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TORONTO — Tonight at 7PM, I read alongside poets Dominique Béchard, @carolyn_smart_poet, and Jim Johnstone at @typebooks, and I’ll read from my book, Who Else in the Dark Headed There (@biblioasispublishing).

I last read in Toronto in 2014. Don’t wait until 2038 to hear me again.

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LONDON — Join me, @alexboydwriter, and Connie Gault at @littlewrenbooks this afternoon at 4 PM!

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"He'd been in the habit for many years of making long journeys, most often abroad, since there is nothing to see in Iceland except mountains, waterfalls, tussocks and this light that can transfix you and turn you into a poet."
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Reading literature can be a dangerous activity, particularly so when you're a fisherman living in the frigid, windswept Westfjords of Iceland, for the impression literature leaves on the mind can be so profound, and its hold on your attention so absolute, that you risk forgetting your waterproof jacket at home. Such are the dangers the main characters face in this book, whom Stefánsson follows as he explores the personalities and ways of living and dying of the villagers in this remote part of the world which provides coast to arctic waters.

Stefánsson writes simply though pensively, with many commas, aphoristic asides, and a playfulness with the inherent contradictions in language. No matter of any tragic events described, invariably Stefánsson's prose provides a gentle, cozy, and cute undercurrent; though I found the second half of the book set mostly on land, relative to the first half set mostly at sea, to be a bit overly cute for my tastes. Still, in the end I found it to be a charming and thoughtful book, and I'd be curious to check out another book from him.
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What is one want to drink when they are led to imagine a man fighting for his life in an open cockleshell the size of a coffin, in a northerly gale when land has disappeared, the sky as well, as the howling of the wind is on the verge of blowing the head off his shoulders, all while burdened with the task to fish? In my case it was something dark and strong, which I found in Temporal Artisan Ale's Two Threads, a blend of a bourbon barrel aged barley wine with another bourbon barrel aged barley wine double barrel aged in a rye ex-cognac barrel. The resulting 14.5% ABV beverage warms the cockles AND tastes lovely!
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Next Up: The Mahabharata modernly rendered by Ramesh Menon. Dipping my toes into a Sanskrit epic of ancient India.

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Writer and flamenca @rebecadk interviewed me recently as part of the Victoria Festival of Authors.

I’m grateful for her close reading of my book, Who Else in the Dark Headed There (Biblioasis), and our conversation about my work with @palabraflamenco and Jan Zwicky.

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New arrivals and restocks ✨

• Crafting for Sinners by Jenny Kiefer (@quirkbooks ): A woman gets locked inside a megachurch craft store and has to fight her way out with whatever’s on the shelves. Yes, really!

• A Ghost in the Throat by Doireann Ní Ghríofa (@biblioasispublishing ): Is a beautiful, unusual mix of essay and autofiction about motherhood, literary obsession, poetry, and a woman who lived in Ireland more than 200 years ago.

• Three by Na Zhong (@joylandpublishing ): “For fans of Annie Ernaux’s The Years, Three is fable-like and precise, at once a sweeping view of an era and an elegy for a splintered family.”

• Lost Souls Meet Under a Full Moon by Mizuki Tsujimura (@scribnerbooks ): A teenage boy in Tokyo arranges for his customers one night with a person they’ve lost. Called an unforgettable page-turner and is a multimillion copy bestseller in Japan.

• 1,000 Coils of Fear by Olivia Wenzel, (@catapult ): A mixed-race German woman between Berlin and New York, trying to understand her painful past and confusion of selves.

• The Unworthy by Agustina Bazterrica (@scribnerbooks ): The world has collapsed and a woman is writing in secret inside a cruel religious order. “A fable about the inadequacy of language in the face of darkness.” - The Guardian

• Nineteen Claws and a Black Bird by Agustina Bazterrica (@scribnerbooks ): Twenty, short, strange, darkly funny stories.

• Flesh by David Szalay (@scribnerbooks ): A spare, unsettling chronicle of male alienation, desire, and the forces that shape a life. Winner of the 2025 @thebookerprizes

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Windsor! I’m thrilled as heck to be reading from my book alongside poets @leighkotsy and Dominique Béchard at @biblioasis_bookshop tonight at 7PM.

As my book is published by @biblioasispublishing, this is a kind of homecoming for my work, as I’ve felt so well supported by my publisher.

Please join us!

For my birthday, which, yes, is today, I’d like you all to each buy a copy of my book. See you tonight!

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On October 29, BEST CANADIAN POETRY 2027 will launch at Toronto International Festival of Authors (@festofauthors) with readings by featured local poets @adamsol42 @paulvermeersch @roccodg1 @theguelphpoet and more.

I am thrilled to be reading "Sisyphus Goes Skiing" from the collection.

