September 2021 | Upcoming Projects, New Clients, Advance Praise & Rave Reviews
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CARTOGRAPHY OF WOUNDS by Preeti Kaur investigates themes of intergenerational trauma, touch and grief while taking the reader through various cities in Canada, the US and India. Pushing the boundaries of what's permitted and expected from Punjabi women, as well as the boundaries of what constitutes a novel, CARTOGRAPHY OF WOUNDS is a non-linear hybrid novel written in fragments about a bisexual, Punjabi woman who returns home to Surrey, BC after 14 years away to take care of her dying mother. Upon her mother’s death, Simrin Grewal quits her job as a journalist to navigate the spirals of accumulated grief that have gathered since childhood, including family wounds, disappointing romantic relationships and a folktale about a Crow and a Sparrow. As the story progresses, Crow accompanies Simrin, sometimes taking over the narration for moments that Simrin cannot see or has forgotten, other times blending into Simrin’s reality. Preeti Kaur is represented by Chelene Knight.
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FOUL DAYS by Genoveva Dimova is The Witcher if Leigh Bardugo had written it. As a witch, Kosara can tame rusalkas, fight kikimoras, and brew lycanthrope repellent. There’s only one monster she can’t defeat: her ex. He’s the Zmey—the tsar of monsters. She defied him one too many times, and now he’s hunting her. To escape his wrath, Kosara’s only hope is to trade her powers for passage across the Wall around her city: a magical barrier protecting the outside world from the monsters within. The only problem is that without her magic she develops the shadow sickness that kills witches without their powers—she’s traded a fast death at the hands of the Zmey for a slow one. If she wants to live, Kosara needs to get her powers back. And to do that, she has to face the Zmey. Genoveva is represented by Brenna English-Loeb.
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In LOWFIELD by Mark Sampson, Riley Fuller has just moved into Applegarth, a large, dilapidated house that he inherited from his grandfather. He thought fixing up this old house and moving to a new town would allow him a fresh start away from his disreputable past; however, Applegarth has different plans. As Riley spends more and more time at Applegarth exploring the secrets of his family and a mysterious and undisclosed town once known as Lowfield, his thoughts become more and more unhinged, as if not his own at all. Is Riley as sordid as his past actions and current thoughts would suggest, or is Applegarth poisoning him with its own nefarious intentions? Can Riley overcome seemingly insurmountable odds and battle the spirits that haunt both him and Applegrath, or will he succumb to the same tragic fate as his grandfather? Mark is represented by Brenna English-Loeb.
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RIVER MEETS THE SEA is a contemporary, Canadian seafaring epic that follows the seemingly separate timelines of a white-passing, Indigenous foster child in 1940s Vancouver and an Afro-Sri Lankan immigrant in the suburbs of Nanaimo in the 1970s. The novel follows the seemingly separate lives of these spirited young men and their ever-elusive connection to water until they inevitably cross paths, revealing rich, lesser-known Canadian histories along the way. RIVER MEETS THE SEA is inspired by the lives of real people from Turtle Island, and seeks to illuminate the interconnectedness of humanity and our lifeblood: the dynamic element of water. The novel fosters unity between different generations and demographics, and brings much needed representation for those of us with braided identities, and to challenge the often monolithically delineated categories of Black and white. Rachael Moorthy’s writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in publications such as PRISM International, SAD Magazine, Revue Zinc, The Pigeon, This Side of West. Rachael is represented by Chelene Knight.
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A HOUSE OF THREE is a contemporary upmarket debut novel about a throuple who have shared a home together for months and fostered a relationship that is a beautiful place of no return. Casper, Francesca and Quinn live together in a complex relationship that borders on codependency. But the love triangle tears at them all— the taboo, the emotional stress, the love, the heartache. Casper needs his wife, Francesca, but is unable to reach her after the many losses she's suffered so instead he reaches for Quinn. Francesca needs Quinn; if she weren’t there, Francesca would be forced to face her half-hearted feelings towards the marriage, to face the children she did not, could not, have. And Quinn needs Francesca just as much: a substitute for the mother she lost long ago, Francesca offers Quinn stability, a maternal figure and a friend— because Quinn is on a quest to figure out who she is and who she will become, a black woman who has slipped into passing for white, struggling to find her way back to her own identity. Felice Laverne is represented by Amanda Orozco.
