NEW STAR BOOKS Spring 2017 New Star Books Spring 2017 New Titles + Recent Highlights + Complete Backlist

New Titles 1 A Short Sad Book by George Bowering 2 Maria Mahoi of the Islands by Jean Barman 3 Culture Gap and Beyond: Real Life in a New World by Judith Plant 4 if wants to be the same as is: The Essential Poems of David Bromige by David Bromige (Jack Krick, Bob Perelman, Ron Silliman, eds.) 5 A perimeter by rob mclennan 6 The Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed by Andrew Struthers

Recent Fiction Recent Poetry 6 Piranesi’s Figures by Hannah Calder 9 Clean Sails by Gustave Morin 6 Dance Moves of the Near Future by Tim Conley 9 Twenty Seven Stings by Julie Emerson and Roxanna Bikadoroff, illus.

Recent Non-fiction 9 The World, I Guess by George Bowering 7 The News We Deserve: The Transformation of 10 Loitersack by Donato Mancini Canada’s Media Landscape by Marc Edge 10 North of California St. by George Stanley 7 A Series of Dogs by John Armstrong 10 Posh Lust by Louis Cabri 7 Soviet Princeton by Jon Bartlett and Rika 10 Parkway by Peter Culley Ruebsaat 11 Rua da Felicidade by Ken Norris 7 Around the World on Minimum Wage by Andrew Struthers 11 sybil unrest by Larissa Lai and Rita Wong 8 Greatly Exaggerated by Marc Edge 11 After Desire by George Stanley 8 Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? by W.F. Garrett- 11 Indigena Awry by Annharte Petts, James Hoffman and Ginny Ratsoy, eds. 8 Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics by Graeme Truelove 8 Mac-Pap by Ronald Liversedge and David Yorke, ed. 9 Rebel Life by Mark Leier 12 Complete backlist 14 Ordering information

On the cover: Head by Andrew Struthers; body and book cover by Greg Curnoe, from A Short Sad Book, George Bowering (Talonbooks, 1977) NEW FORMAT REPRINT :: fiction

George Bowering A Short Sad Book Introduction by Erín Moure Afterword by George Bowering

Original 1977 cover

These days, Canada is a heavyweight of world fiction, boasting PUBLICATION DATE some of the gaudiest names in the literary firmament, its schools MARCH 23, 2017 graduating great writers by the frontlist. It’s easy to forget that it was SPECS not always so. Trade ppb, 224 pages, 5.5” x 8.5” Forty years ago, George Bowering saw a country still struggling PRICE to find itself in its books, and decided to write A Short Sad Book $19 CAD • $17 USD about it. Did he know he was writing if not The Great Canadian ISBN Novel something like it? 978-1-55420-129-7 Originally published in 1977, A Short Sad Book has plenty of what you’d expect any Great Canadian Novel to have plenty of: geog- raphy, love, loons crying in the wilderness, lots of beavers. There’s a romance between Sir John A. and Evangeline, a Purdy good detec- tive named Al hot on the trail of whoever killed Tom Thompson (yes, that one), terror in the form of white rabbits from the Black Moun- tain, Riel, Dumont, postmodernism (there’s even a character named “George Bowering”!!), and cameos by Gertrude Stein as the muse, Frank Mahovlich as the travel agent, and Jack McClelland as himself. Poet/translator Erín Moure provides an introduction for this new edition, peeling back just enough layers of Bowering’s short but incredibly rich novel to show even more layers underneath. Bowering’s own Afterword provides additional context. A teachable moment in Canadian literature if ever there was one.

George Bowering is a two-time Governor General’s Award winner and the author of at least one hundred books, most recently The Dad Dialogues (with Charles Demers, 2016), The Hockey Scribbler (2016), Attack of the Toga Gang (2015), Ten Women (2015), Writing the Okanagan (2015), and The World, I Guess (2015).

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Jean Barman Maria Mahoi of the Islands [Revised second edition]

Since its original publication in 2004, Maria Mahoi of the Islands SERIES has become a classic in its field, and an important document on the Transmontanus No. 13 history of Indigenous Hawaiians known as Kanakas, who had an PUBLICATION DATE early presence across the Pacific Northwest and are now part of the APRIL 27, 2017 broader Hawaiian diaspora across North America. SPECS Born in the mid-1850s on Vancouver Island to an Indigenous Trade ppb, 128 pages, 6.75” x 9.75” Hawaiian father and an Indigenous British Columbian mother, PRICE Maria (pronounced Ma-RYE-ah) moved as a young woman to Salt $19 CAD • $17 USD Spring Island in British Columbia’s Strait of Georgia, and in mid-life to her very own nearby Russell Island. Now part of the Gulf Islands ISBN National Park Reserve, the island and Maria’s home, overseen by des- 978-1-55420-132-7 cendants, are open to visitors. A true pioneer, Maria lived until 1936 and bore thirteen children, but also kept her father’s surname and fiercely protected her interests, including a legal action to acquire Russell Island in her own name. Maria Mahoi’s many descendants encouraged and facilitated the telling of her story in its original and now revised edition. Drawing on information that has come to light since the book’s first publication—and sometimes as a result of it—Jean Barman has updated and expanded her account, and written a new Foreword talk- ing about the life that the book has taken on. Maria Mahoi of the Islands was originally published as number 13 in the Transmontanus series. The author of numerous articles and books, including The West Beyond the West: A History of British Columbia, Jean Barman has a MA in Russian Studies (Harvard), MLS (Berkeley), EdD in History of Education (UBC) and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. She lives in Vancouver.

