By Melanie Jackson
writersunion.ca/member/melanie-jackson

Welcome to the December 2024 issue of WestWords, The Writers’ Union of Canada newsletter featuring latest from our BC/Yukon members. As always, there’s lots of interesting news––and, this being the holiday season, perhaps readers will be inspired to use WestWords for gift ideas!

I have long thought that writers and illustrators believe, with apologies to Monsieur Descartes, “I create, therefore I am.” Recently reading Percival Everett’s James, I was inspired by the protagonist’s passion for writing: “…my interest is in how these marks that I am scratching on this page can mean anything at all. If they can have meaning, then life can have meaning, then I can have meaning.”

Nicely said, Prof. Everett. And nicely done, BC and Yukon members, for your creative accomplishments in the reports that follow. 

My thanks, as always, to our regional rep Rhona McAdam and to TWUC staff for their kind help and support in preparing WestWords. 

Best of the holiday season to all.

Big thanks from Bill to readers for making his new travelogue, A Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot another BC bestseller! Join him for a fascinating excursion, exploring his hometown on foot, as the book strolls through Vancouver neighbourhoods, examining the history and culture, beauty and grit that make this city unique.

Recommended by The Vancouver Sun, CBC, The Province and Canadian Geographic, the book, published by Arsenal Pulp Press, features contemporary and archival photos to accompany Bill’s engaging and evocative stories.

Frances is excited to have two children’s books vying for readers’ choice awards this winter. Owls: Who Gives a Hoot? is a Forest of Reading Yellow Cedar Award nominee. Grizzly Bears: Guardians of the Wilderness is nominated for the Young Readers’ Choice Awards Society of BC’s Red Cedar Award.

These are Frances’s second and third books in Orca Book Publishers’ Orca Wild series of nonfiction for middle-graders, following her debut with Beavers: Radical Rodents and Ecosystem Engineers in 2021. Her fourth Orca Wild book, Bison: Community Builders and Grassland Caretakers, will be published next spring. Visit Frances on Instagram!

Karen’s historical fiction/suspense novel, Palmyra, was winner of the 2024 Whistler Independent Book Award for Fiction. Palmyra takes place on a cocoa estate on the island of Trinidad at the turn of the 20^th century. Narrated by the 11-year-old son of the housekeeper to a wealthy French Creole Family, the novel is part coming-of-age story and part Gothic mystery that teems with family secrets, divided loyalties and ambition. Palmyra was also shortlisted for the Guernica Prize and the Page Turner Awards.

Karen lives in the scenic Okanagan Valley.

Vince’s new book, Power Metal: The Race for the Resources That Will Shape the Future, was published on November 19. It’s a globe-spanning investigation into the human and environmental costs of renewable energy and digital technology—and how we can do better. John Vaillant, author of Pulitzer-nominated Fire Weather, calls Power Metal “a necessary, illuminating and often shocking read.”

Check out Power Metal, the Newsletter.

Inspired by real events, The Blood Labyrinth is B.R.’s latest international mystery. Decades after the suspicious death of an unidentified man at a South African beach, the police open a cold-case investigation into the crime. Sixteen thousand kilometers away, a Canadian woman begins a search for her biological family. When a public-database DNA match connects her search to the police investigation, it triggers an alert at the British spy agency MI6. As the various protagonists attempt to advance their respective agendas, their paths continue to intersect until, ultimately, all collide in a surprising and unexpected conclusion.

On November 22, Sylvia released Here, Now, a gripping tale set in a 1920s logging camp. The novel follows Eva Clark, a young woman navigating love, loss and resilience, from Seattle’s smoky saloons to northern Vancouver Island’s mist-shrouded shores.

Rich in historical detail, Here, Now is part of Sylvia’s“Island Echoes” series, stand-alone stories about strong women in unconventional roles, celebrating the natural beauty and rugged industry of the Pacific Northwest.

Marilyn’s More Richly in Earth, A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod (MQUP) 2024, was longlisted in nonfiction for The Saltire Prize, Scotland’s National Book Award. Part memoir, part literary investigation, the book is set in Scotland’s Hebridean Islands, on Vancouver Island (where Marilyn grew up) and in the stories of her Newfoundland grandparents.

“This book is a major work” – Maoilios Caimbeul, Scottish writer of poetry, prose and children’s literature.

Elizabeth’s Look to This Day, Poems for Doris McCarthy is a collection of ekphrastic, haibun, narrative and found poems describing both the many beautiful landscape paintings of the acclaimed artist, writer and teacher Doris McCarthy (1910-2010) reproduced in the book and her full, creative and adventurous life.

This book was introduced at the 20^th anniversary celebration of the opening of the Doris McCarthy Gallery at the University of Toronto in May 2024.

Reviewed and edited by award winning poet and educator Jenna Butler, Look to This Day is available from Waterside Arts.

