Fall may not begin in the calendar until September 22, but it’s official: the Fall publishing season has officially begun. With hundreds of titles pushed into this season as a result of the pandemic, it’s a bumper lineup of talent we can expect on shelves.
If, like us, you have exhausted your catalogue of stories (Netflix reruns, anyone?) you’re likely looking for new tales to immerse yourself in as we head into an auspicious weekend of already-nostalgic lakeside reads.
Look no further than these brand new September releases from BC publishers.
When you want…
A remedy to Zoom-fatigue:
Blue Sky Kingdom: An Epic Family Journey to the Heart of the Himalaya, by Bruce Kirkby (Douglas & McIntyre)—Bruce and his wife Christine decided in a matter of days to change their lives. Swapping their plugged-in lifestyle for tickets on a shipping container, they travelled with their seven- and three-year-old through South Korea, China, India and Nepal to a thousand-year-old Buddhist monastery in the remote Zanskar valley, one of the last places where Tibetan Buddhism is still practised freely in its original setting. The result is a riveting tapestry of travel adventure. It’s also an important reminder of why we should seek what happiness means to us.
Imaginings of a different world for a better world:
Love After The End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction, ed. by Joshua Whitehead (Arsenal Pulp Press) — Possibly one of the most anticipated titles of Fall, this anthology of queer Indigenous speculative fiction offers—amongst its many gifts—the opportunity to imagine future worlds that instill hope. In what can feel like end times, Love After The End not only immerses us in stories of transplanted trees in space, Indigiqueer virtual reality apps, and the bending of space-time continuums but, crucially, stories that are—as Daniel Heath Justice Explains—“(re)imagining futures where Indigenous love, liberation, and laughter flourish far beyond the settler imaginary.”
A reminder of (impressive) human ability:
Emilio Comici: Angel of the Dolomites, by David Smart (Rocky Mountain Books) — Just like the mountains they seek to ascent, mountaineers are often steeped in romanticism and mystery, none more so than those of the early 20th century. Born to a working class family in Trieste under Austrian occupation, Emelio Comici had achieved more than 200 first ascents in the Alps prior to his death at 39 in 1940; his family upbringing (and its trauma) being a key factor in his quest for the sky. This comprehensive biography offers a portrait of a complicated man in a fascinating era.
Inspiration for bucking the trend:
Hammer and Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman, by Kate Braid (Caitlin Press) — This is the long-awaited follow up to a much-thumbed memoir, Journeywoman, in which one of the first women to work in construction in BC offered both a frank and nuanced revelation of working in a male-dominated trade. Since Braid began in the 70s, the number of women in blue-collar trades has remained in single percentage digits (4 percent). Hammer and Nail picks up where Braid left off in a collection of essays that explore the culture of work, and what it can feel like to make decisions for oneself in spite of tradition.
An immersive celebration and reclamation:
eat salt | gaze at the ocean, by Junie Désil (Talonbooks) — A beloved member of the West Coast poetry community, and a shortlist winner of Prism International’s Pacific Poetry Prize, Junie Désil shares her talents with the wider world in this magnificent debut that explores Black sovereignty, Haitian sovereignty and Black lives. Punctuated with information about zombies and Haiti is a powerful narrative of Désil’s own experience growing up as Black and Haitian on stolen land. This is a beautiful debut of lore, power, water and identity.
A stunning epic of note:
Butter Honey Pig Bread, by Francesca Ekwuyasi (Arsenal Pulp Press):Warm; epic; folkloric; sensual; provoking—this debut is already on every media’s must-read list for the season. Set across continents, Butter Honey Pig Bread follows interwoven stories of related Nigerian women dealing with tragedy in very different ways, and on different continents, before facing their wounds—and each other. This will, no doubt, be one of the books everyone is speaking about throughout Fall.