By Melanie Jackson

Welcome to the June 2025 edition of WestWords, The Writers’ Union of Canada newsletter highlighting the latest from our BC/Yukon members. And just in time to help you plan your summer reading!

Of course, old favourites may also vie for your attention. I had the privilege of rereading and, for The Seaboard Review of Books, reviewing Harbour Publishing’s reissue of A Whale Named Henry. By the late BC writer Muriel Wylie Blanchet, Henry was first published in 1983 and is just as irresistibly mischievous now that he’s resurfaced.

This whale of a tale inspired me to add to the review my thoughts on the type of protagonist young readers prefer. So did a recent message from a woman in Toronto, who said she’d been a childhood fan of my Orca Books’ Dinah Galloway mystery novels and still rereads them. Naturally I was delighted, and between Henry and Dinah, my conclusion in the review about protags who appeal is: they’re troublemakers!

I’m confident that the books you read about in WestWords will also, years from now, be making a Henry-like splash. Enjoy the issue, and have a great summer.

My thanks to our regional rep, Rhona McAdam, and TWUC staff for their help and support.

Announcing Hari’s Tabako on the Windowsill, from Brick Books. Hari (he/him/siya) has begun an in-person and online tour alongside collaborators and friends, which he plans to extend throughout the province and the country. Guided by a burning attention — to braids of displacement, loss and joy, to multiple beginnings — Hari creates moments where we can expand through the personhood of perception into wider, overlapping worlds of perspective and possibility. These exquisite poems initiate the work of transformation.

Photo: Kilby Smith-McGregor.

Gail will host a week-long fall writing retreat at the Sorrento Centre in the Shuswap, BC from September 28 to October 3, with morning master classes and afternoon blue-pencil sessions. Find the details here. 

I Want to Die in My Boots (Touchwood/Brindle & Glass, historical fiction) is now in bookstores. This is the tale of Belle Jane, the woman who led a gang of horse and cattle thieves in 1920s Saskatchewan. Throughout her remarkable life, Belle Jane brilliantly breaks taboos, takes the name of five husbands and resists the tragic fate of her hero, outlaw queen Belle Starr.

Dark and daring, meticulously researched and mostly true, I Want to Die in My Boots is a lyrical, earthy tribute to an unsung heroine of the west.

Bill would like to thank the BC/YT Book Prizes for naming A Perfect Day for a Walk: The History, Cultures, and Communities of Vancouver, on Foot a finalist for the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award. With more thanks to Arsenal Pulp Press, and to Rocky Mountain Books for the release of A Season in the Okanagan, Bill’s travel memoir to where he grew up, which includes his original painted photos from the excursion, a stand-alone sequel to BC’s bestselling A Season on Vancouver Island.

Tony is proud to launch his next massage-therapy thriller, On Borrowed Time.

What will it cost you to live forever? When RMT Jackson Teague uncovers a secret longevity treatment that might actually work, his hands tell him something’s not right. Some very bad people want what he knows. Others want him silenced. One step ahead of organized crime and one step behind the answers, Jackson races to uncover the truth before his patients, and his friends, find out just what eternity could cost.

The book launch of Amaranthine Chevrolet took place on June 10 at The Bent Mast in Victoria.

Marilyn’s More Richly in Earth: A Poet's Search for Mary MacLeod (McGill-Queen’s University Press) is a finalist for the Hubert Evans 2025 Non-Fiction Prize.

Chaucer is a reluctant spy in J.C.’s debut historical novel, The Storyteller’s War. March 1366: Geoffrey Chaucer, page to King Edward III, is caught in J.C. Corry’s deadly conflict between King Pedro of Castille and his half-brother, Enrique Trastamara. Sent by the king as a reluctant spy, Chaucer must persuade the mercenary Sir Hugh Calveley to change sides in a war that could alter the fate of kingdoms. As armies collide on the battlefield, Chaucer’s greatest challenge is not just turning the tide of war — but winning the battle for his love, Pippa. Learn more: linktr.ee/jccorry.