2 See newstarbooks.com for more details Click here to return to contents NEW RELEASE :: memoir

Judith Plant Culture Gap And Beyond Real Life in a New World

The time is the early 1980s. Judith Plant and her new partner, Kip, SERIES are ready for a change. Inspired by the charismatic Fred Brown, their Transmontanus No. 22 communications professor at Simon Fraser University, they join a PUBLICATION DATE commune in a remote valley near the Yalakom River, deep in BC’s May 25, 2017 Coast Mountains. SPECS Culture Gap and Beyond: Real Life in a New World tells the story Trade ppb, 128 pages, 6.75” x 9.75” of that sojourn. The challenges and privations, the joys and adven- tures of rural communal living, form the backdrop to the human PRICE drama the author recounts. Judith and Kip’s family includes her chil- $19 CAD • $17 USD dren; Willie takes to the new life, but his sisters feel the strong pull ISBN of the life they left behind. Meanwhile Fred, the inspiration for the 978-1-55420-133-4 commune, stricken with cancer, is dying. An absorbing account of a lifestyle emblematic of a time, Culture Gap and Beyond also shows, from her own older perspective, a young mother’s struggles to reconcile her social ideals of personal and environmental responsibility, and loving and caring for those closest to her. Judith Plant, together with her late partner Kip, is longtime publisher of New Society Publishers of Gabriola, BC. She co–edited the collections Healing the Wounds: The Promise of Ecofeminism, and Home! A Bioregional Reader.

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David Bromige if wants to be the same as is Edited by Jack Krick, Bob Perelman, and Ron Silliman Introduction by George Bowering

Drawn from 22 books of poetry published by David Bromige in his PUBLICATION DATE lifetime, if wants to be the same as is chronicles the career of one JUNE 29 2017 of contemporary poetry’s most distinctive writers. SPECS Born in London, England, in 1933, raised in Canada, and a resi- Trade ppb, 640 pages, 6.75” x 9.75” dent for most of his adult life of California, David Bromige is just as PRICE difficult to pin down in terms of his aesthetics. As a student at the $45 CAD • $35 USD University of BC in the early 1960s, Bromige met writers like Fred ISBN Wah, George Bowering, and Jamie Reid, who pointed him towards 978-1-55420-134-1 the American postmodernists, and eventually, to a scholarship to UC–Berkeley. There, he became immersed in the Bay Area’s explo- sively creative poetry scene, and came to be associated with many of the L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets. Bromige’s own work, however, holds wide appeal and from the start resisted any sort of classification, winning praise across the literary- critical spectrum. His publishers included Black Sparrow Press (Bukowski’s publisher), Sun & Moon, Brick, and The Figures, and he won acclaim from the likes of Robert Hass, the Poetry Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He died in Sebastopol, California, in 2009. if wants to be the same as is presents a life’s work that is, in the words of Bob Perelman, “beautiful, deeply amusing, continually sur- prising.” David Bromige taught at Sonoma State University for over twenty years, published thirty books of poetry, and was twice honoured by both the Poetry Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. He died in 2009.

4 See newstarbooks.com for more details Click here to return to contents FALL 2016 DROP-IN :: poetry

rob mclennan A perimeter

A new child, a new house, a new neighbourhood: rob mclennan PUBLICATION DATE takes the measure of his environment in A Perimeter, a collection NOVEMBER 17, 2016 of shorter and longer pieces from 2010 to 2014. SPECS Trade paperback, 80 pages, 5.5” x 8.5” “In fatherhood, mclennan has found a perfect subject for his signa- ture rhythmic gifts: their pause and heft, their sweeping forward PRICE and pulling back. Listen to A perimeter and you will hear a moment $18 CAD • $16 USD expand, a year collapse. This is a book about focus, but also about the ISBN blur of sleep deprivation. As with so much about parenting, it is equal 978-1-55420-128-0 parts gratitude and bewilderment. Could it be any other way?” —Marcus McCann “Metaphors abound. rob mclennan’s poems are shards, piercing & cutting through the dross of the world; or rob mclennan’s poems are neutron stars, dense & compactified & replete with signification(s) within their deceptively small visual fields, reshaping & reworking semantic space; or rob mclennan’s poems are the aesthetic logarithms of the human heart & human experience, the powers, the ratios, the functions of the experiential. Or (& I can’t stress this enough) all of the above.” —Gil McElroy

rob mclennan is the author of over thirty books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, most recentlyThe Uncertainty Principle: Stories (2014) and the poetry collection If suppose we are a fragment (2014). In 2016 mclennan was inducted into the VERSe Ottawa Hall of Honour. He lives in Ottawa with Christine McNair and their two small girls.

