, fast-paced description of life—and death—on the Western Front reproduces the chaotic sounds and rhythm of battle. This cutting-edge drama, profoundly in opposition to conventional histories of Canadian troops in World War I, debunks every sentimental notion of duty, heroism and nationhood. “Birth of Nation” they called it on TV but I didn’t see nobody getting born just a lot of people dying so we could sit there on top of another shit hole of mud with Captain Rutherford still pushing for that DSO or the MC or the MCB or the YMCA with Triangles—just give him a medal will ya?

Cast of 1 man. “Bolsheviki is vintage Fennario, gritty, authentic, touching, replete with oneliners, never boring … making its radical-pacifist point while paying due respect to veterans.” —Montreal Gazette “Tying [Bolsheviki ] all together is Fennario’s determined de-glorification of war and old-soldier nostalgia. He’s still an unrepentant, hard-charging leftie. A socialist, pro-worker, anti-war activist who, though now confined to a wheelchair, has lost none of his dramatic edge, as pissed off … as when he wrote On the Job forty years ago.” —Montreal Mirror

David Fennario’s Banana Boots, The Death of René Lévesque, Doctor Thomas Neill Cream (Mystery at McGill), Joe Beef, Nothing to Lose and On the Job are also available from Talonbooks.

10 Talonbooks New Releases

Tombs of the Vanishing Indian Marie Clements

Two-time Governor General’s Drama Award–finalist Marie Clements is an acclaimed Métis performer, playwright and director whose work has been presented on stages across Canada, the United States and Europe. She is the founder of urban ink productions, a Vancouver-based First Nations production company that creates, develops and produces Aboriginal and multicultural works of theatre, dance, music, film and video. Marie Clements writes, or, perhaps more accurately, composes, with an urbane, sophisticated and incisive intellect; her refined artistry is deeply rooted in the particulars of her place, time and history. Clements’s Tombs of the Vanishing Indian was shortlisted by the Canadian Authors Association for the Carol Bolt Award for Drama in 2011.

Three Young Native American sisters and their mother board a bus bound for Los Angeles, leaving home as part of a 1950s government mandate to relocate reserve Indians to urban centres. This assimilationist policy was one focus of Métis playwright Marie Clements’s research when she was commissioned to create a new play for the tenth anniversary of the Native Voices series at the Autry National Center, Los Angeles. Clements dramatizes the emotional, psychological and social repercussions of this, and subsequent, bureaucratic incursions into the girls’ lives. Their arrival in California takes a tragic turn when their mother is suddenly killed and the girls are arbitrarily placed in different foster homes, never to see each other again. We follow Janey, Miranda and Jessie as they lead very disparate adult lives: Janey, a troubled vagrant; Miranda, a burgeoning actress fighting typecasting in Hollywood; Jessie, an idealist physician who’s married to a medical colleague. As it was bureaucratic policy that had dismantled their secure family unit and sent each girl into the unknown, so too did a government paper ultimately bring them together, if only symbolically. Clements casts the sisters’ narrative against the backdrop of another historical injustice: the forced sterilization of thousands of Native women in the 1970s, a practice that was only abolished in 1981. Clements’s play is a compelling, and poetic, investigation of the coldly bureaucratic machinations that have, throughout history, attempted to facilitate the disappearance of Native people. Though Tombs of the Vanishing Indian focuses on specific policies and locations, it speaks eloquently to broader themes of Aboriginal displacement. There are, indeed, echoes of Canadian policy aimed at the dissolution of First Nations families and culture: the potlatch ban, residential schools and the ban on Native language, whose profoundly damaging ramifications are our shared legacy. 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

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

Marie Clements’s Burning Vision, Copper Thunderbird, The Edward Curtis Project and The Unnatural and Accidental Women are also available from Talonbooks.

Talonbooks New Releases 11

The Book of Esther Leanna Brodie

Leanna Brodie is an actor, writer and translator. Her translations include, most recently, Sébastien Harrisson’s From Alaska and Hélène Ducharme’s Baobab. She has been playwright-in-residence at the Blyth Festival and at 4th Line Theatre, and her radio dramas Invisible City and Seeds of Our Destruction have been broadcast on CBC Radio. Her libretti were heard in Tapestry New Opera Works’ Opera to Go 2008; in David Ogborn’s acclaimed site-specific piece Opera on the Rocks; and in Emergence, his song cycle featuring a singing robot. The Angle of Reflection, with New Zealand composer Anthony Young, was produced by the Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra.

It’s June 1981. Farmers face a debt crisis with interest rates as high as 20 percent. More than three hundred men are arrested after police sweeps of Toronto bathhouses, yet Pride Toronto launches its first gaypride 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. Acclaimed playwright Leanna Brodie excels with this heartwarming coming-of-age, and coming-out, drama. The Book of Esther examines the seemingly irreconcilable positions of two groups: conservative rural Christians and militantly anti-religious urban queer activists. But Brodie doesn’t take sides. Instead, it’s like she’s picked up a rock to discover what’s scurrying around underneath, pointed it out to us, and said, “Isn’t this interesting. Maybe we should all look at this for a while. Maybe we should talk about it, instead of just pretending that it isn’t there.” Cast of 2 women and 3 men. “The issue is simple—as black-and-white as a Holstein cow … But, happily, [The Book of Esther] is more than a simple catalogue of controversial, or at least provocative, subjects. When the play opens, the forces that divide— ignorance, prejudice, intolerance, hypocrisy and arrogance—are given free rein. At play’s end, however, the forces that bind—understanding, compassion, tolerance, honesty and love—assert themselves. —www.therecord.com “There were audible gasps in the audience as the play’s teenage anti-hero, A.D., spouted off his anti-religious diatribes. Some of his dialogue was so politically incorrect that, if an adult had spoken the lines, it would border on hate-mongering. But that is the conflict situation that Leanna Brodie has set up in her play.” —Globe & Mail

Leanna Brodie’s For Home and Country, Schoolhouse and The Vic are also available from Talonbooks. ISBN 978-0-88922-682-1 Drama 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD April

12 Talonbooks New Releases

Vigil Second Edition

Morris Panych

Playwright, actor and director Morris Panych has been described as “a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre.” He has appeared in more than fifty theatre productions and in numerous television and film roles. He has directed more than thirty theatre productions and written over a dozen plays that have been translated and produced throughout the world. He has twice won the Governor General’s Award: for The Ends of the Earth (Talonbooks, 1993) and for Girl in the Goldfish Bowl (Talonbooks, 2003). Panych has won the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award fourteen times, for both acting and directing. He has also been nominated six times for Toronto’s Dora Mavor Moore Award and three times for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.

Since Morris Panych’s classic black comedy, Vigil, premiered in 1996, it has been produced throughout North America, the United Kingdom and Europe, including a 2009 Off-Broadway production, which opened to rave reviews, a run as Auntie & Me in London and, most recently, shows at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles and the American Conservatory Theater in San Francisco, where Panych directed Academy Award–winner Olympia Dukakis opposite Marco Barricelli in the lead role. This updated edition incorporates changes to scenes and dialogue that have been part of the play’s evolution over the past fifteen years, as well as a new playwright’s note. Vigil is about a man returning—after thirty years—to sit with a female relative on her deathbed. Kemp, the protagonist, is an extremely selfcentred 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. Gallows humour and Kemp’s diatribes on humanity and mortality fuel this delightfully dark narrative, but it is Grace’s economical contributions to the dialogue (she’s a woman of few words) that give this play its weight and profundity. A play of mistaken identity, twisted circumstance and surprising turns, it is deliciously absurd, incredibly funny and poignantly tender. This is one Vigil worth keeping. Cast of 1 woman and 1 man. “A small masterpiece.” “A devilishly funny play [that] laughs in death’s face.”

—Globe & Mail —Maclean’s

“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

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

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 and What Lies Before Us are also available from Talonbooks.

Talonbooks Previously Announced 13

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

Alain Deneault & William Sacher 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 in applied mathematics, specifically for the oceanic and atmospheric sciences, from McGill. 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 March

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 such prosecution. The authors of Imperial Canada Inc. meticulously research four factors that contribute to the answer to this question: Québec’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. Alain Deneault’s Paul Martin & Companies is also available from Talonbooks. 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

14 Talonbooks Recent Releases

Taking My Life Jane Rule

Afterword by Linda M. Morra

Discovered in her papers as a handwritten manuscript in 2008, Jane Rule’s autobiography follows the first twenty-one years of her life. In writing about her formative years, she is indeed “taking” the measure of her life, assessing its contours of pleasure and pain, and accounting precisely for how it evolved. At turns deeply moving and witty, Taking My Life probes in emotional and intellectual terms the larger philosophical questions that were to preoccupy her throughout her literary career. “A beautiful piece of dryly ironic writing, deeply thought out and intellectually honest.”

—Quill & Quire

“Whether it serves as an introduction to a new literary voice or an illumination of an already beloved one, this book offers fascinating insight into Rule’s formative years as a provocateur, intellectual, lover and writer.” —Publishers Weekly ISBN 978-0-88922-673-9; Non-fiction / Autobiography; 5.5 x 8.5; 288 pp; Trade paper; Photos; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Then We Were One Fragments of Two Lives Fred A. Reed Shocked by his younger brother’s death from injuries sustained in the Vietnam War, Fred Reed sets out on a journey of personal discovery and understanding. By way of Iran in the aftermath of the Revolution, the Anatolian highlands of the mystic Bediuzzaman Said Nursi, in pursuit of ancient and modern iconoclasts in Syria and Lebanon, he comes under the spell of Islam. In its embrace he finds a renewed brotherhood; in its discipline, liberation. Then We Were One challenges us with its conclusion that indictment, absolution and redemption, though we must seek them, are not ours to ultimately possess. ISBN 978-0-88922-667-8; Non-fiction / Autobiography; 5.5 x 8.5; 304 pp; Trade paper; Photos; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

textual vishyuns image and text in the work of bill bissett Carl Peters Although bill bissett is recognized internationally as a pioneer of visual, concrete, sound and performance poetry, very little critical work exists on his poetry, and almost none on his visual work. Drawing primarily from statements and manifestos of aesthetic theory by practitioners of the major modernist movements in the visual arts; the poetics of Gertrude Stein, William Burroughs, Charles Olson and bpNichol; and the films of Andy Warhol, Stan Brakhage, David Lynch and David Cronenberg, here, finally, is a book that locates bissett’s textual and visual artistic praxis within the larger context of the history, theory and practice of art. “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; Non-fiction / Literary criticism; 6 x 9; 224 pp; Trade paper; Colour photos; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Crossing the Continent Michel Tremblay

Translated by Sheila Fischman

A child wounded in spirit. A mother in need. A family dispersed across the Canadian Prairies in 1913. All reunite when ten-year-old Rhéauna, affectionately known as Nana, is called “home” to Montreal, to the mother who abandoned her five years before. From the warmth of her grandparents’ farm, Nana embarks alone on an epic train journey. At each of three stops she makes, a female relative receives her, and ultimately reveals to young Nana one of the roles to which women were confined: the spinster, the mother or the prostitute. Crossing the Continent gives us the backstory to the characters of Tremblay’s great Chronicles series, particularly of his mother, the Nana of this book and later of The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant. “The empathy and tenderness that Tremblay has for his characters is evident on every page of the novel Crossing the Continent.” —Le Devoir ISBN 978-0-88922-676-0; Fiction; 5.5 x 8.5; 272 pp; Trade paper; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Talonbooks Recent Releases 15