Lorne is pleased to announce that his new poetry collection, What is Broken Binds Us, is forthcoming September 15 from the University of Calgary Press’s Brave & Brilliant Series. These are poems of the disruptions and emotional tremors that shape us: enslaved families broken and dispersed, hidden histories, addiction and estrangement, and the shocks of bodily trauma. Pre-orders available now at independent bookstores.

Preeti is Upstart & Crow’s 2025 Poet in Residence! Preeti is a writer, facilitator, former lawyer, and critical-race feminist who has spent over two decades using arts-based methodologies to explore justice, healing and transformation, offering creative workshops across communities and institutions on Turtle Island. Her work asks how language so often used to colonize, flatten and desensitize might instead bring us back to ourselves, oneness and each other. Learn more: @write.with.preeti or linktr.ee/Jadooberry.

Thomas published his début poetry book, Through the Cities and the Woods, on April 14 through JLRB Press. The book focuses on themes of social justice, the natural world and relationships. Find out more here.

Dora, of Delta, BC, presented “Thinking about Oneself: Reflections on Desire and Discovery in the Personal Essay and Memoir,” and read from Return Stroke at the Mennonite/s Writing 10 conference in Winnipeg, June 12-15.

Daniela is excited to share two new books with the community this year. The poems in SCAR/CITY (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2025) walk streets and take snapshots of the impact financialization of our homes has on our sense of community and belonging. Her début essay collection, Is This an Illness or an Accident? (Caitlin Press, 2025) delves into the conflicts and contradictions of what it means to belong, to work and to find home.

Patti was among five featured authors at the recent Yukon Writers’ Festival and Young Authors’ Conference in Whitehorse and Haines Junction. She was also an artist-in-residence at the Caetani Centre in Vernon, BC in May. Patti will read this summer at Yukon Words’ “Words Out Loud” event. Pieces of Paradise is an inspiring audio play about humans moving beyond adversity, helped by animal witnesses, including two dogs, a snake and a Yellow-Rumped Warbler; it’s adapted from Patti’s published stage play, Paradise. Find out more here.

Jill’s novel After We Drowned was a finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize and the New Horizons Award. It received an honourable mention in the grand-prize Historical Fiction category.

After We Drowned is a coming of age/environmental cataclysm story with a stealthy, but kickass, feminist subplot. Taking place in 1984-85, it comes with plenty of pop culture and its very own soundtrack that can be found here.

Shari’s historical novel in verse, Song of Freedom, Song of Dreams (Andrews McMeel, 2024), is a finalist for the 2025 Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize and a nominee for the 2026 MYRCA Northern Lights Award.

On August 14, Sheila will be reading on Hornby Island with funding from the National Public Reading program, thanks to the Canada Council and The Writers’ Union of Canada. After 10 readings on the islands, and several more by Zoom since the release of her 2024 book Voices for the Islands: Thirty Years of Nature Conservation on the Salish Sea, she is thrilled with the funding. On June 20 at the Rotary Centre, Qualicum Beach, Sheila will also be reading about her three-year sailing journey to capture the voices of keen conservationists on the islands.

Photo: Gordon Scott.

Taryn is pleased to announce the publication of her début novel, The Very Good Best Friend (Now or Never Publishing). The Very Good Best Friend is a punchy psychological thriller about a woman who sets out on a harrowing journey to rescue her best friend from an abandoned, desolate mall in the countryside, only to uncover deeper and darker secrets hidden within its decaying walls. Available at bookstores now.

Canadian authors Franke James, Billiam James and Teresa Heartchild (Franke’s sister) accepted three gold awards for their book Freeing Teresa at the NYC Big Book Awards and Independent Press Awards on May 3, 2025. The memoir, a true story about the sisters’ battle for disability rights, won for the Social Change and also twice for the Audiobook category. Overall, their memoir has earned over 30 international book awards. “The result is more than a memoir: it’s a testimony to how ‘tickets to freedom’ are gained through fighting and love.” — The Midwest Book Review.

Photo: Daniel D’Errico.

Winona is thrilled to announce the audio release of her latest novel, Bad Boy, read by Nick Johnson.