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“The Story of Your Life” by Ted Chiang meets Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, THE DISAPPEARANCE OF JAMES CHAZKY by Benjamin Parzybok investigates what it means to belong in an indifferent universe and the many ways we create origin stories for ourselves. As the ambassador between the ANR (a benevolent group of AIs running Earth) and the Sakesh (alien refugees), Janesh Kaputat is used to handling impossible requests as the two sides try to negotiate past a stalemate: the Sakesh want to stay on earth, and the ANR want them gone, ASAP. When the Sakesh ask to meet the human memoirist James Chazky, a deeply mediocre writer with whom the ANRs are for some reason obsessed, Jan is confused but figures this is something she can actually accomplish. The only problem: James Chazky is missing. Benjamin is represented by Brenna English-Loeb.
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Spanning the years from 1958 to 2002, and set in New York, London, Grenada and Winnipeg, Canada, THE WORLD SO WIDE by Zilla Jones is the story of Felicity Alexander, the daughter of a Black Grenadian woman and an unknown white father. Felicity has two competing desires: to defy stereotypes and misperceptions to become a celebrated opera singer, and to be loved. Inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement and the spotlight it has placed on the legacy of colonialism, THE WORLD SO WIDE is loosely based on the author’s family connections to the Grenadian Revolution and its traumatic fallout. Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer, anti-racist educator, mother, singer and writer from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Metis nation (Winnipeg.) Her fiction has appeared in print in Prairie Fire, the Malahat Review and Prism, and online in Room and the Puritan Review. Zilla Jones is represented by Chelene Knight.
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BURMA BY ACCORDION is a graphic memoir of two very different journeys with piano accordions through Upper Burma (modern-day Myanmar) by illustrator and cartoonist, Carol Isaacs. On the 15th of March in 1942, Carol's father’s cousin Maurice Saul fled Mandalay (Upper Burma’s capital) as the Japanese invaded, taking with him four gallons of petrol, a couple of blankets and his beloved piano accordion. Almost eighty years later (pre-military coup), the author goes back to Myanmar retracing Maurice’s escape to India through villages, dirt tracks and mountainous jungle whilst carrying her own accordion. Carol is represented by Fiona Kenshole and Amanda Orozco.
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NO PAKISTANI COWBOYS is a memoir by Tariq Hussain about growing up between two cultures and trying to figure out where you fit in. Tariq explores identity, belonging, and the unshakeable bond between mother and son, ultimately finding meaning through songs: their power to connect us to ourselves, to strangers and, most importantly, to the people we love. Tariq is a Juno nominated singer/songwriter and recording artist living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Coast Salish Peoples in East Vancouver, BC. Tariq's music career spans two decades during which time he has released six full-length albums and one EP. He has also performed extensively across Canada and Europe, both as a solo artist and with his band, Brasstronaut. He has been a radio host for CBC Radio 3 and currently teaches lyric writing at UBC's School of Creative Writing. His writing has appeared in The Walrus, Sad Mag, and Fine Magazine. Tariq is represented by Laura Cameron.
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R. Renee Hess founded the Black Girl Hockey Club in 2018, a non-profit organization committed to creating community for Black women in ice hockey. In an as-yet untitled nonfiction work, Renee chronicles the joys, difficulties, and hard truths of hockey culture for folks marginalized by race, gender, sexuality, and ability, and explores how Black women are leading the way toward social change. Drawing from her own feelings of marginalization and Otherness, her experiences as an advocate, and from extensive interviews with players, executives, fans, and media, Renee examines hockey's problematic history through the intersectional lenses of feminism and social justice and considers the future for Black women who love a sport that doesn’t always love them back. Renee works in community engagement for La Sierra University, is an adjunct professor of writing, and has had nonfiction works and poetry published by outlets such as Black Nerd Problems, Spectrum Magazine, and Racebaitr. Renee is represented by Brenna English-Loeb and Evan Brown.