Miss Take Réjean Ducharme

Translated by Will Browning

Sixteen-year-old Miles has run away from home, inviting his childhood companion, the fourteen-year-old Inuit orphan Chateaugué, to join him in a rented apartment in Montreal. There they construct a chaste life for themselves, living as brother and sister, entering into a suicide pact to preserve their childhood innocence from the adult roles preordained for them. Written in a style echoing the work of Arthur Rimbaud and William S. Burroughs, Réjean Ducharme’s vision is darkly prophetic of a world that has lost its way. “To read Ducharme … is to get luxuriously lost in a chaotic mass of simultaneous, tangential and sometimes conflicting ideas … His writing is a delight, playing on words, creating double entendres and weaving different threads of narrative and thought.” —Rain Review of Books ISBN 978-0-88922-669-2; Fiction; 5.5 x 8.5; 272 pp; Trade paper; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Judith’s Sister Lise Tremblay

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

In the endless small-town summer of 1968, a twelve-year-old girl contemplates with dread her impending enrolment at the local high school. Her mother, who won’t let her daughter marry “the first man to come along,” is prepared to do anything to make sure her children don’t grow up “ignorant,” like Judith’s sister, Claire, the prettiest girl in town. Judith’s Sister is a coming-of-age novel that focuses on the timeless themes that preoccupy adolescent girls: solitude, alienation, body image, sexuality, shame and fear of strangers. “Judith’s Sister explores the delicate passage from childhood to adolescence, that critical period in life which, whether we like it or not, often contains the seeds of the inevitable betrayals of friends, neighbourhood and social background. —Le Devoir ISBN 978-0-88922-677-7; Fiction; 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

In Piazza San Domenico Steve Galluccio In Piazza San Domenico is a comedy of misunderstandings that takes place in a bustling neighborhood of 1952 Naples. It recounts the story of how one broken engagement ripples throughout friends and family, affecting all of their respective lives in different ways. In a world conflicted by “traditional” values and the emancipated new thinking of the postwar era, Italian theatrical archetypes with their roots in Roman comedies and the Commedia dell’Arte evolve into the recognizable stereotypes of mid-twentieth-century society that became hallmarks of the whimsically romantic Sophia Loren / Marcello Mastroianni films of the early 1960s. Cast of 4 women and 4 men. “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; Drama; 5.5 x 8.5; 128 pp; Trade paper; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

The Strange Truth About Us A Novel of Absence M.A.C. Farrant A three-part novel-length work of prose fragments, snippets, questions, speculations and meditations, by turns philosophical, dark, comedic and lyrical, The Strange Truth About Us attempts to imagine a multitude of possible futures for our garrisoned Western world. Unique in style and approach, engaging, enigmatic and controversial, this book is an attempt to prick the bubble of our complacency in the face of the “awful atrocity” we’ve made for ourselves. “A model West Coast non-conformist, activist-author 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; Fiction; 5.5 x 8.5; 216 pp; Trade paper; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

16 Talonbooks Recent Releases

novel bill bissett Celebrated since the 1960s for pushing the boundaries of language and representation in the creation of image as a site of both content and context, the world’s leading sound, visual, concrete and performance poet, bill bissett, describes his latest book as “a novel with connekting pomes n essays.” As such, bissett’s novel is in effect a spectacular and demonstrative response to Jacques Derrida’s famous argument in Of Grammatology: that any investigation of meaning cannot escape the opposition of speech and language central to the Western philosophical tradition. Against this tradition, bissett posits Gertrude Stein’s modernist observation: “Everything is the same except composition …” “These essays are rich with information about bissett, but most importantly they revive and reexamine significant moments from his life and career. It is a must-read for both bissett scholars and fanatics alike.” —Broken Pencil ISBN 978-0-88922-671-5; Fiction; 6 x 9; 176 pp; Trade paper; Illustrations; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Ordinary Time Gil McElroy This collection of poems sets out to give shape to time. Opening with childhood memories of impending Cold War armageddon, the book’s second section, counted out on the Julian calendar, discovers that it is our movement through space that lends time its dimensionality. Its third section works within the Anglican lectionary to make manifest the arc of a complete year-long cycle of both “Sacred” and “Ordinary” time, while its final section returns to the book’s beginning: to the “reassuringly grey briefcases we jiggle over great distances” in our ongoing attempts to guarantee our security and our place in the world. “A master of the craft … [Gil McElroy] is very, very intelligent and his ear is infalliable.”

—ARC Poetry

ISBN 978-0-88922-675-3; Poetry; 6 x 9; 128 pp; Trade paper; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Rebuild Sachiko Murakami 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. The poems of Rebuild engrave themselves on the absence at the city’s centre, its bulldozed public spaces. Its poems crumble in the time it takes to turn the page, words flaking from the line like the rain-damaged stucco of leaky condos. What does it mean, Murakami asks, to rebuild poetry, when our lyrics are supposed to be preciously unique, and yet recognizably similar, in their stanzas or “rooms,” to the familiar landscapes of other poems? “Murakami’s poetry performs erasure on itself, tries to renovate and rebuild. Something faster. Something better. Tears out consonant and vowel, post and beam, with dishwasher, writes elegy, writes condo, writes missing, writes return.” —Nikki Reimer ISBN 978-0-88922-670-8; Poetry; 6 x 9; 96 pp; Trade paper; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

All Is Flesh Yannick Renaud

Translated by Hugh Hazelton

Afterword by Étienne Lalonde

All Is Flesh collects in one volume Hugh Hazelton’s English translations of Yannick Renaud’s brilliant first two books of poetry. In Taxidermy, a couple evolves from one poem to another by means of a game in which the wager is the extreme, perfect control of their movements. There is constant tension between the need for movement and the pain it causes those who believe in “occupying space unequivocally.” The Disappearance of Ideas continues to reflect on time, questioning our relationship with death and mourning both as loss and as the awareness of the passage of time, reminding us that “death remains the privilege of the living.” “The Disappearance of Ideas, a meditation on mourning, has a great and beautiful placidity … Renaud’s poetic phrasing is finely chiselled, down to the ellipses which give rise to the book’s most powerful thoughts, without ever falling into the trap of sentimentality.” —Voix et images ISBN 978-0-88922-672-2; Poetry; 5.5 x 8.5; 160 pp; Trade paper; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 17

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 —Books in Canada character studies.” 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.

“Succeeds in showing readers … that Islam is not a monolith, but ‘a rich and complex mosaic.’” —CBRA Turkish rights sold to Zafer Publishing, Istanbul.

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

18 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

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 —Globe & Mail beauty.” 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 ©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

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.

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 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.

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

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 19

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 —D.M.R. Bentley been more closely intertwined.” 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 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.

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. “Fascinating.”

—Quill & Quire

20 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

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. “Perceptive, highly readable account of the avant-garde —Vancouver Sun scene in Canada.” ISBN 978-0-88922-306-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1992; 144 pp

A remarkable collection of seven life stories from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, giving voice to women who are seldom heard on their own terms. City of Vancouver Book Award Finalist, 2005. ISBN 978-0-88922-513-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2005; 180 pp; map; 3rd printing

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

QSPELL Award Winner for Non-fiction, 1992. “Her book on the film is exquisitely attuned to the —Boston Globe interplay between art and life.” ISBN 978-0-88922-294-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1991; 176 pp; photos; 4th printing

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

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 21

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

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

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 French language rights sold to HMH Ltée. ISBN 978-0-88922-195-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1981; 264 pp; photos; 3rd printing

Winner Ann Saddlemyer Award, 2009.

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 & illus.; 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

22 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

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 —Fred Wah can be talked about ‘with some life.’”

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 —Michele Landsberg, Toronto Star different world.”

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

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

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

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

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 23

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 —Vancouver Sun ‘justice for all’ will want to read.”

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

24 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist

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

Takeover in Tehran

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

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

Edited by Ralph Maud

as told to Fred A. Reed

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

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.

Salonica Terminus

The Terror of the Coast

Travels into the Balkan Nightmare Fred A. Reed

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

In his extensive travels in the Balkans, Reed encounters a landscape inscribed with a shocking testimony of ethnoracialist aspirations. “The good and evil aspects of nationalism … [A] compassionate account of one of the world’s most difficult regions.” —Toronto Star ISBN 978-0-88922-368-4; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1996; 272 pp; photos & maps

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 B.C.’s history.” —CBRA ISBN 978-0-88922-318-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1999; 382 pp; photos, maps & illustrations; 2nd printing

Shattered Images

Theatre and AutoBiography

The Rise of Militant Iconoclasm in Syria Fred A. Reed

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

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

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.

Signs of Literature

They Write Their Dreams on the Rock Forever

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

Rock Writings in the Stein River Valley of British Columbia Annie York, Richard Daly & Chris Arnett

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

“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

Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist 25

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

Timothy Findley and the Aesthetics of Fascism

Twelve Opening Acts

Intertextual Collaboration and Resistance

Translated by Sheila Fischman

The New Canadian Criticism Series

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.

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

QWF Translation Award Winner, 2005.

Michel Tremblay

Too Good to Be True

Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand

Alcan’s Kemano Completion Project Bev Christensen

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

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 ISBN 978-0-88922-354-7; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD ©1995; 352 pp; photos & maps

Compiled and edited by Chris Arnett A vital collection of writings collected during the Depression, first published in Victoria’s oldest newspaper. “An engrossing and delightful book.” —Georgia Straight ISBN 978-0-88922-555-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD ©2007; 352 pp; photos; 2nd printing

Tracing the Paths

Vancouver

Reading =/ Writing The Martyrology Edited by Roy Miki

A Visual History Bruce Macdonald

A wide spectrum of readings of bpNichol’s challenging and innovative long poem.

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

“A stimulating companion to those reading, and rereading, Nichol’s quirky, honest, and experimental work.” —Books in Canada

BC Book Prize Finalist, 1993.

City of Vancouver Book Award Winner, 1993. “Bruce Macdonald breaks new ground with an impressive multi-disciplinary atlas.” —Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-311-0; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD ©1992; 96 pp; cloth; photos, maps & illus.; 2nd printing

Transmission Difficulties

Vancouver Anthology

Franz Boas and Tsimshian Mythology Ralph Maud

Revised Second Edition Edited by Stan Douglas

Ralph Maud delves into the mystery of Boas’s alleged “translations” of the stories gathered by his chief Tsimshian informant, Henry Tate.

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, hardcover edition features new colour reproductions and a new afterword by Stan Douglas. Co-published by the Or Gallery.

“A useful contribution to BC anthropology.” —Victoria Times-Colonist

26 Talonbooks Non-fiction Backlist / Fiction Backlist

Women in a World at War

Write It on Your Heart

Seven Dispatches from the Front Madeleine Gagnon

The Epic World of an Okanagan Storyteller Harry Robinson

Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott

Compiled and edited by Wendy Wickwire

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

BC Book Prize Finalist, 1990.

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

“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

FICTION BACKLIST

All That Glitters

The Athabasca Ryga

Martine Desjardins

George Ryga

Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

Edited by E. David Gregory

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

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.

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

And Other Stories

The Baldwins

Edited by George Bowering

Serge Lamothe

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. ISBN 978-0-88922-451-3; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2001; 320 pp

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

The Angel of Solitude

The Bicycle Eater

Marie-Claire Blais

Larry 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.

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2006.

“The narrative voice is wise and fatalistic and full of religiosity.” —Paragraph

“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

Governor General’s French Fiction Award Finalist, 2003.