The anthology's editor Tolu Oloruntoba (@tolu1n1) and series editor Anita Lahey (@anitamlahey) will be there to present this new collection.

If you're in town and can attend, please join us at Victoria College Chapel at 6:30 PM.

Ticket and event details here: https://festivalofauthors.ca/event/best-canadian-poetry/

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good reading tonight! launching my new Caitlin Press title alongside Garth Martens (with his new Biblioasis title), with opening reading by our pal Jennifer Baker; thanks to Perfect Books and David O’Meara for hosting!

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A fable about love and innocence and beauty, and finding a light through the darkness, 'Daphnis and Chloe' by Colin McAdam is today's Featured #CanLit in-store! It is also a #TheBookerllersList Fall selection! 💕🇨🇦📚

"There's a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe. And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wife's hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.

Longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize • A 2026 CIBA Booksellers’ List Selection • One of Lit Hub's Most Anticipated Books of 2026"

Visit us in person or online at tidewaterbooks.ca 💕🇨🇦📚

Feed the Algorithm Local! *Like*Comment*Share*

#IndieBookstoreCA #IndieBookstores #ShopSmall #ThankYouForShopingLocal #Fallinlovewithlocal #SmallBusinessEveryDay IndieBookstores.ca Biblioasis

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Ottawa! Join me, @rob_mclennan_writer, @margo_lapierre, and sophiepseudonym at @perfectbooksottawa tonight, with @leftothedial hosting! See you soon!

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The Stone Face and the African Diaspora in France

My last read for #NYRBSummer was The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith (4.0/5), originally published in 1963 and by @nyrbooks in 2021.

This is a book about race, caste, new beginnings, and discovering that cruelty exists everywhere regardless of the target. Simeon Brown has fled the US, where he was blinded as a teenager in a racist attack for the “safe haven” of France. He settles in Paris as a journalist, where he experiences a very different life. Here he can openly date a white woman, have drinks with white Americans who treat him as an equal, and find other ex-pats like himself, black Americans who escaped 1960s America.

The utopia he thinks he has found is slowly unraveled as he learns about the Algerian Civil War and the treatment of Algerians in France and Algeria. As Simeon sees his Algerian friends being treated like he was in the US, he begins to awaken to the reality of life in France. The culmination of the novel comes with the violent suppression of the peaceful Algerian protest against a racist curfew in October 1961.

At times Smith uses this novel to speak explicitly to the 1960s reader. To speak openly and honestly of the effect that living as a minority in a racist society has on an individual and a people. The message can at times be a bit in your face, but I understand why Smith wants to be so direct.

I also included here a few more novels from other writers of the African diaspora in France.. I love Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin, written from his experiences in 1950s queer Paris. Great book. Romance in Marseille belongs to the Harlem Renaissance and the Jazz Age grit of life in the port city of the 1920s. Rounding out this small selection is life in contemporary Paris from the point of view of Ivorian undocumented workers. Standing Heavy was Shortlisted for the 2023 International Booker Prize.

#thestoneface #williamgardnersmith #jamesbaldwin #instabooks

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October 22
Windsor, ON
Biblioasis Bookshop, 7pm
@biblioasis_bookshop

Triple Book Launch
w/ poets Leigh Kotsilidis, Dominique Béchard, & Garth Martens

Leigh Kotsilidis has written two full-length collections of poetry, ‘Hypotheticals’ (2011) and ‘Some of Us May Live’ (2026), both with Coach House Books. Her poems have also appeared in journals and magazines, including The Malahat Review, Prism international, EVENT, The Fiddlehead, Prairie Fire, and Hazlitt, as well as being anthologized in The Best Canadian Poetry in English and IV Lounge Nights, among others. She is also an intermedia artist. Kotsilidis lives and works in Tiohtiá:ke (Montreal).
@leighkotsy @coachhousebooks

‘Shadow of the Living Brightness’ is Dominique Béchard’s second collection. Her first, ‘One Dog Town,’ came out with Gaspereau in 2019. She was a co-winner of the Frog Hollow Chapbook Contest in 2022 for Infinity Mirror. She has an MFA from New York University and a PhD from the University of New Brunswick. She currently lives in Windsor, where she works in publishing.
@coachhousebooks

Garth Martens is the author of ‘Prologue for the Age of Consequence’ and ‘Who Else in the Dark Headed There.’ For his first book, he was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. He is also a past winner of the Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. His poetry appears in Dark Mountain Project, Poetry Ireland, Hazlitt, This Magazine, Vallum, Fiddlehead, and Best Canadian Poetry. He is also a member of Palabra Flamenco, a literary flamenco ensemble that joins traditional flamenco dance and music with poetry and oral storytelling. He lives in Victoria, BC.
@garthmartens @biblioasispublishing

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