FREEHAND BOOKS SPRING 2 0 2 1 Message from the publisher
Freehand is proud to support our authors throughout their writing careers, whether it’s their first book or their fifteenth. And so this season, we’re delighted to welcome back three authors we’ve had the privilege of working with before, with three new “modern classics.”
Keith Maillard brings us The Bridge, an engaging, eye-opening memoir about growing up in West Virginia in the ‘40s and ’50s, never quite sure if he was a boy or a girl. Susan Olding has penned Big Reader, a clear-eyed collection of essays, in the vein of a modern-day Joan Didion, about divorce, stepparenting, aging parents, and her lifelong love of books. And The Lover, the Lake, written by Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau and translated by Susan Ouriou, is a captivating and joyous Indigenous romance.
During these difficult times, thank you so much for your support of local Canadian authors and independent publishers like Freehand.
kelsey attard Managing Editor, Freehand Books may 2021
One writer’s deeply compelling story of growing up nonbinary in the 1940s and ’50s
“Most people know their gender identity by the time they are two or three. My memories don’t go back quite that far, but as far back as I do remember, I was never certain. I asked my mother and grandmother over and over again, ‘Am I a boy, or am I a girl?’— asked so many times they got sick of answering and started getting mad at me, and then I would hear, ‘I told you!’ They always told me that I was a boy, but I was never convinced. It would take me over sixty years to arrive at a clear understanding of my problem — I was trapped inside what we now would call ‘the gender binary,’ the notion that there are only two choices.”
So begins The Bridge, Keith Maillard’s fascinating memoir of growing up in West Virginia in the 1940s and ’50s: a time and place where the word “nonbinary” didn’t exist. This memoir from one of Canada’s most celebrated writers is an instant classic — timely, accessible, and wonderfully evocative. Maillard is a natural, gifted storyteller.
KEITH MAILLARD is the author of fourteen novels. He has won the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Literary Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Awards. He grew up in Wheeling, West Virginia, and has lived for many years in Vancouver, where he teaches creative writing at UBC.
also available:
isbn 978-1-988298-78-8 $22.95 cdn 5 × 8 paperback 272 pages canadian rights BIO031000 Biography & Autobiography / LGBT SOC032000 Social Science / Gender Studies BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs may 2021
A book about memory, loss, and reading from one of Canada’s finest essayists
Ever since childhood, Susan Olding has been a big reader, never without a book on the go. Not surprising, then, that she turns to the library to read her own life. From the dissolution of her marriage to the forging of a tentative relationship with her new partner’s daughter, from discovering Toronto as a young undergrad to, years later, watching her mother slowly go blind: through every experience, Olding crafts exquisite, searingly honest essays about what it means to be human, to be a woman — and to be a reader. Big Reader is a brilliant, achingly beautiful collection about the slipperiness of memory and identity, the enduring legacy of loss, and the nuanced disappointments and joys of a reading life.
“Susan Olding’s work combines the visceral force of lived experience with the nuance and narrative drive of the best fiction.” — Nino Ricci
SUSAN OLDING’s first book, Pathologies: A Life in Essays, was longlisted for the RBC Taylor Prize, won the Creative Nonfiction Collective’s Readers’ Choice Award, and was selected by 49th Shelf and Amazon.ca as one of 100 Canadian books to read in a lifetime. A long-time resident of Kingston, Olding currently lives in Victoria.
also available:
ibsn 978-1-988298-81-8 $22.95 cdn 5.5 × 8.5 paperback 300 pages north american rights LCO010000 Literary Collections / Essays BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs may 2021
A spellbinding novel celebrating Indigenous sensuality; the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French
When it was first published in Quebec, The Lover, The Lake was heralded as the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French. Today, as it is translated into English for the first time, author Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau would rather call it a celebration of sensuality, another first. At a time when Indigenous peoples were being dispossessed of their land and history as well as their relationship to the body, the love explored by Wabougouni and Gabriel is an act of defiance. Their intimate connection plays out on the shores of Lake Abitibi in an affair as turbulent and unfathomable as the lake itself.