Jazz musician-turned-amateur sleuth Jason Davey never expected his fan meeting at the Shard to end in a devastating plunge. But when Marcus Merritt jumps to his death after handing Jason a program from his last tour, Jason finds himself on a week-long quest to retrieve a stolen collection of scores by England’s most famous composer, Sir Edward Elgar.

Theory has an exciting release on June 17: Heartburst — a time travel rom-com for broken weirdos. The book starts in a small town in Manitoba, when a depressed woman discovers a portal to 1920 in her craft cupboard. Armed only with a wry sense of humour and passable common sense, she finds renewed will to live through righting injustices in history. Learn more: www.theoryknight.com.

Photo: The Word Verve.

The Sunshine Project, the final book in Uma’s Book Uncle trilogy for young readers, will be published in August simultaneously by Groundwood Books and Duckbill/PRH India.

Fiona’s latest poetry video, Lost Stream, based on her poem and made in collaboration with recently graduated videographer and animator, Quinn Kelly, was selected for three festivals: Worldthreading Poetry Film Festival 2025 (Copenhagen); REELpoetry Houston 2025; and Poetry Film Festival 2025 (Venice, California). This and four of her other poetry videos were selected by the U.S. Coalition for Quality Children’s Media (CQCM) for the KidsFirst Film Festival database. Learn more: fionalam.net.

Eve’s latest non-fiction book, Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck, was released on April 29. Now a BC bestseller, her book focuses on the stories of the Canadian survivors in a 1914 wreck that claimed more passenger lives than either the Titanic or the Lusitania. The CPR-owned liner’s tragedy stands as the worst maritime disaster during peacetime in Canadian history. BDW features over 170 contemporary and archival black-and-white photos Find out more here.

Pauline is thrilled to share this recent review, in BC Review of Books, of her poetry collection Becoming the Harvest (published by Caitlin Press).

Photo: James Wilson.

Angela has been selected to be a 2025 writer-in-residence at Berton House in Dawson City, Yukon. Long, a freelance journalist and multi-genre writer, is the author of Observations from Off the Grid and Every Day We Disappear. She’s currently living in an Airstream trailer on a lavender farm on Vancouver Island, and can’t wait to spend July and August in the Land of the Midnight Sun.

Shirley’s Calm Harbour, Turbulent Seas will be released by Harbour Publishing on July 22, 2025. The author has woven accounts of shipwrecks and sea serpents, settlement and dispossession, tragedy and resilience, unsolved mysteries and surprising revelations, to depict the rich and vibrant history of Ucluelet and surrounding area. One hundred and forty black-and-white photos further bring alive the history of what was once an isolated outpost and is now a touted tourist destination. ISBN: 9781998526161. Hardback. 448 p. $39.95

Adrienne recently had a story on sustainable floristry, “Rebels with a Vase,” published in The Walrus. Her story on First Nations’ search-and-rescue initiatives, “The First First Responders,” published in Hakai Magazine, was short-listed for a National Magazine Award in the long-feature category.

Photo: Patrice Hansen.

Charlotte’s mystery, Breaking News: Local Heiress Dead, has won the inaugural Toby Award, a national award for Canadian indie mystery authors. You can find out more at charlottemorganti.com.

Mahtab’s Ghost Queen, a 2024 Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection, was published by Orca on February 11, 2025.

“Offers plenty of creepy thrills. Narsimhan skillfully balances a fast-paced plot with thoroughly dark, emotionally charged scenes. The connection to an actual legend and site in India enriches the story and heightens the fear factor. An entertaining ghostly romp that will draw in reluctant readers.” – Kirkus Reviews.

Margaret is pleased to have received a Gold Award from the Nonfiction Authors Association (U.S.) for her recently published book Lost Legacies: Learning from Ancestral Stories for Inspiration and Policy-Making Today. She uses facts from her previously unknown heritage history, weaving in stories from other immigrant groups in Canada, to demonstrate how important it is to understand your own cultural history. Margaret is a retired social psychologist as well as a retired lawyer. That background has enabled her to produce a fascinating book.

