news | Sunday April 5, 2026

Sarah Waisvisz in The Toronto Guardian

The Toronto Guardian has run a piece on Lambda Award–finalist Sarah Waisvisz! Waisvisz is the author of Heartlines: A Love Story. Waisvisz chats about her creative works, Kingston, and more. Learn more about her in this day-in-the-life feature.

news | Saturday April 4, 2026

Daphne Marlatt to Receive Honorary Degree

Award-winning author, educator, and activist Daphne Marlatt (Shadow Catch, Intertidal, The Gull, and more) is set to receive an honorary degree from the University of British Columbia! UBC gives honorary degrees to individuals who have made significant contributions to society. Marlatt will receive a Doctor of Letters. In the announcement outlining their spring 2026 degree recipients, Sachi Wickramasinghe writes of Marlatt, “her groundbreaking poetry collections and prose works have reshaped the possibilities of feminist and experimental writing in Canada.” A huge congratulations to Daphne Marlatt! Read the entire announcement here.

news | Friday April 3, 2026

Save Your Prayers – Send Money Has Arrived!

Save Your Prayers – Send Money has arrived! The latest book from Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize–finalist Jónína Kirton boldly takes on the wellness industry, considering disability politics through the lived experience of a seventy-year-old Métis woman and recovering New Ager. A hybrid collection that moves fluidly between prose and poetry, Save Your Prayers – Send Money weaves intergenerational trauma and its impact on health through the daily realities of chronic pain and illness.

An excerpt from “life expecancy”:

“it’s 2025 and the rich are already buying time
they cheat death a decade at a time
while others are consistently considered

an unnecessary expense”

These poems explore where healing might lie and how a peace might be found whether we heal or not. The weft supporting them all is the importance of belonging, of blood memory and cellular memory reaching back to our earliest Ancestors. Pick up your copy here.

news | Thursday April 2, 2026

You're Invited to the Talonbooks Spring 2026 Launch!

Join us at the Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall for the launch of the Talonbooks spring 2026 titles! Come help us celebrate this season’s authors and books. Here’s the lineup! It’s going to be an amazing evening.

Taryn Hubbard will read from Beautiful Unknown Future
Jenn Ashton (attending digitally) will read from Growing My Way Home
George Bowering (attending digitally) will read from Pearl
Jónína Kirton will read from Save Your Prayers – Send Money
Elee Kraljii Gardiner will read from sometimes, forest
Nicole Raziya Fong will read from SUBTEXT and
Danielle LaFrance will read from Verbal Violence!

The launch will be hosted by the author of Future Works, Jeff Derksen!

A live stream will be available on the Talonbooks YouTube page. Light snacks and drinks will be provided. Hope to see you there!

Talonbooks Spring Launch
Martha Lou Henley Rehearsal Hall
Vancouver, BC
May 1, 2026
Doors at 7 p.m., readings begin at 7:30 p.m. PDT

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok is a Finalist for the 2026 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Nonfiction!

We are over the moon to share that ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another by ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn is a finalist for the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction Book, an Alberta Literary Award! In ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok, nêhîyaw educator quinn has created an essential work as he guides readers through the spirit marker writing system as a foundation for teaching ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐁᐧᐃᐧᐣ nêhîyawewin. Here, quinn shares both a philosophy of language and personal narratives to enrich and illuminate the learning experience. The Wilfrid Eggleston Award honours outstanding works of nonfiction written by Alberta-based authors. A huge congratulations to ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn! Check out all of this year’s finalists here.

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

National Poetry Month 2026

April is National Poetry Month! These past 12 months have been incredible poetry months over at Talonbooks HQ. To celebrate this, we’re highlighting some of the recent titles that have been making our bookshelves proud they weren’t manufactured into chairs or hatstands instead.

1. The Book of Z by Rahat Kurd

2. th book uv lost passwords 1 by bill bissett

3. No Depression in Heaven by ryan fitzpatrick

4. Stigmata by Scott Jackshaw

5. tours, variously by Drew McEwan

6. Beautiful Unknown Future by Taryn Hubbard

7.. Pearl by George Bowering

8. Save Your Prayers – Send Money by Jónína Kirton

9. sometimes, forest by Elee Kraljii Gardiner

10. SUBTEXT by Nicole Raziya Fong

11. Verbal Violence by Danielle LaFrance

In times of turmoil, poetry is a place where we might take heart; where we might resist and cultivate and commemorate and build with art and reading a better way to live. We hope these titles offer you this. Happy National Poetry Month. We hope this April brings all the best kinds of renewal.

news | Wednesday April 1, 2026

Alison Manley Reviews Crowd Source

Alison Manley reviews Crowd Source, the latest collection by award-winning poet Cecily Nicholson in The Miramichi Reader. Manley refers to Crowd Source as “a modern, crow-focused epic.” To read the complete piece, click here.

news | Tuesday March 31, 2026

the berry takes the shape of the bloom in Arc Poetry Magazine

Paisley Conrad writes about the berry takes the shape of the bloom by andrea bennett in Arc Poetry Magazine. bennett’s stellar book of poetry won second place in the 11th annual Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry and explores themes of gender, family, trans parenthood, and becoming. Conrad says: :“An archive of feeling that is carefully rendered in fragments and ruptures … a statement of emotional physics … the berry takes the shape of the bloom does not offer narrative, closure, or catharsis. What it offers instead is a meditation of intimate survival – one that lingers in what cannot yet be resolved and asks what else might take shape in that refusal.” Read Conrad’s complete piece here.

news | Monday March 30, 2026

Pearl Has Landed!

We are delighted to announce that Pearl by literary icon and Canada’s first ever Parliamentary Poet Laureate George Bowering has landed! The making of a poem is like the making of a pearl – you take something gritty and create a jewel. This collection sprawls in search of the next glimmering insight, tugging at different threads with a multifarious large-heartedness. This is a collection holding both levity and depth in its pages.

From “A Woodsy Wish”:

“Whose words these are I wish I knew.
I’d like to toss him in the slough.
If they’d been written by a horse,
I do not think they’d be much worse.

The terza rima is a snooze.
My crowd would give it three loud boos.
And all the dumby dumb de dumb
would make them ask, who is this bum?

The guy can hear a flake of snow;
with such an ear, where does he go?
To where you look at jumping sheep,
iambic numbers of his sleep.

To sleep, perchance to clip clip clop,
till you don’t think he’ll ever stop.
With miles to go and go, of course,
you’ll wish he’d fallen off his horse.”

and an excerpt from “Earth”:

“He found her mother’s grave
in a forlorn windswept cemetery
in middle Alberta,

her father saved the headstone
money for something else,
nice guy.

He got a photo of her mother’s
mother’s grave in a lovely
Mennonite graveyard in Oregon.

He leaned on his cane
while someone scraped the snow
and laid her with her own husband.

This is what newborn
children are for.”

Touching, ribald, and cheeky, Pearl reflects on a life well-lived and well-written. Get your copy of Bowering’s final poetry collection here.

news | Sunday March 29, 2026

Review of Convivialities in C Magazine

Nageen Shaikh reviews Convivialities: Dialogues on Poetics by Michael Nardone in C Magazine. Shaikh says Convivialities is “an eclectic range of perspectives grounded in social-materialist poetics, politics, translation, activism, and Indigeneity … a highly critical and self-aware compendium, offering clarity, if not outright solutions.” Read the complete piece here.