Moving out and moving on.     Dave and Morley's marriage has mellowed and deepened like a fine wine, Sam has developed a palate for girls and Gruyere, and Steph's found happiness with an artist who photographs roadkill.      Everyone's growing wiser and worldlier--well, almost everyone.     Yes, Dave still has trouble with the automatic car wash, defibrillators, and hot yoga, but he's come to appreciate Mary Turlington, and that's saying quite a bit.     In this brand new collection of Vinyl Cafe stories, the more things change, the more things stay the same...

    Also available in the anthology Wilderness Tips

    P. Kinsella (Shoeless Joe), as well as the 25th anniversary of Field of Dreams, the film that he inspired.In addition to his classic baseball tales, W. P. Kinsella is also a critically-acclaimed short fiction writer. His satiric wit has been celebrated with numerous honors, including the Order of British Columbia.Here are his notorious First Nation narratives of indigenous Canadians, and a literary homage to J. D. Salinger. Alongside the “real” story of the 1951 Giants and the afterlife of Roberto Clemente, are the legends of a pirated radio station and a hockey game rigged by tribal magic.Eclectic, dark, and comedic by turns, The Essential W. P. Kinsella is a living tribute to an extraordinary raconteur.Table of Contents Introduction by Rick WilberTruthHow I Got My NicknameThe Night Manny Mota Tied the RecordFirst Names and Empty PocketsSearching for JanuaryLieberman in LoveThe Grecian UrnThe FogBeefDistancesHow Manny Embarquadero Overcame and Began His Climb to the Major LeaguesThe Indian Nation Cultural Exchange ProgramK MartThe FirefighterDr. DonBrother Frank’s Gospel HourThe Alligator Report—with Questions for DiscussionKing of the StreetWavelengthsDo Not Abandon MeMarco in ParadiseOut of the PictureThe Lightning BirdsPunchlinesThe Last Surviving Member of the Japanese Victory SocietyThe JobRisk TakersThe Lime TreeDoves and ProverbsWaiting on Lombard StreetShoeless Joe Jackson Comes to IowaAfterward - Where It Began: Shoeless Joe

    Bohemian and beautiful, this engineering student is as passionate about constructing sets for theater and opera as she is about Trey, the one man she can finally trust. Deirdre is a first year engineering major, earnest and perceptive, but too naïve to know that frat boys can be dangerous. Montreal columnist Jenean is feisty and urbane, a feminist who longs for peace between the sexes even as she ponders splitting from her live-in partner. In the face of startling and heartbreaking tragedy, we witness fierce love and bonding. This is not your everyday love story.The Montreal Massacre is lodged in Canadian memory: on December 6, 1989, fourteen female engineering students were murdered in their classroom. Set in that tragic historical moment, on two college campuses fraught with gendered antagonisms, this novel follows the imagined lives of women as they happen headlong into the December 6 tragedy. Were In Cold Blood to marry The Poisonwood Bible, this novel would be their progeny: a story disarmingly accurate and bountifully probing that explores the profundity of deepest love and unimaginable loss.

    But her obligatory marriage to Henry is rife with the threat of violence and the lure of deceit; her secret liaisons with Thom, her husband’s former brother-in-law, could send her to an early grave; and her devotion to the education and equal rights of Henry’s daughters is putting an even bigger strain on her marriage. Does Kate risk her life to gain authority in both her relationship and her political career? Which love will she be led to if she follows her heart? And what kind of future is there for her children if she makes a crucial mistake?“Here is a playwright who is taking on the big themes of feminism with a restless, probing intelligence and political savvy. Her characters are living, breathing, messy human beings who reach for the stars and who stumble in the dirt. These are not mouthpieces for politically correct punditry, but people whose emotions cause chaos and whose ideas drive their passion. In short, this is the best kind of playwriting: thoughtful, full-bodied, and redolent of the stuff of life.” —Bob White, Director of New Plays, Stratford Festival