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Andrew Struthers

The Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed

NEW PUBLICATION DATE The Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Piranesi’s Figures Dance Moves of the APRIL 20, 2017 Weed is informative and even Near Future SPECS enlightening, but above all, it’s a Hannah Calder Double-sided trade paperback hilarious look at a humble plant Tim Conley that has entertained, inspired, and 160 pages, 5.5” x 8.5” Reading Calder is to move occasionally terrified so many for through the world barefoot A wild ride through the absurd, PRICE so long. over asphalt, grass, sand and the surreal and the specula- $19 CAD • $18 USD Andrew Struthers directs his water. This is sensual, insightful tive . . . What is Conley doing ISBN “brilliant madness” towards the writing. ambivalent nature of marijuana, that’s so effective? It’s part 978-1-55420-115-0 — Michael Turner, author of 8 X 10 once the target of “reefer mad- story­telling prowess, part and The Pornographer’s Poem ness” hysteria and now available hitting the sweet spot between for quasi-legal purchase at Piranesi’s Figures is a romp through realism and the weird (and the dispensaries on every other block “the magnificent psychological weird is almost always played (at least in some jurisdictions). ruins of at least two marriages “straight), part dedication to One side of this double and one attempt at child–rearing, the aesthetic as overriding paperback celebrates the glorious and a gleefully reckless contortion function . . . The overall effect highs of pot, from the friendships of novelistic conventions, sexual of these 24 experiments isn’t it helps forge to the creative practices, and family dynamics. an idea but a feeling: an output it enhances. The other As in her first novel, More House, unsettling, a strangely pleasant grapples with the dark side of Hannah Calder peers into hidden pot: the embellished claims of its corners and under creaking beds unease. —Globe & Mail proponents, the lives its overuse with such relentless abandon that SPECS ppb, 160 pp, 6” x 9” has ruined, and the dangers of a even her own characters bristle at product so strong it bears little her advances. The result is a dense PRICE $18 CAD • $16 USD resemblance to your parents’ pot. witches-brew of storytelling, a ISBN 978-1-55420-097-9 With Canada poised to join feminist-tinged fairytale. PUBLISHED 2014 several U.S. states in finally re-legalizing­ marijuana, The SPECS ppb, 234 pp, 5.5" x 8.5" Sacred Herb / The Devil’s Weed is PRICE $21 CAD • $19 USD your liferaft in the coming sativa ISBN 978-1-55420-112-9 tsunami. PUBLISHED 2016

6 See newstarbooks.com for more details Click here to return to contents NON-FICTION

The News We Deserve A Series of Dogs Soviet Princeton Around the World on The Transformation of Canada’s Slim Evans and the 1932–33 Minimum Wage Media Landscape John Armstrong Miners’ Strike Andrew Struthers Marc Edge John Armstrong uses his wry Jon Bartlett & wit and vivid prose to evoke a Rika Ruebsaat To understand this culture, we Marc Edge is one of the most life immeasurably enriched by need writers with a genuine prescient and provocative ob- BC Book Prizes finalist one best friend after another. sense of humour, such as servers of the Canadian media BCHF Historical Writing Awards He tells boyhood tales of romp- Struthers. scene. The News We Deserve is a finalist ing along the railroad tracks —Phillip Marchand, National Post compelling book showing how with Spooky the mutt, touching A fascinating chapter in labour money, policy, and education accounts of Sluggo the Rottwei- organizing history in Canada. Something of a hybrid spawned have aligned to give Canadians ler befriending sex workers, —Literary Review of Canada of Gulliver’s Travels, William poorer journalism than they howl-inducing memories of Kotwinkle’s classic The Fan Man, “deserve. Anyone concerned A carefully documented and “ laying a treasured friend to rest and National Lampoon mag- about the role journalism plays during a rain- and beer-soaked well-textured chronicle of a azine . . . I was hooked on his in Canadian politics, culture, night, and many more stories class’ dangerous struggle for manic stream of the sublime, and society will find his critique both moving and hilarious. livable wages set against a the sublimely ridiculous and deeply unsettling. “landscape of political and social much that lies strewn some- — Robert G. Picard, Reuters Institute SPECS ppb, 192 pp, 5.5” x 8.5” unrest. —Penticton Western News “where between the two— for the Study of Journalism, PRICE $21 CAD • $19 USD Required reading for the Cana- especially the delightful University of Oxford ISBN 978-1-55420-118-1 dian leftist who is curious as to graphics.­ —BC Studies PUBLISHED Fall 2016 “ SPECS ppb, 224 pp, 6” x 9” what exactly was going on west Imagine T.E. Lawrence’s Seven PRICE $24 CAD • $24 USD of the Rockies during the worst Pillars of Wisdom performed ISBN 978-1-55420-121-1 of the Depression. —Socialist.ca PHOTOGRAPHS 12 B&W as a Bob and Doug McKenzie sketch, and you’re halfway there. PUBLISHED Fall 2016 SPECS ppb, 136 pp, 6” x 9” —subTerrain PRICE $19 CAD • $18 USD “ISBN 978-1-55420-109-9 SPECS ppb, 304 pp, 5.5” x 8.5” PHOTOGRAPHS 12 B&W PRICE $24 CAD • $21 USD PUBLISHED 2015 “ISBN 978-1-55420-086-3 ILLUSTRATIONS numerous, by the author PUBLISHED 2014