Jan has been busy promoting her latest historical novel, Winter of Siege (MW Books, Garden Bay), even offering home delivery of her books during the postal strike for readers on the Sunshine Coast!

She will guest edit the winter issue of Not An Island, a literary journal of the Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society. Jan hopes to see Not An Island rise over time to the professional quality of other Canadian publications.

Adrienne is a co-editor of Standing on High Ground: Civil Disobedience on Burnaby Mountain (Between the Lines), released on October 29.

Since 2014, hundreds of protesters have been arrested resisting the Trans Mountain pipeline. Here are 25 stories of people who fought for climate justice, including Indigenous leaders, academics, faith leaders, political leaders, engineers, artists and writers, scientists, physicians and ordinary folk from diverse backgrounds.

The stories explore our moral duty to future generations, government’s collusion with corporate power, the violation of Indigenous Law and unsustainable worldviews. Standing on High Ground shows us that we can all take a stand.

Transactions with the Fallen, Michael’s fifth book, and his first of short stories, is published by Rocks Mills Press. Tales set in towns and cities on four continents and in the wild reveal how bittersweet understandings and misunderstandings reverberate through the generations, touching upon beliefs and rituals that underlie the ordinary and acknowledge the struggle to find meaning within the ruins of the contemporary world.

The British Columbia Review calls Transactions with the Fallen “masterful.” Michael read from the collection at Galiano Island Books in October.

In summer 2022, Victor almost died. He recalled Always Breathe from a publisher, caught his breath and went back to work.

The result: a stronger, longer Always Breathe, with more poems and stories about Victor’s near-death experience, being saved by his wife—and living.

Fretting about amount of time it takes to place a manuscript, Victor decided, with the support of his wife, disability activist and Ph.D. candidate Michelle Hewitt, to self-publish. Stuffed with poems, stories and dispatches from the pain room, Always Breathe will be released by 2NNs publishing on or before Victor’s 70^th birthday, April 3, 2025.

The new, 20^th anniversary edition of edition of M.A.C.’s beloved memoir of her 14th summer, My Turquoise Years, captures a lost time and place with love and hilarity.

This edition includes five companion stories, an introduction by Lynne Van Luven and a preface by the author. Witty, tender and wry, My Turquoise Years is a book for anyone who remembers being a teenager.

Trevor’s 18^th novel, Bright Shining as the Sun (Exile Editions), written under his crime series pseudonym John Farrow, will be out February 14. The Farrow novels have been bestsellers on four continents and critically acclaimed in many languages.

Trevor has been published by such firms as Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Saint Martin’s Press and McClelland & Stewart. Principally published abroad in recent years, Trevor chose a Canadian house for his latest novels to reconnect at home.

The 2008 film of his novel The Timekeeper can be viewed on Prime. Visit Trevor here, and the John Farrow mysteries here.

The mythopoetic life of islanders and their love of being islanded are captured with luminous clarity in Mona’s new book of poetry, Islander, her first in 14 years. Three sections open the collection: “Village Life,” “Huddling” and “Joies de la Vie.” Two powerful long sociopolitical poems, “The Weather Is Political” and “Sleepless in Strathcona” then complete it.

“This stunning collection of poems examines the imagined life made true.” —British Columbia Review.

“Islander walks with us along each page mending memory and moment to now with such tenderness, so much, enough to mend ‘all the heartbreaks of the world’.” —Shauna Paull.

Lorraine’s If I Have Known Beauty: Elegies for Phyllis Webb was published this fall by Raven Chapbooks and launched on Salt Spring Island in November. The sequence of poems was co-winner of the 2023 Gwendolyn MacEwen Award for Best Suite of Canadian Poems, and a finalist in the 2024 National Magazine Awards.

Lakshmi’s latest publications:

• What is this poet?,Prairie Journal of Canadian
  Literature, Issue #83, 2024
• Reconstructed Space: Philippine-Canadian Artists in British Columbia Anthology, 2024
• Wyrd England, Broken Sleep Books, Wales, 2025.

Selected 2023 works:

• “Imagined India” and “The Word Out,” Soul Spaces Anthology, (New Delhi)
• “Phinder Dulai: Streaming the Polyphonic Beat of Migrant Life,”Arc Poetry Journal, 100th issue
• “Out of Silence,”Abridged (Belfast) Issue 0-94
• “Books Unread,”Persimmon Tree (New York) Summer
• “Marc the Gatherer,” Canadian League of Poets at University of Alberta, 1970, U of A Libraries Aviary Repository, SpokenWeb Recordings
• “Revolution,” University of La Laguna (Tenerife, Spain).

Jill’s novel After We Drowned will be out in mid-December. It’s a coming-of-age/environmental catastrophe story that takes place in the swampy heart of Cajun America and set to the music of Tina Turner, Stevie Nicks and Madonna.