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 27

The Black Notebook

Chameleon & Other Stories

Michel Tremblay

Bill Schermbrucker

Translated by Sheila Fischman

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 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 —Montreal Review of Books the story …” ISBN 978-0-88922-543-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2006; 224 pp

The Blue Notebook

The Circus Performers’ Bar

Michel Tremblay

David Arnason

Translated by Sheila Fischman

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

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 Breakdown So Far

Citizen Suárez

M.A.C. Farrant

Guillermo Verdecchia

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

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

ReLit Award Nominee, 2008.

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

Cambodia

A Covenant of Salt

A Book for People Who Find Television Too Slow Brian Fawcett

Martine Desjardins Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

“Cambodia is urgent, blunt, difficult—and vitally necessary.” —Canadian Forum

“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

Investigative fictions that examine the intentions of the information revolution.

Capital Tales

Darwin Alone in the Universe

Brian Fawcett

M.A.C. Farrant

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

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

28 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

Death in Vancouver

The Duchess and the Commoner

Garry Thomas Morse

Michel Tremblay

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

Translated by Sheila Fischman

“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

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. ISBN 978-0-88922-418-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1999; 256 pp

Death of the Spider

Dürer’s Angel

Michèle Mailhot

Marie-Claire Blais

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

Translated by David Lobdell

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

This third novel in the trilogy of Pauline Archange expresses her desire to translate the events of her life into words.

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

“A writer who stands head and shoulders above her contemporaries.” —Globe & Mail

Desert of the Heart

Fairy Ring

Jane Rule

Martine Desjardins

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

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

“Cool, clear-eyed, compassionate and unsentimental.” —Margaret Laurence, Globe & Mail

Translated by Fred A. Reed & David Homel

Governor General’s Translation Award Winner, 2001.

“An intelligent and utterly believable novel.” —Joyce Carol Oates

“Fairy Ring sets up familiar targets, tilts at them with wonderful panache and scores weirdly compelling hits.” —Globe & Mail

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

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 29

The First Quarter of the Moon Michel Tremblay

The Happiest Man in the World and Other Stories

Translated by Sheila Fischman

David Arnason

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.

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

“Touching and extra-real.”

“A wonderful book.”

—Quill & Quire

—Globe & Mail

The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky

Harry’s Fragments

Karen X. Tulchinsky

A Novel of International Puzzlement George Bowering

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. “Old-fashioned in the very best sense; it’s got lots of heart.” —National Post

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 —Ottawa Citizen of literary styles.” ISBN 978-0-88910-387-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1990; 182 pp

George Ryga

The Heart Laid Bare

The Prairie Novels Edited by James Hoffman

Michel Tremblay

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

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.

“…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 ISBN 978-0-88922-501-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2004; 320 pp

Translated by Sheila Fischman

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 license, 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

30 Talonbooks Fiction Backlist

The Hunting Ground

Mile End

Lise Tremblay

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Translated by Gail Scott

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

A chilling and masterful look at the interior landscapes of psychosis which mirror so perfectly the emptiness of the exterior surfaces they reflect.

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

In the Shadow of the Vulture

Mimosa

George Ryga

Bill Schermbrucker

Set in the desert at the Mexico–U.S. border, this novel deals with the hope and despair of immigrant labourers.

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

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

Latakia

Mother of the Grass

Audrey Thomas

Jovette Marchessault

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

Translated by Yvonne M. Klein

The second volume of Marchessault’s turbulent autobiographical trilogy. “Has enlarged the dimensions of the autobiographical novel by introducing elements of myth and visionary experience.” —Gloria Orenstein ISBN 978-0-88922-267-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1989; 176 pp

Like a Child of the Earth

Motortherapy

Jovette Marchessault

Bill Schermbrucker

Translated by Yvonne M. Klein

A frank and intensely personal book about human relationships.

The first volume of Jovette Marchessault’s autobiographical trilogy. Prix France-Québec Winner, 1976. “The most profound glimpse into a native Canadian woman’s imaginative experience.” —Books in Canada

“[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

Main Brides

Mrs. Blood

Gail Scott

Audrey Thomas

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.

“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

“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

Talonbooks Fiction Backlist 31

My Career with the Leafs & Other Stories

The Painter’s Wife

Brian Fawcett

Monique Durand

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

Translated by Sheila Fischman

An extraordinary novel about art and passion inspired by the lives of two great artists, Evelyn Rowat and René Marcil. “Resonant, ethereal, poignant. Here is a novel of rare —La Provence (France) aesthetic intelligence.” “A delight!”

—Nuit blanche

My Name Is Bosnia

Piercing

Madeleine Gagnon

Larry Tremblay

Translated by Phyllis Aronoff & Howard Scott

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

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

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 sub-text— that in contemporary urban environments, the only way people break through alienation is through some form of violence.

IMPAC Dublin Literary Award Longlist, 2007. “Movingly captures the transformative effect of war —Publishers Weekly on human consciousness …” “In Gagnon’s deft hands the narrative is stirring but never maudlin.” —Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-542-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©2006; 256 pp

News from Édouard

The Rain Barrel

Michel Tremblay

George Bowering

Translated by Sheila Fischman

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

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

“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

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 participatory narrator scrambling to keep up with the unfolding perceptions within the others.

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.

Governor General’s French Fiction Award Winner, 2000. “An extraordinary book of excellent quality.” —Adrienne Clarkson

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

Subject to Change

Brian Fawcett

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.

Renee Rodin

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

—Kootenay Reporter

“… a delightful testament to the complexity of people and the many roles we play in our lifetimes.” —Telegraph-Journal “Renee Rodin lives the life I would try to live if I had the time.” —George Bowering ISBN 978-0-88922-644-9; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2010; 160 pp; 2nd printing

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). “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

Edited by Ann Kujundzic 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. Nominated for the Governor General’s Translation Award, 1994.

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 —Montreal Review of Books unforgettable women.” 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.

34 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

All Fall Down

Larry Tremblay

Wendy Lill

Translated by Chantal Bilodeau

A play about modern-day witch-hunting. 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

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

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 Souers 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

The English and French working class get together on their balconies in 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

36 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

The Berlin Blues

Bordertown Café

Drew Hayden Taylor

Kelly Rebar

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.

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.

“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

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

Bethune

The Boy in the Treehouse / Girl Who Loved Her Horses

Rod Langley 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. “A portrait of an enormously complex man.” —Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-088-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1975; 128 pp; 6th printing

Drew Hayden Taylor Two plays about the process of children becoming adults and the nature of, and necessity for, rites of passage. The Boy in the Treehouse cast: 1 woman and 4 men. Girl Who Loved Her Horses cast: 2 women and 3 men. ISBN 978-0-88922-441-4; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2000; 160 pp; 3rd printing

Billy Bishop Goes to War

Burning Vision

John Gray with Eric Peterson

Marie Clements

A musical about Canada’s famous World War I flying ace. Cast of 2 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.

Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 1982. “A delightful—and cunningly wrought—work of art.” —New Yorker “A superb mixture of laconic irony and white-knuckle tale-telling.” —Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-196-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1982; 104 pp; photos; 13th printing

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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 37

Les Canadiens

Cold Comfort

Rick Salutin

Jim Garrard

Introduction by Ken Dryden

Set in Saskatchewan, the geographic centre of Canada, Cold Comfort depicts the complex relationship among three characters. Cast of 1 woman and 2 men.

A play about Quebec and Canada that uses hockey as a metaphor. Cast of 7 men. Chalmers Award Winner for Best Canadian Play, 1977.

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

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

“Sheer genius!”

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 mosaic of experiences that form a childhood. Cast of 2 women, 2 men, 1 female child and 1 male child.

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

—Arts National, CBC Radio

Carmela’s Table

The Concise Köchel

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

Normand Chaurette

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

Translated by Linda Gaboriau 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 Ojibwa artist Norval Morrisseau. Cast of 5 women and 4 men.

“The play comes at a propitious time.”

—The Scientist

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

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2008. “Marie Clements … is building a powerful reputation for her innovative approaches to … theatre on aboriginal themes.” —Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-568-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2007; 84 pp; 2nd printing

38 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Corker

Cyrano de Bergerac

Wendy Lill

Edmond Rostand

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. Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1999. “Tough, compassionate and surprisingly funny.” —Sunday Daily News ISBN 978-0-88922-394-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1998; 128 pp

Translated by John Murrell 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 … —Edmonton Journal impressive achievement …” ISBN 978-0-921368-43-4; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD ©1995; 160 pp

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 manipulates 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.

In this comedy of identity politics, Pocahontas, Tonto and other First Nations characters rewrite their stereotyped lives. Cast of 3 men and 5 women.

“A unique and astonishing dramatic event.” —Calgary Herald

“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.

Written by one of Canada’s most influential postmodern playwrights, this dazzling one-man show is storytelling of the highest order. 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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 39

Democracy

Down Dangerous Passes Road

John Murrell

Michel Marc Bouchard

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.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Alberta Writers’ Guild Prize Winner for Drama.

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.

“Even the simplest lines have a quiet eloquence … soft explosions of the heart.” —Quill & Quire

Governor General’s Translation Award Finalist, 2000.

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 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.

“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.

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.

“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.”

Translated by John Van Burek

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

40 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Earshot

En Pièces Détachées

Morris Panych

Michel Tremblay

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. “A superbly mounted Panych attack.”

Translated by Allan Van Meer The life of a lower-class family in East End Montreal. Cast of 4 women and 2 men. “Tremblay courageously insists on the relevance and dilemma of neo-colonial French Canada.” —Books in Canada

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 —Globe & Mail action.”

“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

Contains 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 ISBN 978-0-88922-404-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD ©1999; 208 pp; 4th printing

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 ISBN 978-0-88922-525-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2005; 96 pp; 4th printing

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

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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 41

The Execution

The Fighting Days

Marie-Claire Blais

Wendy Lill

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

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

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

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

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

A look at post–World War II Canada from a recent highschool graduate’s viewpoint. Cast of 2 women and 9 men. “Defines a uniquely Canadian experience that expands to the universal.” —Kootenay Reporter ISBN 978-0-88922-096-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1975; 128 pp

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco Tremblay’s penetrating analysis of a Quebec family unit. Cast of 3 women and 1 man. “Brilliantly insightful, uncompromising drama.” —Detroit News “One of Tremblay’s infinitely hot and dense family dramas …” —Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-349-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©1975, 1994; 82 pp; 6th printing

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

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

42 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Fragments of a Farewell Letter Read by Geologists

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

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

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.

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.

Normand Chaurette

Fronteras Americanas

Goodnight Disgrace

American Borders Guillermo Verdecchia

Michael Mercer

One man’s struggle to find a home between two cultures, exploding the images and constructs built up around Latinos and Latin America. Cast of 1 man. Governor General’s Drama Award Winner, 1993. “Outrageous, funny, devastatingly witty.”

—CBC

From his wheelchair in a nursing home, Conrad Aiken recalls his long, stormy relations with Malcolm Lowry. Cast of 3 women and 4 men. “Knocked out by the richness of its language.” —Vancouver Sun ISBN 978-0-88922-238-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1986; 120 pp

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 destruction of the people of the Blackfoot Confederacy by the liquor trade in Alberta and Montana. Cast of 5 women and 13 men.

“Boyd’s writing is muscular, vigorous and commanding.” —Globe & Mail

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

With a Japanese translation by Toyoshi Yoshihara 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.”