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Greatly Exaggerated Whose Culture Is It, Svend Robinson Mac-Pap The Myth of the Death of Anyway? A Life in Politics Memoir of a Canadian in the Newspapers Community Engagement in Spanish Civil War Graeme Truelove Small Cities Marc Edge Ronald Liversedge BC Book Prizes finalist W.F. Garrett-Petts David Yorke (ed.) Soundly researched . . . delivers James Hoffman Informative, interesting and the analytics lacking in many Ginny Ratsoy (eds.) sometimes very moving. A ter- In recognizing Liversedge and reports about the ‘death’ of rific biography of an amazing his compatriots, we recognize Addresses important questions the centrality of the subjects printed news. man. —Rabble.ca —Newspaper Research Journal about the contribution of associated with the Great arts and culture in small and Readers will learn a great deal Depression to the emergence of A provocative thesis that Edge medium sized cities and the about Robinson, his motiva- a vibrant social history on the backs up with reams of data . . . ethos and ethics of supporting tions, his colleagues and friends, Left Coast and elsewhere. And he accomplishes this with “ cultural development in these “and gain multiple valuable —BC Studies a breezy, readable style. —BC Studies insights into the internal “ environments. A fascinating and much needed —Georgia Straight workings of the political system contribution to the slowly Demonstrates ample awareness “Includes contributions by Bruce during one of the most tumul- growing number of books on tuous eras in Canadian, British and critique of the dangers to Baugh, bill bissett, Ila Crawford, Canada’s role in the Spanish good journalism of excessive Nancy Duxbury, Alexander Forbes, “Columbian, and NDP history. Civil War —The Volunteer “ —BC Studies profit orientation. Kathleen Irwin, Terry Kading & —Journalism & Mass Communication Christopher Walmsley, Caffyn Ronald Liversedge’s (author of Quarterly Kelley, Ernie Kroeger, Lucy Lippard, SPECS trade paperback, 352 Recollections of the On-to-Ottawa Adelheid Mers, Judith Miller, pages, 6” x 9” “Trek) memoir of his two years at SPECS trade paperback, 320 Bernard Momer, Maureen F. Rogers PRICE $24 CAD • $24 USD the front is richly illustrated and “pages, 6” x 9” & Barry P. Brockley, Si Transken, and ISBN 978-1-55420-072-6 annotated by labour historian PRICE $21 CAD • $21 USD Savannah Walling. PHOTOGRAPHS 32 B&W David Yorke. ISBN 978-1-55420-102-0 PUBLISHED 2013 PUBLISHED 2014 SPECS trade paperback, 320 SPECS trade paperback, 224 pages, 6.75” x 9.75” pages, 5.5” x 8.5” PRICE $35 CAD • $35 USD PRICE $19 CAD • $19 USD ISBN 978-1-55420-087-0 ISBN 978-1-55420-071-9 PHOTOGRAPHS 35 B&W PHOTOGRAPHS 19 B&W PUBLISHED 2014 PUBLISHED 2013

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Rebel Life (2nd ed. rev.) Clean Sails Twenty Seven Stings The World, I Guess The Life and Times of Robert Gustave Morin Julie Emerson George Bowering Gosden, Revolutionary, Mystic, Illustrated by Labour Spy Alcuin Book Design Awards, Roxanna Bikadoroff Bowering’s candour is be- honourable mention Mark Leier guiling. He gives you a good Stunningly complex, hyp­ Carefully crafted, lapidary time with his writing, you feel More than a biography: a rich notic visual poems composed poems . . . illustrated with comfortable, even chummy, in examination of a radical era manually on modified type­ powerful drawings . . . Deft his presence; he’s playful, but that students of labour history writers . . . A major entry into and austere, evoking the gaudy then he nails you with some will benefit from . . . [Leier] has Canada’s corpus of typewriter horrors of war and what it does hard truths. —Vancouver Sun shared the details of [Gosden’s] poetry, a strange, stunning book to women . . . The voices that “The World, I Guess is a substantial life with the imagination where every page impresses drive and inform her poems are book that commands a broad of a mystery writer and the strong and fierce, and women with its meticulous patterning. poetic range, a catholic span of in- documentary knowledge of one —Winnipeg Free Press “are agents as well as objects. “ terests, and echoes of a lifetime of of our most seasoned labour —Vancouver Sun An epic of oddball sights, a saga reading and learning from Pound, “historians. —BC Studies Williams, Stanley, and others. of unstable figures, and a co- Twenty Seven Stings is a suite of The centrepiece is “The Flood,” Rebel Life plumbs the enigma that lossus of concrete poems made seventeen poems inspired by was Gosden, but it is much more: roles of women in wars, and the a long, complex, discursive poem from an arsenal of typewriters whose subject is poesis and whose an introduction to BC labour his- with names like Tooth Courier, cultural histories and military strategies that have led us into interest is in the world around the tory; a trove of rarely seen archival Hector Wheat-Gomez, and Cy photographs, and sidebars rich wars throughout history, from writer. But the book ends with a Machina. —subTerrain with historical arcana; and, with sixth-century BCE China to Alex- suite of translations of the “mod- its chapter describing the research ander the Great to contemporary ern” Canadian poetry canon, from “SPECS ppb, 164 pp, 6.5” x 8.75” Charles G.D. Roberts and Archibald that unearthed Gosden’s story, American drone warfare. PRICE $24 CAD • $21 USD a rich resource for instructors, Lampman to Irving Layton and students, and trade unionists alike. ISBN 978-1-55420-108-2 SPECS ppb, 72 pages, 6” x 9” Phyllis Webb. PUBLISHED 2015 PRICE $18 CAD • $16 USD SPECS trade paperback, 160 SPECS trade paperback, 192 ISBN 978-1-55420-107-5 pages, 6” x 9” pages, 6” x 9” PUBLISHED 2015 PRICE $18 CAD • $16 USD PRICE $21 CAD • $21 USD ISBN 978-1-55420-096-2 ISBN 978-1-55420-058-0 PUBLISHED 2015 PHOTOGRAPHS 20 B&W PUBLISHED 2013