After We Drowned can be ordered directly from Anvil Press. And bonus! If you want to listen to the mostly ’80s playlist that accompanies the novel, it’s right here.

Campbell River author Shari’s young adult historical novel in verse, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams, was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award (Young People’s Literature—Text).

Game Face, Shari’s middle-grade verse novel about hockey, anxiety and friendship, has been selected for several readers’ choice programs, including the Surrey Schools Book of the Year, Chocolate Lily Award, Red Cedar Award, Diamond Willow Award and Silver Birch Fiction Award.

Valerie, a Victoria author, is delighted to announce that all four books in her historical fiction series The McBride Chronicles are now released. Providence, Destiny, Legacy and Tomorrow tell the story of one family through six generations, from the 1840s to present day.

The books are set against a backdrop of British Columbia’s rich history, telling both sides of colonization through to truth and reconciliation.

They can all be found on Amazon, in bookstores or through the publisher, Hancock House Publishers, Vancouver.

Sue and Lesley have launched a monthly podcast for kids based on their three volume series Time To Wonder: A kid’s guide to BC's regional museums. The podcast is hosted by Sue, Lesley and their 11-year-old co-host Ava Louis.

Ava, Lesley and Sue chat with guests who work in museums or with museums answering questions like, “Is that bear real?” “Were there museums before settlement?” “How did they put that skeleton together?” Find out more at timetowonderpodcast.com.

“In Voices for the Islands, Sheila chronicles the legacy of the many dedicated local activists who worked for over 50 years to build the land trusts, conservancies and precious wild sanctuaries that now safeguard the very soul of BC’s Gulf Islands.

“Employing land covenants, scientific research, innovative fund-raising and effective advocacy, Sheila documents what these nature heroes did against daunting odds to save nature from development. …a ‘must read’ that I suspect may inspire you too to join the action.”—Ric Careless, a founder of the Sierra Club of BC and the BC Parks Foundation, and Order of BC recipient.

Mix’s latest novel, Hotel Beringia, was released in late June 2024 (Tidewater Press). The novel follows two sisters who spend a summer break from university studies working at an isolated hotel near the Arctic Circle, Yukon.

Set in the late 1980s, Hotel Beringia explores the Klondike mentality of the Canadian Arctic as a boundless natural resource to be exploited. The novel also delves into the nuances of sisterhood⏤the intimate and familial, and the broader, societal meaning.

Thommy’s award-winning holiday novel, Write Christmas, is now available in audiobook format in addition to print and e-book. The story finds a small-town businesswoman’s lack of Christmas spirit tested when she wakes one day to find that the holiday has vanished. Publishers Weekly says, “This heartwarming fantasy updates a favorite Christmas trope…Christmas enthusiasts will find this hits the spot.”

Also available is Thommy’s nonfiction look at the making of Wes Craven’s A Nightmare on Elm Street. Entertainment Weekly called his Never Sleep Again: The Elm Street Legacy “the ultimate dream and/or nightmare for Freddy Krueger fans.”

Canadian activist and author Franke James’s memoir Freeing Teresa: A True Story about My Sister and Me has won the 2024 Book of the Year for “Outstanding True Story” at the Independent Author Network Awards. Midwest Book Review: “The result is more than a memoir: it’s a testimony to how ‘tickets to freedom’ are gained through fighting and love.” The book has won 18 international awards, including for Human Rights & Political Movements, Special Needs (Disability Rights), Family Challenges, Memoir and Nonfiction Audiobook.

Freeing Teresa also won NYC Big Book Awards, 2024 for Social/Political Change and Audiobook Nonfiction. More information here.

Sophie is a writer in Nelson who has just published her first children’s book with Owlkids Books. It's called Katrina Hyena, about a laughing hyena who laughs at the wrong times. Most hyenas laugh to alert their clan to danger, but Katrina laughs because she finds the world hilarious and dreams of becoming a stand-up comedienne.

Katrina Hyena is an early chapter book for emerging readers aged four to eight, with fun and playful illustrations by Aparna Varma.

Eva has recently published her fourth book of poems, Untamed: Lyrics and Erotics, with Ekstasis Editions. She wrote these poems when she was in her twenties in Poland. Eva’s other books are Whatever We Are, Fire and Water (with Laurence Hutchman) and Solace.

Fiona has wrapped up her three-year role as Vancouver’s sixth poet laureate with the City Poems Project publication, which includes results from the City Poems poetry contest and poetry video contest. Fiona compiled a handy two-page teacher’s resource with links to over a dozen diverse local poems and poetry videos. Watch the seven minute trailer with clips of the 44 postsecondary poetry videos that were made based on local poems about historical, cultural and ecological sites.

As well, Fiona has just completed her new two-minute poetry video, Lost Stream, about one of Vancouver’s hidden waterways.