—UNESCO

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 43

Halo

The Hope Slide / Little Sister

Josh MacDonald

Joan MacLeod

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.

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

Merritt Theatre Award Nominee for Best Play, 2004. “Halo successfully melds faith, drama and humour … —Halifax Daily News very funny and quite moving.” ISBN 978-0-88922-469-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2002; 128 pp; 3rd printing

“A passionate and rich examination of the human —Victoria Times-Colonist condition’s precariousness.” 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

Heaven

Hosanna

George F. Walker

Michel Tremblay

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.

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco 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.

“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

“Written by a real playwright who can write poetic prose, handle literary technique and create character.” —New York Post

Hellfire Pass

The Impromptu of Outremont

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

Michel Tremblay

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

Translated by John Van Burek 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.

44 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

In the Eyes of God

Joe Beef

Raul Sanchez Inglis

David Fennario

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.

Desperately poor immigrants find refuge in Montreal’s legendary barkeep, Joe Beef. Cast of 5 women and 5 men. The United Steel Workers’ Union Pauline Julien Prize Winner, 1987.

“[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

“An evening of political theatre with both guts and skill is a rare commodity these days.” —Montreal Gazette

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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 45

Life Without Instruction

Ludwig & Mae

Sally Clark

Louis Patrick Leroux

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

Translated by Shelley Tepperman & Ellen Warkentin

“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 —Toronto Star ambiguities.”

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. “audacious avant-garde spectacles …”

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

—Jane Moss

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 female child and 1 male child.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Marchessault evokes the doubts, the trials and the joys of this singular existence. Cast of 3 women and 1 man. “A worthy trip home for one of Canada’s greatest painters.” —Globe & Mail ISBN 978-0-88922-314-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1992; 104 pp; 2nd printing

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

Translated by John Van Burek A rich, emotional, sweeping drama of anger and sorrow spanning three generations. Cast of 3 women, 4 men and 1 male child. Chalmers Award Winner, 1990.

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

“A full and resounding resonance.”

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.

—Theatrum

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Marcel Pursued by the Hounds

Modern Canadian Plays

Michel Tremblay

Volume II Edited by Jerry Wasserman

Translated by John Van Burek & Bill Glassco How our “innocent” childhood games and fantasies come back to haunt us in adult life. Cast of 4 women and 1 adolescent male. “Tremblay’s grip on matters of the human heart is as precise, knowing and unforgiving as ever.” —Quill & Quire ISBN 978-0-88922-326-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1996; 80 pp; 2nd printing

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; 6th printing

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 —Georgia Straight this much.” 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 male children.

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 ISBN 978-0-88922-549-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2006; 96 pp; 2nd printing

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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 47

Nothing to Lose

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth

David Fennario

Drew Hayden Taylor

Working-class survivors of the ’60s stage a workers’ sitdown strike. Cast of 9 men.

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

James Buller Award for Playwright of the Year, 1997. Dora Mavor Moore Award for Outstanding New Play, Small Theatre Division, 1996. “This is not just a great Native production. This is a great production. Period.” —CBC ISBN 978-0-88922-384-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1998; 112 pp; 7th printing

The Occupation of Heather Rose

Other Schools of Thought

Wendy Lill

Morris Panych

Young, naïve 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 naïvely 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

48 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Playing Bare

Remember Me

Dominic Champagne

Michel Tremblay

Translated by Shelley Tepperman

Translated by John Stowe

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

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

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1994.

“[Tremblay] has entered a new phase of his dramatic —Canadian Literature art.”

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 female child, 1 male child 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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 49

Sainte-Carmen of the Main

The Seagull

Michel Tremblay

Anton Chekhov

Translated by John Van Burek

Translated by David French

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.

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

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

“One of the best plays of the ’80s.”

Winner of 6 Jessie Richardson Theatre Awards, 1989. —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.

“Brilliant.”

“A gem of a play … affecting, funny and as evocative as a dream.” —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.

—Globe & Mail

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

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 moving theatrical experience.”

—Theatrum

50 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

Six Plays by Mavor Moore

Spectacle of Empire

Mavor Moore

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

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. “One of the great men of Canadian drama.” —Books in Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-271-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©1989; 208 pp

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. “The French play by Lescarbot is a significant literary and cultural artifact …” —Dalhousie Review ISBN 978-0-88922-547-3; $21.95 CAD / $21.95 USD ©2006; 108 pp; maps & illustrations

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 the World War I, 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 which matter; which 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 ’50s in which a battered child, Maurice, seeks refuge in a fantasy world. Cast of 1 man and 1 male child.

“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

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 51

Talking Bodies

The Trespassers

Larry Tremblay

Morris Panych

Translated by Sheila Fischman

Poignant, thought-provoking and sharply sardonic, The Trespassers focuses on the relationship between fifteenyear-old 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.

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

“Charming and, this being Panych, funny.” —National Post

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 seventeen. 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

52 Talonbooks Drama Backlist

2000

Waiting for the Parade

Joan MacLeod

John Murrell

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.

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

“2000 is a remarkable achievement.” —Canadian Book Review Annual “Full of good insights … good lines.” —University of Toronto Quarterly

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.

Talonbooks Drama Backlist 53

The Weekend Healer

Whereverville

Bryden MacDonald

Josh MacDonald

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.

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.

Westray

Willful Acts

The Long Way Home Chris O’Neill & Ken Schwartz

Margaret Hollingsworth

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.

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.

“Crisp, thoughtful, and entertaining, and every bit —Ottawa Citizen deserving of a standing ovation.”

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 1985 (War Babies).

Whale Riding Weather

With Bated Breath

Bryden MacDonald

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.

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, 1994. “Powerfully written …”

—Toronto Star

What Lies Before Us

Written on Water

Morris Panych

Michel Marc Bouchard

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.

Translated by Linda Gaboriau

Governor General’s Drama Award Finalist, 2007. “Panych is … ambitious, talented, funny, feared, beloved … and altogether impossible to ignore.” —Toronto Life ISBN 978-0-88922-560-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD ©2007; 96 pp

Where the Blood Mixes Kevin Loring 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. 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

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

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After Jack

Back to the War

Garry Thomas Morse

Frank Davey

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.

A careful archaeology of the catalogue of innocence assembled by a youthful imagination blossoming during World War II.

“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 —Stephen Collis a deep breath. Now dive back in.”

“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.

A composition of daily riffs during an autumn in Denmark and Italy; an album of verbal portraits by a husband and wife who see differently; and 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

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.

b leev abul char ak trs

Bread and Salt

bill bissett

Renee Rodin

“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

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

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 55

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.

A collection of prose poems on the hyperbolic absurdities of multiculturalism in action.

“Lola Lemire Tostevin is an incisive, intelligent, and —Quarry sharply observant writer …”

“Finally, what’s left is an irresistible, irrepressible read that’s bound to raise eyebrows.” —Monday Magazine

“Lovely, nape-tingling work.”

—Books in Canada

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. “Morse is 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

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.

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.

“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

“One of the best poets of his generation.”

The Commons

Down Time

Stephen Collis

Jeff Derksen

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.

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

“Ken Norris … has been hailed as Canada’s premier romantic poet.” —Toronto Star —Matrix

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

56 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

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 —Canadian Literature clarity and beauty.”

“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

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 collages; 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

A Few Words Will Do

Genrecide

Lionel Kearns

Adeena Karasick

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.

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

“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

“Beautiful linguistic carnage …” “Bridging the genre gap …” “Visually striking … ”

—Word —The Link

—Jewish Post and News

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 57

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 —Barry McKinnon in Canada.”

“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.”

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.

“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

“For mclennan, there are no rules. His poetry defies —Room Magazine convention or classification”

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

Gypsy Guitar

hypoderm

David W. McFadden

notes to myself Weyman Chan

100 poems of love and betrayal—all presented in the unmistakable McFadden style. Governor General’s Poetry Award Finalist, 1988. “An exhilarating immersion in a uniquely bizarre and irrepressible imagination.” —Canadian Literature ISBN 978-0-88922-250-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD ©1987; 112 pp; 3rd printing

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. “hypoderm … maps the borders and the fence; the lines between friends and family, between forgive and forget.” —derek beaulieu ISBN 978-0-88922-637-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD ©2010; 96 pp

58 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

I. Another. The Space Between Selected Poems Jamie Reid

Kerrisdale Elegies George Bowering

“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

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

is a door

Love and Savagery

Fred Wah

Des Walsh

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.

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.

BC Book Prize Winner, 2010. “Without a doubt, [is a door] is a dazzler … thoughtful, playful and stunningly skillful.” —Globe & Mail

“A collection to be read and re-read, pondered and savoured.” —Newfoundland Herald

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 59

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 —Citylife way after you hear him.”

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 —Nicole Brossard exciting.”

“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.’” —Sharon 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.

narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane bill bissett 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

northern wild roses / deth interrupts th dansing 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 is one of the leading performance poets in Canada.” —Flak Magazine

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

60 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

On the Material

Post-Prairie

Stephen Collis

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

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

“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 —Hank Lazer emotional of subjects”

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

BC Book Prize Winner, 2011.

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

The Richard Brautigan Ahhhhhhhhhhh

Robin Blaser

rob mclennan

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).

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.

“Robin Blaser became a source for poetry’s authority beyond any simplifying place or time.” —Robert Creeley

Archibald Lampman Award Finalist, 2000.

peter among th towring boxes / text bites

scars on th seehors

bill bissett

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 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.”

BC Book Prize Winner, 2003. “[bill bissett is] the shaman of Canadian poetry.” —Georgia Straight

Popular Narratives

Selected Poems

Frank Davey

The Arches Frank Davey

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. “Risqué metaphors … scandalously unpoetic … a powerful alternative to the orthodoxy of poetic beauty.” —Smaro Kamboureli ISBN 978-0-88922-285-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD; ©1991; 96 pp

Selections from seven of this important poet and editor’s long poems. “Possesses a concentrated power that is rarely evident.” —Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-174-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD ©1980; 112 pp

Talonbooks Poetry Backlist 61

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

Selected Poems

The Singer’s Broken Throat

The Vision Tree Phyllis Webb

Des Walsh

Poetry distinguished by its attention to form and thought. Governor General’s Poetry Award Winner, 1982. “Phyllis Webb … is one of the finest poets now writing in Canada.” —Books in Canada ISBN 978-0-88922-202-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©1982; 160 pp; 4th printing

Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland & Labrador Heritage and History Award Finalist, 2005. “Alternatively tender and bitter, this collection is at once a prayer for love’s endurance and a lament for a nation …” —Fiddlehead “Walsh is, and always has been, Newfound-land’s poet.” —Sunday Independent ISBN 978-0-88922-478-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD ©2003; 64 pp

Selected Writing

Sticks & Stones

As Elected bpNichol

George Bowering

Selections from visual poetry to translations by one of the most important poets in the 20th century writing in English. “bpNichol’s work is the most courageous body of work in Canadian literature.” —Frank Davey ISBN 978-0-88922-176-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1980; 144 pp

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

Selected Writing

sublingual

Net Work Daphne Marlatt

bill bissett

Poetry and prose with an instantaneous recognition of perceptions and thought. “Confronts political realities on the level in which they impinge upon people’s lives.” —Montreal Gazette ISBN 978-0-88922-175-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD ©1980; 144 pp

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. ISBN 978-0-88922-589-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD ©2008; 160 pp; illustrations

62 Talonbooks Poetry Backlist

There’ll Be Another

Transnational Muscle Cars

David W. McFadden

Jeff Derksen

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

“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

“They are beautifully written and enjoyable to read.” —Quill & Quire “McFadden should be everybody’s favorite poet.” —Ottawa XPress

“Accessible in themes, comfortably paced and motored by an anti-heroic punk sensibility …” —Publishers Weekly

This Tremor Love Is

Triage

Daphne Marlatt

Cecily Nicholson

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.

