Recommended Reading

Each book in this admittedly eclectic list had an impact on my development as an author. I lived without electricity for much of my childhood and youth, and thus forged an extremely close bond with books- my muses. The books in this list were my teachers and continue to inform and influence my voice as a writer. They all have a permanent home on the bookshelf of my mind. ** Willow Yamauchi is a Vancouver-based writer and artist. A self proclaimed Bad Mommy, Willow believes women need to stop lying to themselves and to others about the Mommy experience-only the truth shall set us free. Willow parents two children with her husband, Ron. Despite everything, they appear to have survived most of their childhood. Bad Mommy is her second book.

Heather Birrell's latest book is Mad Hope. She also works as a high school teacher and a creative writing instructor. She does all of this – barely – in Toronto, where she lives with her husband, Charles Checketts, and their two daughters. www.heatherbirrell.com

Dr. Timothy C. Winegard received his MA in War Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada in 2006, and his Doctorate in History from the University of Oxford in 2010. He served nine years as an officer in the Canadian Forces, including a two-year attachment to the British Army. Tim is the author of three books, and is internationally published in both the fields of Indigenous Peoples and Military History. He currently resides in Grand Junction, Colorado. For more information about Tim and his research, see his website at: www.timothycwinegard.com.

Nancy Richler’s short fiction has been published in various American and Canadian literary journals, including Room, The New Quarterly, Prairie Fire, Another Chicago Magazine, and The Journey Prize Anthology. Her first novel, Throwaway Angels, was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award for Best First Crime Novel. Her second novel, Your Mouth is Lovely, won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for fiction and Italy’s Adei-Wizo Literary Prize. The book has been translated into seven languages. Born in Montreal, Nancy lived for many years in Vancouver, but has recently returned to her hometown.

Is it poetry, or prose in verse, or a free verse novel, or a novel in verse? All epithets have been used for the novel-length stories told in verse form. Writing a book is challenge enough, but to write it in verse, rhyming or not, seems almost inexecutable. Luckily, several authors have found their voices in this writing style and they are exceptionally skilled at it. Judging by the awards bestowed upon the ten books in this list and the young readers of both genders who consume these stories voraciously, it is a style that has a solid foothold in kidsCanLit.

I looked at the bookshelf in my study this morning and found Anne Carson sitting alongside Charles Schultz. I have no idea what they were doing there together, but I would like to think they were having a fruitful conversation. (They both like to draw. They are both observant and funny.) There are picture books of all kinds on my “grown-up” shelf. Some I pilfered from my children. Some I bought for myself. Some are a little beyond me but I figure I’ll grow into them. Lately unaccompanied prose feels bereft to me. Perhaps it’s all the time I have spent in the company of my young sons, who believe a book without pictures is a travesty. (Why not just make a book without a binding, or page numbers?) In the belief that grownups need pictures too, I’ve assembled a selection of adult-friendly visual reads. **Kyo Maclear is a novelist and children’s author. She has two new books out this March: a novel, Stray Love (HarperCollins Canada) and Virginia Wolf (Kids Can Press.)

Grace O'Connell holds an MFA in Creativing Writing. Her work has appeared in various publications including The Walrus, Taddle Creek, Quill & Quire and EYE Weekly. She has taught creative writing at George Brown College and now works as a freelance writer and editor in Toronto. She is Knopf's New Face of Fiction for 2012, and her first novel Magnified World is forthcoming in May.

Carrie Snyder's latest book is The Juliet Stories, and she is also author of Hair Hat. She was born in Hamilton and grew up in Ohio, Nicaragua, and Ayr, Ontario. She lives now in Waterloo, Ontario.

