"A book that is both strange and gorgeous."
GG Award-winner Sarah Ellis describes fairyland as a place suspended between who she had been before Sherry died and who she was after. Read Anne Thériault's feature interview here: bit.ly/4dAG2Xv
ALT Haadline: Death and the fairies: Sarah Ellis turns to memoir to process the final year of her wife’s life. Illustration in black and gold of a dragonfly.
OWL – an acronym for outdoors and wildlife – was launched in 1976. The magazine was such a hit out of the gate the founders started to publish a handful of books under the Owl Books name. Read our history of @owlkids here: bit.ly/4uT6bIf
ALT Two magazine covers and two book covers or light blue backgrounds. One cover is an illustrated blue underwater scene of two scuba divers and two narwhals - the first OWL magazine - and the first Chirp magazine with an illustration of a yellow chick and a yellow plastic duck; The cover of The Wildlife ABC that is a red frame with an illustration of a group of North American animals including a bear, bighorn sheep and walrus and the the book cover of WHY ? that shows two adults, al little boy and two girls looking in front of a red car looking toward something the girl with black hair is pointing to.
The headline is: OWL be there.
Maggie Helwig wins Shaughnessy Cohen Prize
“Helwig never lets compassion impede lucidity, and her book avoids both cynicism and battle fatigue." Read the full story here: bit.ly/4tQG7NO
Less than a month after she first heard about Hassan Kanafani’s firsthand online accounts of living in Gaza, writer Yasuko Thanh had received an offer to publish his work in book form. @arsenalpulp
Read the bookmaking story: bit.ly/4vZ7kz5
Also @ quillandquire.bsky.social
GG Award–winner Sadiqa de Meijer returns to poetry with Qaf’s People, a collection that “resurfaces questions about diaspora, belonging, identity, language, and home.” @VehiculePress Read Shazia Hafiz Ramji's review: bit.ly/4e5WuAS
Also see @ quillandquire.bsky.social
ALT Black & white photo of author with long dark hair and one hoop earring showing, plus the cover of the poetry collection Qaf's People that has an illustration with series of lines positioned at different angles portraying what look like rays of light shining down over mountains, possibly islands, and then spreading out into the foreground almost as if portraying water. The line art is in a darkish green over a beige background.
Dorothy Ellen Palmer reviews Jelly, Baby: Essays on Disability and Vulnerability, "an accessible memoir and a work of unapologetic advocacy." @bookhugpressRead the full review here: bit.ly/4mW5Cus
ALT The photo shows a woman (a background of a cream coloured curtain) with long black hair, in a black top with her elbows on the table, cradling her chin on hands which have had the fingers amputated. She has roses tattooed on both her forearms. The text below is from the review: "In the six lyrical essays, poet Therese Estacion sings rage in full voice."
Marie-Louise Gay never intended for Stella, Star of the Sea to be the springboard for a series, but as she was writing, she realized she wanted “the characters discovering the world, not just the ocean.
Feature interview: bit.ly/42lKx2P@GroundwoodBooks
ALT Watercolour illustration of two children with their backs to us, and looking at the white moon. in the sky. Gentle blue and green colours. She has long bright orange-red hair and blue blanket and he is blonde with an orangey striped blanket. Their dog, also facing the moon is wrapped in white and black patterned cloth.
Jennifer LoveGrove’s The Tinder Sonnets confronts moral selectivity and sexual violence. Read Molly Cross-Blanchard's starred review here: bit.ly/4uaf9R1
Check out more at: quillandquire.bsky.social
Al & Eurithe Purdy Poetry Prize 2026 shortlist:
•I Would Like to Say Thank You, Joseph Dandurand
•Parade of Storms, Evelyn Lau
•Wellwater, Karen Solie
•On The News that Sagittarius A* Grows Hungrier, Nicola Vulpe
• Out of the Ordinary, Tom Wayman
alpurdy.ca/news/