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.

BC Book Prize Finalist, 2002.

“This is the heart of Vancouver, beating bravely in the tent village, attesting to daily poverty, daily ingenuity …” —Rita Wong

ths is erth thees ar peopul

Vermeer’s Light

bill bissett

Poems 1996–2006 George Bowering

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. ReLit Award Nominee, 2008. “His poetry addresses the limitless discussion of the boundaries between the personal and the political.” —National Post ISBN 978-0-88922-557-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD ©2007; 144 pp; illustrations

“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

time

what’s left

bill bissett

rob mclennan

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.

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

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 63

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 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

Bouchard, Michel Marc

20 The Coronation Voyage

978-0-88922-629-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Angus, Ian

Brooks, Daniel & Guillermo

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 18 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 20 978-0-88922-459-9; $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 5 Anarcho-Modernism: Toward a New Belford, Ken 978-0-88922-440-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-685-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Critical Theory in Honour of Jerry Decompositions 55 The Madonna Painter 45 The Shovel 61 Zaslove 17 978-0-88922-631-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-457-5; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Archambault, François

978-0-88922-641-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Tale of Teeka

bissett, bill b leev abul char ak trs

978-0-88922-410-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-574-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Burns, Mary

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

15 Seconds

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

The Happiest Man in the World and Other Stories 29

978-0-88922-322-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

loving without being vulnrabul

978-0-88922-372-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The Pagan Wall

978-0-88922-312-7; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

uv hurricane

978-0-88922-507-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The Terror of the Coast: Land 978-0-88922-532-9; $17.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Alienation and Colonial War on novel 16 Vancouver Island and the Gulf 978-0-88922-671-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Islands, 1849–1863 24 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 60 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

ths is erth thees ar peopul

978-0-88922-557-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

time 19

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

41 Beating the Bushes

Bourguignon, Stéphane 32

978-0-88922-596-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Bowering, George And Other Stories

C Carlson, Tim Diplomacy

978-0-88922-611-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-451-3; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Omniscience

978-0-88922-647-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-200-7; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

northern wild roses / deth interrupts Baseball Love th dansing 59

Arnett, Chris

Crimes and Mercies: The Fate of German Civilians under Allied Occupation, 1944–1950

The Fairies Are Thirsty

59 A Slight Case of Fatigue

978-0-88922-269-4; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD narrativ enigma / rumours

Bush, Steven

Boucher, Denise

978-0-88922-562-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-529-9; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Blonds on Bikes

54 Carson, Linda A. et al.

46 978-0-88922-381-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Mom’s the Word 978-0-88922-431-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Harry’s Fragments 29 978-0-88910-387-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 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 19 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

978-0-88922-634-0; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

The Rain Barrel

Champagne, Dominic

59 Playing Bare 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 17 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 22 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 42 60

Timothy Findley and the Aesthetics of The Execution 41 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 25 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

64 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Chekhov, Anton The Seagull

Cross, Ronald & Hélène Sévigny 49

978-0-88922-324-0; $16.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Christensen, Bev Too Good to Be True

978-0-88922-635-7; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

25 Cryer, Beryl Mildred

978-0-88922-354-7; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand: Oral

Clark, Sally Life Without Instruction

978-0-88922-347-9; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Lost Souls and Missing Persons

978-0-88922-397-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Moo

978-0-88754-476-7; $12.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Saint Frances of Hollywood

978-0-88922-366-0; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

The Trial of Judith K.

Anthropology, Law and First Nations

978-0-88922-472-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Copper Thunderbird

978-0-88922-568-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Tombs of the Vanishing Indian

978-0-88922-520-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-566-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Fairy Ring

D’Acres, Lilia & Donald Luxton

Maleficium

Lions Gate

Deverell, Rex

Dalpé, Jean Marc

Boiler Room Suite

44 978-0-88922-521-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD In the Eyes of Stone Dogs 978-0-88922-519-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Clements, Marie & Rita Leistner

Song of the Say-Sayer

Cochrane, Mark

Daurio, Beverley

Douglas, Stan Vancouver Anthology, 2nd ed.

Danis, Daniel

978-0-88922-137-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-484-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-680-7; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Cloth: 978-0-88922-416-2; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

10 Scattered in a Rising Wind

978-0-88922-686-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Unnatural and Accidental Women

978-0-88922-449-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Clements, Marie Burning Vision

All That Glitters 23

978-0-88922-398-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-471-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-315-8; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD A Covenant of Salt

978-0-88922-503-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

WASPs

Darwin Alone in the Universe

Derksen, Jeff

978-0-88922-556-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Traditions of the Hul’q’umi’num’ Annihilated Time: Poetry and Other Coast Salish of Kuper Island and Politics 17 Down the Road to Eternity: New & Selected Fiction 28 Vancouver Island 25 978-0-88922-612-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD 978-0-88922-615-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-555-8; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Down Time 55 The Strange Truth About Us: A Novel 978-0-88922-278-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Culhane, Dara of Absence 15 Dwell 56 An Error in Judgement: The Politics of 978-0-88922-668-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-328-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Medical Care in an Indian / White Transnational Muscle Cars 62 Fawcett, Brian Community 19 978-0-88922-473-5; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Cambodia: A Book for People Who 978-0-88922-246-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Find Television Too Slow 27 The Pleasure of the Crown: Desjardins, Martine

978-0-88754-465-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Wanted

Deneault, Alain & William Sacher F

Lasagna: The Man Behind the Mask Imperial Canada Inc.: Legal Haven of Farrant, M.A.C. 21 Choice for the World’s Mining Industries 13 The Breakdown So Far 978-0-88922-348-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-237-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Capital Tales My Career with the Leafs & Other Stories

978-0-88922-199-4; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

The Secret Journal of Alexander Mackenzie

978-0-88922-227-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Fennario, David Balconville

978-0-88922-145-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Banana Boots 25

978-0-88922-221-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-396-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Cloth: 978-0-88922-614-2; $35.00 CAD / $35.00 USD Bolsheviki: A Dead Serious Comedy

Ducharme, Réjean

978-0-88922-687-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

50 Go Figure

29 The Death of René Lévesque 38 The Edward Curtis Project: A Modern 978-0-88922-419-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-482-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-480-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Picture Story 19, 40 That Woman 51 Miss Take 15 Doctor Thomas Neill Cream (Mystery 978-0-88922-642-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-399-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-669-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD at McGill) 39 Change Room

55 Hell & Other Novels

978-0-88922-432-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Collis, Stephen The Commons

978-0-88910-421-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Davey, Frank 55 Back to the War

978-0-88922-580-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

On the Material

Dumont, Gabriel 29 Gabriel Dumont Speaks

978-0-88922-632-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

54 The Painter’s Wife 54

978-0-88922-636-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-559-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics

Conolly, L. W. 18 Popular Narratives Selected Poems: The Arches

Cook, Michael Jacob’s Wake

978-0-88922-097-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Can You See Me Yet?

Ebtekar, Massoumeh with Fred A. Reed

978-0-88922-119-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Fiorentino, Jon Paul & Robert Kroetsch

of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture Post-Prairie: An Anthology of New Poetry 60 24 978-0-88922-443-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Enright, Robert

978-0-88922-523-7; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Fischer, Hervé

The Decline of the Hollywood Empire Peregrinations: Conversations with 19 Contemporary Artists 22

Deneault, Alain

978-0-921368-67-0; $24.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-538-1; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Nathan Cuckow BASH’d

978-0-88922-174-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Tiln & Other Plays 51 Paul Martin & Companies: Sixty Theses on the Alegal Nature of 978-0-88922-107-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Tax Havens

Craddock, Chris &

978-0-88922-285-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-102-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Findley, Timothy

978-0-88922-217-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story

978-0-88922-359-2; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-121-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

31 On the Job

978-0-88922-535-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-291-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Nothing to Lose

Durand, Monique

Phyllis Webb and the Common Good: Cultural Mischief 55 Poetry / Anarchy / Abstraction 23 978-0-88922-364-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Canadian Drama and the Critics, Revised Edition

978-0-88922-625-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-514-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

60 Bardy Google

978-0-88922-332-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

19 Joe Beef

978-0-88922-545-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Frangione, Lucia Cariboo Magi

978-0-88922-527-5; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-656-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Espresso

978-0-88922-495-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 65

Paradise Garden

47 Grace, Sherrill &

978-0-88922-658-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Vol. III: The Mainland Halkomelem 24 Kearns, Lionel

978-0-88922-150-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD A Few Words Will Do 56 Vol. IV: The Sechelt and the 978-0-88922-558-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Performing National Identities: French, David South-Eastern Tribes of International Perspectives on Jitters 44 Kennedy, Dorothy & Randy Vancouver Island 24 Contemporary Canadian Theatre 22 978-0-88922-242-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Bouchard 978-0-88922-151-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-475-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 1949 46 Indian Myths & Legends from the Hogg, Robert 978-0-88922-266-3; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Grace, Sherrill & North Pacific Coast of America: An English Canadian Poetics One Crack Out 47 A Translation of Franz Boas’ Jerry Wasserman Vol. I: The Confederation Poets 19 978-0-88922-488-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 1895 Edition of Indianische Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing 978-0-88922-613-5; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD The Riddle of the World 48 Sagen von der Nord-Pacifischen and Performing Lives in Theory and 978-0-88922-487-2; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Küste Amerikas 20 Practice 24 Hollingsworth, Margaret Salt-Water Moon 49 978-0-88922-553-4; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD 978-0-88922-540-4; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Willful Acts 53 978-0-88922-257-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Lil’wat World of Charlie Mack 21 978-0-88922-385-1; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Gray, John Silver Dagger 49 978-0-88922-640-1; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 45 Homel, David 978-0-88922-325-7; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Local Boy Makes Good Kerr, Kevin 978-0-88922-248-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Get on Top 29 Soldier’s Heart 50 Skydive 50 978-0-7737-6048-6; $22.95 CAD / $18.95 USD 978-0-88922-463-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Lost in North America: The Imaginary 978-0-88922-638-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Canadian in the American Dream That Summer 51 Hughes, Kenneth James Studies in Motion 50 21 978-0-88922-439-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Signs of Literature 24 978-0-88922-592-3; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Albert-Reiner Glaap

978-0-88922-350-9; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-236-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Unity (1918)

Gray, John with Eric Peterson

Billy Bishop Goes to War

Gagnon, Madeleine My Name Is Bosnia

978-0-88922-196-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Outsider Notes

978-0-88922-542-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

22 Kitagawa, Muriel

978-0-88922-363-9; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD This Is My Own

978-0-88922-461-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Hunter, Lynette

Cloth: 978-0-88922-231-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Women in a World at War: Seven Dispatches from the Front 26 Hadfield, D.A. 978-0-88922-483-4; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Kiyooka, Roy K.