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UNDERNEATH THE PALM TREES by Eva Recinos is an upmarket memoir-in-essays about a young woman's coming of age as she navigates the grief of losing her father at a young age and struggles for the American dream through education despite the depression, anxiety, and pressures of being a first-generation daughter and student. Structured around the rules she and others imposed on herself, this collection captures the complex experience of a young woman who grew up as the daughter of immigrants in the lower-income neighborhood of South Central Los Angeles, next to one of the wealthiest private universities in America, which she eventually attended. In these essays, Recinos touches on the dissonant effects of straddling two disparate worlds at home and at school in essays on her bi-sexuality while at Catholic school; on the nuances of gentrification within her neighborhood and herself; and on the often unseen mental health difficulties of first-generation daughters as they strive to live up to their parents' dreams for them, and their own. From a fresh, emerging Latinx voice of the millennial generation, UNDERNEATH THE PALM TREES is an engaging, poignant, and eye-opening collection reminiscent of MY TIME AMONG THE WHITES and CHILDREN OF THE LAND. Eva Recinos, an arts & culture journalist, is represented by Amanda Orozco.
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Kevin Chong is the author of six books of fiction and nonfiction, most recently the novel The Plague. Those titles have been named books of the year by Globe and Mail, National Post, and Amazon.ca, listed for a CBC prize, a BC Book Prize, and a National Magazine Award, optioned for film and TV, and published in the US, Europe, and Australia. His creative nonfiction and journalism have recently appeared in the Guardian, the Times Literary Supplement, the Rumpus, and the South China Morning Post. Based in Vancouver, he teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia Okanagan. He holds an MFA from Columbia University.
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Charles Dowding has spent years becoming an overnight success and rising star in the field of organic gardening. Interest in the benefits of NO DIG, the gardening practice Charles has used for decades has grown rapidly during the recent home garden revolution, and he is now one of the most trusted gardening gurus online, where he teaches others the many benefits of leaving the soil intact, layering on organic compost and eliminating chemical fertilizers: the main benefits of which are more food in less time with fewer weeds. Charles' popular videos on these topics are instructive and motivating, but the process is more fully detailed and explained in his book, NO DIG GARDENING, which has sold over 20,000 copies since its release in late 2020.
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Natalie Dupille is a cartoonist, writer, and illustrator based in Seattle, WA. Her cartoons and narrative comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The Los Angeles Times, WIRED, and Playboy, among others, and generally reflect on social issues, sexuality, and current events. She is the author of numerous autobiographical comics works including the book In Spite of Ourselves, for which she was called “Breakout Cartoonist of the Year” in 2020 by Fantagraphics Bookstore and Gallery. Dupille is currently working on her first full-length graphic novel.
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Kyle Raymond Fitzpatrick is a queer, Latinx writer based in Los Angeles. His fiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Cosmonauts Avenue, The Exposition Review, and Queen Mob’s Teahouse while his nonfiction has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books, Taste, and Popsugar. His work was recently shortlisted for PRISM International’s Jacob Zilner Prize for Short Fiction. He received an MFA in Writing from Otis College of Art and Design and was a LARB Publishing Fellow. He has a BFA from Georgetown University in English and Theatre & Performance Studies. He is currently at work on his first novel. He works in entertainment and loves dogs, pét-nat, and short shorts.
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Petti (Peg) Fong is the journalist who created, hosts and writes the podcast Alone Together: A Curious Exploration of Loneliness from Apostrophe Podcast Network, executive produced by Terry O’Reilly. Over the last 10 years, she has interviewed hundreds of experts on the topic of loneliness and social isolation. She was a staff reporter at The Vancouver Sun, The Globe and Mail and the western bureau chief for The Toronto Star Newspaper. Currently, she is the Vancouver correspondent for The Economist Magazine. She has an M.S. Journalism from Columbia University and teaches journalism at Langara College and business at Kwantlen Polytechnic University. In 2003, she was a regional finalist in the Commonwealth Short Story Competition, a finalist in the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Competition for 2019, and a longlist finalist for the Desperate Literature Prize for Short Fiction 2020.
