Award Winning Reads from Book*hug
Readopolis by Bertrand Laverdure, Translated by Oana Avasilichioaei
$20
Winner of the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation
In the pages of Readopolis (Lectodôme in the original French), Laverdure playfully examines the idea that human beings are more connected by their reading abilities than by anything else. Funny and sardonic, whimsical and tragic, this postmodern novel with touches of David Foster Wallace and Raymond Queneau portrays the global village of readers that the Internet created, even before the 2.0 revolution.
Rag Cosmology by Erin Robinsong
$18
Winner of the 2017 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry
“Rag Cosmology is spellbinding. The poems in this stunning debut collection are acrobatic and kinetic, alive with immediacy and sensuality. Experimental in design, yet deeply resonant and familiar in subject matter, Erin Robinsong writes with skillful chiaroscuro, bringing light into darkness, and darkness into light. Reading this collection felt like a breathless game of hide-and-seek—playful, thrilling and haunting, too.” —Ruth Ozeki
Silvija by Sandra Ridley
$18
Finalist for the 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize for Excellence
Finalist for the 2017 Archibald Lampman Award
49th Shelf Most Anticipated Fall 2016 Poetry Preview Selection
“The poems in Sandra Ridley’s book are potent and beguiling. Words are given the space they need to root and branch. This pace of them engages with the unarticulated, the hidden, the unbearable as readers encounter five elegies that allude to and invoke trauma, shame, and a profound sense of loss. Given the themes at work in this collection, silence is an essential part of the reading. Ridley conducts and curates that space as liminal. Here’s where we understand the scope of the work and concede to bearing witness. Here’s where we understand that we will be haunted. And from that silence, the words that emerge have been given the time they need to properly cure and to season in the poem’s atmosphere. They reach, as words do, singular and fluent. Ridley’s language is persuasive and ripe. ‘[N]arrow your eyes to the now,’ the poem requests. Here is ‘a shame unleashed by plain talk’. Beneath these elegies, there is a current, a reprise praising the healer. This current is another root system, an ongoing poem, essential to the collection.” —Griffin Poetry Prize Jury Citation
Notes from a Feminist Killjoy by Erin Wunker
$23
Winner of the Atlantic Book Awards 2017 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award
Winner of the East Coast Literary Awards 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award
Best Book of 2017: Gold Winner, The Coast Halifax
“Women reaching out to one another, telling each other our stories. This is a structural tactic. It is also crucial to the work of justice and social change. Let us take Wunker’s core message to heart and continue this messy, complex, and vital conversation.” —Julia Feng, The Fem