“My hope is that this novel will serve to unearth the seed of joy buried deep in our culture, still profoundly alive . . . The Lover, the Lake shows us that we are not just suffering and victims: we can also be pleasure.” — from the prologue
VIRGINIA PESEMAPEO BORDELEAU is an internationally recognized visual artist and writer of Cree origin. She has published three novels and two poetry collections in French. She received the 2020 Artist of the Year Award from the Counseil des arts et lettres du Québec. She lives in Abitibi, in northwest Quebec. SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning writer, editor and literary translator, with over thirty translations and co-translations of fiction, non-fiction, children’s and young adult literature to her credit. She won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation. She lives in Calgary.
also available:
isbn 978-1-988298-84-9 $21.95 cdn 5.5 × 8.5 paperback 120 pages canadian rights FIC059000 Fiction / Native American & Aboriginal FIC027010 Fiction / Romance / Erotica FIC044000 Fiction / Women featured titles
isbn 978-1-988298-74-0 $24.95 cdn isbn 978-1-988298-71-9 $22.95 cdn
* Winner, City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize “Imagine the craft and form of Caroline Adderson’s * Finalist, Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Ellen in Pieces, a premise and scope like Kate Atkinson’s “This fearless collection of short stories addresses head- Life After Life, and an attention to the details of ordinary on the physical, emotional, and spiritual challenges of life that recalls the work of Carol Shields . . . If Sylvie aging women. The protagonists in these stories do not Had Nine Lives, by Leona Theis, is SO GOOD.” just rage against the dying of the light; they grab it by — Pickle Me This the throat, forcing the reader to confront uncomfortable and revelatory truth concerning what it is to age in a female body. Inspired by canonical stories such as John Cheever’s The Swimmer, James Joyce’s The Dead, and Shirley Jackson’s The Lottery, Butala reinvigorates aging myths and the writing craft itself.” — 2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury featured titles
isbn 978-1-988298-68-9 $23.95 cdn isbn 978-1-988298-55-9 $22.95 cdn
“What an enchanting world! Trailblazing artists, “With the same exacting precision Charlie uses to smouldering sensuality, and the rare mind of a visual make his paper birds, Friesen has sensitively created artist who changed the way we see. Every time I left a visceral, affecting narrative, folding in just the the book, I rushed to return, to be beguiled again by right amounts of compassion, elegance, horror, Crane’s deft and painterly vision, and her penetrating and wonder. The voices inside Universal Disorder will exploration of a woman genius at work in a field echo in your head long after turning the last page.” utterly dominated by men.” — Ashley Little, author of Niagara Motel — Shaena Lambert, author of Petra backlist
isbn 978-1-988298-28-8 $19.95 cdn/us isbn 978-1-988298-12-2 $16.95 cdn/us
* Audience choice winner of Canada Reads, 2019 * Finalist, 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry * OverDrive’s Big Library Read selection—April, 2019 * Finalist, 2018 City of Victoria Butler Book Prize * Finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction * Finalist for the 2019 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing “[A] late-career highlight . . . [Crozier] can speak * Winner of the 2019 Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction for the inanimate with whimsy and empathy, * Winner of the Alberta Book of the Year Award, Trade Non-Fiction knows when and how to conjure sensuality, and can sneak in an emotional payload.” “This extraordinary story is about the resilience of family in — Quill and Quire the face of profound terror; Yeung writes with a deceptively simple, meticulously observing eye and novelistic attention to plot and character.” — 2018 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing Jury (André Picard, Angela Sterritt, and Chris Turner) backlist