Kathy’s memoir, In This Faulty Machine, will be in bookstores September 9, 2025. Pre-orders can be made from your local bookstore or direct from the publisher via this link.

Acclaimed South Asian writer and great friend to many, Kalwant Singh Nadeem Parmar (1936–2025) passed this April in Burnaby. Nadeem (“friend” in Persian) wrote in Urdu, Punjabi, and English, producing novels and ghazal poems. More information is available online in TWUC’s “In Memoriam” resource. Thanks to Brian Burtch for sharing this information and writing Nadeem’s “In Memoriam.”

Pictured: Nadeen (left) and Brian.

Nasreen’s A Call To Unite is a collection of 20 articles/essays, of which about 10 were published by Inanna Publication, and also Journey Magazine. Nasreen has added about 10 more to complete the collection. The essays address issues and concerns in our modern chaotic world of injustice, war and conflict.

Cynthia will be the Surrey Muse Arts Society’s featured author on Saturday, June 28, 1-4 PM, along with a poet, artist and emerging artist, followed by an open-mic session, at the Surrey City Centre Library, room 405. She’ll also be offering a scriptwriting workshop, “The Mathematics of a Strong Scene,” through Surrey Muse on Saturday, August 9, 1–3 PM, also at the Surrey City Centre Library. Finally, Cynthia will be facilitating “Poetic Memoir and Photo Journaling” in Gibsons on Saturday, August 23, at 10:30 AM. Tickets available at Eventbrite for both workshops.

Photo: Cathalynn Labonte-Smith.

Kevin’s 17th chapbook, Windowful, has come out this year with Anstruther Press. This collection continues his exploration of angels, medical mishaps and post-Mennonite meanderings.

Photo: Kevin Spenst.
Artwork: Kerry Vaughn Erickson.

Diana’s new book, Along Came A Gardener, is based on her work as a psychotherapist (individual, marital, and family) for 25 years. In this nonfiction inspirational book, she weaves in stories from the world of mental health along with lessons from her garden. Covering a wide range of problems: anger management, addiction, marital and family conflict, depression, and more, Diano offers hope and discusses how and when to get help. Along Came A Gardener was reviewed in The British Columbia Review.

Terese has had two novels published. Her second memoir, Hitler and My Mother-in-Law, will be published in November. Learn more: teresesvoboda.com.

Photo: Beowulf Sheehan.

Rhea’s eighth collection of poetry, Talking to Strangers, has been awarded the 2025 Betty Averbach Foundation Prize for Poetry for the Western Canada Jewish Book Award.

Photo: Belle Ancell.

Comox Valley-based K.A. Wiggins (Kaie) is celebrating a stellar short-fiction spring with two different “best of” anthologies: Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy & Science Fiction, Vol. 3 (Ansible Press, 2025); and Brave New Weird:The Best New Weird Horror, Vol. 3 (Tenebrous Press, 2025)), a by-invitation anthology.

The official launch of Kaie’s Teaching Canadian Short Fiction educators’ resources will be launched at the Surrey Teachers’ Association Convention in May. More info and free resources here.

Jennifer’s The Heart of Homestay won silver in the parenting category of the Independent Publisher Book Awards. By sharing real stories from a vast network of homestay families, Jennifer shows the benefits of hosting an international student while being real about the challenges. It’s also a must-read for anyone interested in an intimate portrayal of intercultural relationships. Kirkus Reviews calls it “a comprehensive guide, brimming with honesty, compassion, and plenty of easy-to-follow strategies.” Find out more here.

Photo: Leanna Rathkelly.

Author and editor Jenn has joined Pulp Literature as Novel Acquisitions & Production Editor to lead the revitalization of Pulp’s novel-publishing branch. With two decades of publishing industry experience, Sommersby brings deep expertise in story development and a fervent passion for inclusive, emotionally resonant storytelling. She is excited to acquire and publish high-quality commercial and genre fiction, with a special interest in women-centred and 2SLGBTQIA+ narratives under the Pulp Femme imprint.