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Vanessa Friedman (she/her) is a queer dyke writer living in Portland, OR. She’s the community editor at Autostraddle and a teaching artist with 826NYC. She received her MFA in creative nonfiction from Sarah Lawrence College, and she is a Tin House Summer Workshop alum and a Hedgebrook Spring Retreat alum. Vanessa writes about friendship, home, loneliness, grief, sex, and the body; her work has been published in Autostraddle, Nylon, Catapult, Alma, Shape, among others, and her essay, “If I’m Lonely,” will be included in the as yet untitled anthology based on Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 classic, Sex and the Single Girl, forthcoming from Harper Perennial in 2022. Vanessa is currently at work on her first novel. You can find her online at vanessapamela.com.
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Tariq Hussain is a Juno nominated singer/songwriter and recording artist living on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded lands of the Coast Salish Peoples–Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh, and Musqueam First Nations–in East Vancouver, BC. Tariq’s music career spans two decades during which time he has released six full-length albums and one EP. He has also performed extensively across Canada and Europe, both as a solo artist and with his band, Brasstronaut. He has been a radio host for CBC Radio 3 and currently teaches lyric writing at UBC’s School of Creative Writing. His writing has appeared in The Walrus, Sad Mag, and Fine Magazine. Tariq is at work on a memoir about music and belonging titled NO PAKISTANI COWBOYS.
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Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer, anti-racist educator, mother, singer and writer from Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Metis nation (Winnipeg.) Although she has been writing since the age of three, she only began submitting her work in the fall of 2019. Since then, she has been longlisted for the CBC short fiction competition, shortlisted twice for the Writers Union of Canada short prose competition - most recently with three stories on the list, the Fiddlehead magazine short story competition, the Missouri Review Perkoff Prize, the Masters Review Anthology X, and the Freefall Magazine short prose contest (in progress.) She won Honourable Mention in the Room magazine short fiction contest, and first place in the GritLit short story contest, Malahat Review Open Season contest, and Prism Magazine Jacob Zilber short fiction prize. Her fiction has appeared in print in Prairie Fire, the Malahat Review and Prism, and online in Room and the Puritan Review.
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Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal (she/her) is a critical race feminist, writer, lawyer, college prof and facilitator who grew up on the traditional territories of the Semiahmoo, Katzie, Kwikwetlem, Kwantlen, Qayqayt, Tsawwassen and Musqueam First Nations (also known as Surrey and North Delta, British Columbia). Before leaving her legal career to pursue a Master of Laws, Preeti articled at a boutique litigation firm in Tkaronto and clerked at the Federal Court of Canada. In her LLM, she used theatre, creative writing and performance art to investigate how law lives in the body, with a focus on race. She then pursued an MFA in Creative Writing at the University of Guelph where she completed her manuscript for a hybrid novel. Preeti’s writing has appeared in PRISM international, Looseleaf Magazine, the Community Building Art Works Anthology: We Were Not Alone, the Festival of Literary Diversity’s program, alt. theatre magazine, Theatre Research in Canada and No Foundations, amongst other publications.
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Carol Isaacs is a London-based cartoonist known as The Surreal McCoy. Her cartoons have been published in the New Yorker, Sunday Times, Readers’ Digest and many other unlikely places. Her first graphic memoir The Wolf of Baghdad - Memoir of a Lost Homeland was published by Myriad Editions UK in 2020 and was listed as the one Guardian’s best ten graphic books of that year. Her work has featured in The Inking Woman - 250 years of British Women Cartoon and Comic Artists. She was cartoonist-in-residence for comedian and broadcaster Sandi Toksvig’s radio show, and has illustrated books by Sandi and the mathematician Alex Bellos.
She is also a classically-trained pianist, keyboard and accordion player working in pop and world music. Carol has toured and recorded with artists worldwide, including Sinead O’Connor (Ireland), Indigo Girls (USA), Squeeze (UK), Phongsit Kampee (Thailand) and Ahmed Mukhtar (Iraq). She is a founder member of the London Klezmer Quartet and Hamsa, playing Jewish music from Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean. She is also part of the Judeo-Arabic music group Ayin who accompany The Wolf of Baghdad motion comic when it is performed live.