isbn 978-1-988298-59-7 $22.95 cdn/us isbn 978-1-988298-54-2 $22.95 cdn
* Selected for the Alberta Reads Book Club * Winner, 2020 Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction “Vanderstoop’s dystopian novel marries love of place, “I found it tender and devastating. A deep dive into the the power of human relationships and the hard reality trauma created by family secrets — and secret-keeping.” of climate change to produce a work that should — Sarah Selecky challenge a lot of our contemporary obsessions. This is “Unflinching and mesmerizing, Lauren Carter’s novel a cautionary tale about what really matters, rendered explores the daily impact of generational trauma, the the more powerful by the fact that it could very well need to love unreservedly, and a woman inching toward prove to be as much a work of prophecy as of fiction.” healing by dredging up the past.” — Kevin Van Tighem, author of Our Place: Changing the — Emily Pohl-Weary Nature of Alberta the complete list fiction cdn usd
978-1-55481-265-3 Afterlife of Birds, The Elizabeth Philips 2015 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-47-4 Agnes, Murderess Sarah Leavitt 2019 29.95
978-1-988298-34-4 All of Us In Our Own Lives Manjushree Thapa 2018 21.95
978-1-55481-054-3 And Me Among Them Kristen den Hartog 2011 21.95
978-1-55481-138-0 Are You Ready to Be Lucky? Rosemary Nixon 2013 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-207-3 Between Clay and Dust Musharraf Ali Farooqi 2014 19.95
978-1-55481-016-1 Blue Sunflower Startle Yasmin Ladha 2010 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-186-1 Boundary Problems Greg Bechtel 2014 19.95 19.95
978-1-55111-879-6 Buying Cigarettes for the Dog Stuart Ross 2009 19.95 19.95
978-1-55481-109-0 Crimes of Hector Tomás, The Ian Colford 2012 21.95
978-1-988298-18-4 Dazzle Patterns Alison Watt 2017 21.95 21.95
978-1-55111-730-0 Description of the Blazing World, A Michael Murphy 2011 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-182-3 Dilettantes, The Michael Hingston 2013 21.95
978-1-55111-978-6 Doctrine of Affections, The Paul Headrick 2010 23.95 23.95
978-1-988298-56-6 End of Me, The John Gould 2020 22.95 22.95
978-1-988298-25-2 Figgs, The Ali Bryan 2018 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-139-7 Green and Purple Skin of the World, The paulo da costa 2013 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-021-5 Hold Me Now Stephen Gauer 2011 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-37-5 Hummingbird Devin Krukoff 2018 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-71-9 If Sylvie Had Nine Lives Leona Theis 2020 22.95 22.95
978-1-988298-84-9 Lover, the Lake, The Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau, trans. by Susan Ouriou 2021 21.95
978-1-55481-318-6 Middenrammers John Bart 2016 21.95 21.95
978-1-55111-927-4 Mother Superior Saleema Nawaz 2008 23.95 23.95
978-1-55481-253-0 Mystics of Mile End, The Sigal Samuel 2015 21.95
978-1-55111-995-3 Not Anyone’s Anything Ian Williams 2011 21.95
978-1-55481-060-4 Not Being on a Boat Esmé Claire Keith 2011 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-68-9 One Madder Woman Dede Crane 2020 23.95
978-1-55111-932-8 Open Arms Marina Endicott 2009 23.95
978-1-55481-059-8 People Who Disappear Alex Leslie 2012 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-286-8 Perfect World Ian Colford 2016 19.95 19.95
978-1-55111-925-0 postcard and other stories Anik See 2009 23.95 23.95
978-1-55481-062-8 Reverse Cowgirl, The David Whitton 2011 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-137-3 Roost Ali Bryan 2013 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-09-2 Searching for Petronius Totem Peter Unwin 2017 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-74-0 Season of Fury and Wonder Sharon Butala 2020 24.95
978-1-55481-079-6 Seen Reading Julie Wilson 2012 21.95 21.95 the complete list fiction continued cdn usd
978-1-988298-62-7 Speechless Anne Simpson 2020 22.95 22.95
