Penny Dreadfuls were popular, cheaply produced 19th century magazines filled with brutal and sensationalist tales. In her uncompromising second collection of poetry, Vancouver poet Shannon Stewart revisits their grisly spirit through a series of meditations that examine the medias obsession for luridness, be it tabloids or respectable newspapers. At the centre of the book is the story of accused serial killer Robert Pickton. In poems of great psychological risk-taking, Stewart tracks the missing women of Vancouvers East Side and describesusing a voice by turns gritty, funny, shrewd, and broken-heartedhow the gruesome details of their reported murders seep into her role as a mother and wife. Fable-like, ribald, and packing a powerful anti-puritanical punch, Penny Dreadful furnishes us with unsentimental X-rays of the contemporary world and its sundry terrors.

Shannon Stewart is the author of Sea Crow (Orca, 2004), Alphabad: An Alphabet Book for Wicked Children! (Key Porter Books 2005) and Captain Jake (Orca, 2008). She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. Shannon lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, with her husband and two children in a cottage by the sea where she sometimes spots young pirates digging for treasure.

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