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Loitersack North of California St. Posh Lust Parkway Selected Poems 1975–1999 (Hammertown, Part 3) Donato Mancini Louis Cabri George Stanley Peter Culley Packed full of quotations, analy- Introduction by Sharon Thesen Smart, sometimes silly, and ses, and deconstructions of and always biting, Cabri’s poems Culley’s poetry is remarkable about poetry, and yet it never A rich selection of [Stanley’s] are poetic products par excel- for its suspension of rhetorical gets old . . . the effect is just as much earlier work, some of it lence . . . Posh Lust resembles elegance, together with all the perplexing and just as thrilling dating back 40 years, with an a compost heap of poetic stubborn rawness of the refusal as sitting down with the work incisive introduction . . . His po- language. Cabri’s primary target to stop seeing. The inconsisten- of a well-loved scholar. The best ems are often like slide shows, is neo-liberal capitalism, which cies and ravelled edges result- “part of Loitersack is that Donato kaleidoscopic and discontin- “is happy to destroy the world ing from this charged refusal Mancini makes it fun. The book uous . . . at times he rises to for you as long as you fill out “are themselves the troubled is simultaneously a theatrical great beauty. —Vancouver Sun its satisfaction survey: “Most condition of “being,” which is play, a grocery list, a decon- “ Satisfying Rubble: / (a) chunks but one refraction among many struction of laughter (you have North of California St. will be (b) dust.” —Winnipeg Free Press in natural history. to read it to understand), and most useful to newcomers —Lisa Robertson, Lemonhound People study poetry and some uniquely poetic. At times it is al- to Stanley’s work, readers read it. Poetry is a pinnacle most nonsensical, but charming who may have missed the Parkway is suffused with publication of the four out-of- art — as in “a small ornamental impulses of loyalty, generosity, all the same. turret” — even when it’s a drunk —Contemporary Verse 2 print books from which this and discovery, all of which imaginary communist, or just a can be found in moments of collection is drawn. Thesen’s drunk imaginary. Kitsch makes laughter, nostalgia, or learning. SPECS trade paperback, 128 introduction helps place this the serious art of poetry bearable, pages, 6” x 9” “selection of poetry in the con- —subTerrain so that poetry may become a PRICE $21 CAD • $19 USD text of Stanley’s larger career, ISBN 978-1-55420-085-6 situation where one is entertained SPECS trade paperback, 96 PUBLISHED 2014 as “a retrospective reading” of by many an aspirational boner or “pages, 6” x 9” Stanley’s first few Canadian becuntment in the literary field. PRICE $18 CAD • $18 USD decades. —Malahat Review ISBN 978-1-55420-076-4 SPECS trade paperback, 96 PUBLISHED 2013 SPECS trade paperback, 192 pages, 6” x 9” pages, 6” x 9” PRICE $18 CAD • $18 USD PRICE $21 CAD • $21 USD ISBN 978-1-55420-083-2 ISBN 978-1-55420-082-5 PUBLISHED 2014 PUBLISHED 2014

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Rua da Felicidade sybil unrest After Desire Indigena Awry