Inglis, Raul Sanchez

Pacific Windows: Collected Poems of Roy K. Kiyooka 60

Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic In the Eyes of God 44 978-0-88922-378-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD History: The Politics of Playing in 978-0-88922-561-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Toronto 23 Knickerbocker, Nancy Je me souviens 44 978-0-88922-563-3; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-453-7; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD No Plaster Saint: The Life of Mildred J Osterhout Fahrni 22 Hardin, Herschel Galluccio, Steve

Gale, Lorena

In Piazza San Domenico

15 Esker Mike and His Wife, Agiluk

978-0-88922-674-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Mambo Italiano

45 The Great Wave of Civilization

978-0-88922-494-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-106-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

52 Fifteen Miles of Broken Glass

978-0-88922-282-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-423-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Kröller, Eva-Marie George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour 20

Jetha, Sadru 41 Nuri Does Not Exist

978-0-88922-096-6; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-306-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-655-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Johnson, Chris

Hentsch, Thierry

Garrard, Jim

978-0-88922-452-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Jaeger, Peter

42 ABC of Reading TRG

Hendry, Tom

Garneau, Michel Warriors

978-0-88922-018-8; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Lafond, Jean-Daniel & Essays on George F. Walker: Playing with Anxiety 19 Fred A. Reed 19 978-0-921368-82-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Conversations in Tehran 19 978-0-88922-587-9; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Glover, Douglas 978-0-88922-550-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Truth or Death: The Quest for Dog Attempts to Drown Man in Immortality in the Western Narrative K Lamothe, Serge Saskatoon 28 Tradition 25 The Baldwins 26 978-0-88922-228-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-509-1; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD Karasick, Adeena 37 Empire of Desire: The Abolition of Time 978-0-88922-201-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Cold Comfort

978-0-88922-544-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Gold, Artie

Amuse Bouche

Highway, Tomson

The Collected Books of Artie Gold 55 Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout 40 978-0-88922-652-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Rose

Grace, Sherrill Making Theatre: A Life of Sharon Pollock

978-0-88922-525-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-604-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Dyssemia Sleaze

Langley, Rod

56 Bethune

978-0-88922-434-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-088-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

56 The Dunsmuirs: Alone at the Edge 39 978-0-88922-490-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD The Empress Has No Closure 978-0-88922-297-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 978-0-88922-307-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

21 Hill-Tout, Charles

Genrecide

978-0-88922-586-2; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD The Salish People (ed. Ralph Maud)

Strange Comfort: Essays on the Work Vol. I: The Thompson and of Malcolm Lowry 24 the Okanagan 978-0-88922-618-0; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

56 The Dunsmuirs: A Promise Kept

978-0-88922-370-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

The House That Hijack Built 23

978-0-88922-149-9; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

57 Lavallée, Ronald

978-0-88922-511-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Tchipayuk: or The Way of the Wolf 32

978-0-88922-148-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Mêmewars

Vol. II: The Squamish and the Lillooet 23

978-0-88922-304-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-344-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-338-7; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

66 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Leonoff, Cyril E.

McElroy, Gil

Malyon, Carol & bill bissett

Miki, Roy &

Bridges of Light: Otto Landauer of Cold Comfort: Growing Up griddle talk: a yeer uv bill n carol Cassandra Kobayashi Leonard Frank Photos, 1945–1980 Cold War 3 dewing brunch 20 Justice in Our Time: The Japanese 18 978-0-88922-684-5; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD 978-0-88922-606-7; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Canadian Redress Settlement 20 Cloth: 978-0-88922-376-9; $39.95 CAD / $34.95 USD Dream Pool Essays 56 Cloth: 978-0-88922-292-2; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD 978-0-88922-454-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Leroux, Louis Patrick Ludwig & Mae

978-0-88922-623-4; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Lill, Wendy All Fall Down

37 38

978-0-88922-394-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

The Fighting Days

978-0-88922-226-7; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum

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

McFadden, David W. Five Star Planet

978-0-88922-382-0; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Gypsy Guitar

978-0-88922-250-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

There’ll Be Another

978-0-88922-361-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-515-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

53 McKinnon, Barry 978-0-88922-608-1; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Centre: Poems 1970–2000

Where the Blood Mixes

mclennan, rob 18 gifts

978-0-88922-554-1; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

978-0-88922-314-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Mother of the Grass

Moodie, Andrew

30 The Lady Smith 48 Moore, Mavor

Marlatt, Daphne

Morse, Garry Thomas After Jack

Charles Olson at the Harbor

978-0-88922-607-4; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-175-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Discovery Passages

Maud, Ralph

978-0-88922-630-2; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-450-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-271-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-616-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Death in Vancouver

Selected Writing: Net Work

978-1-55331-002-0; $14.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-213-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Six Plays by Mavor Moore

The Gull

978-0-88922-120-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-267-0; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-660-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Murakami, Sachiko The Invisibility Exhibit

978-0-88922-579-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-576-3; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Rebuild

A Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and Legend 55

978-0-88922-497-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Luxton, Donald

The Magnificent Voyage of Emily Carr 45

This Tremor Love Is

978-0-88922-552-7; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Loring, Kevin

30 Mitchell, Ken

978-0-88922-261-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Cruel Tears

Saga of the Wet Hens

47 MacIvor, Daniel 49

Like a Child of the Earth

978-0-88922-468-1; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD White Pebbles in the Dark Forests 33 978-0-88922-280-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Great Lakes Suite 20

978-0-88922-289-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Marion Bridge

Building the West: The Early Architects of British Columbia

978-0-88922-675-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-593-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Cul-de-sac

Sisters

978-0-88922-499-5; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-569-5; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Corker

978-0-88922-575-6; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

NonZero Definitions

34 Ordinary Time

978-0-88922-336-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Chimera

Last Scattering Surfaces

Marchessault, Jovette

978-0-88922-670-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-189-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Murphy, John

The Heretic 43 Poet to Publisher: Charles Olson’s 978-0-88922-595-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Correspondence with Donald Allen 57 23 Murrell, John

978-0-88922-605-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-486-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

Democracy 39 57 The Porcupine Hunter and Other 978-0-921368-28-1; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD 978-0-88922-662-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Stories 23 The Faraway Nearby 41 harvest: a book of signifiers 57 978-0-88922-333-2; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Glengarry

978-0-88922-455-1; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Transmission Difficulties: Franz Boas

McCaffery, Steve & bpNichol Rational Geomancy: The Kids of the Book-Machine 23 978-0-88922-300-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

McClure, Michael Specks, 2nd ed.

978-0-88922-688-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-408-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-360-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Whale Riding Weather

978-0-88922-353-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

With Bated Breath

978-0-88922-651-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

MacDonald, Josh Halo

Whereverville

978-0-88922-183-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-430-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

62 Meigs, Mary 978-0-88922-498-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Beyond Recall

what’s left

Amigo’s Blue Guitar

978-0-88922-505-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

MacLeod, Joan

The Box Closet

978-0-88922-294-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-622-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Lily Briscoe: A Self-Portrait

Homechild

MacDonald, Bryden

The Weekend Healer

978-0-88922-424-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

25 Another Home Invasion

Cloth: 978-0-88922-311-0; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD

Divinity Bash / nine lives

and Tsimshian Mythology 60

978-0-88922-253-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-371-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD In the Company of Strangers 20

Macdonald, Bruce Vancouver: A Visual History

The Richard Brautigan Ahhhhhhhhhhh

978-0-921368-56-4; $10.95 CAD / $7.95 USD

Waiting for the Parade

978-0-88922-195-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-582-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Medusa Head

The Hope Slide / Little Sister

43 978-0-88922-210-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-411-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Time Being 33

The Shape of a Girl / Jewel

978-0-88922-460-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

N Nichol, bp bpNichol Comics

978-0-88922-448-3; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Meanwhile: The Critical Writings of bpNichol 21 978-0-88922-447-6; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Selected Writing: As Elected

978-0-88922-176-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Nichol, James W.

49 978-0-88922-374-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Sainte-Marie among the Hurons 978-0-88922-147-5; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

51 Mercer, Michael 978-0-88922-583-1; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Goodnight Disgrace

Toronto, Mississippi 2000

978-0-88922-373-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

Mailhot, Michèle

42 Nicholson, Cecily 978-0-88922-238-0; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Triage

Miki, Roy A Record of Writing

978-0-88922-657-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

23 Norris, Ken

54 Death of the Spider 28 Cloth: 978-0-88922-263-2; $39.95 CAD / $34.95 USD Asian Skies 978-0-88922-469-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-633-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Tracing the Paths: Reading = / Writing 978-0-88922-298-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD 978-0-88922-506-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

The Martyrology

25 Dominican Moon

978-0-88922-256-4; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-526-8; $17.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author 67

Fifty

56 Pollock, Sharon

978-0-88922-479-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Walsh

Floating Up to Zero

978-0-88922-215-1; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Write It on Your Heart: The Epic Scobie, Stephen World of an Okanagan Storyteller bpNichol: What History Teaches 18 26 978-0-88922-220-5; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-502-2; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-659-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Going Home

978-0-88922-573-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

Hotel Montreal: New and Selected Poems

978-0-88922-456-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Limbo Road

978-0-88922-401-8; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Rodin, Renee

Bread and Salt

Reaney, James Colours in the Dark

Heroine 54 32

978-0-88922-644-9; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

45 Rossi, Vittorio

978-0-88922-002-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD Carmela’s Table: A Carpenter’s Trilogy,

Bordertown Café The School-Marm Tree

32 Reed, Fred A.

978-0-88922-129-1; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Anatolia Junction: A Journey into

Trees Are Lonely Company

978-0-88922-327-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

O’Neill, Chris & Ken Schwartz Westray: The Long Way Home

978-0-88922-491-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Olson, Charles

Simons, Beverley Crabdance

978-0-88922-016-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

37 Strindberg, August 978-0-88922-594-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD Miss Julie

978-0-88922-477-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

O’Hagan, Howard

978-0-88910-456-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part II

Rebar, Kelly

978-0-88922-415-5; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-367-7; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Main Brides

37 Subject to Change

978-0-88922-001-0; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Listen to the Wind

Scott, Gail

Hidden Turkey

978-0-88922-549-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Carpenter: A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A Chronicle in Three Plays, Part III Suttles, Wayne 37 Coast Salish Essays 18

17 978-0-88922-609-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 978-0-88922-426-1; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Hellfire Pass: A Carpenter’s Trilogy, A

Persian Postcards: Iran After Khomeini 22

Chronicle in Three Plays, Part I

978-0-88922-564-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-351-6; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Paradise by the River

Salonica Terminus: Travels into the Balkan Nightmare 24

978-0-88922-212-0; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-393-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Tallman, Warren

In the Midst 20 Rostand, Edmond Muthologos: Lectures and Interviews, 978-0-88922-368-4; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-308-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 38 2nd ed. 22 Shattered Images: The Rise of Militant Cyrano de Bergerac Taylor, Drew Hayden $10.95 $7.95 978-0-921368-43-4; CAD / USD 978-0-88922-639-5; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD Iconoclasm in Syria 24 alterNatives 34 978-0-88922-485-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Rule, Jane

P Panych, Morris Benevolence

978-0-88922-584-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Dishwashers

978-0-88922-524-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-428-5; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Takeover in Tehran: The Inside Story Desert of the Heart 28 The Baby Blues 35 of the 1979 U.S. Embassy Capture 978-0-88922-301-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD 978-0-88922-406-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 24 Taking My Life 14 The Berlin Blues 36 978-0-88922-443-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-673-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Then We Were One: Fragments of Theme for Diverse Instruments Two Lives 14

Ryga, George

Earshot

978-0-88922-334-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Girl in the Goldfish Bowl Gordon

978-0-88922-664-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Lawrence & Holloman

All Is Flesh

47 49

978-0-88922-281-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Trespassers, The

978-0-88922-610-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

In the Shadow of the Vulture

29 400 Kilometres

Summerland

978-0-88922-313-4; $34.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Les Canadiens

978-0-88922-384-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-122-2; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-661-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Thesen, Sharon Aurora

978-0-88910-471-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

27 The New Long Poem Anthology, 2nd ed. 59 30 978-0-88922-438-4; $39.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

978-0-88922-208-3; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-560-2; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Nature Power: In the Spirit of an

textual vishyuns: image and text in the work of bill bissett 14

Only Drunks and Children Tell the Truth 47

Salutin, Rick

12 Living by Stories: A Journey of Schermbrucker, Bill 978-0-88922-692-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD Landscape and Memory 21 Chameleon & Other Stories What Lies Before Us 53 978-0-88922-522-0; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Okanagan Storyteller

978-0-88922-537-4; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

NEWS: Postcards from the Four Directions

978-0-88922-643-2; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Vigil, 2nd ed.