    It’s a complex performance and I am very good. I am so good that it becomes confusing." Winner of the 2015 Metatron Prize for Rising Authors, Sofia Banzhaf’s literary debut is memorable and enthralling, like staring into the dark and seeing a prism. Life is snaking its way through the characters of Pony Castle, and bad things are happening to good people. "Pony Castle reads like a line of crushed pill up the nose: a quick breath in and then the rush. Banzhaf's writing is a straight chute to the most depraved of human behaviors, but within this brutal world, she finds grace and humanity." -Sarah Gerard, author of Binary Star "Sofia Banzhaf creates a captivating world where nothing is free and anything can happen.” -Chelsea Hodson, author of Pity the Animal

    Part public disturbance, part performance artist, and part modern-day prophet, Ins Choi embodies the form of a nameless vagabond who is both beggar and seer. He creates a rich tapestry of the profane and the sacred, the humorous and the banal, the contemptuous and the poignant in both poetry and lyric. It is a holy communion for the urban soul. This relevant and challenging show is captured here in book form with illustrations of subway drawings by Guno Park, whose work has been featured internationally.

    Irish Deirdre, forced into marriage at sixteen, never stops trying to regain her freedom, though her ruthless escape attempts threaten to destroy her family. Her son, Frank, raised in Brooklyn, is a talented young artist, until he's blinded in WW2. With fierce determination, Frank forges a new life for himself, but the war has shaken him deeply. His two daughters, rebellious Von and sensitive Rosheen, grow up as isolated as the hothouse roses their mother breeds on the frozen Canadian prairie, and like the roses, they have scant protection against the violent elements that imperil them. Rosheen's son, Kyle, raised without his mother, knows nothing of the family's history until 1999, when he and Von gather Rosheen's art works for an exhibit at a Brooklyn gallery. The story of the Garrisons is shaped by powerful forces - -a rogue north wind, a vengeful orphan, a sugar-dust explosion, an airborne jar of peaches, a scar that refuses to heal, a terrible lie, an unexpected baby, and a desperate drive across treacherous ice. Despite all the their tragedies, the creative fire that drives the Garrisons survives, burning more and more brightly as it's passed from one generation to the next, into the twenty-first century.

    These irreverent, playful, weird, and comedic poems come in a variety of forms, fully engaging in pop culture, without a judgmental tone. They see your frumpy expectations and raise you issues of sexuality, consent, sexism, homophobia, race, and class. They explore the highs and lows of romantic relationships and the expectations and realities of love, tackling real emotional worlds through the lens of film.Two cool people wrote it. Dina Del Bucchia, the fashionable and voluptuous, is a woman on the go, brazenly hosting literary events and tweeting about otters and award shows. Daniel Zomparelli, the handsome and dashing, is a young, gay man-about-Vancouver who somehow also quietly edits (in chief) a semi-annual poetry journal. (Ship them all you want, fools.)How to tell if you are compatible with this book: Are you equally versed in literature and pop culture? Are you a film-savvy fan of contemporary poetry? Are you an academic with interest in literature and cultural studies? Are you in general a cool, sad person? This book might just be the sassy best friend you’ve wanted.

    Using his word processor’s Ctrl-F function, he searched the compilation for words that relate to the political and social aspects of land, territory, and ownership. Each search query represents a study in context (How was this word deployed? What surrounded it? What is left over once that word is removed?) accumulating toward a representation of the public domain as a discoverable and inhabitable body of land.Featuring a text by independent curator Kathleen Ritter – the first piece of scholarship on Abel’s work – Un/inhabited reminds us of the power of language as material and invites us to reflect on what is present in the empty space when we see nothing.

    But as Pearl confronts her own mortality, she begins to understand what her dead husband, Henry, has always known. Secrets are like dark and angry ghosts. And they don’t just haunt you. They haunt everyone you love.Alternating between Pearl’s voice and the voices of her family, both living and dead, each chapter in Let Us Be True offers a different perspective on one woman’s life. With each story and each new voice comes a deeper understanding of Pearl, her secret past and the people she has loved. But will her daughters, Carol and Darlene, two women locked in their own anger and caught up in their own secrets, ever know the full truth about their mother’s past, and if they do, will they find it in their hearts to forgive her? And in forgiving, will they finally find a way to be true to themselves and the people they love?

