How does the old adage go? Despite the sage wisdom of not judging a book by its cover, the cover of a book is a key first impression that informs a potential reader of what it’s about, inviting them to flip open to the first page and want to find out more. The decisions that go into a cover’s artwork, font choice, and other design elements are all important in creating an impression that makes a book stand out. And when it comes to books by Canadian small presses, there’s a wonderful opportunity for unique, beautiful, and more personalized covers that you might not always find with books published by larger houses or the Big Five. This is not to take anything away from books released by these publishers, which often have great covers of their own, but sometimes, especially in certain genres and trends, one cover to the next can seem a little formulaic. Not so with small press books, and the artists who spend lots of time and care in creating them, ensuring that no two covers are exactly alike. 

Memoirist and poet, Hollay Ghadery has described her first book of fiction, Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill Press, 2024) as “the result of my struggling to make sense of my fantasising about planning my husband’s funeral.” Not that she wants him dead, but rather because of her need for a more equitable partnership in her marriage, such are the circuitous paths of the psyche. 

Widow Fantasies is a unique collection of micro-fictions where Ghadery condenses her narratives into semi-oblique snapshots

Having a middle-grade author on our blog is a first for us, and we are delighted to kick off what will hopefully be the first of many middle-grad lit features with Anna Rosner, the award-winning author of Eyes on the Ice (Groundwood Books, 2024).

This story follows ten-year-old Lukas and his brother Denys, who want nothing more than to play hockey, but it’s 1963, and they live in Czechoslovakia, where everyone is on the lookout for spies of the state.

This is a thrilling read, and one young readers have been enjoying.

Welcome to the Power Q & A series, Anna!

Everyone has parents. Everyone’s parents die. Yet the stories where parents and death intersect are unique.

George K. Ilsley’s recent memoir tells one such story. As a young adult, George left his Nova Scotia home, heading west, eventually landing in Vancouver—as far away as he could get while remaining in North America. Then, as he turns 50, his father turns 90, and his father needs, but doesn’t especially want, Ilsley’s care.