A new month means new books! Here are some of the most anticipated Canadian titles for September 2024.
When Regina’s brother shows up on her doorstep with his six-year-old daughter after seven years, her quiet loner life is never the same. The longer they stay, the clearer it becomes to Regina that something terrible has happened — and once the secret is revealed, they’re sent on a fraught journey from Alberta to the coast of B.C.
Bad Land is out now.
Originally from Calgary, Corinna Chong lives in Kelowna, B.C. and teaches English and fine arts at Okanagan College. She published her first novel, Belinda’s Rings, in 2013. In 2023, she published the short story collection The Whole Animal which includes Kids in Kindergarten, the winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize.
Line Drive to Love is a queer coming-of-age novel about a talented softball player stuck between her passion for the sport and a budding romance with a fellow player. Rory wants to be the best pitcher there is but with her father’s ALS diagnosis as well as trying to date the charming Shanti she starts to feel overwhelmed. From softball to family to summer romance, can Rory step up to everything on her plate?
Line Drive to Love is out now.
Angel Jendrick is a writer of romance and poetry currently based in P.E.I. She is also the author of Secret Me.
In May Our Joy Endure, Céline is a celebrated architect and icon. When her first megaproject in her home of Montreal is met with harsh criticism for bringing on gentrification, she is fired as CEO from her firm. She must try to understand what exactly she is being accused of and figure out what to tell herself so that she can continue to justify her world of privilege.
May Our Joy Endure is out now.
Kevin Lambert is a Montreal-based author who grew up in Chicoutimi, Que. May Our Joy Endure won the Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre and Prix Ringuet. His novel Querelle de Roberval was a finalist for numerous prizes in Quebec, Canada and France. His first novel, You Will Love What You Have Killed, won a prize for the best novel from the Saguenay region.
Donald Winkler is a Montreal-based translator. He has won three Governor General’s Literary Awards for French-to-English translation.
Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster is a short story collection that transports readers through time and place, from 1980s England to Renaissance France and current Canada. While each story stands alone, connections can be found in the most unexpected ways.
Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster is out now
Damian Tarnopolsky is a Toronto-based writer, editor and teacher. His novel Goya’s Dog was shortlisted for the Amazon First Novel Award and the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book (Canada/Caribbean). His short fiction has appeared in The Puritan, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, subTerrain and Audeamus. Tarnopolsky has twice been nominated for the Journey Prize.
In 2007, his story You Guys, featured in Every Night I Dream I’m a Monk, Every Night I Dream I’m a Monster, was shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize.
Following two Michif sisters, lyn and June, real ones examines what happens when their estranged and white mother gets called out as a pretendian. Going by the name Raven Bearclaw, she’s seen success for her art that draws on Indigenous style. As the media hones in on the story, the sisters, whose childhood trauma manifests in different ways, are pulled into their mother’s web of lies and the painful past resurfaces.
real ones is out now.
katherena vermette is a Métis writer from Winnipeg. Her books include the poetry collections North End Love Songs and river woman and the four-book graphic novel series A Girl Called Echo. Her novels are The Break, The Strangers, The Circle. North End Love Songs won the Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. The Break was a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. It was defended by Candy Palmater on Canada Reads 2017. The Strangers won the 2021 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the 2021 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
In a Bollywood-inspired family drama, The Wedding transports readers to Surrey and Vancouver, B.C. in the lead-up to the lavish Sikh wedding between Devi and Baby. Offering glimpses into the lives of the wedding party, guests and the event staff making it all happen, the novel is all about community, tradition and the union of two people.
The Wedding is out now.
Gurjinder Basran is a writer living in Delta, B.C. Her novels include Everything Was Good-bye, the winner of the BC Book Prize and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, Help! I’m Alive and Someone You Love is Gone.
Voice Lessons is a collection of personal essays that explore one woman’s journey to find her voice — as an introverted singer, a writer, a mother and a person. Showing a deep love and understanding for human connection, these essays look into dealing with grief at an early age, the anxiety of young adulthood and the tensions that come with heritage and tradition.
Voice Lessons is out now.
Eve Krakow is a Montreal-based writer. Her work has been published in Grain Magazine, The Nasiona, JMWW Journal, Maisonneuve, Smithsonian Magazine and Shy: An Anthology.
