In a strange land

Contributors

This issue’s cover artist, Christy Lundy, is a Toronto-based illustrator

Spatial intelligence

THERE’S AN oft-repeated story about Terry Waite, the British humanitarian

Northern exposure

Elle Wild lives out her youthful fantasies in the debut novel Strange Things Done

Rural divide

The Wellington County Library system invests $30 million in heritage properties and new technologies

Best of times, Worst of times

Nathan Whitlock on great and terrible news from the book world

Group dynamic

Writing circles can be helpful, but they also can suck the life force out of you

Making connections

YouTube superwoman Lilly Singh expands her brand to the page

Size matters

The Penguin Shop makes up for its small footprint with flexible design and appealing merchandise

Tweenage dream

Following years of market dominance by YA, publishers say it’s middle-grade fiction’s time to shine

Ses-squee!-centennial

LEADING UP to the 150th anniversary of the founding of

Drawing to a close

After almost 10 years and seven books, graphic novelist Scott Chantler brings his Three Thieves series to an end

Taking refuge

A chance discovery online led author Margriet Ruurs on a journey to her altruistic new picture book

Nesting instinct

I hadn’t realized the full symbolism of my latest children’s story until I read it to a dying friend

Trying times

Two picture books perfectly capture the seemingly world-ending tribulations of being small

Memoirs of a Sidekick

In Memoirs of a Sidekick, David Skuy – best known

A Mortal Song

With A Mortal Song, author Megan Crewe poses the question:

The Liszts

BASED ON its title, and the publishing history of its

Are You an Echo? The Lost Poetry of Misuzu Kaneko

Misuzu Kaneko; David Jacobson, Sally Ito, and Michiko Tsuboi, eds

Gertie’s Leap to Greatness

ANNE, PIPPI, Ramona, Harriet, Clementine: the precocious, incorrigible, too-bright-forher-own-good young

Every Hidden Thing

WITH HIS new novel, Toronto-based YA author Kenneth Oppel takes

Lila and the Crow

IN HER authorial debut, Montreal illustrator Gabrielle Grimard tackles bullying

Level the Playing Field: The Past, Present, and Future of Women’s Pro Sports

IN HER wide-ranging examination of the world of women’s professional

Freedom’s Just Another Word

GROWING UP in Saskatoon in 1970 with a black father

Up, down, all around

A young boy mourning the loss of his dog finds himself in a parallel universe in Richard Scrimger’s latest middle-grade novel

Road to nowhere

Jane Ozkowski’s debut YA novel is a portrait of late-adolescent inertia and ennui

And Then the Sky Exploded

WHEN CHRIS LARKIN'S great-grandfather (GG Will) dies, the almost-14-year-old learns

Remembrance of things past

M.G. Vassanji’s foray into speculative fiction also recalls the author’s earlier novels

Bit Rot: stories + essays

IT SEEMS quaint that Douglas Coupland’s latest work should arrive

Niagara Motel

ASHLEY LITTLE, author of the 2014 novel Anatomy of a

The Adjustment League

THE SUPER lives a quiet, solitary life, taking care of

All the broken things

In her first novel, Katherena Vermette portrays a Métis family struggling to stay resilient in the face of tragedy

In the shadows of war

Journalist Deborah Campbell recounts her attempts to locate a missing woman in Syria following the 2003 Iraq invasion

Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life

REBECCA SOLNIT’S essay collection Men Explain Things to Me and

Into the Sun

THEY CAN be found in every contemporary war zone –

For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known

WHEN DANILA BOTHA burst onto the scene in 2010 with

Reflections and refractions

With a tightly integrated triptych, Michael Helm has crafted his most intricate novel yet

Leave takings

Two authors from Quebec confront death – of the body and of love

The long and short of it

New collections from Kathy Page and Leon Rooke display divergent approaches to the short form

Queer Progress: From Homophobia to Homonationalism

TIM MCCASKELL is often referred to as a granddaddy of

Chasing Utopia: The Future of the Kibbutz in a Divided Israel

READING DAVID LEACH’S thoroughly researched and expertly envisioned new book,

Belief

NOVELIST MAYANK BHATT, who immigrated to Canada from Mumbai in

Water world

Anne Carson’s new collection waves off conventional book packaging