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Greg Kearney is the author of two story collections, Mommy Daddy Baby, and Pretty, which won the 2012 ReLit award for short fiction. Its 2013 novel, The Desperates, was a finalist for both the Lambda and ReLit awards for full-length fiction. It has lived throughout Canada and currently resides on the on the unceded territory of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishnabeg, the Chippewa, the Haudenosaunee and the Wendat peoples.
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Oonya Kempadoo resides in Canada and is a UK, Guyanese, Grenadian citizen. She is the author of three novels, two of which were nominated for the Dublin Impac Prize. Her work, critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, has been long-listed for the Orange Prize, translated into six languages and on Oprah Winfrey’s Summer Reads. Winner of a Casa De Las Americas prize, she was named a “Great Talent for the 21st Century” by Orange Prize judges. Kempadoo is a Fulbright Scholar alumni, consultant/researcher with an interest in cross-disciplinary dialogue and is co-founder of the Grenada Community Library.
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Conor Kerr is a Métis/Ukrainian educator, writer and harvester. He is a member of the Métis Nation of Alberta, part of the Edmonton Indigenous community and is descended from the Lac Ste. Anne & Fort Des Prairies Metis communities and the Papaschase Cree Nation. His Ukrainian family settled in Treaty 4 territory in Saskatchewan. Conor works as the Executive Director of Indigenous Education and Services at Langara College. In 2019, Conor received The Fiddlehead's Ralph Gustafson Poetry award. In 2021, Conor received The Malahat Review's Long Poem Prize. His writing has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2020 and has appeared in literary magazines across Canada. He has two books coming out in 2021, Avenue of Champions, and An Explosion of Feathers.
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Felice Laverne has been writing stories since age 13; since then, she has obtained a bachelor’s degree in English from Georgia State University and a master’s degree in Publishing at Kingston University in London, England. Felice wrote her dissertation on Diversity & Inclusion in Publishing, which drove her career-long passion for bold marginalized voices the world had never heard before. After years of partnering with major publishing houses as a freelance book editor and ghostwriter, having edited phenomenal big-name books such as Zerlina Maxwell’s The End of White Politics (Hachette), Paola Ramos’ Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity(Vintage), and ghostwriting Bonnie Wan’s The Life Brief (Simon Element) among so many others, she partnered with Latoya Smith to found ArtHouse Literary Agency, while continuing to put on summits for publishers around Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and working on her own writing as an author herself. Her essays and short fiction have been published in Padmore Culture and Kingdoms in the Wild, respectively. Felice was born and raised in the South and now lives in the Bay Area.
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Christine Mari is a 23-year-old Japanese-American comic artist based in Los Angeles, California. She is half Japanese and was born in Tokyo but grew up in the United States. At age fifteen, she self-published her first book, Halfway Home, an illustrated account of a summer she spent traveling in Japan. Halfway was selected as a 2016 Great Graphic Novel for Teens by YALSA. In 2016 Halfway was expanded and published in full color as Diary of a Tokyo Teen by Tuttle Publishing. While studying abroad in Japan, she began posting autobiographical comics to Instagram. Today, she has over 140,000 Instagram followers and draws comics on a wide range of topics, from her experiences living in Tokyo to her multiracial identity and everyday struggles with anxiety and depression.
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Rachael Moorthy is a Canadian writer from the Salish Sea to Switzerland. Her writing has appeared, or is forthcoming, in publications such as PRISM International, SAD Magazine, Revue Zinc, The Pigeon, This Side of West, and others. She was shortlisted for the Malahat Review’s 2020 Far Horizons Award for poetry, and has recently completed her debut novel “River Meets the Sea”. Rachael is of Afro-Asian diasporic, displaced Indigenous, and mixed European ancestry, and is forever trying to figure out how to answer the question “where are you from?” She is passionate about telling the stories of those who, like her, have complex and braided identities.
