For the special edition slipcase please go here.You know the drill by now. The 2020 Short Story Advent Calendar is a deluxe box set of individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America. This year's slipcase is a thing of beauty, too, with electric-yellow lining and spot-glossed lettering. It also comes wrapped in two rubber bands to keep those booklets snug in their beds.

     Written with incredible honesty and self-knowledge, Between the Lines is a stunning collection of poems from Céline Zabad. Ranging in length from a single line to full pages, her poems mimic at once the brevity and vastness of feeling. Her verse is at times as free as a cloud, other times as solid as stone. Her words are philosophies and feelings in their own rights, on love, loss, loyalty, betrayal, hope, and disappointment—on life. Zabad encapsulates the thrill of love’s first blush and the freezing burn of heartbreak. Her feelings flow freely throughout the collection, lending her poetry uncommon authenticity and power. Nature thrives between the lines of her verse, reminding the reader that tears are as natural as raindrops. Whether you’re looking for new ways to think about your own feelings or are simply passionate about poetry, you’ll find plenty to love in this collection. To better understand the complexities of emotion in yourself and others, you must read Between the Lines.

    Confused yet intelligent animals attempt to interact with confused yet intelligent humans, resulting in the death of Elijah Wood, Salman Rushdie, and Wong Kar-Wai; the destruction of a Domino's Pizza delivery car in Orlando; and a vegan dinner at a sushi restaurant in Manhattan attended by a dolphin, a bear, a moose, an alien, three humans, and the President of the United States of America, who lectures on the arbitrary nature of consciousness, truth, and the universe before getting drunk and playing poker.

    These visionary pieces build upon Simpson's powerful use of the fragment as a tool for intervention in her critically acclaimed collection Islands of Decolonial Love. Provocateur and poet, she continually rebirths a decolonized reality, one that circles in and out of time and resists dominant narratives or comfortable categorization. A crow watches over a deer addicted to road salt; Lake Ontario floods Toronto to remake the world while texting "ARE THEY GETTING IT?"; lovers visit the last remaining corner of the boreal forest; three comrades guerrilla-tap maples in an upper middle-class neighbourhood; and Kwe gets her firearms license in rural Ontario. Blending elements of Nishnaabeg storytelling, science fiction, contemporary realism, and the lyric voice, This Accident of Being Lost burns with a quiet intensity, like a campfire in your backyard, challenging you to reconsider the world you thought you knew.

    Shot through with unexpected moments of sex and violence, readers will become acquainted with a world that is at once the same and opposite from the one in which they live. With a diverse palette of vivid characters--from people who wear furry mascot costumes at all times, to a group of 'New Filmmakers' that devises increasingly unexpected sexual scenarios with complete strangers, to a secret society that concocts a virus that only infects those on the political right--Wren's avant-garde Polyamorous Love Song (finalist for the 2013 Fence Modern Prize in Prose) will appeal to readers with an interest in the visual arts, theatre, and performance of all types.

    

    In her first collection in five years, Anne Carson explores this idea with characteristic brilliance and a tantalizing range of reference, moving from Aphrodite to Antonioni, Demosthenes to Annie Dillard, Telemachos to Trotsky, and writing in forms as varied as opera libretto, screenplay, poem, oratorio, essay, shot list, and rapture. As she makes her way through these forms she slowly dismantles them, and in doing so seeks to move through the self, to its undoing.

    Grief-stricken at the recent loss of her baby, she's failed to give life in the past. Now this four-year-old boy is alive and healthy because of her: it's a heady realization. Anna is desperate to get to know Max, yet terrified at how responsible she feels for him. So she decides not to tell anyone about him or that she's arranged to meet his father. Soon she is immersed in a complicated double life, spending half the week with her husband, who believes her to be filming out of town, and the other half with Adam and Max. But Anna has lied to Adam about who she is. And she's lied about her marriage. And soon these lies will catch up with her... Acclaim for LIFESAVER: ‘Compelling stuff’ - Heat ‘Painful and poignant, Lifesaver is a very touching account of the effect that having children – and not being able to have them – has on relationships’ - Candis ‘Poignant and funny ...A compelling, honest, moving and powerful story of self discovery’ - The Last Word ‘A thought-provoking, all embracing novel of the role of mother, lover, wife and above all, life-saver’ - Western Mail Series

    Featuring brand new stories and some old favorites, many of these tell-all, gritty tales were originally published on the blog Make It MAD between 2010 and 2012, and have been rereleased in their originality for this special print and digital anthology.