Told through interviews with people close to Terry Fox including family, friends, nurses and coaches, Hope tells the story of how he ran his legendary Marathon of Hope. Using their stories, over 200 documents and photos and pages from Terry’s own journal, Hope explores Fox’s true story filled with resilience, determination and humility.
Voice Lessons is out now.
Barbara Adhiya is an editor and author based in Toronto. She was an editor at CP/AP and Reuters. She was a contributing author for Making It in High Heels 3: Innovators and Trailblazers and was an editor for Expect Miracles by Dr. Joe Vitale.
Hearty is an essay collection that explores andrea bennett’s love and appreciation for food as someone who’s worked in the industry for decades and uses food to show they care. The essays examine specific foods as well as broader themes like food media and home gardening in a blend of journalism, cultural commentary and personal experience.
Hearty is out now.
andrea bennett is a writer and senior editor at The Tyee. Their writing can be found in The Walrus, Chatelaine, The Atlantic and the Globe and Mail. Their work includes the essay collection Like a Boy but Not a Boy and poetry collection the berry takes the shape of the bloom. They live in Powell River, B.C.
In The Monster and the Mirror, K.J. Aiello tells the story of their life through the magical tales that helped them during their struggle with mental illness. Blending memoir, research and cultural criticism, the book dives into stories like The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones to look into our perceptions and stereotypes when it comes to mental health.
The Monster and the Mirror is out now.
Aiello is a Toronto-based writer whose work has been published in the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Chatelaine, The Walrus and This Magazine.
Our Green Heart is a deep dive into the science of forests and how protecting them will in turn protect us from the harsh effects of climate change. Diana Beresford-Kroeger writes powerful essays about the natural world drawing on her experiences as a botanist, biochemist, biologist, poet and the last child in Ireland to get a full Druidic education.
Our Green Heart is out now.
Beresford-Kroeger is a scientist of medical biochemistry, botany and medicine and a recipient of the Royal Canadian Geographical Society Kamookak Medal. She has written numerous books about nature including Arboretum America: A Philosophy of the Forest, which won the Arbor Day Foundation Award, To Speak for the Trees, which won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award and The Global Forest, which she wrote and presented in a feature documentary called Call of the Forest. She lives in Ontario.
Are You Listening? is a memoir in poems and stories that highlights the importance of listening to oneself, others and the earth. Weaving stories and transforming pain into possibility, it follows Zaynab Mohammed’s experience as a woman who lost her innocence as a child because of cultural inequity and was forced to navigate her life in a strange place.
Are You Listening? is out now.
Mohammed is an Iraqi, Lebanese and Palestinian performance poet. Are You Listening? is also a one-woman show that has been touring since 2023. She lives in Nelson, B.C.
In cop city swagger, Mercedes Eng draws on the experiences of racialized and unhoused people in Vancouver, particularly in communities like Chinatown. Through short poems, Eng examines the threat to public safety the Vancouver police posed by assessing cases from 2019 to 2023, highlighting institutional violence and the purpose of community self-preservation.
cop city swagger is out now.
Eng is a Vancovuer prairie-born poet of Chinese and settler descent. She is also the author of Mercenary English. Eng is an assistant professor at Emily Carr University of Art + Design.
The Sky is a Sky in the Sky is a collection of miscellaneous poems including one-line poems, prose and a remix of poetry by Stuart Ross’s friend Nelson Ball. Infused with humour, this collection imagines the poet’s many lives and the grief he endures.
The Sky is a Sky in the Sky is out now.
Stuart Ross is an Ontario writer, editor and teacher. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction and essays including You Exist, Pockets and A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. He won the 2023 Trillium Book Award for his memoir The Book of Grief and Hamburgers.
A Way to Be Happy is a short story collection that follows various characters as they try to find happiness. Ranging from mundane to extraordinary, the stories feature everything from a pair of addicts robbing parties to fund their sobriety to a Russian hitman dealing with an illness and reliving his past.
A Way to Be Happy is out now.
Caroline Adderson is the Vancouver-based author of five novels, including The Sky is Falling, Ellen in Pieces and A Russian Sister. She has also published two short story collections, including the 1993 Governor General’s Literary Award finalist Bad Imaginings.
Adderson’s awards include three B.C. Book Prizes, a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction. She has received the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is also a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prizes.
The Capital of Dreams is a dark fairytale set in a small European country during a period of war. Fourteen-year-old Sofia is the daughter of the revered writer, Clara Bottom. When their country is invaded, Clara bundles Sofia onto the last train evacuating children out of the city. Clara gives her daughter her latest manuscript to smuggle to safety.