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Carlos Alonzo Morales is a Mexican-Canadian novelist, screenwriter, and academic. A self-described “indoor kid” from the beginning, he found himself drawn to literature, films and video games far more than to other people. It wasn’t until he was seventeen that he received his autism diagnosis, finally explaining both his tendencies and his struggles. Since then, he obtained a Master’s degree in English Literature from Brock University, by writing his Master’s thesis on the Mass Effect trilogy. His creative projects in prose and screenwriting represent a wide variety of genres including sci-fi, space opera, fantasy, horror, thrillers, the Gothic, and Westerns. His sci-fi novels in particular are driven by a desire to see more Latino protagonists in genre fiction.
Besides his creative work, Carlos is also a contributing writer for IGN.com, where he regularly analyzes film. When he’s not writing, he can commonly be found watching movies, discussing superheroes, and spending way too much time on Twitter.
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Anthony Ocampo, Ph.D. is a writer and sociologist from Los Angeles. He is the author of The Latinos of Asia: How Filipino Americans Break the Rules of Race (2016) and the forthcoming Brown and Gay in LA: Queer Sons of Immigrants Coming of Age, as well as a Ford Foundation, Voices of Our Nation (VONA), Tin House, and Jack Jones Literary Arts “Culture, Too” fellow. His essays on race, immigration, and sexuality have appeared in GQ, KCET, Life and Thyme, Prism, Gravy, HuffPost, and the San Francisco Chronicle, among others. Dr. Ocampo’s research and commentaries have been widely cited in publications such as The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, the New Yorker, NBC News, BBC, USA Today, Time Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and the Washington Post, among many others. Dr. Ocampo is Professor of Sociology at California Polytechnic State University-Pomona and Faculty Director of the California State University Chancellor’s Doctoral Incentive Program. He is also an Academic Director for the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity and serves on the Board of Trustees of the Filipino American National Historical Society.
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Tatiana Schlote-Bonne has lived in San Diego, a small mining town in Nevada, and now resides in Iowa, where she’s pursuing an MFA in creative writing at the University of Iowa. Her novel-in-progress won the 2020 Diverse Worlds grant from the Speculative Literature Foundation. She has essays published in F(r)iction, Dogwood, and forthcoming from The Los Angeles Review. In her free time, she lifts weights and plays Magic: The Gathering. You can connect with Tatiana on Twitter: @TatianaSchlote or on Instagram @thebuffwriter.
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ADVANCE PRAISE & RAVE REVIEWS |
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Advance praise for Hannah Mary McKinnon's AN HONEST MAN, which publishes in May 2022 (World English, Mira). Contact Carolyn Forde.
“There's no crime writer more wickedly diabolical than the brilliantly clever Hannah Mary McKinnon. An Honest Man — risky and dark and absolutely unique —made me hide under the covers and then laugh out loud. But it's more than a page-turning thriller — McKinnon's sophisticated storytelling combined with a masterclass in voice means this one is not to be missed. (And warning: you will never look at your spouse the same way.) Hannah Mary McKinnon has done it again: she's the modern queen of twisty suspense!”
—Hank Phillippi Ryan USA Today bestselling author of Her Perfect Life
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Advance Praise for Katherena Vermette’s THE STRANGERS ((World rights available ex: English in Canada - Hamish Hamilton; French excluding North America - Albin Michel; French North America - Québec Amérique; Polish - Wielka Litera; and German - Luchterhand). Contact Marilyn Biderman.
“Katherena Vermette's The Strangers is a deeply moving story of how colonial institutions continue to bear down on and disrupt the lives of Indigenous women and girls. It is a powerful collective portrait of struggle and resistance, of what it's like to be in an Indigenous body in twenty-first century Canada. In the end, it adds up to an engrossingly written ode to another kind of care, one against the grain of suffering. A brilliant follow-up!"
—Billy-Ray Belcourt, bestselling author of A History of My Brief Body
"The Strangers is a unique and essential triumph of a novel. It is revelatory in its artistry--in its constellating of family against violent separation, in its austere poetics of voice and consciousness. Katherena Vermette has proven once again that she is among the most gifted and relevant writers of our time: someone with everything to teach us about the telling of necessary stories, about grieving the fallen, honouring survival, and revealing the fiercest beauty."