    I enjoyed it a lot. —Nick CaveSet in Camden Town, London, during the late 1980s, Junkie Love is a study of addiction and loss, a nihilistic love story for the blank generation. Focusing on the psycho-pathology of addiction, it takes a look at what happens when hope disappears and hedonism turns to despair and self-loathing. The characters in this tale are rootless and adrift, dislocated from their pasts with no belief in the aims and aspirations of a materialistic society. Instead of turning to politics or religion, they embark on a course of self-destructive sex and manically obsessive drug abuse, a journey to the end of the night from which many do not return. Largely autobiographical and leavened with irony and perverse humor, Junkie Love follows the protagonist into the heart of this morass to the point where corruption and dissipation coalesce into something approaching transcendence.

    Then there's the story of the story, and there's no arguing with that. -#6There are few things in life I am sure of.I am sure that books have the answer.I am sure that lightbulbs on string are dancing. I am sure that well-lit basements hold the songs of all of us.--On 6th & 7th October 2015, author Jen Campbell wrote 100 Poems in 48 hours to raise money for The Book Bus - a charity which funds mobile libraries across Africa, Ecuador and India. These poems were made into a limited edition pamphlet & you can also read them over here: http://100poemchallenge.blogspot.co.uk/

    Journeying between his native Ulster and his adopted London, he balances ideas of home and flight, the need for belonging and the need to remain outside. Formally deft, rhetorically fresh, these poems never shy from difficult choices, exploring cruelty and vengeance wherever they may be found: in love, in work and against political backdrops. But these are brave, resolute writings that resist despair at all times, affirming instead the need to rebuild and to right oneself, to dust down and carry on.

    Winner of the 1999 Governor General's Award for Poetry and shortlisted for the 1999 Pat Lowther Award and the 1999 Dorothy Livesay Award for Poetry (BC Book Prize). SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH contains many poems of praise and grief for the imperiled earth drawing frequently on Jan Zwicky's experience as a musician and philosopher and on the landscapes of the prairies and rural Ontario.SONGS FOR RELINQUISHING THE EARTH was first published by the author in 1996 as a handmade book, each copy individually sewn for its reader in response to a request. It appeared between plain covers on recycled stock, with a small photo (of lavender fields) pasted into each copy. The only publicity was word of mouth.Part of Jan Zwicky's reason for having the author be the maker and distributor of the book was a desire to connect the acts of publication and publicity with the initial act of composition, to have a book whose public gestures were in keeping with the intimacy of the art. She also believed the potential audience was small enough that she could easily sew enough copies to fill requests as they came in. While succeeding in recalling poetry's public life to its roots, she was wrong about the size of that audience and her ability to keep up with demand as word spread, Hence, this facsimile edition. In publishing it, Brick Books has attempted to remain as faithful as possible to the spirit of those original gestures, while making it possible for more readers to have access to this remarkable book.

    He’s got a killer reputation, social status, unfathomable wealth, fast cars, and all the women he wants. Hell, he even has a video game character made in his likeness. Brother…But, he’s willing to pay the big bucks for my high-end escort services. If the boy needs a monster to prance around his annual Halloween Crawl of Horrors experience, then I’m his ghoul. The only real problem is that I’m terrified of things that go bump in the night. Halloween is NOT my holiday. But, I can swallow my fear for a month and play Barbie to his Ken. The main thing to keep in mind is that the man is a client. None of this is real. Not the wealth, the heat, the steamy moments where I want to give up all of my candies and stop being a trick… all fake. And he is completely off limits. The fact that he keeps making me feel so safe in the swirls of horror around us isn’t helping anything.He might be looking for a rich fake witch, but I’m starting to feel forever. Maybe I’ll just put a spell on him. ‘Cause then he’s mine… right?

    Baseball's hottest playboy.He's cocky. Rude. Arrogant.And too damn sexy.From the moment he strutted into my diner, he's had his baby blues set on me.He doesn't take no for an answer... But everything about him just rubs me the wrong way.He's too good looking, and too damn charming.And he thinks he can spit a good game.But I'm not one of his adoring fan girls, and I'm not that easy.I know his kind, and I've been burned before.I've promised myself I won't make that mistake twice...Or will I?