When the children’s train stops in the middle of the forest, Sofia senses they are in danger. She manages to escape, but loses her mother’s beloved manuscript. Soon Sofia finds herself alone in a country at war on an epic journey to find all that she has lost.
The Capital of Dreams is out now.
Heather O’Neill is a novelist, short story writer and essayist from Montreal. She won Canada Reads 2024, championing The Future by Catherine Leroux, which was translated from French by Susan Ouriou. O’Neill is the first person to win Canada Reads as both an author and a panellist. Her debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals won Canada Reads 2007 when it was defended by musician John K. Samson. Her other books include Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists The Girl Who Was Saturday Night and her short story collection Daydreams of Angels.
In Countess, Virika Sameroo is the first lieutenant on an interstellar cargo vessel serving the Æerbot Empire. When her captain dies, she is charged for murder and treason even though she’s always been loyal. This sets her on a quest for revenge against the empire.
Countess is out now.
Suzan Palumbo is a Trinidadian-Canadian author based in Brampton, Ont. She is also the author of short story collection Skin Thief. Her stories have been nominated for the Nebula, Aurora and World Fantasy Awards.
In Songs for the Brokenhearted, Zohara is a 30-something Yemeni Israeli woman living in New York City, a life that feels much simpler than her childhood growing up in Israel. When her sister calls to let her know of their mother’s death, she gets on a plane with no return ticket and begins the journey of unravelling lost family stories.
Songs for the Brokenhearted is out now.
Ayelet Tsabari is the author of The Art of Leaving, which won the Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Memoir and was a finalist for the Writer’s Trust Hilary Weston Prize, and The Best Place on Earth, which won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award. Her short story Green was shortlisted for the 2018 CBC Short Story Prize. She teaches in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Guelph, the MFA in Fiction program at the University of King’s College and the Shaindy Rudoff Graduate Program in Creative Writing at Bar-Ilan University. She lived in Toronto for a number of years and currently resides in Tel Aviv.
The Unweaving tells the story of one Métis family in 1869 as surveyors arrive in Red River to negotiate joining Confederation. Each member of the family reacts in their own way, but all are hoping to protect their way of life.
The Unweaving is out now.
Cheryl Parisien is a Winnipeg-based Red River Métis writer. The Unweaving is her first novel, which is loosely based on her own family’s history.
In this collection of exploratory poems, the poet embodies the meaning of Interrobang, a punctuation mark that combines a question mark and an exclamation. Through riddles and playing with form, the poet writes of community, identity and explores what it means to be a “lost soul.”
When you can read it: Sept. 12, 2024
St. John’s-based Mary Dalton’s poetry collections include Merrybegot, Red Ledger, Hooking and Edge. Dalton has won the E.J. Pratt Poetry Award and been shortlisted for various others, among them the Pat Lowther Award, the Atlantic Poetry Award, and the Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry.
Combining the selected poems of four previous collections in addition to new writings, One River is a collection of exploratory poems in both theme and form. A myriad of otherworldly characters are featured throughout, like a grasshopper or a millionaire entering heaven as a camel and a pilot flying by scent.
When you can read it: Sept. 12, 2024
Ricardo Sternberg is a Toronto-based author and poet. His previous books include The Invention of Honey, Map of Dreams, Bamboo Church, and Some Dance. He is also the author of a book on the Brazilian poet Carlos Drummond de Andrade.
Dedicated to survivors of Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) and all residential schools in Canada The Flesh of Ice is a collection of poems and personal narratives of writer Garry Gottfriedson of the Secwépemc (Shuswap) First Nation. Where Gottfriedson’s last collection Bent Back Tongue discussed the history of Indigenous people in Canada as affected by the government of Canada and the Catholic Church, this book describes the lived realities of those who attended KIRS, citing their pain, their resilience and their necessary voices.
When you can read it: Sept. 13, 2024
Gottfriedson is from Kamloops, B.C. He is strongly rooted in his Secwépemc (Shuswap) cultural teachings. In the late 1980s, Gottfriedson studied under Allen Ginsberg, Marianne Faithfull and others at the Naropa Institute in Colorado. He is the author of 13 books, including Skin Like Mine and Clinging to Bone. Gottfriedson received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC) in 2023.