    Born in a small town in Nova Scotia to a mother who begins yelling at him the moment he is born and a father who keeps his own counsel, Buck imbibes fear and insecurity like other kids guzzle milk. Hobbled by his fears and demons, Buck almost disappears into the “evil in the woods” that lurks just beyond the town's border . . . until he is saved by three gifts: baseball, romantic love and music. His epic journey­­—full of diversions, coincidences, and larger-than-life characters—out of the darkness of his suicide-plagued childhood and into the bright wide world begins with a killer pitching arm (Buck almost makes it to the pros) and continues with his transformation into hip hop artist Buck 65. Along the way, Buck develops into a hopeless romantic and an obsessively creative, shape-shifting man who both fears life and dives into it with abandon. Wicked and Weird is a lively, sometimes shocking portrait of a life lived on the edge, by turns funny and heartbreaking.

    But to those who work in journalism, up-close involvement with these stories can also be life-changing. In That’s Why I’m a Journalist, veteran broadcaster Mark Bulgutch interviews 44 prominent Canadian journalists, who each share their behind-the-scenes accounts of some of the most memorable stories of their careers and describe the moment that made them say to themselves, "That’s why I’m a journalist." Although many of the contributors' stories are related to their roles in the most high-profile events of the 20th and 21st centuries, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to 9/11, here too are reflections on quieter and more intimate moments that had a deep personal impact. Peter Mansbridge talks about a trip to Vimy Ridge on the hundredth anniversary of World War I, Adrienne Arsenault recalls bringing together old friends separated by the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Terence McKenna recounts what it’s like to worry about being kidnapped as part of the job and Wendy Mesley reflects on the satisfaction of asking tough questions—and uncovering the truth. Together, these enthralling and varied accounts provide an intimate understanding of the people we see on camera and hear on the radio. As Bulgutch argues, modern journalism is undergoing existential threats. News has never been more accessible yet, paradoxically, important news has become harder to find, often buried by pseudo-news of celebrity, lifestyle tips and the latest viral video of a water-skiing squirrel. The stories in this book serve as reminders of the importance of real journalists and real journalism.

    From Nobel Laureate Alice Munro, a brilliantly executed and revelatory story—one of the earliest published works of her career—in which simply finding a place to write turns out to be the hardest act of all.  Alice Munro is the universally acclaimed master of the contemporary short story, the Chekhov of our time, and “The Office” sheds light on the process and growth of a beloved writer. A selection from Dance of the Happy Shades, Munro’s first collection. An eBook short.

    Told by four narrators—including Annie Oakley and Gabriel Dumont—Abigail’s story brings the high stakes of the New World into startling focus.

    Though their bodies disintegrate, their spirits linger on. Fragile but insistent, these spirit-memories permeate Shirley Camia’s collection of poetry, The Significance of Moths.In her latest work, Camia exposes her experiences in Canada as a child of immigrants. Although true for many, the newcomer experience magnifies the “strands of the past” that are “bound to the present.” Like a voyager though time and space, she perceives her present through a film of nostalgia for a home she never knew, while she faces a future laden with the expectations of a family who risked everything for a better tomorrow.

    Other poems in this collection draw on multiple cultural and artistic sources, family history, and Islamic imagery and language, and are elaborations on the author’s reflections on living and walking in Vancouver through the end of a marriage.The poet’s lyrical, emotionally powerful, narrative style engages cultural complexity by weaving traditional religious and political language and imagery into contemporary contexts. Some poems explore ideas of how the body refracts from historical trauma, including division of the state of Kashmir during the 1949 parition of Indian and Pakistan, as well as the loss of Arabic and non-Arabic scripts in Urdu and the consequent removal of language and memory embodied in language. Additionally there is a foregrounding of thematically interlinked schisms between religion and secularism, and the tension of navigating through these polarities as a person living within diaspora. Further areas that contribute to torquing the language are the emergence of secular modernism within the context of Muslim cultural and familial space.Cosmophilia represents and discovers the modern Muslim woman’s experience in Kashmir as well as urban North America, a setting both alienating and stimulating.