Peters, Carl

978-0-88922-517-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

30 In a World Created by a Drunken God 43

Dara Culhane

Wickwire

978-0-88922-597-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-233-5; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Robertson, Leslie A. &

978-0-88922-513-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-663-0; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

42 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

40 Dead White Writer on the Floor

978-0-88922-500-8; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

978-0-88922-672-2; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD George Ryga: The Prairie Novels

51 Robinson, Harry & Wendy

978-0-88922-628-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-441-4; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD

978-0-88922-000-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

George Ryga: The Other Plays

In Plain Sight: Reflections on Life in Still Laughing: Three Adaptations by Downtown Eastside Vancouver 20 Morris Panych 50 978-0-88922-624-1; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

The Ecstasy of Rita Joe

978-0-88922-581-7; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

The Boy in the Treehouse / Girl Who Loved Her Horses 36

26 The Buz’Gem Blues

978-0-88922-276-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

44 Richmond, Jacob

978-0-88922-346-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

7 Stories

978-0-88922-512-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-392-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Legoland

Other Schools of Thought

The Athabasca Ryga

42 Renaud, Yannick

978-0-88922-481-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-060-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-667-8; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

40 Reid, Jamie 978-0-88922-444-5; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD I. Another. The Space Between: Selected Poems The Ends of the Earth 40

Mimosa 22

978-0-88922-254-0; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD News & Smoke: Selected Poems 59 978-0-88922-504-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Motortherapy 30 978-0-88922-417-9; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 978-0-88922-330-1; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

68 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Author

Thomas, Audrey Latakia

The Duchess and the Commoner 30

978-0-88922-167-3; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD La Duchesse de Langeais & Other

Mrs. Blood

978-0-88922-319-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Real Mothers

Plays

Spectacle of Empire: Marc Lescarbot’s Theatre of Neptune in New France 50

Vanderhaeghe, Guy 39 Dancock’s Dance 40

978-0-88922-092-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-547-3; $21.95 CAD / $21.95 USD

978-0-88922-533-6; $16.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Twenty Years at Play: A New Play

978-0-88922-104-8; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

31 En Pièces Détachées

978-0-88922-191-8; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD

978-0-88922-418-6; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Centre Anthology

Verdecchia, Guillermo

978-0-88922-275-5; $29.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Another Country / bloom 35 32 The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant Watts, Charles & Edward Byrne 978-0-88922-570-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD 28 978-0-88922-329-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 27 The Recovery of the Public World 23 978-0-88922-190-1; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD Citizen Suárez

Songs My Mother Taught Me

Tostevin, Lola Lemire Cartouches

The First Quarter of the Moon

978-0-88922-352-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD 978-0-88922-355-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again

Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre

978-0-88922-389-9; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

34 Forever Yours, Marie-Lou

978-0-88922-649-4; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

The Bicycle Eater

Talking Bodies

978-0-88922-445-2; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

The Ventriloquist

978-0-88922-536-7; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

45 Wells, Oliver N.

978-0-88922-375-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors

18 978-0-88922-255-7; $24.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Woodcock, George Wah, Fred

43 is a door

978-0-88922-470-4; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-202-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-185-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

52 Impromptu on Nuns’ Island

Selected Poems: The Vision Tree

Youssef A Line in the Sand

978-0-88910-391-7; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-296-0; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

51 The Impromptu of Outremont

42 Hanging Fire

Verdecchia, Guillermo & Marcus

978-0-88922-425-4; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

31 Hosanna

978-0-88922-645-6; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Webb, Phyllis

978-0-88922-383-7; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-349-3; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

26 The Heart Laid Bare

978-0-88922-528-2; $19.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Piercing

Fronteras Americanas: American Borders

Tremblay, Larry

978-0-88922-388-2; $39.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

978-0-88922-391-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Two Plays 58

978-0-88922-123-9; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD

978-0-88922-620-3; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

45 Selected Poems: Loki Is Buried at Y Tremblay, Lise Smoky Creek 61 978-0-88922-295-3; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD The Hunting Ground 30 Marcel Pursued by the Hounds 978-0-88922-177-2; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD 46 York, Annie, Richard Daly & 978-0-88922-534-3; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD 61 978-0-88922-326-4; $16.95 CAD / $12.95 USD Sentenced to Light Chris Arnett Judith’s Sister 15 News from Édouard 978-0-88922-577-0; $29.95 CAD; $29.95 USD 31 They Write Their Dreams on the Rock 978-0-88922-677-7; $14.95 CAD / $14.95 USD 978-0-88922-435-3; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Walker, George F. Forever 24 Mile End 30 Past Perfect 47 And So It Goes 34 Cloth: 978-0-88922-331-8; $60.00 CAD / $40.00 USD 978-0-88922-467-4; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

34 The Red Notebook

Albertine in Five Times (trans. Van Burek & Glassco) 34 978-0-88922-234-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

978-0-88922-572-5; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Bambi and Me

978-0-88922-380-6; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

Les Belles Soeurs

978-0-88922-260-1; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

978-0-88922-627-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD

Assorted Candies for the Theatre

978-0-88922-493-3; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

The Real World?

Tremblay, Michel Albertine in Five Times (trans. Gaboriau)

La Maison Suspendue

978-0-88922-302-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-588-6; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Remember Me

978-0-88922-219-9; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

Sainte-Carmen of the Main

978-0-88922-181-9; $15.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Some Night My Prince Will Come

978-0-88922-510-7; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-654-8; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

The East End Plays: Part I

Youssef, Marcus

34 978-0-88922-413-1; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD Adrift 978-0-88922-585-5; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The East End Plays: Part II 40 978-0-88922-404-9; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

Heaven

Youssef, Marcus, Guillermo

Verdecchia & Camyar Chai

978-0-88922-429-2; $17.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

The Power Plays

The Adventures of Ali & Ali and the 48 aXes of Evil 34

978-0-88922-414-8; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

Somewhere Else

978-0-88922-516-9; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

978-0-88922-402-5; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD

Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Suburban Motel Hanging Angel 33 978-0-88922-198-7; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD

978-0-88922-412-4; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD

Z Zomparelli, Daniel

33 Walsh, Des Davie Street Translations 7 Birth of a Bookworm 17 58 978-0-88922-390-5; $19.95 CAD / $15.95 USD Love and Savagery 978-0-88922-683-8; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD 978-0-88922-476-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Twelve Opening Acts 25 978-0-88922-599-2; $16.95 CAD / $16.95 USD The Black Notebook 27 61 978-0-88922-466-7; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD The Singer’s Broken Throat A Thing of Beauty

978-0-88922-543-5; $19.95 CAD / $19.95 USD

978-0-88922-478-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

27 Tulchinsky, Karen X. 978-0-88922-619-7; $24.95 CAD / $24.95 USD The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky 29 Wasserman, Jerry Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies 978-0-88922-646-3; $29.95 CAD / $29.95 USD Modern Canadian Plays: 17 Vol. I, 4th ed. The Blue Notebook

978-0-88922-541-1; $17.95 CAD / $17.95 USD

Tussman, Joseph

978-0-88922-436-0; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD

36 The Burden of Office: Agamemnon Modern Canadian Plays: and Other Losers 18 978-0-88922-252-6; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD Vol. II, 4th ed. 46 978-0-88922-265-6; $18.95 CAD / $14.95 USD Crossing the Continent 14 978-0-88922-437-7; $39.95 CAD / $39.95 USD 978-0-88922-676-0; $18.95 CAD / $18.95 USD Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. I, 5th ed. 2 Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra 38 Bonjour, Là, Bonjour

978-0-88922-184-0; $15.95 CAD / $11.95 USD

The Driving Force

978-0-88922-530-5; $15.95 CAD / $13.95 USD

978-0-88922-678-4; $49.95 CAD / $49.95 USD

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title 69

Booklist Index by Title A ABC of Reading TRG, 17 Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, 34 Adrift, 34 Adventures of Ali & Ali and the aXes of Evil, The, 34 After Jack, 54 Albertine in Five Times (trans. Gaboriau), 34 Albertine in Five Times (trans. Van Burek & Glassco), 34 All Fall Down, 34 All Is Flesh, 16 All That Glitters, 26 All the Verdis of Venice, 34 alterNatives, 34 American Notebooks, 17 Amigo’s Blue Guitar, 34 Amuse Bouche, 54 Anarcho-Modernism, 17 Anatolia Junction, 17 And Other Stories, 26 And So It Goes, 34 Angel of Solitude, The, 26 Annihilated Time, 17 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, 17 Banana Boots, 35 Bardy Google, 54 Baseball Love, 17 BASH’d, 35 Beating the Bushes, 35 Belles Soeurs, Les, 35 Benevolence, 35 Berlin Blues, The, 36 Bethune, 36 Beyond Recall, 17 Bicycle Eater, The, 26 Billy Bishop Goes to War, 36 Birth of a Bookworm, 17 Black Notebook, The, 27 Blonds on Bikes, 54

Blue Notebook, The, 27 Boiler Room Suite, 36 Bolsheviki, 9 Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies, 17 Bonjour, Là, Bonjour, 36 Book of Esther, The, 11 Bordertown Café, 36 Box Closet, The, 18 Boy in the Treehouse, The / Girl Who Loved Her Horses, 36 bpNichol Comics, 54 bpNichol: What History Teaches, 18 Bread and Salt, 54 Breakdown So Far, The, 27 Bridges of Light, 18 Building the West, 18 Burden of Office, The, 18 Burning Vision, 36 Buz’Gem Blues, The, 36

C Cambodia, 27 Can You See Me Yet?, 36 Canadian Drama and the Critics, 18 Canadiens, Les, 37 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, 18 Chilliwacks and Their Neighbors, The, 18 Chimera, 37 Chinese Blue, 6 Circumstances Alter Photographs, 18 Circus Performers’ Bar, The, 27 Citizen Suárez, 27 Coast Salish Essays, 18 Cold Comfort, 37 Cold Comfort: Growing Up Cold War, 3 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, 19 Copper Thunderbird, 37 Corker, 38 Coronation Voyage, The, 38 Covenant of Salt, A, 27 Crabdance, 38 Crimes and Mercies, 19

Crossing the Continent, 14 Cruel Tears, 38 Cul-de-sac, 38 Cultural Mischief, 55 Cyrano de Bergerac, 38