Gottfriedson is a juror for the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize.
I Hate Parties is a collection of 50 poems on Jes Battis’ experiences of being queer, autistic and nonbinary. Focusing on the feelings of intense anxiety that come with growing up in the nineties in Canada as a marginalized person, Battis writes of adolescence, queer parties and panic attacks through metaphor and honest verse.
When you can read it: Sept. 14, 2024
Battis is a queer autistic writer and teacher at the University of Regina, splitting their time between the prairies and the west coast. They wrote the Occult Special Investigator series and Parallel Parks series. Battis’ first novel, Night Child, was shortlisted for the Sunburst Award. Their novel The Winter Knight was on the Canada Reads 2024 longlist.
I Feel That Way Too is a reflection on the #MeToo movement and how survivors of sexual assault are further effected by sensationalized trials. Drawing on their own childhood and events like the Jian Ghomeshi trial, the poet turns a critical lens at the sexist structures the media and other social powers uphold. Through these confrontations, this collection of poems meditates on how the bodies of survivors move through these trials and towards healing.
When you can read it: Sept. 14, 2024
jaz papadopoulos is an interdisciplinary writer and educator from B.C. They hold an MFA from the University of British Columbia and are a Lambda Literary Fellow. I Feel That Way Too is their debut poetry collection.
Reflecting on over 50 years of writing First Here and then Far is a collection of David Zieroth’s particular poetic voice and identity. From his upbringing in the Prairies to worldwide travels to his current existence in North Vancouver, Zieroth writes of the curiosity that accompanies the every day.
When you can read it: Sept. 14, 2024
David Zieroth is a Vancouver writer. His poetry collection The Fly in Autumn won the 2009 Governor General’s Literary Award and was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry in 2010. Zieroth also won The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Award for How I Joined Humanity at Last. His other works include the trick of staying and leaving, watching for life, the bridge from day to night and Zoo and Crowbar.
In Other Maps, Anna can’t wait to leave her hometown after visiting for her dad’s retirement party. When she runs into her ex-best friends, she’s forced to confront her past and figure out if there was truth behind the rumours about the New Year’s party back in high school — and only then, can she move forward into a better future.
When you can read it: Sept. 14, 2024
Rebecca (Atkinson) Morris is a Montreal-based writer whose short stories have won the Malahat Review Open Season Award and the Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction contest. She is an alumna of the Banff Centre, winner of a Canada Council Arts grant and an active member of the Quebec Writers’ Federation.
Starting in a small town with a boy from a low-income family, Just Say Yes explores how Bob McDonald ended up travelling the world, hosting Quirks and Quarks, becoming an officer of the Order of Canada and even having an asteroid named in his honour.
When you can read it: Sept. 14, 2024
McDonald has been the host of CBC Radio’s Quirks and Quarks since 1992. He is a regular science commentator on CBC’s News Network and a science correspondent for CBC TV’s The National. He has written multiple books including Measuring the Earth with a Stick, which was shortlisted for the Canadian Science Writers Association Book Award and The Future Is Now, about the achievable greener future.
Post-Mortem of the Event is a collection of poems and “wave form visualization” composed from recordings of the poet’s live readings and digital archives. Hinting at an unwritten manuscript, this collection experiments with form and sound, echoing themes of death and inclusion.
When you can read it: Sept. 15, 2024
Klara du Plessis is a poet, academic and curator living between Montreal and Cape Town. Her other poetry collections include Ekke which won the Pat Lowther Memorial Award in 2019, and Hell Light Flesh which was adapted into a mono-opera at the 2023 International Festival of Films on Art.
In the nonfiction work Under the White Gaze, author and journalist Christopher Cheung explore the state of diversity and race within Canadian media organizations and platforms. The work is a call-to-action for news organizations to think more critically about representation in all areas of media coverage.
When you can read it: Sept. 16, 2024
Christopher Cheung is a staff reporter for the Tyee. His writing can also be found in Metro and the Vancouver Courier.
The poems in Bad Weather Mammals reflect Ashley-Elizabeth Best’s own experiences with disability. The poems look back at her childhood, but also her adulthood and even her relationships in her community. The poet explores in a variety of formal constraints both the joys and devastation of living with a disabled body.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Ashley-Elizabeth Best is a disabled poet and essayist from Kingston, Ont. Her debut collection of poetry, Slow States of Collapse, was published in 2016. Best’s chapbook Alignment was published in 2021. That same year, Best was also a contributor for Resistance, a collection of poems curated and edited by Sue Goyette.
