news | Thursday April 2, 2026

You're Invited to the Talonbooks Spring 2026 Launch!

Join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall for the launch of the Talonbooks spring 2026 titles! Come help us celebrate this season’s authors and books. Here’s the lineup! It’s going to be an amazing evening.

Taryn Hubbard will read from Beautiful Unknown Future
Jenn Ashton (attending digitally) will read from Growing My Way Home
George Bowering (attending digitally) will read from Pearl
Jónína Kirton will read from Save Your Prayers – Send Money
Elee Kraljii Gardiner will read from sometimes, forest
Nicole Raziya Fong will read from SUBTEXT and
Danielle LaFrance will read from Verbal Violence!

The launch will be hosted by the author of Future Works, Jeff Derksen!

A live stream will be available on the Talonbooks YouTube page. Light snacks and drinks will be provided. Hope to see you there!

Talonbooks Spring Launch
Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
Vancouver, BC
May 1, 2026
Doors at 7 p.m., readings begin at 7:30 p.m. PDT

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok is a Finalist for the 2026 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction!

We are over the moon to share that ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another by ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn is a finalist for the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction Book, an Alberta Literary Award! In ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok, nêhîyaw educator quinn has created an essential work as he guides readers through the spirit marker writing system as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. Here, quinn shares both a philosophy of language and personal narratives to enrich and illuminate the learning experience. The Wilfrid Eggleston Award honours outstanding works of nonfiction written by Alberta-based authors. A huge congratulations to ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn! Check out all of this year’s finalists here.

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

National Poetry Month 2026

April is National Poetry Month! These past 12 months have been incredible poetry months over at Talonbooks HQ. To celebrate this, we’re highlighting some of the recent titles that have been making our bookshelves proud they weren’t manufactured into chairs or hatstands instead.

1. The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd

2. th book uv lost passwords 1 by bill bissett

3. No Depression in Heaven by ryan fitzpatrick

4. Stigmata by Scott Jackshaw

5. tours, variously by Drew McEwan

6. Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard

7.. Pearl by George Bowering

8. Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton

9. sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner

10. SUBTEXT by Nicole Raziya Fong

11. Verbal Violence by Danielle LaFrance

In times of turmoil, poetry is a place where we might take heart; where we might resist and cultivate and commemorate and build with art and reading a better way to live. We hope these titles offer you this. Happy National Poetry Month. We hope this April brings all the best kinds of renewal.

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

Alison Manley Reviews Crowd Source

Alison Manley reviews Crowd Source, the latest collection by award-winning poet Cecily Nicholson in The Miramichi Reader. Manley refers to Crowd Source as “a modern, crow-focused epic.” To read the complete piece, click here.

news | Tuesday March 31, 2026

the berry takes the shape of the bloom in Arc Poetry Magazine

Paisley Conrad writes about the berry takes the shape of the bloom by andrea bennett in Arc Poetry Magazine. bennett’s stellar book of poetry won second place in the 11th annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry and explores themes of gender, family, trans parenthood, and becoming. Conrad says: :“An archive of feeling that is carefully rendered in fragments and ruptures … a statement of emotional physics … the berry takes the shape of the bloom does not offer narrative, closure, or catharsis. What it offers instead is a meditation of intimate survival – one that lingers in what cannot yet be resolved and asks what else might take shape in that refusal.” Read Conrad’s complete piece here.

news | Monday March 30, 2026

Pearl Has Landed!

We are delighted to announce that Pearl by literary icon and Canada’s first ever Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering has landed! The making of a poem is like the making of a pearl – you take something gritty and create a jewel. This collection sprawls in search of the next glimmering insight, tugging at different threads with a multifarious large-heartedness. This is a collection holding both levity and depth in its pages.

From “A Woodsy Wish”:

“Whose words these are I wish I knew.
I’d like to toss him in the slough.
If they’d been written by a horse,
I do not think they’d be much worse.

The terza rima is a snooze.
My crowd would give it three loud boos.
And all the dumby dumb de dumb
would make them ask, who is this bum?