—David Chariandy, award-winning author of Brother and I've Been Meaning to Tell You
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Advance Praise for Carlyn Zwarenstein’s ON OPIUM: PAIN, PLEASURE, AND OTHER MATTERS OF SUBSTSANCE (World rights available ex. English in North America - Goose Lane Editions). Publishes September 14, 2021. Contact Marilyn Biderman.
“Carlyn Zwarenstein provides a voice previously missing from the overdose crisis. With empathy and urgency, she takes us inside the world of people who use opioids at a time when they are dying in record numbers. On Opium captures people’s pain, hope, and resilience, and in sharing their stories, provides a blueprint to end the crisis."
—Travis Lupick, author of Fighting for Space
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Advance Praise for Judith McCormack’s THE SINGING FOREST (World rights available ex. English in North America - Biblioasis). Publishes September 14, 2021. Contact Marilyn Biderman.
“The Kurapaty mass grave near Minsk, Belarus, was used to hide the bodies of thousands murdered by Stalin’s secret police from 1937 to 1941. This novel of witness tells the story of the prosecution of a war criminal hiding in Canada. There is self-discovery. There is torture and false confession. There are affidavits and dark nights of the soul. There is Leah’s painful search for witnesses driven by her “damaged, obstinate heart.” And searingly, as McCormack writes, there are the voices of the dead who cry out, “We are here. We are waiting.” Know this history through your heart, through the empathetic imagination of McCormack’s fiction.”
—Kim Echlin, author of The Disappeared
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Advance Praise for Sharon Butala’s THIS STRANGE VISIBLE AIR: (World rights available ex. English in Canada, Freehand Books). Publishes September 13, 2021. Contact Marilyn Biderman.
“A timely manifesto about old age, which Sharon Butala shows us is far more interesting than is commonly understood. Butala is a talented and original author who writes with lyric grace and a tantalizing touch of mysticism.”
—Susan Swan, author of The Dead Celebrities Club
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Advance Praise for Stephen Gerard Malone’s THE HISTORY OF RAIN (World rights - Nimbus). Publishes September 30, 2021. Contact: Shaun Bradley for film/TV inquiries.
“This is what it means to care. A story of trauma and order, chaos and beauty, reality and fantasy, The History of Rain constructs a path from the trenches of WWI to the film sets and opulent estates of Golden Age Hollywood. Along the way, the story grapples with massive forces: nature and time, love and longing, public and private space. Malone, like his character, is a master of cultivation, and this book, like the gardens it imagines, is a wonder of patience and intricate attention. Wander through and try to take it all in. Everywhere you look, there is more than you expect.”
—Alexander MacLeod, Giller Prize–shortlisted author of Light Lifting
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Advance praise for Scotiabank Giller Prize-shortlisted Kathleen Winter's UNDERSONG (World rights available ex: World English, Knopf Canada; German, btb). Publishes August 17, 2021. Contact: Shaun Bradley for film/TV inquiries; Evan Brown for translation rights.
“Dorothy’s exuberant imagination blooms on the page.... Her feelings are powerful, her words a spontaneous overflow. Melancholic and perceptive, Undersong is a tantalizing glimpse into a life as it could have been.”
—Literary Review of Canada
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“[Kilanko’s] characters are never distant or holier-than-thou. She creates them from what Wole Soyinka calls the common cloth of humanity. Elegant in their simplicity, the people in her stories get right to the heart of the human experience: the desire to escape harsh conditions, to be respected, to be seen.”
—Brittle Paper
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Praise for YOU WILL REMEMBER ME by Hannah Mary McKinnon (Rights Available ex. World English, Mira). Contact Carolyn Forde:
“Fans of psychological thrillers will be happy to get their hands on Hannah Mary McKinnon’s latest novel...YOU WILL REMEMBER ME makes for a great summer read.”
—The Suburban
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Praise for Clayton Thomas-Muller’s LIFE IN THE CITY OF DIRTY WATER (Allen Lane Canada, World). Publishes August 24th, 2021. Contact Carolyn Forde.
"Nationally and internationally recognized activist and survivor Clayton Thomas-Muller ties together personal stories of survival that bring the realities of the First Nations of this land into sharp focus in this heart stopping memoir. This book binds together the urgent issues of Indigenous rights and environmental policy, and is an absolute must-read."