Ken Norris Larissa Lai & George Stanley Annharte Rita Wong A lonesome travelogue that In tandem with being or Blue Metropolis First Peoples Literary Prize winner (2015) explores loss, place, and poetic A witty, often trenchan­ tly funny becoming invisible as an object form . . . His awareness is what repar­tee on main­tain­ing a of desire as he ages, Stanley’s This book directly responds to makes this collection shine. resis­tant spirit in an envi­ron­ poetry also ruminates on the the injustices facing Aboriginal Rua Da Felicidade is a formal ment of aggres­sive glob­al­ized process of making poetic mean- people. It is revolutionary and thematic battle against con­sumerism. ing itself when the impetus— literature. —Contemporary Verse 2 (and growing understanding —Canadian Literature desire—abates. [The poem] is of) a postmodern world . . . We the gift that the poet can offer Saturated with rejection of “ A lively, feminist foray into an “honest Injun” clichés and of hear the voices of the many, as “others, having lived through opposed to just the one. And “avant-garde poetics of cultural the mysteries of desire, having ageist and sexist stereotypes and political critique . . . Lever- “from settler culture . . . The all of them are shouting out for not yet, not ever solved the creation. —Contemporary Verse 2 ages multiple identities as an pull to beauty, to youth, to the ‘experimental’ is never separate opening from which to shake consolations of old age. from a passionate rejection of Rua Da Felicidade celebrates mem- up and transmute political and ­—Canadian Literature white bourgeois aesthetics. ory and desire precisely in their cultural structures, even to the —Canadian Literature immateriality and impermanence, “ (up)root(ing) of language and The poems in After Desire might seeking to constantly immerse Never veers into polemic— “form. The romp and sounds be sparked by the beauty of a itself in the uncertain materiality Annharte pays too much of language are joyful, funny, waiter in a restaurant in Stanley’s attention to language for this of the here and now. As such, it Kitsilano neighbourhood, by a challenges Williams’s dictum “no rousing, agitating, shifting the work to be mere treatise. Here possibilities, recanting the line conversation in his neighbourhood ideas but in things”: “You’ll sail pub, by a glance exchanged with too there is pleasure in sound of logic. —Herizons the world / in your paper boat, / a baby or a teenager on the bus, and language, sultry sexual eventually throwing out / your by a failing vacuum cleaner, or by exultations, strength and pride. cordless anchor.” SPECS trade paperback, 128 pages, 6” x 9” another poet’s poem. Whichever “ —The Rusty Tuque the case may be, Stanley’s poetry SPECS trade paperback, 96 PRICE $18 CAD • $18 USD remains solidly embedded in the SPECS trade paperback, 144 pages, 5.5” x 8.5” ISBN 978-1-55420-069-6 material city in which he lives. pages, 6” x 9” PRICE $18 CAD • $18 USD PUBLISHED 2013 PRICE $19 CAD • $19 USD ISBN 978-1-55420-073-3 SPECS ppb, 96 pages, 5.5” x 8.5” ISBN 978-1-55420-067-2 PUBLISHED 2013 PRICE $18 CAD • $18 USD PUBLISHED 2012 ISBN 978-1-55420-070-2 PUBLISHED 2013

Click here to return to contents See newstarbooks.com for more details 11 COMPLETE BACKLIST BY TITLE

TITLE (bold=ebook available) GENRE ISBN YEAR PUBLISHED CDN / USD AUTHOR Æthel POETRY 978-1-55420-030-6 2007 $21 / $18 Field Day NF 978-1-55420-002-3 2003 $21 / $21 Donato Mancini Matt Hern After Desire P 978-1-55420-070-2 2013 $18 / $18 Franzlations P 978-1-55420-062-7 2011 $19 / $19 George Stanley Gary Barwin, Hugh Thomas, & Craig Conley Age of Briggs & Stratton The P 978-1-55420-039-9 2008 $18 / $16 Gardens Aflame NF 978-1-55420-065-8 2012 $19 / $19 Peter Culley Maleea Acker Along the No. 20 Line NON-FICTION 978-1-55420-061-0 2011 $24 / $24 Ghost in the Water A NF 978-0-921586-38-8 1994 $16 / $16 Rolf