The guy can hear a flake of snow;
with such an ear, where does he go?
To where you look at jumping sheep,
iambic numbers of his sleep.

To sleep, perchance to clip clip clop,
till you don’t think he’ll ever stop.
With miles to go and go, of course,
you’ll wish he’d fallen off his horse.”

and an excerpt from “Earth”:

“He found her mother’s grave
in a forlorn windswept cemetery
in middle Alberta,

her father saved the headstone
money for something else,
nice guy.

He got a photo of her mother’s
mother’s grave in a lovely
Mennonite graveyard in Oregon.

He leaned on his cane
while someone scraped the snow
and laid her with her own husband.

This is what newborn
children are for.”

Touching, ribald, and cheeky, Pearl reflects on a life well-lived and well-written. Get your copy of Bowering’s final poetry collection here.

news | Sunday March 29, 2026

Review of Convivialities in C Magazine

Nageen Shaikh reviews Convivialities: Dialogues on Poetics by Michael Nardone in C Magazine. Shaikh says Convivialities is “an eclectic range of perspectives grounded in social-materialist poetics, politics, translation, activism, and Indigeneity … a highly critical and self-aware compendium, offering clarity, if not outright solutions.” Read the complete piece here.

news | Saturday March 28, 2026

Canadian Lambda Finalists in CBC Books

CBC Books has written up a rundown of all of the 2026 Canadian Lambda Literary Awards finalists, including Talonbooks author Sarah Waisvsiz whose debut publication, Heartlines: A Love Story is shortlisted for the award for LGBTQ+ Drama. Now in their 38th year, the Lambda Literary Awards celebrate outstanding 2SLGBTQIA+ storytelling. Check out the wonderful assortment of authors shortlisted in one of twenty-six categories here.

news | Friday March 27, 2026

Save Your Prayers – Send Money Featured on CBC Books

Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton is featured on CBC Books’s list of forthcoming must-read Canadian poetry titles.

Save Your Prayers – Send Money boldly takes on the wellness industry. Kirton delves into disability politics through the lived experience of a seventy-year-old Métis woman and recovering New Ager. A hybrid collection that moves fluidly between prose and poetry, Save Your Prayers – Send Money weaves intergenerational trauma and its impact on health through the daily realities of chronic pain and illness.

View all of the CBC Books recommendations here.

news | Friday March 27, 2026

World Theatre Day 2026

March 27 is World Theatre Day! Plays are a significant part of Talonbooks’s publishing program. We love the mastery of dialogue, the depth of character, and (of course) the drama of it all. Comedy, heartbreak, commentary, satire, education, romance … theatre has been a place to explores and present all of these fundamental human experiences throughout history. Happy World Theatre Day, Talonites. To us, this is very much something to celebrate. Here are a handful of amazing plays from recent years we’d love to beam a fresnel light at for World Theatre Day.

1. Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show/Le Wild West Show de Gabriel Dumont by Jean Marc Dalpé, David Granger, Laura Lussier, Alexis Martin, Andrea Menard, Yvette Nolan, Gilles Poulin Denis, Paula-Jean Prudat, Mansel Robinson, and Kenneth T. Williams

Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show is a flamboyant epic, constructed as a series of tableaux, about the struggles of the Métis in the Canadian West. The creative team behind Gabriel Dumont’s Wild West Show – including ten authors, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, French- and English-speaking men and women – brings Dumont’s dream to life in a captivating, joyously anachronistic saga. Order your copy here.

2. Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor’s Life by Caroline Russell-King and Maria Crooks

Check out the winner of the Theatre BC Canadian Playwriting Competition, two Betty Mitchell Awards, and two Calgary Theatre Critics’ Awards, Selma Burke: Carving a Sculptor’s Life! This play is a flight of fancy based on the incredible life of African American sculptor Dr. Selma Hortense Burke. Burke chronicled many of the extraordinary and devastating events of the past century in her outstanding work: lynchings, the Harlem Renaissance, the Holocaust, the assassination of Martin Luther King. Burke persisted in artmaking in the face of a society that didn’t always recognize her talents, a husband who demolished her work, and a government who stole it. Get your copy here.