Best was on the longlist for the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize.
The poems in Death of Persephone explore the myth of Persephone through the character of Stephanie who lives in a more modern setting than her Greek inspiration. With many displacements to the myth, one question remains: who will survive this altered version of the ancient story?
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Yvonne Blomer is a poet and author. She is the author of the travel memoir Sugar Ride: Cycling from Hanoi to Kuala Lumpur and the poetry collection As if a Raven. She edited the anthologies Refugium: Poems for the Pacific and Sweet Water: Poems for the Watersheds. Blomer served as Victoria’s poet laureate from 2015 to 2018.
Blomer was longlisted for the 2020 CBC Poetry Prize.
Inspired by the scenery of her childhood in New Brunswick, Jacqueline Bourque’s posthumous poetry collection meditates on life and death after Bourque received a terminal cancer diagnosis. Without Beginning or End offers a series of connections to family, art, friendship and the human condition through short emotional poems.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Bourque was an Ottawa-based poet. Her poems appeared in The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, The Fiddlehead and the Queen’s Quarterly. Her first book Repointing the Bricks was shortlisted for the Ottawa Book Award. She died in 2023.
Referring to the Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) term, Total Party Kill is a scenario within a game of D&D where all of the characters die together. Mapping the poet’s personal story of addiction and sobriety alongside a dark fantasy game of monsters and underworlds, this collection combines poetic verse and short monologues. Told through the poet’s own voice and other D&D characters, Total Party Kill parallels the roleplaying game and one’s path to healing.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Craig Francis Power is an artist and writer from St. John’s. His first novel, Blood Relatives, won the Percy Janes First Novel Award, the Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, the ReLit Award, and was shortlisted for the BMO Winterset Award. His other books include The Hope and Skeet Love. His visual art has been shown at galleries across Canada.
Water Quality is a book of lamentations, monologues and haibun: a Japanese form of both prose and haiku. Focusing on water as a central force that covers a swimmer’s body, the poet follows the movement and purpose of water across lakes, seas and oceans. From Hong Kong to the Pacific Northwest, the poet questions what water wants and how we can best steward it.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Cynthia Woodman Kerkham is the Victoria-based author of Good Holding Ground and with feathers and the co-editor of Poems from Planet Earth. Woodman Kerkham was shortlisted for the 2014 CBC Poetry Prize.
Homing is a memoir about the author’s experience of abandoning a busy commuter lifestyle to move to a cabin in the woods with her family. The book also touches upon the journey of repairing her fractured relationship with both herself and the natural world.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Alice Irene Whittaker is a writer and environmental leader. She is the executive director of Ecology Ottawa and the creator and host of Reseed, a podcast about repairing our relationship to nature. Whittaker has longlisted for all three CBC Literary Prizes. She was on the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize longlist, the 2021 CBC Nonfiction Prize longlist and was on the longlist of the 2012 CBC Short Story Prize. Whittaker lives with her family in a cabin in the woods in Quebec.
Born to Walk is a memoir that details Alpha Nkuranga’s story of resistance and survival. When she was eight, she and her younger brother ran from her grandparents’ home in Rwanda in the midst of the civil war. They hid in a swamp until it was safe to leave and ended up joining a group of refugees fleeing to Tanzania. More than ten years later, Nkuranga moved to Canada and now works with women and children who face abuse and homelessness.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Nkuranga works for Women’s Crisis Services in Kitchener, Ont. She fled Rwanda as an eight-year-old and lived in refugee camps in Tanzania and Uganda before arriving in Canada in 2010.
Because Somebody Asked Me To is celebrated writer Guy Vanderhaeghe’s response to all the editors and publishers who have asked him for his insights on books, history and literature spanning his prolific career. It examines the state of Canadian literature when he first appeared on the scene in 1982, what’s happened since and where it can go from here.
When you can read it: Sept. 17, 2024
Vanderhaeghe is a novelist, short story writer and playwright. Vanderhaeghe’s debut short story collection Man Descending, published in 1982, earned him the Governor General’s Literary Award and later the Faber Prize in Britain. He would go on to win two more Governor General’s Literary Awards: in 1996 for The Englishman’s Boy and in 2015 for the short story collection Daddy Lenin and Other Stories. His book The Last Crossing