Knight Terry Glavin Anarchive P 978-1-55420-018-4 2005 $18 / $16 Greatly Exaggerated NF 978-1-55420-102-0 2014 $21 / $21 Stephen Collis Marc Edge Around the World on Minimum Wage NF 978-1-55429-086-3 2014 $24 / $21 Green Shadow The NF 978-0-921586-44-9 1995 $16 / $16 Andrew Struthers Andrew Struthers Asper Nation N 978-1-55420-032-0 2007 $21 / $21 Guilty of Everything NF 978-0-921586-86-9 2001 $16 / $16 Marc Edge John Armstrong Backup to Babylon P 978-1-55420-024-5 2006 $20 / $16 Hammertown P 978-1-55420-000-9 2003 $16 / $16 Maxine Gadd Peter Culley Basking Sharks N 978-1-55420-022-1 2006 $19 / $19 Heart of the Community The NF 978-0-921586-94-4 2003 $24 / $24 Scott Wallace & Brian Gisborne Paul Taylor (ed.) Box The FICTION 978-1-55420-045-0 2009 $19 / $19 High Slack NF 978-0-921586-45-6 1996 $16 / $16 George Bowering Judith Williams Briss The F 978-1-55420-043-6 2009 $19 / $19 Hollywood Utopia NF 978-0-921586-90-6 2002 $18 / $18 Michael Tregebov Justine Brown Buffet World P 978-1-55420-054-2 2011 $21 / $21 IKMQ P 978-1-55420-064-1 2012 $16 / $16 Donato Mancini Roger Farr Burning Water F 978-1-55420-036-8 2007 $19 / $19 In the Millennium P 978-1-55420-047-4 2009 $18 / $16 George Bowering Barry McKinnon Calendar Boy F 978-0-921586-82-1 2001 $20 / $20 Indigena Awry P 978-1-55420-067-2 2012 $19 / $19 Andy Quan Annharte (Marie Baker) Caprice F 978-1-55420-053-5 2010 $19 / $19 Islands of Resistance NF 978-1-55420-050-4 2010 $21 / $21 George Bowering Andrea Langlois, Ron Sakolsky, and Marian van der Zon (eds.) Captivity Tales NF 978-0-921586-32-6 1993 $18 / $18 Killing Time F 978-1-55420-019-1 2005 $18 / $18 Elizabeth Hay Hank Schachte Cedar Surf The NF 978-0-921586-93-7 2003 $16 / $16 Kokanee NF 978-0-921586-85-2 2002 $16 / $16 Grant Shilling Don Gayton Chiwid NF 978-0-921586-39-5 1995 $16 / $16 Last Best West The NF 978-1-55420-044-3 2009 $24 / $24 Sage Birchwater Anne Gagnon, W.F. Garrett-Petts, James Hoffman (eds.) Chronicles of Dissent (2nd ed.) NF 978-1-55420-003-0 2003 $24 nfs Last Voyage of the Loch Ryan The NF 978-1-55420-008-5 2004 $18 / $18 Noam Chomsky Andrew Struthers City of Love and Revolution NF 978-1-55420-048-1 2010 $24 / $24 Local Matters NF 978-1-55420-005-4 2003 $20 / $20 Lawrence Aronsen Brian Fawcett Clam Gardens NF 978-1-55420-023-8 2006 $19 / $19 Loitersack P 978-1-55420-085-6 2014 $21 / $19 Judith Williams Donato Mancini Class Warfare (2nd ed.) NF 978-1-55420-004-7 2003 $24 nfs Mac-Pap NF 978-1-55420-071-9 2013 $19 / $19 Noam Chomsky Ronald Liversedge, David Yorke (ed.) Clean Sails P 978-1-55420-108-2 2015 $24 / $21 Mannequin Rising P 978-1-55420-056-6 2011 $18 / $18 Gustave Morin Roy Miki Daaku F 978-1-55420-027-6 2006 $21 / $21 Maria Mahoi of the Islands (2nd ed) NF 978-1-55420-132-7 2017 $19 / $17 Ranj Dhaliwal Jean Barman Daaku: The Gangster’s Life F 978-1-55420-059-7 2011 $21 / $21 McGowan’s War NF 978-1-55420-001-6 2003 $21 / $21 Ranj Dhaliwal Donald Hauka Dance Moves of the Near Future F 978-1-55420-097-9 2015 $16 / $16 Mine P 978-0-921586-87-6 2001 $18 / $16 Tim Conley Stephen Collis Death Feast in Dimlahamid A N 978-0-921586-64-7 1998 $18 / $18 More House F 978-1-55420-042-9 2009 $19 / $19 Terry Glavin Hannah Calder Debbie: An Epic P 978-0-921586-61-6 1997 $16 / $16 Nemiah: The Unconquered Country NF 978-0-921586-22-7 1992 $24 / $24 Lisa Robertson Terry Glavin Dynamite Stories NF 978-0-921586-95-1 2003 $16 / $16 News We Deserve The NF 978-1-55420-121-1 2016 $24 / $24 Judith Williams Marc Edge Enough Already! NF 978-1-55420-010-8 2004 $21 / $21 North of California St. P 978-1-55420-082-5 2014 $24 / $21 Bruce O’Hara George Stanley Every Day in the Morning (slow) P 978-1-55420-051-1 2010 $16 / $16 Off the Highway NF 978-1-55420-049-8 2010 $19 / $19 Adam Seelig Mette Bach Exercises in Lip Pointing P 978-0-921586-92-0 2003 $18 / $16 Old Red Shirt The P 978-1-55420-006-1 2004 $16 / $16 Annharte (Marie Baker) Yvonne Klan