At the outset of her writing career in the 1980s and ’90s, Catherine worked as a community newspaper reporter and freelancer. Life circumstances led her away from journalism and on to other pursuits. But when her niece, Michelle Lang, was killed while reporting for the Calgary Herald during Canada’s mission in Afghanistan, Catherine set her mind to return to the writing life.

She produced Embedded, a memoir that both honours her beloved niece and explores the consequences of war.

Pauline is thrilled to announce the publication of her second book of poetry, Becoming the Harvest, published by Caitlin Press: a poignant, and at times light-hearted, meditation on the end of life.

“Keep on raising hell until
Heaven is in sight.”

“Approaching one’s death shouldn’t be this fun,” writes one reviewer. “Pauline shows that it could be.”

Pauline continues to give Way to Go! Workshops, where she calls upon her poetry to open hearts and minds to thoughtful conversation about the end.

Dawn’s debut poetry collection, Northerny, was published by University of Alberta Press in February 2024. It made the Alberta Bestseller list in April, and the Edmonton Bestseller list in May.

You can hear and read more about Northerny at CBC’s The Next Chapter and on Rob McLennan’s blog.

Erin is a writer from North Vancouver, BC. Her short stories have recently been published in Conjunctions 83: Revenants, The Ghost Issue, edited by Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow; and in the Canadian speculative magazine Augur, Issue 7.3.

You can also find Erin’s work is in the upcoming anthology from Exile: Through the Portal––Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia. Her story “Nesting,” first published in Prairie Fire, was shortlisted in the 2024 Masters Review Reprint prize.

Mahtab’s Ghost Queen (Orca, February 2025) is a JLG Gold Standard Selection. “An entertaining romp that will draw in reluctant readers.”—Kirkus Reviews.

Teen vlogger Malika’s ghost-hunter channel is almost popular enough to start earning money. She just needs one viral video—and she knows where to get it. Malika convinces her boyfriend to sneak with her after dark into Bhangarh Fort, the most haunted place in India, and record the experience.

Things go terribly wrong. Can the “Ghost Queen” escape, or is she doomed to be trapped for eternity with a mad magician and the princess who rejected him?

Canadian rights to Kathy’s first book-length nonfiction work, her memoir  Getting Better at Being Worse (working title), have  been bought by Penguin Canada for publication in September 2025.

Stand-alone sections of the memoir have appeared in The New Quarterly, Best Canadian Essays and Geist. Visit Kathy here.

Kalwant (Nadeem) Parmar is being honoured by Radical Desi and Indians Abroad in Surrey, BC  for his latest Punjabi novel, 2025.

The novel is based on the farmers’ agitation in Punjab, India that occurred in 2020.

Cynthia’s latest eco-poetry collection, Ordinary Light, a first-prize winner in the SCWES Book Awards for BC Authors, can be ordered from bookstores throughout the world from the Ingram catalogue, along with her earlier nature poetry book Rainforest in Russet. The books are also in BC and Yukon libraries.

Cynthia has been having a wonderful time offering readings and eco-oriented writing workshops throughout the Lower Mainland and Sunshine Coast. She looks forward to meeting local writers at her spring readings at the Powell River Public Library in April 2025 and the Salt Spring Island Public Library on May 1, 2025.

Steven and Phil Hall will be featured readers in the Planet Earth Poetry series on January 10, 2025, 7:30 pm, at Russell Books in Victoria.

Accomplished and entertaining presenters, these poets will read from their collaborative chapbook The Green Rose (above/ground press) and other publications.

Terese’s second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, will be published by OR Books next fall. She had to find a new publisher after the first one objected to having the word “Hitler” in the title.

Her two books of fiction published this year, Roxy and Coco (novel) and The Long Swim (third collection of stories) received a full page in the New York Times Book Review.

The Coquitlam Writers Group has launched a YouTube Channel to feature members being interviewed by founding member Ted Yabut Jr.

Margie, author of Displaced Persons, Harrow Road and Some of Skippy’s Blues, joined Ted recently to talk about writing, publishing and her novel Rose Addams (NeWest Press, April 2023).

Check out the interview here!

With the publication of The Runaway (2024), author/illustrator Nancy completed the Crow Stories trilogy. The earlier titles are: The Outlaw (2018), described by the New York Times as “Bewitching”; and The Ranger (2019), praised as “visually arresting and enigmatic.”

All three titles are with Groundwood Books. Nancy’s debut picture book, The Outlaw, was acquired by the late Sheila Barry from a slush pile.

Nancy likes to quote Norman Juster in Phantom Tollbooth: “Get your fresh-picked ifs, ands and buts.”

Lucy’s début chapbook, Ju, was launched this fall at Massy Arts Gallery by local independent publisher broke press. Featuring award-winning poems, the collection ruminates on how food ties a family together through the seasons, even as it comes apart.

Visit Lucy here.