     Leading an inexperienced team of detectives, she probes beneath the wintry surface of the township to discover the victim had a dark secret--one that may endanger others in the community as well. For young and enthusiastic Detective Constable Kevin Walker, the chance to work with Ellie March is an honour, until the situation turns ugly and unexpected betrayal threatens to destroy his promising career.

    With essays from fourteen First Nations artists from a variety of disciplines, the collection provides insight into the paths that led each artist to pursue and develop his or her craft. The essays explore many common themes around the role of art in First Nations communities, including the importance of art for creating social change, the role of art in representing Native culture and the fusion of traditional and contemporary techniques. On a more personal level, the essays describe the significance of art in the lives of the contributors, along with their sometimes unlikely journeys to success, stories which are often touched with humour and humility.Chef David Wolfman describes gruelling years of prep work in the kitchens of the exclusive National Club; filmmaker Zacharias Kunuk discusses leaping into his first feature film without knowing how to finance it; fashion designer Kim Picard describes making a dress inspired by coffee beans; and playwright Drew Hayden Taylor tells the story of putting a bullet through his first play and burying it in his yard. Other contributors include actor/playwright Monique Mojica, painter Marianne Nicolson, painter Maxine Noel, blues pianist Murray Porter, scholar Karyn Recollet, dancer/choreographer Santee Smith, director/actor Rose Stella, drummer Steve Teekens, writer Richard Van Camp and manga artist Michael Nicholl Yahgulanaas.

    By the time he turned eleven years old, the world had gone mad. He became one of the millions of Jews to be shipped to a Nazi death camp. How he survived that ordeal and what followed is the incredible story told in these pages. That Mordechai is alive today is nothing short of a miracle. His is an incredible story of triumph and unwavering determination to survive, which is what he did against all odds in the Nazi death camps. The journey that began in the Holocaust carried Ronen through the establishment of Israel, immigration to Canada, and finally to an emotional return to Auschwitz, this time as a guest of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, who called that moment one of the most extraordinary he had seen in his four decades in politics.

    They banter about the nature of man, of gods, and of what Bipin calls the World Wise Web. They dream of a trip to Easter Island to see the stout and silent monoliths that hunker on the cliff edges of that barren south seas place. Everything is connected, Bipin believes. There are no coincidences. So, when a cerebrally challenged young man invades The Pearl on an obnoxious all-terrain vehicle, chewing up trails and threatening amphibians, Bipin seeks the cosmic meaning inherent in this assault. Villis, on the other hand, wants to wage war. Villis’ and Bipin's naïve efforts to dispel the ATV-man from The Pearl spiral into a rollicking chaos of confusion, involving celebrity impersonators, visions of cavemen, and a time portal swirling from within the vibrating heart of The Pearl.The Last Year of Confusion is a thought provoking, at times irreverent and darkly comic, commentary on the weightiness of humankind’s footprints upon our planet.

    Contributors include - Jean Rae Baxter, Timothy Christian, John Corvese, Ethel Edey, B.D. Ferguson, Krista Foss, Frances Hern, Ellen S. Jaffe, Lise Levesque, Bruce Meyer, Jane Mulkewich, Katherine O'Flynn, Barb Rebelo, Wendi Stewart, Richard Van Holst, Michelle Ward Kantor, and Carol Leigh Wehking.

    A place of tenuous security, “one claw on the screen” can threaten the entire structure. Joanne Epp, in her first collection of poetry, Eigenheim, shapes and reshapes the peculiar characteristics of one’s own idea of home.Without defining the precise dimensions, there is room enough to house the essentials. Examining death and birth, loss and love, deep searching and unquenchable longing, Epp reaches back to her rural Mennonite roots while restlessly exploring what lies just beyond the sun’s reach.