12 See newstarbooks.com for more details Click here to return to contents COMPLETE BACKLIST BY TITLE

Pacific Press NF 978-0-921586-88-3 2001 $35 / $35 Tungsten John NF 978-0-921586-70-8 2000 $21 / $21 Marc Edge John Harris Parkway P 978-1-55420-076-4 2013 $18 / $18 Twenty Seven Stings P 978-1-55420-107-5 2015 $18 / $16 Peter Culley Julie Emerson Paroled For Life NF 978-0-921586-89-0 2002 $18 / $18 Two Wolves at the Dawn of Time NF 978-0-921586-84-5 2001 $29 / $29 P.J. Murphy, Loyd Johnsen, Jennifer Murphy (eds.) Judith Williams Piranesi’s Figures F 978-1-55420-112-9 2016 $21 / $19 Vancouver: A Poem P 978-1-55420-038-2 2008 $18 / $16 Hannah Calder George Stanley Posh Lust P 978-1-55420-083-2 2014 $18 / $18 Voice Great Within Us A NF 978-0-921586-56-2 1998 $16 / $16 Louis Cabri Charles Lillard Rebel Life (2nd ed.) F 978-1-55420-058-0 2012 $21 / $21 Voyage Through the Past Century NF 978-1-55420-068-9 2013 $24 / $24 Mark Leier Rolf Knight Red Laredo Boots NF 978-0-921586-49-4 1996 $16 / $16 Wages NF 978-1-55420-029-0 2007 $21 / $21 Theresa Kishkan John Armstrong Red Line, Blue Line, Bottom Line NF 978-1-55420-011-5 2004 $16 / $16 Watch Yourself NF 978-1-55420-021-4 2007 $22 / $21 Marc Edge Matt Hern Robin Blaser NF 978-1-55420-052-8 2010 $16 / $16 Weather The P 978-0-921586-81-4 2001 $16 / $16 Stan Persky and Brian Fawcett Lisa Robertson Rua da Felicidade P 978-1-55420-073-3 2013 $18 / $18 What Species of Creatures NF 978-1-55420-040-5 2008 $19 / $19 Ken Norris Sharon Kirsch Sacred Herb The / The Devil’s Weed NF 978-1-55420-115-0 2016 $19 / $18 Whose Culture Is It, Anyway? NF 978-1-55420-087-0 2014 $35 / $35 Andrew Struthers W.F. Garrett-Petts, James Hoffman, and Ginny Ratsoy (eds.) Seize the Time NF 978-1-55420-074-0 2013 $24 / $24 Why Does It Feel So Late? P 978-1-55420-046-7 2009 $16 / $15 Vladimir Keremidschieff Simon Armstrong Sentences and Paroles NF 978-0-921586-63-0 1998 $24 / $24 Words, Words, Words NF 978-1-55420-066-5 2012 $19 / $19 P.J. Murphy, Jennifer Murphy (eds.) George Bowering Series of Dogs A NF 978-1-55420-118-1 2016 $21 / $19 World, I Guess The P 978-1-55420-096-2 2015 $21 / $21 John Armstrong George Bowering Shiva The F 978-1-55420-063-4 2012 $21 / $21 Wreck Beach NF 978-1-55420-031-3 2007 $19 / $19 Michael Tregebov Carellin Brooks Shoot! F 978-1-55420-041-2 2008 $19 / $19 Writing Class P 978-0-921586-68-5 1999 $21 / $21 George Bowering Andrew Klobucar and Michael Barnholden (eds.) Short Version The NF 978-1-55420-016-0 2005 $21 / $21 XEclogue P 978-0-921586-72-2 1999 $16 / $16 Stan Persky Lisa Robertson Silt P 978-1-55420-012-2 2005 $16 / $16 Jordan Scott Small Cities Book The NF 978-1-55420-009-2 2005 $35 / $35 W.F. Garrett-Petts (ed.) Social Work With Rural Peoples (3rd ed.) NF 978-1-55420-020-7 2006 $20 / $20 Ken Collier Soviet Princeton NF 978-1-55420-109-9 2015 $19 / $18 Jon Bartlett and Rika Ruebsaat Stardust NF 978-1-55420-033-7 2007 $19 / $19 Bruce Serafin Stranger on a Strange Island NF 978-1-55420-057-3 2011 $19 / $19 Grant Buday Stranger Wycott’s Place NF 978-1-55420-037-5 2008 $19 / $19 John Schreiber Sturgeon Reach NF 978-1-55420-060-3 2012 $19 / $19 Terry Glavin and Ben Parfitt Subway Under Byzantium P 978-1-55420-035-1 2008 $18 / $16 Maxine Gadd Svend Robinson: A Life in Politics NF 978-1-55420-072-6 2013 $24 / $24 Graeme Truelove Sweet England F 978-1-55420-055-9 2010 $19 / $19 Steve Weiner sybil unrest P 978-1-55420-069-6 2013 $18 / $18 Larissa Lai and Rita Wong There P 978-1-55420-026-9 2006 $18 / $16 Roy Miki This Ragged Place NF 978-0-921586-66-1 1998 $18 / $18 Terry Glavin Tom Thomson’s Shack NF 978-0-921586-75-3 2000 $20 / $20 Harold Rhenisch Topic Sentence NF 978-1-55420-028-3 2007 $21 / $21 Stan Persky

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A BRIEF HISTORY

In 1969, a group of writers and editors continue under a new imprint, Vancou- 1990, when Rolf Maurer assumed the published the first of several literary ver Community Press, based at “the York role. This last change coincided with a supplements inserted into the weekly St. commune.” return to the press’s literary roots: while Straight. The Georgia Straight Writing By 1974, the press began to empha- New Star continues to publish books Supplement featured work by writers size non-fiction titles about current about politics and social issues, it also such as Straight editor/publisher Dan affairs and politics. One of these books, resumed publishing poetry, as well as MacLeod, Stan Persky, Milton Acorn, Two Roads by Jack Scott, a largely prose fiction and non-fiction. As well, Gerry Gilbert, Jack Spicer, George positive account of the People’s Repub- books on local history and culture be- Stanley, Robin Blaser, Maria Hindmarch, lic of China (Scott was one of the first came an important component of New Jim Herndon, Dennis Wheeler, and Colin westerners to visit, and write an account Star’s list. Stuart. of, the China of Mao Zedong and the In 1998, New Star moved across Soon the GSWS began publishing Cultural Revolution) inspired another town to its current location, at 18th and books, including works by bill bissett, name change, to New Star Books. Commercial Street in East Vancouver. Judith Copithorne, Fred Wah, Brian By 1978, the York Street commune Today, New Star Books publishes four to Fawcett, George Bowering, and Daphne was no more, and Lanny Beckman, who ten new titles per year. Marlatt. Within another year, many of had joined the press in 1974, became the GSWS writers left the Straight to publisher, a position he held until

A WORD ON OUR SPONSORS

This country’s literary culture is made possible by the citizens of Canada and British Columbia through the Canada Council Block Grant Program for Publishers, the Canada Book Fund administered by Canadian Heritage, the British Columbia Arts Council, and the Government of British Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit. Be sure to let your elected representative know of your support for these vital initiatives.

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