Mark Laba’s second full-length poetry collection—and his first in seventeen years—brings to life the old variety shows he watched on TV as a child, shows forgotten in the vault of broadcast history. In The Inflatable Life, the reader will find a little singing, a little dancing, a little drama, a little comedy, a little experimentation.

Intensive Care isn’t a medical survival story; it’s a yearlong reflection on how the imminence of death can enhance life. The grass gets greener. Confirmation that one is loved is exhilarating, more powerful than any drug.

With its accessible style, this collection should appeal to a broad readership. Anyone who’s tried to write a poem about an object will be able to relate to the impossibility (and undesirability) of evoking a ‘thing’ outside of their own subjective relation to it. Inventory will be of particular interest to those who are familiar with the long and broad history of object poetry, including works by Francis Ponge, Robert Bly, Zbigniew Herbert, and Jorge Luis Borges.

B.C. Book Prize Finalist

Ivanhoe Station is the début collection from Vancouver poet Lyle Neff.

Kevin Spenst’s much-anticipated debut collection of poetry opens as a coming-of-age narrative of lower-middle class life in Vancouver’s suburb of Surrey, embroidered within a myriad of pop- and “post-Mennonite” culture.

Nathaniel G. Moore follows up his 2014 ReLit Award win for Savage with a diverse collection of short fiction, his first — Jettison, featuring stories which dangle somewhere between horror and romance.

Just Like a Real Person is a story about broken cars and broken people. A story of intoxication, sobriety, and potent memories of a woman in a yellow sundress. But, it’s also a story about love that asks what it means to finally feel, after years of feeling nothing but numb.

PRAISE FOR KASPOIT!
“…Reminds me of Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange in its inventive language and insular
world of violence; also Beckett and Mamet in the lowlife characterizations, back-andforth dialogue, and the sheer absurdity.”
—Myna Wallin, A Thousand Profane Pieces

“…compelling, sickening, and, ultimately, hits what is most likely closest to the truth about what happened there than anything else that’ll get out in the world. Kaspoit! puts me in mind of A Clockwork Orange (the book), for its neologisms and violence/bleakness, and Pulp Fiction (the movie) for the unrelenting violence, so
much so that we become inured to it.”
—Janis Harper, Body Breakdowns

“…there is a well-executed gloom that maybe owes a tip of the hat to Harry Crews or
Flannery O’Connor, or maybe a drunken Hawthorne. The dialogue never grinds or
presents an obstacle—it runs smooth, which is a must considering its importance
to the story. In many ways it is the story.”
—Phillip D. Alexander, The Next Rainy Day

Melissa Bull’s debut short story collection The Knockoff Eclipse hums with the immediacy of distant and future worlds. Firmly rooted in the streets and landmarks of Montreal and its many neighbourhoods and subcultures, Bull’s characters shine with the dirt of digging just deep enough.

A strangely unified collection, unsettling and surprising, Knucklehead resides where the lines between real and imagined blur. Giles’s penetrating view and unsentimental honesty shape these stories and push the reader’s expectations of the “ordinary.” These are mature and compelling narratives that encapsulate everything great about short fiction. They freeze a moment, but upon closer examination reveal something more, a message that resonates long after that story has been read.