Espresso, 40 Essays on George F. Walker, 19 EX MACHINA, 19 Execution, The, 41

Damnée Manon, Sacrée Sandra, 38 Dancock’s Dance, 38 Darwin Alone in the Universe, 27 Davie Street Translations, 7 Dead White Writer on the Floor, 38 Death in Vancouver, 28 Death of René Lévesque, The, 38 Death of the Spider, 28 Decline of the Hollywood Empire, The, 19 Decompositions, 55 Democracy, 39 Desert of the Heart, 28 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, 55 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

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, 29 Five Books of Moses Lapinsky, The, 29 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, 42 Fronteras Americanas, 42

Gabriel Dumont Speaks, 19 Genrecide, 56 George Bowering: Bright Circles of Colour, 20 George Ryga: The Other Plays, 42 George Ryga: The Prairie Novels, 29 Get on Top, 29 Gideon’s Blues, 42 gifts, 57 Girl in the Goldfish Bowl, 42 E Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, The, 42 Glengarry, 57 Earshot, 40 Go Figure, 29 East End Plays, The: Part I, 40 Going Home, 57 East End Plays, The: Part II, 40 Goodnight Disgrace, 42 Ecstasy of Rita Joe, The, 40 Gordon, 42 Edward Curtis Project, The, 19, 40 Great Lakes Suite, 20 Empire of Desire, 19 Great Wave of Civilization, The, 42 Empress Has No Closure, The, 56 griddle talk, 20 En Pièces Détachées, 40 Ground Water, 57 Ends of the Earth, The, 40 Guide to B.C. Indian Myth and English Canadian Poetics, An, 19 Legend, A, 20 Ernestine Shuswap Gets Her Trout, 40 Gull, The, 42 Error in Judgement, An, 19 Gypsy Guitar, 57 Esker Mike & His Wife, Agiluk, 40

70 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title

Halo, 43 Hanging Fire, 57 Happiest Man in the World and Other Stories, The, 29 Harry’s Fragments, 29 harvest, 57 Heart Laid Bare, The, 29 Heaven, 43 Hell & Other Novels, 29 Hellfire Pass, 43 Heretic, The, 43 Heroine, 29 Homechild, 43 Hope Slide, The / Little Sister, 43 Hosanna, 43 Hotel Montreal, 57 House That Hijack Built, The, 57 How to Write, 20 Hunting Ground, The, 30 Hypoderm, 57

Lady Smith, The, 44 Lasagna, 21 last photo uv th human soul, th, 58 Last Scattering Surfaces, 58 Latakia, 30 Lawrence & Holloman, 44 Legoland, 44 Leisure Society, The, 44 Life Without Instruction, 45 Like a Child of the Earth, 30 Lil’wat World of Charlie Mack, The, 21 Lily Briscoe, 21 Limbo Road, 58 Line in the Sand, A, 45 Lions Gate, 21 Listen to the Wind, 45 Living by Stories, 21 Local Boy Makes Good, 45 Lost in North America, 21 Lost Souls and Missing Persons, 45 Love and Savagery, 58 loving without being vulnrabul, 59 Ludwig & Mae, 45

I I. Another. The Space Between, 58 Imperial Canada Inc., 13 Impromptu of Outremont, The, 43 Impromptu on Nuns’ Island, 43 In a World Created by a Drunken God, 43 In Piazza San Domenico, 15 In Plain Sight, 20 In the Company of Strangers, 20 In the Eyes of God, 44 In the Eyes of Stone Dogs, 44 In the Midst, 20 In the Shadow of the Vulture, 30 Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America, 20 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, 15 Justice in Our Time, 20

K Kerrisdale Elegies, 58

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, 21 Maleficium, 1 Mambo Italiano, 45 Marcel Pursued by the Hounds, 46 Margaret Atwood: A Feminist Poetics, 21 Marion Bridge, 46 Meanwhile, 21 Medusa Head, The, 21 Mêmewars, 59 Memories of You, 46 Mile End, 30 Mimosa, 30 Miss Julie, 46 Miss Take, 15 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. I, 4th ed., 46 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. II, 4th ed., 46 Modern Canadian Plays: Vol. I, 5th ed., 2 Mom’s the Word, 46 Moo, 46 Mother of the Grass, 30 Motortherapy, 30

Moustache, The, 59 Mrs. Blood, 30 Muthologos, 22 My Career with the Leafs & Other Stories, 31 My Darling Nellie Grey, 59 My Name Is Bosnia, 31

N narrativ enigma / rumours uv hurricane, 59 Nature Power, 22 New Long Poem Anthology, The, 59 NEWS, 22 News & Smoke, 59 News from Édouard, 31 1949, 46 No Plaster Saint, 22 Noam Chomsky Lectures, The, 46 Noise from the Laundry, 59 NonZero Definitions, 59 northern wild roses / deth interrupts th dansing, 59 Nothing to Lose, 47 novel, 16 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, 16 Other Losses, 22 Other Schools of Thought, 47 Outsider Notes, 22

Piercing, 31 Playing Bare, 48 Pleasure of the Crown, The, 23 Poet to Publisher, 23 Popular Narratives, 60 Porcupine Hunter and Other Stories, The, 23 Post-Prairie, 60 Power Plays, The, 48 Properties, The, 5

Q Queens, The, 48

R Rain Barrel, The, 31 Rap Canterbury Tales, The, 60 Rational Geomancy, 23 Re: Producing Women’s Dramatic History, 23 Real Mothers, 31 Real World?, The, 48 Rebuild, 16 Record of Writing, A, 23 Recovery of the Public World, The, 23 Red Notebook, The, 31 Refugee Hotel, The, 48 Remember Me, 48 Richard Brautigan Ahhhhhhhhhhh, The, 60 Riddle of the World, The, 48 Rose, 48

Saga of the Wet Hens, 48 Saint Frances of Hollywood, 48 Sainte-Carmen of the Main, 49 Sainte-Marie among the Hurons, 49 Salish People, The, Vol. I, 23 Salish People, The, Vol. II, 23 P Salish People, The, Vol. III, 24 Pacific Windows, 60 Salish People, The, Vol. IV, 24 Pagan Wall, The, 31 Salonica Terminus, 24 Painter’s Wife, The, 31 Salt-Water Moon, 49 Paradise by the River, 47 Satchmo’ Suite, The, 49 Paradise Garden, 47 scars on th seehors, 60 Past Perfect, 47 Scattered in a Rising Wind, 32 Paul Martin & Companies, 22 Schoolhouse, 49 Pell Mell, 60 School-Marm Tree, The, 32 Peregrinations, 22 Seagull, The, 49 Performing National Identities, 22 Secret Journal of Alexander Persian Postcards, 22 Mackenzie, The, 32 peter among th towring boxes / text Selected Poems: The Arches, 60 bites, 60 Selected Poems: Beyond Even Phyllis Webb and the Common Good, Faithful Legends, 61 23

Talonbooks Booklist Index by Title 71

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, 24 Shinny’s Girls and Other Stories, 32 Shovel, The, 61 Signs of Literature, 24 Silver Dagger, 49 Singer’s Broken Throat, The, 61 Sisters, 49 Six Plays by Mavor Moore, 50 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, 8 Spectacle of Empire, 50 Sticks & Stones, 61 Still Laughing, 50 Strange Comfort, 24 Strange Truth About Us, The, 15 Studies in Motion, 50 Subject to Change, 32 sublingual, 61 Suburban Motel, 50 Summerland, 32

T Takeover in Tehran, 24 Taking My Life, 14 Tale of Teeka, The, 50 Talking Bodies, 51 Tchipayuk, 32 Terror of the Coast, The, 24 textual vishyuns, 14 That Summer, 51 That Woman, 51 Theatre and AutoBiography, 24 Theme for Diverse Instruments, 33 Then We Were One, 14 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, 25 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, 25 Tombs of the Vanishing Indian, 10 Too Good to Be True, 25 Toronto, Mississippi, 51 Tracing the Paths, 25 Transmission Difficulties, 25 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, 25 Turkana Boy, 4 Twelve Opening Acts, 25 Twenty Years at Play, 51 Two Houses Half-Buried in Sand, 25 Two Plays, 51 2000, 52

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, 12

W Waiting for the Parade, 52 Walsh, 52 Wanted, 52 Warriors, 52 WASPs, 52 Weekend Healer, The, 53 Westray, 53 Whale Riding Weather, 53 What Lies Before Us, 53 what’s left, 62 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, 26 Write It on Your Heart, 26 Written on Water, 53

72 Talonbooks Booklist Index by Translator

Booklist Index by Translator Aronoff, Phyllis & Howard Scott My Name Is Bosnia, 31 A Slight Case of Fatigue, 32 Women in a World at War, 26

Barnholden, Michael Gabriel Dumont Speaks, 19

Bertz, Dietrich Indian Myths & Legends from the North Pacific Coast of America, 20

Bilodeau, Chantal Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre, 34

Bishop, Neil B. Death of the Spider, 28

Brown, Alan The Fairies Are Thirsty, 41

Browning, Will Go Figure, 29 Miss Take, 15

Claxton, Patricia Tchipayuk, 32

Fischman, Sheila Bambi and Me, 17 The Bicycle Eater, 26 Birth of a Bookworm, 17 The Black Notebook, 27 The Blue Notebook, 27 Crossing the Continent, 14 The Duchess and the Commoner, 28 The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant, 28 The First Quarter of the Moon, 29 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, 51 Thérèse and Pierrette and the Little Hanging Angel, 33 A Thing of Beauty, 33 Twelve Opening Acts, 25

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, 42 The Hunting Ground, 30 Impromptu on Nuns’ Island, 43 In the Eyes of Stone Dogs, 44 Judith’s Sister, 15 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

Reed, Fred A. & Robin Philpot Imperial Canada Inc., 13

Scott, Gail Mile End, 30

Stowe, John Remember Me, 48

Tepperman, Shelley Playing Bare, 48

Tepperman, Shelley & Ellen Warkentin Ludwig & Mae, 45

Theodore, Bobby 15 Seconds, 41 The Leisure Society, 44

Turnbull, Keith The Ventriloquist, 52

Van Burek, John

Hazelton, Hugh

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, 49

All Is Flesh, 16

Van Burek, John & Bill Glassco

Hodes, Laura

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, 46 The Real World?, 48

The Angel of Solitude, 26

Klein, Yvonne M. Like a Child of the Earth, 30 Mother of the Grass, 30 White Pebbles in the Dark Forests, 33

Kroetsch, Neil EX MACHINA, 19

Lobdell, David Dürer’s Angel, 28 The Execution, 41

Moore, Jessica Turkana Boy, 4

Mullins, Rhonda The Decline of the Hollywood Empire, 19 Paul Martin & Companies, 22

Murrell, John Cyrano de Bergerac, 38

French, David

Reed, Fred A.

Miss Julie, 46 The Seagull, 49

Empire of Desire, 19 Truth or Death, 25

Gaboriau, Linda

Reed, Fred A. & David Homel

Albertine in Five Times, 34 All the Verdis of Venice, 34 American Notebooks, 17 Assorted Candies for the Theatre, 35 Bonbons Assortis / Assorted Candies, 17

All That Glitters, 26 The Baldwins, 26 A Covenant of Salt, 27 Fairy Ring, 28 Maleficium, 1

Van Meer, Allan En Pièces Détachées, 40

Yoshihara, Toyoshi The Gull, 42

Talonbooks Sales Representation and Ordering 73

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 406 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

74 Talonbooks Sales Representation and Ordering

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.

Talonbooks Canadian Trade Terms and Returns Policy 75

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. Out-dated 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 six 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.