3. Heartlines: A Love Story by Sarah Waisvisz

If you haven’t yet, check out finalist for the 2026 LGBTQ+ Drama LAMBDA Award Heartlines: A Love Story! Heartlines imagines the extraordinary love, art, resistance, and lives of gender pioneers Claude Cahun and Marcel Moore. Waisvisz takes the audience through the dizzying romance of their early life together in the Parisian avant-garde – and the subsequent fracturing of that life with the rise of nazism. Identities of all kinds are explored, suppressed, and liberated as their love withstands oppression, violence, and time itself. Pick up your copy here.

4. Fado: The Saddest Music in the World by Elaine Ávila

Fado: The Saddest Music in the World, is a tale of love and ghosts set in the back alleys and brothels of old Lisbon. Part concert, part theatre, the story of a young woman confronting her country’s fascist past and her own identity is interwoven with the heartbreaking national music of Portugal, fado. Fado won the Award for Favourite Musical in Victoria. Secure your copy here.

5. Little Red Warrior and His Lawyer by Kevin Loring

Little Red Warrior is the last remaining member of the Little Red Warrior First Nation. He discovers a development company has begun construction on his ancestral lands. Little Red attacks one of the engineers and is arrested for assault and trespassing on his own lands. In jail he meets his court-appointed lawyer, Larry, who agrees to help Little Red get his lands back. Larry convinces his wife, Desdemona, to allow Little Red to move into their basement while they sort out Red’s case. Desdemona and Red strike up an uneasy relationship. As sparks begin to fly between them Larry prepares to fight for Little Red’s Land Rights. An unexpected intervention by a greater power occurs in the court case, and nothing will ever be the same. Order your copy here.

6. White Noise by Taran Kootenhayoo

Hilarious, incisive, and potent, new play White Noise by the late, great Taran Kootenhayoo is available to read this month. In this blistering comedy, two neighbouring families, one Indigenous and one white, dine together during Truth and Reconciliation Week. As cultural misunderstanding, colonial violence, and racism both covert and overt surface, White Noise asks, “How do we deal with internalized racism? Do we keep pushing it away … or do we make a change?” Pick up your copy White Noise here.

7. Kuroko by Tetsuro Shigematsu

Maya is a hikikomori (引きこもり), an extreme recluse who hasn’t left her bedroom in five years, spending all her time in Virtual Reality. So her father hires an actor to befriend her online and entice her back into the real world. How? By visiting the scariest place on earth, Aokigahara, the “Suicide Forest.” When we lose what gives our lives purpose, when the distance between us and those closest to us seems impossible to bridge, where do we turn? Can virtual worlds offer real solutions? Is an honourable death better than a meaningless life? Get your copy of Kuroko here.

8. Fire Never Dies: The Tina Modotti Project by Carmen Aguirre

Forthcoming this spring comes Fire Never Dies by award-winning, best-selling author Carmen Aguirre. Aguirre explores the intersection of art and revolution through the life of Italian photographer and activist Tina Modotti. Modotti’s story unfolds in 1920s Mexico City, where her art flourished and she engaged with icons like Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. However, after seven years, she abandoned photography to join the antifascist cause, ultimately running the Red Aid Hospital during the Spanish Civil War. Modotti’s journey from working-class roots to revolutionary martyrdom raises urgent questions: What is the purpose of art in the face of fascism? Pre-order your copy here.

9. Asking for It and What I Call Her by Ellie Moon

Written in the wake of the Jian Ghomeshi scandal, Asking for It considers gender roles and the various ways sexual consent is understood personally, culturally, and legally. What I Call Her explores female generational rage, the loneliness of holding on to one’s own truth, and the gaps in how people perceive and understand the world they inhabit. Pick up your copy here.

Whether you’re taking in a matinee or simply keeping the dramatic spirit alive in your heart, we hope you have a wonderful World Theatre Day.