Book*hug Turns 20: Thirty Books for Twenty Years, Part One of Three
In case you missed the news, this year marks our twentieth anniversary. We’ve been celebrating this special milestone anniversary in various ways throughout the year. To help keep the celebrations going, our team has assembled a list of thirty of our favourite titles from the last twenty years. Today, we’re pleased to bring you part one of a three-part series that features our first ten picks.
Take a dive into the past with us to witness the combined efforts of the fantastic writers, editors, translators, and designers who have helped make Book*hug Press what it is today! This is not an exhaustive list, but a starting point for discovering just some of the daring and bold works that we have proudly championed. Here’s to twenty more years of literary excellence!
Written by Rune Christiansen, one of Norway’s most beloved literary stars, and masterfully translated by Kari Dickson, Fanny and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest is a beautiful, poetic portrait of grief, friendship, independence, and transgression.
Testament by Vickie Gendreau, translated from French by Aimee Wall
On June 6, 2012, the late Vickie Gendreau was diagnosed with a brain tumour. In between treatments, between hospital stays and her “room of her own,” she wrote Testament, a work of brave and daring autofiction, in which she imagines her death. Written in language as raw and flamboyant as she was, and brilliantly translated by Aimee Wall, Gedreau inverts the elegiac “grief memoir” form and plays with the notion of a last testament, thereby beating any would-be eulogists to the punch.
Talking Animals by Joni Murphy
A fable for our times, Joni Murphy’s sophomore novel, Talking Animals, takes place in an all-animal world where creatures rather like us are forced to deal with an all-too-familiar landscape of soul-crushing jobs, polluted oceans, and a creeping sense of doom. This is an urgent allegory about friendship, art, and the elemental struggle to change one’s life under the low ceiling of capitalism.
Air Carnation by Guadalupe Muro
Air Carnation features an absorbing narrative that bridges nonfiction and fiction, poetry, and song, as Guadalupe Muro explores themes of independence in love and the writerly life. With sojourns in Argentina, Buenos Aires, New York, Washington, and a cross-Canada train passage from Edmonton to Toronto, Air Carnation is an affecting work that will have you laughing, crying, and all the while, enjoying this fascinating metafiction that sings of hippiedom in Patagonia.
Bunny and Shark by Alisha Piercy
Alisha Piercy’ Bunny and Shark is part coming-of-middle age story, part shark adventure, that reveals and celebrates women’s power in the trenches. Plunging into the first thirteen days after the ‘bastard’ pushes his ex-Playboy wife ‘Bunny’ over a cliff in the Caribbean, Bunny and Shark is a fable about island survival and the perils and potentials of being exiled from one’s identity.
At times funny, at other times sad, and more than often a mixture of the two, Giving Up, the first novel by Mike Steeves, is a deeply felt account of what goes on in the inner sanctum of a modern couple’s apartment. Giving Up addresses difficult topics—James’s ruinous ambition, and Mary’s quiet anguish—in a funny and relatable way.
Document 1 by François Blais, translated from French by JC Sutcliffe
Tess and Jude live in small-town Quebec and spend their time travelling all across North America—using Google maps—which provides them the luxury of adventure while remaining in the comfort of their own home. But Tess and Jude are dreamers, and their online adventures eventually give rise to a desire to actually travel somewhere. They settle on Bird in Hand, Pennsylvania, and begin scheming to raise the cash they’ll need for the trip. Funny, smart,x and wonderfully human, Document 1 by the late Francois Blais, is a tragicomic tale of two dreamers and their quest for adventure, as well as a satirical take on the world of arts and letters.
Worst Case, We Get Married by Sophie Bienvenu, translated from French by JC Sutcliffe
From acclaimed Quebecoise writer Sophie Bienvenu, and translated by JC Sutcliffe, Worst Case, We Get Married, is a raw and heartrending coming-of-age novel. Aicha lives with her mother in Montreal’s Centre-Sud neighbourhood. She’s only thirteen but claims to be older. She has never known her father, and resents her mother for leaving Hakim, her stepfather. Her only friends are Mel and Jo, two local sex workers, and Baz, a musician in his twenties, who comes to her rescue one day and with whom she proceeds to fall in love. Her impossible love for Baz, her precociousness and her rebellious streak come together in an explosive and deadly cocktail.
No Work Finished Here: Rewriting Andy Warhol by Liz Worth
When Andy Warhol’s a, A Novel was first published in 1968, The New York Times Book Review declared it “pornographic.” Yet decades later, it continues to be an essential documentation of Warhol’s seminal Factory scene. And though the book offers a pop art snapshot of 1960s Manhattan that only Warhol could capture, it remains a challenging read. No Work Finished Here: Rewriting Andy Warhol attempts to change that, by appropriating the original text and turning each page into a unique poem.
Trapsongs: Three Plays by Shannon Bramer
From playwright and poet Shannon Bramer comes Trapsongs, a collection of three dark comedies that navigate the realm of the surreal and absurd. Trapsongs is by turns comedic, grotesque, and profane, but is all the while a tender exploration of the human condition in all its hilarious and humbling glory.
