Making Waves offers a mosaic of fresh approaches toward shaping a new “literacy of place”—a more coherent understanding of B.C. and Pacific Northwest literature in the 21st century.
On December 21st, 2012 the eerily accurate Mayan Calendar, which goes back over 5,000 years, suddenly comes to a stop. Obviously this means only one thing: the world will end. What no one knows is how the world will end and that’s where this book will be an invaluable companion as the conflagration begins. Will it be a massive earthquake,
Originally published in 1967 by McClelland and Stewart, Mirror on the Floor was the first novel from an emerging young writer named George Bowering. Now with over 100 publications to his credit, we are proud to be reissuing Bowering’s debut novel.
Set in Vancouver in the mid-1960s, Mirror on the Floor vividly evokes the Vancouver of that era, when neon signs still shimmered on the rain-soaked streets and Theatre Row bustled with excited movie-goers.
By RH Slansky
In this ambitious short novel, R.H. Slansky weaves a complex narrative about the very nature of narrative: it is an annotated re-issue of a fictional autobiography that casts a questioning eye on the reliability of family lore.
The story starts with a newspaper photo taken in an obscure Nova Scotia town after the murder of eight bald eagles. The bizarre photo wins a contest and, over time, the unidentified girl in the foreground becomes, like Diane Arbus’s Boy with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, infamous. Rita Van Loon decides, after seven painful years, to explain herself and the events surrounding the murders.
These brief tales are alternately fantastic, humorous, menacing, contemplative, absurd, hallucinatory, violent, confessional, and always provocative. If there is one thing that unites these narratives it is their brevity and their drive for conclusion. Potent text-bites for the short-attention-span reader.
By Ed Macdonald
In Mutant Sex Party & Other Plays, Ed Macdonald eviscerates the high and the mighty, the hypocritical, and those who abuse power in late-Capitalism America.
By Derek von Essen (Text by Phil Saunders)
No Flash, Please! documents an important period in Toronto’s music community. As seen and heard by two journalists covering it for a number of monthly independent magazines, not only did they experience the local bands they knew and loved becoming famous, they also witnessed soon-to-be legends, come through those same clubs and concert halls. Nirvana, Sonic Youth, Jesus Lizard, Mudhoney, Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Henry Rollins, all played Toronto during this period and von Essen’s camera and Saunders’ ears were there to witness their performances in crowds that varied in size from 20 to 500.
Nondescript Rambunctious is a genre-busting thriller with a beating, human heart. More than a simple story of a killer and his victims, the novel takes the reader into the life of a family, the days of a community, and the very real possibility that evil is everywhere—maybe even inside us. Woven through this dark tapestry are the glittering threads of humanity, humour, and in the form of one young woman, the promise of redemption.
Like a sinister dream, Nondescript Rambunctious pulls you in and doesn’t let go. There is no easy way out.