978-1-988298-44-3 Student, The Cary Fagan 2019 21.95
978-1-55481-264-6 Swallows Uncaged, The: A Narrative in Eight Panels Elizabeth McLean 2015 21.95
978-1-988298-01-6 Teardown Clea Young 2016 19.95
978-1-988298-54-2 This Has Nothing to Do With You Lauren Carter 2019 22.95
978-1-988298-49-8 Towers of Babylon, The Michelle Kaeser 2019 22.95
978-1-988298-31-3 Twin Studies Keith Maillard 2018 24.95
978-1-988298-21-4 Two Roads Home Daniel Griffin 2017 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-55-9 Universal Disorder Bernice Friesen 2020 22.95
978-1-988298-59-7 Watershed Doreen Vanderstoop 2020 22.95 22.95
978-1-988298-00-9 Weather Inside, The Emily Saso 2016 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-228-8 Welcome to the Circus Rhonda Douglas 2015 19.95 19.95
978-1-55481-061-1 While the Sun Is Above Us Melanie Schnell 2012 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-303-2 White Elephant Catherine Cooper 2016 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-06-1 Winter Child Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau, 2017 21.95 trans. by Susan Ouriou and Christelle Morelli nonfiction
978-1-988298-81-8 Big Reader: Essays Susan Olding 2021 22.95
978-1-55111-928-1 Bitter Medicine: A Graphic Memoir of Mental Illness Clem Martini & Olivier Martini 2010 23.95 23.95
978-1-988298-78-8 Bridge, The: Writing Across the Binary Keith Maillard 2021 22.95
978-1-55481-206-6 Detachment: An Adoption Memoir Maurice Mierau 2014 21.95 21.95
978-1-55481-105-2 Every Wolf’s Howl Barry Grills 2012 21.95 21.95
978-1-988298-28-3 Homes: A Refugee Story Abu Bakr al Rabeeah with Winnie Yeung 2018 19.95 19.95
978-1-55481-195-3 One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery Karyn L. Freedman 2014 21.95
978-1-55111-930-4 Pathologies: A Life in Essays Susan Olding 2008 23.95 23.95
978-1-988298-41-2 Seizure the Day: Living a Happy Life with Illness Brian Orend 2019 22.95 22.95
978-1-55111-117-9 Tangles: A story about Alzheimer’s, my mother, and me Sarah Leavitt 2010 23.95
978-1-988298-15-3 The Unravelling Clem Martini & Olivier Martini 2017 23.95 23.95
poetry
978-1-55111-960-1 Harmonics Jesse Patrick Ferguson 2009 16.95 16.95
978-1-55111-851-2 Here Is Where We Disembark Clea Roberts 2010 16.95 16.95
978-1-55111-926-7 It’s Hard Being Queen: The Dusty Springfield Poems Jeanette Lynes 2008 16.95 16.95
978-1-55481-104-5 Personals Ian Williams 2012 16.95 16.95
978-1-55111-961-8 subUrban Legends Joan Crate 2009 16.95 16.95
978-1-988298-12-2 What the Soul Doesn’t Want Lorna Crozier 2017 16.95 16.95 11 freehand books ampersand inc. ordering info
Kelsey Attard WESTERN CANADA EASTERN CANADA University of Toronto Press Distribution Managing Editor Vancouver Office Head Office (UTP) [email protected] 2440 Viking Way 321 Carlaw Avenue, Suite 213 5201 Dufferin Street Richmond, British Columbia Toronto, Ontario Toronto, Ontario 515, 815 1st Street SW v6v 1n2 m4m 2s1 M3H 5T8 Calgary, Alberta T 604.448.7111 T 416.703.0666 T 1.800.565.9533 t2p 1n3 F 604.448.7118 F 416.703.4745 F 1.800.221.9985 T 403.452.5662 T (toll free) 800.561.8583 T (toll free) 866.736.5620 [email protected] F 403.452.0960 F (toll free) 888.323.7118 F (toll free) 866.849.3819
BRITISH COLUMBIA/ ONTARIO Freehand Books gratefully ALBERTA/ Saffron Beckwith acknowledges the financial SASKATCHEWAN/ [email protected] support of the Canada Council MANITOBA/YUKON/ ext 124 for the Arts, the Government of NUNAVUT/NWT Canada, and the Alberta Media Vanessa Di Gregorio Ali Hewitt Fund for its publishing program. [email protected] [email protected] ext 122 T 604.448.7166 Jenny Enriquez Pavan Ranu [email protected] [email protected] ext 126 T 604.448.7165 Morgen Young Dani Farmer [email protected] [email protected] ext 128 T 604.448.7168 Laureen Cusack Jessica Price [email protected] [email protected] ext 120 T 604.448.7170 Evette Sintichakis [email protected] QUEBEC ext 121 Jenny Enriquez [email protected] Kris Hykel T 866.736.5620 [email protected] F 416.703.4745 ext 127
ATLANTIC PROVINCES Kris Hykel [email protected] T 866.736.5620 F 416.703.4745