—Daily Hive
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Praise for Eliza Reid’s SECRETS OF THE SPRAKKAR (World Rights Available ex: Canada English, Simon & Schuster Canada; World English ex. Canada, Sourcebooks; Icelandic, Forlagið; Korean, Courrier). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“A warm and intimate exploration of what one small country can teach the world about gender equality. Eliza Reid charts her personal journey from a Canadian farm to Iceland’s Presidential Residence and along the way proves to be the best possible guide to the historical, geographical and cultural factors that helped women thrive and built a vibrant modern society.”
—Geraldine Brooks
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Praise for Scotiabank Giller Prize-winner Linden MacIntyre's THE WINTER WIVES (World rights available ex: US and Canada, English language - Random House Canada). Publishes August 10, 2021. Contact: Shaun Bradley for film/TV inquiries; Evan Brown for translation rights.
“One shouldn’t for a moment think of this as a simple book. Longtime journalist MacIntyre … writes with an easy command of both the external world — including international crimes, criminal investigation, the law, and degenerative cognitive diseases — and the internal world of complex and frequently conflicted characters. “The Winter Wives” [is] a powerful, thought-provoking read.”
—Robert J. Wiersma, Toronto Star
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Praise for Katherine Ashenburg’s HER TURN (World Rights Available ex: Canada English, Knopf; US English, HarperCollins). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“With its fruitful examination of betrayal and forgiveness, Ashenburg’s engrossing latest should appeal to fans of Nora Ephron.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
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Praise for Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s THE RETREAT (World Rights Available ex: Canada English, HarperCollins; World English ex. Canada, Muholland Books, Little Brown). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“By setting The Retreat during one of the pivotal moments when everyday elements besieging a woman’s life seem to be conspiring to an overwhelming degree, de Mariaffi vividly humanizes what might, in lesser hands, have been a pro-forma, overly familiar thriller. Instead, The Retreat shines, at once thoughtful and chilling, familiar and unsettling.”
—The Toronto Star
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More advance praise for THE MATZAH BALL by Jean Meltzer (World rights: MIRA Books; Germany: Aufbau, Israel: Dani Books, Sweden: Bonnier, UK and AUS/NZ: Piatkus). Contact Carolyn Forde and Marilyn Biderman.
"Meltzer debuts with a charming holiday romance"
—Publishers Weekly
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More praise for THE LAST EXILES (World: Park Row Books). Contact Carolyn Forde.
"With taut pacing and rich prose, Shin provides a revelatory view on a system of underground brokers who aid defectors, but also fuel indentured servitude in China. The many layers make for a moving and powerful story."
—Publishers Weekly
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More praise for DON’T CALL IT A CULT by Sarah Berman (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Viking, US rights, Steerforth, and Polish, Wydawnictwo Kobiece). Contact Carolyn Forde.
“Vancouver investigative reporter Sarah Berman's nonfiction account goes deep into [NXIVM], meticulously tracing how it began and how it grew... Berman's exposé is a fascinating and chilling read.”
—Star Tribune
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More praise for Darrel McLeod's PEYAKOW (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Douglas & McIntyre, US, Milkweed). Contact Carolyn Forde.
“Sheds welcome light on little-known aspects of the interaction of Indigenous peoples with politically dominant outsiders”
—Kirkus Reviews
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More praise for Zoe Whittall’s THE SPECTACULAR (World Rights Available ex. English Canada and US HarperCollins and Penguin Random House, Ballantine). Contact Samantha Haywood.
“Whittall is excellent at writing the small, intimate details and sharp dialogue, as well as the mostly propulsive plot, while making no bones about opinions on gender inequities. Whittall is a great storyteller, and her latest does not disappoint.”
—Publisher’s Weekly
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More praise for Sophie McCreesh’s ONCE MORE WITH FEELING (World Rights Available ex. Canada English, Doubleday). Contact Samantha Haywood.
"Heart-breaking, funny, and poignant, Once More, With Feeling is a beautifully subtle, unflinching, balancing act of a novel. A striking and memorable accomplishment."
—Iain Reid, author of I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Foe
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Transatlantic Agency | 416 488 9214 |
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