This list could be longer with subtitles, margin notes and cyber space post-its, and I’m sure there are many fantastic novels by Newfoundlanders and Labradorians that I could add. I purposely left out Michael Crummey and Wayne Johnston because their body of work speaks for itself. In no particular order, here is a list of some of the best novels to come out of Newfoundland and Labrador in the past decade. **Kerri Cull is from the small mill town of Corner Brook on the West Coast of Newfoundland. She has been a bartender, bookseller, waitress, administrator, radio show host, columnist, instructor, and is the creator of The Book Fridge. She currently lives in Labrador. Her first book is the poetry collection Soak**

Given the economics of contemporary publishing, it strikes me as something of a miracle that so many small presses continue to publish such interesting and beautiful books. Often they are books that would not be picked up by the larger houses yet they find loyal readers and contribute significantly to literary culture. Sometimes it’s hard to find them. Most small presses can’t afford full-page ads in the nation’s newspapers or publicists. But word travels by mouth, by the passing of these volumes from one hand to another. They’re worth the search.*** Theresa Kishkan came to national attention with her first novel, Sisters of Grass. A true "writer's writer," she has been steadfastly championed by her peers as a writer against whom others measure their own work. She is an enthusiastic organizer and participant in regional literary events. Kishkan's poetry and essays have appeared in many periodicals and journals and in five book-length collections. Today, she lives on the Sunshine Coast of British Columbia with her husband, the poet John Pass. Her latest book is Mnemonic: A Book of Trees.

Patricia Storms is an award-winning cartoonist, as well as a children's book illustrator and author. Her picture book The Pirate and the Penguin was named one of the top 10 Great Books for Children for 2011, by the Canadian Toy Testing Council. She is also the new cartoonist who draws Chirp, the much-loved yellow bird from Owlkids. Patricia lives and creates in Toronto, Canada, with her husband and two fat cats in a cosy old house full to the brim with books. www.patriciastorms.com

Ever since Susanna Moodie wrote about “those wood-demons the black-flies, sandflies and musquitoes,” Canadian writing hasn’t shied away from things that bite in the night. Writers across genres throw back the carpet to reveal the scrabbling creatures who live amongst, and sometimes on, us. And with bedbugs popping up in no fewer than three Lower Mainland libraries, it seems the attraction is mutual; the vermin are ready for their close-up. ***Claire Tacon’s first novel is In The Field, winner of the 2010 Metcalf-Rooke Award.

As D&M Publishers was considering how to celebrate 40 years of publishing, we knew we wanted to give people a chance to win some of our classic books and also to create an ebook with excerpts from those same classics that visitors to our site, fortyyears.ca, could download for free. Choosing those books meant looking at our vast collection of backlist titles published across two imprints since the company began. What we decided on were books that exemplified the best of the categories in which we publish – from nature & environment to First Nations, art & fiction. They were chosen for their lasting contributions to BC and Canadian literature, longstanding bestseller status and award recognition.

The books I've chosen contribute to a conversation about masculinity. They don't offer new visions of masculinity, but they complicate the stereotype, the archetype, of the ordinary heterosexual man, whoever that is. They refuse the blinkered, reductive view. I've worked seven years off and on construction sites in Western Canada where there were seldom any women. The men I've known shared standards by which they measured themselves men. Eager to fit this role, each man nevertheless veered from it in astonishing ways. By shared understanding the crew moderated itself. And if each man was regulated by the tribe, he was also judged at a cross-cut by the public. So often I felt myself summed up at a glance merely because I wore steel-toed boots, a belt and hardhat. In cars or on foot, passersby denied us any place in the wider commonwealth: we were simply enemy struts, and most of us celebrated that image, it's true. For a playful photographic interrogation of these stereotypes, view the “Men Up!” series in this artist's portfolio: http://rionsabean.com/my-work/ **Garth Martens is a construction labourer for an Edmonton-based commercial construction company and a recent graduate of the University of Victoria's MFA program. Garth was the winner of the 2010 Bronwen Wallace Award for most promising Canadian writer under 35. He is a former member of The Malahat Review's poetry editorial board and The Open Space Arts Society's Board of Directors. He lives in Argentina. **

