Off the Page
A blog on Canadian writing, reading, and everything in between
Five Queer Memoirs to Keep You Going
When you’re done watching Tiger King and taking a break from playing Animal Crossing, here are five queer memoirs to k …
Earth Hour: Books & Activities to Spark Discussion and Environmental Action
On Saturday March 28th millions of people around the globe will turn off their lights and spend an hour without the use …
The Books I Want to Read Again
Rereading is comfort, and indulgence. It's a voyage back to the familiar, but one that's still rich with discovery, and …
How Do We Read When Words Fail Us?
On the value of books and reading in a dangerous time.
Books to Keep Young People Learning During Covid-19
There's never been a better time to highlight some great posts from our resident children's librarian, Julie Booker.
A Sense of Place: THE BIRTH YARD Book List
"The Birth Yard embodies a sense of place that I, as a woman, have always felt inside."
"All of us are better when we're loved."
"Last Impressions will make you laugh out loud and cry out loud. What more could be asked of a book?" —Miriam Toews
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The Chat with Eufemia Fantetti
Today's chat is with Eufemia Fantetti, author of the brand-new memoir My Father, Fortune-Tellers, & Me, out now with Mot …
Your 2020 Spring Festival Guide
A round-up of literary festivals taking place this spring near you and across the country.
Books to Keep Young People Learning During Covid-19
There's never been a better time to highlight some great posts from our resident children's librarian, Julie Booker. These are chosen specifically because they relate to certain themes in Canadian curricula, so brand-new homeschoolers use them to keep "school" going even during this incredibly challenging time.
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Beautiful books to help kids in Grades 1-6 to understand and use descriptive language in their stories
Books about math for the smallest of folks and books on media literacy for them, too
Books to help kids in Grade 2 with their "Animal Classifications" unit
Books on structures for kids in Grade 4
Books on rocks and minerals to complement Grade 4 curriculum
Books to complement the Grade 6 unit on biodiversity and the Grade 6 unit on space
Books on flight to complement the Grade 6 unit on science and technology
Books to complement the Grade 3 and Grade 6 focus on biographies
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Other good links:
Funny books for kids
Books to help your kids get to sleep before midnight
Books that are great readalouds
Books for the young artist
A Sense of Place: THE BIRTH YARD Book List
The Birth Yard embodies a sense of place that I, as a woman, have always felt inside. I tried to recreate that sense—the internal anxious pang of walking home alone at night with keys between my knuckles, or that feeling of fearfulness when I turned on the news and was told my body was not mine by white right-wing politicians, etc.—into an external reality, "the Den," a cult that controls women’s bodies, fertility, their social and intellectual lives.
In the book, The Den is a dark place, under the guise of pleasantries—isolation from the hustle and bustle of the mainstream world. Sable knows it like the back of her hand. During the writing process, I even drew out a map of her home and of Ceres, her designated Birth Yard, to envision how I could interact with a setting that doesn’t actually exist.
Each of the selected books on my reading list similarly captures a sense of place, and these are places that have touched me as a reader, from childhood to present time. I tried to list them in the order I remember reading them.
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"All of us are better when we're loved."
"Last Impressions will make you laugh out loud and cry out loud. What more could be asked of a book?" —Miriam Toews
Joseph Kertes was born in Hungary but escaped with his family to Canada after the revolution of 1956. His first novel, Winter Tulips, won the Stephen Leacock Award for Humour. His third novel, Gratitude, won a Canadian Jewish Book Award and the US National Jewish Book Award for Fiction, and both it and his fourth, The Afterlife of Stars, garnered extraordinary critical acclaim. Kertes founded Humber College's distinguished creative writing and comedy programs.
We're happy to feature a reading list of some of his favourite Canadian fiction.
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The Innocents, by Michael Crummey
One of my favourite contemporary Canadian writers is Michael Crummey, and his latest novel, short-listed for the Giller, The GG and the Rogers-Writers’ Trust Fiction Award is The Innocents. The most stunning achievement of this book is that it transports us back to a small isolated cove in 18th century Newfoundland, and not for a second do we doubt that we …
The Chat with Eufemia Fantetti
Today's chat is with Eufemia Fantetti, author of the brand new memoir My Father, Fortune-tellers, & Me, out now with Mother Tongue Publishing. It shares the story of the author’s experience growing up with a mother with severe mental health issues, and charts her lifelong relationship with her mother and father, both first generation Italian-Canadians.
Author Terri Favro calls the work “Utterly original and riveting, this book will tear your heart out.” You can check out the trailer here.
Eufemia Fantetti, a graduate of SFU’s Writer’s Studio and the University of Guelph’s Creative Writing master’s program, is a three-time winner of Accenti Magazine’s annual writing competition. Her work appears in Event Magazine, The New Quarterly and the Globe and Mail and is listed as notable by the Best American Essays Series. Fantetti is also an award-winning playwright and former stand-up comic. She teaches writing at Humber College and edits for the Humber Literary Review. Her debut book, A Recipe for Disaster & Other Unlikely Tales of Love, runner-up for the 2013 Danuta Gleed Literary Award and winner of the 2014 F.G. Bressani Literary Prize for short fiction, is also available from Mother Tongue Publishing.
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Your 2020 Spring Festival Guide
Save the dates! Across the country, organizers and volunteers extraordinaire are programming epic celebrations of books and the amazing people who write them. Find out what's happening in your literary neighbourhood.
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The spring festival season season kicks off with the Growing Room Literary & Arts Festival in Vancouver, BC, running March 11–15, with Aisha Sasha John, Alex Leslie, Alicia Elliott, Amanda Leduc, and Andrea Warner...and these are only a handful of exciting artists at the top of their alphabetized list—just wait til you check out the rest!
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Versefest 2020, Ottawa's International Poetry Festival, takes place March 24–29, with Karen Solie, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Ben Ladouceur, Canisia Lubrin, Gwen Benaway, Kaie Kellough, Robin Richardson, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Sheree Fitch, and many others.
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A spectacular list of events take …