When I got a job as teacher-librarian in a primary school the kids asked if Miss Booker was my real name. The irony hadn't even occurred to me; I was too busy worrying about whether my name would hinder me from winning the famous literary prize. **Julie Booker is five feet tall. She lives in a Toronto row house and drives a tiny car. She has a toy poodle and twin baby boys. She teaches small children. She sees the world in pithy arcs, nicely contained. Her short stories have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies, including the 2010 edition of Best Canadian Stories. She won the Writers' Union of Canada's Short Prose Competition for Developing Writers in 2009.**

Suzanne Sutherland is a Toronto-based writer, editor, and book-seller. Her writing has appeared in Descant, Steel Bananas, and on CBC.ca, and she is the editor of GutLit.com. Her first book, When We Were Good, a young adult novel about girls, guitars and the Bloor Viaduct, will published by Sumach Press in 2013.

Right now I am the only one in my household who is the right age for picture books as both my boys have outgrown that stage, although the younger one does write them. But as first a mother, then a reviewer, and then a children’s writer I have spent an inordinate amount of time immersed in them. After years and years of writing book reviews I have a personal library that is probably smaller than it was when I began. My attitude to books has shifted – the ones I don’t care about I get rid of and the ones that I particularly like I tend to pass on to someone else. But picture books are different. Our collection has been winnowed down over the years and several major moves, but the books we have loved are now part of the family and wherever we go, they go with us. Here are a few of the picture books that stay with me (both literally and figuratively)/ Sara O’Leary is the co-creator with Julie Morstad of the Henry series: When You Were Small, Where You Came From and When I Was Small (Simply Read Books). She is also a playwright and fiction writer. She graduated from the UBC Masters program and has taught Writing for Children and Screenwriting at Concordia University in Montreal. She is currently living in a little house by a big sea and attempting to finish any number of things.

The economy of a life reduced to a suitcase can be as romantic as it is alienating. Being on the move, as I have been for much of the last few years, changes you. It changes you because of the newness you encounter, certainly, and this can be tremendously rewarding. But all that newness also layers itself over the past, altering it. Or at least I have found that to be a sad and liberating truth of my own experience. All lands, even the ones I know best, are strange.I am drawn to stories about travellers, and this list celebrates writers who explore the excitement, adventure, and anguish of life in parts unknown./ Laura Boudreau is the author of Suitable Precautions, a collection of short fiction. Her short stories have appeared in a variety of literary journals and anthologies, including The Journey Prize Stories 22, Canadian Notes & Queries, 10: Best Canadian Stories, The New Quarterly, and The Fiddlehead. She is the winner of the 2009 PRISM International Award for Short Fiction. She lives in London, England, with her husband.

The path to the publication of my novel, Girl in Shades has been influenced by a collection of remarkable Canadian books. Looking back, I’ve realized that like my book, these stories all contain spirited female protagonists who have faced difficult situations with a lively and courageous manner. Like Maya in Girl in Shades, most of them have had the strength to stand up against adversity in some way and find the inner gumption to challenge the circumstances of their lives. Allison Baggio's fiction has been published in literary journals across Canada, including Room, LICHEN and subTerrain. Her columns have appeared in Today's Parent and the Toronto Star. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers and lives in Whitby, Ontario. Girl in Shades is her first novel. You can learn more about her at allisonbaggio.com

Sometimes a tale set in the distant past can speak to my here-and-now just as readily as a story set in my own lifetime. Here are a few novels that stayed with me long after I turned the last page. Ami McKay’s debut novel, The Birth House was a # 1 bestseller in Canada, winner of three CBA Libris Awards, nominated for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a book club favourite around the world. Her new novel. The Virgin Cure, is inspired by the life of her great- great grandmother, Dr. Sarah Fonda Mackintosh, a female physician in nineteenth century New York. Born and raised in Indiana, Ami now lives in Nova Scotia. http://www.amimckay.com/