Title search results
Showing 1 - 20 of 5353 items
The Art of Leaving: A Memoir
By Ayelet Tsabari. 2019
WINNER OF THE CANADIAN JEWISH LITERARY AWARD FOR MEMOIRFINALIST FOR THE HILARY WESTON WRITERS' TRUST PRIZE FOR NONFICTIONAn unforgettable memoir…
about a young woman who tries to outrun loss, but eventually finds a way home. Ayelet Tsabari was 21 years old the first time she left Tel Aviv with no plans to return. Restless after two turbulent mandatory years in the Israel Defense Forces, Tsabari longed to get away. It was not the never-ending conflict that drove her, but the grief that had shaken the foundations of her home. The loss of Tsabari’s beloved father in years past had left her alienated and exiled within her own large Yemeni family and at odds with her Mizrahi identity. By leaving, she would be free to reinvent herself and to rewrite her own story. For nearly a decade, Tsabari travelled, through India, Europe, the US and Canada, as though her life might go stagnant without perpetual motion. She moved fast and often because—as in the Intifada—it was safer to keep going than to stand still. Soon the act of leaving—jobs, friends and relationships—came to feel most like home. But a series of dramatic events forced Tsabari to examine her choices and her feelings of longing and displacement. By periodically returning to Israel, Tsabari began to examine her Jewish-Yemeni background and the Mizrahi identity she had once rejected, as well as unearthing a family history that had been untold for years. What she found resonated deeply with her own immigrant experience and struggles with new motherhood.Beautifully written, frank and poignant, The Art of Leaving is a courageous coming-of-age story that reflects on identity and belonging and that explores themes of family and home—both inherited and chosen.Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)
By Lorna Crozier. 2020
A deeply affecting portrait of a long partnership and a clear-eyed account of the impact of a serious illness, writing…
as consolation, and the enduring significance of poetry from one of Canada's most celebrated voices.When we ran off together in 1978, abandoning our marriages and leaving wreckage in our wake, I was a "promising writer," Patrick had just won the Governor General's Award. I was so happy for him, and I've continued to be every time an honour comes his way, but I knew if I didn't grow, if I remained merely someone who showed potential, we wouldn't last. I swore I wouldn't play the dutiful wife, cheerleader, and muse of the great male writer, and he didn't envision a partner like that. We aspired to flourish together and thrive in words and books and gardens.When Lorna Crozier and Patrick Lane met at a poetry workshop in 1976, they had no idea that they would go on to write more than forty books between them, balancing their careers with their devotion to each other, and to their beloved cats, for decades. Then, in January 2017, their life together changed unexpectedly when Patrick became seriously ill. Despite tests and the opinions of many specialists, doctors remained baffled. There was no diagnosis and no effective treatment plan. The illness devastated them both.During this time, Lorna turned to her writing as a way of making sense of her grief and for consolation. She revisited her poems, tracing her own path as a poet along with the evolution of her relationship with Patrick. The result is an intimate and intensely moving memoir about the difficulties and joys of creating a life with someone and the risks and immense rewards of partnership. At once a spirited account of the past and a poignant reckoning with the present, it is, above all, an extraordinary and unforgettable love story. Told with unflinching honesty and fierce tenderness, Through the Garden is a candid, clear-eyed portrait of a long partnership and an acknowledgement, a tribute, and a gift.Still: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Motherhood
By Emma Hansen. 2020
“Still is one of those rare books that catches you up and does not let you go. With grace, courage,…
and honesty, Emma Hansen adds an important voice to this tragic and too-often silenced subject. I loved this book.” —Beth Powning, author of Shadow Child: An Apprenticeship in Love and Loss A moving, candid account of one woman’s experience with stillbirth.Emma Hansen is 39 weeks and 6 days pregnant when she feels her baby go quiet inside of her. At the hospital, her worst fears are confirmed: doctors explain that her baby has died, and she will need to deliver him, still.Hansen gives birth to her son, Reid, amidst an avalanche of grief. Nine days later, she publishes a candid essay on her website sharing photos from the delivery room. Much to her surprise, her essay goes viral, sparking positive reactions around the world. Still shares what comes next: a struggle with grief and confusion alongside a desire to better understand stillbirth, which is experienced by more than two million women annually, but rarely talked about in public.At once honest, brave, and uplifting, Still is about one woman’s search for her own definition of motherhood, even as she faces one of life’s greatest challenges: learning to live after loss.Halifax and Me
By Harry Bruce. 2020
In 1971, Harry Bruce, recognized as one of Canada's top non-fiction writers, lost his mind—according to his peers—when he left…
bustling, lucrative Toronto and moved his family to the tough little seaport of Halifax. For the past fifty years, Harry Bruce has been working as what The Concise Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature calls "an impassioned advocate for the Maritimes and an essayist of great charm and perception." Here, writing more charmingly and perceptively than ever, he celebrates the blossoming of Halifax as "A City to Dance In."Lucy Maud Montgomery: Canada's Literary Treasure
By Stan Sauerwein. 2019
The bestselling biography of renowned Japanese translator of Anne of Green Gables is available in English for the first time.The…
name Hanako Muraoka is revered in Japan. Her Japanese translation of L. M. Montgomery’s beloved children’s classic Anne of Green Gables, Akage no An (Redhaired Anne) was the catalyst for the book’s massive and enduring popularity in Japan. A book that has since spawned countless interpretations, from manga to a long-running television series, and has remained on Japanese curriculum for half a century. For the first time, the bestselling biography of Hanako Muraoka written by her granddaughter, Eri Muraoka, and translated by the award-winning Cathy Hirano (The Life-changing Magic of Tidying Up), is available in English. Born into an impoverished family of tea merchants in rural Japan at the end of the nineteenth century, Hanako Muraoka’s fortunes change dramatically when she is offered a place at an illustrious girls’ school in Tokyo founded by the Methodist Church of Canada. Nurtured by the Canadian missionaries who teach her, she falls in love with English poetry and literature. This love of the written word develops into a passion for writing and translating children’s literature that sustains Hanako through devastating personal tragedies and the tumult of the twentieth century. In 1941, after Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, Hanako abruptly resigns from her role of reading children’s news over the radio — for which she is known and loved throughout Japan as “Radio Auntie”. Branded as “enemies”, the peace-loving missionaries who nurtured Hanako in her youth and with whom she later worked have been forced to leave the country. But Hanako finds solace in a gift received from a Canadian friend: a copy of L. M. Montgomery’s Anne of Green Gables. Although it is a book from an “enemy nation”, the story of Anne Shirley brings back vivid memories of precious friends in distant lands, giving Hanako courage and hope for the future. Amidst the wail of air-raid sirens, she begins translating her copy into Japanese in 1943, fully aware that she risks imprisonment and even death if caught. Although she completes the majority of the work by the end of the war, it is only much later that a publisher decides to take a chance on a Canadian author previously unknown in Japan, unwittingly launching a cross-cultural literary legacy that continues to this day. Anne’s Cradle tells the complex and captivating story of a woman who risked her freedom and devoted her life to bringing quality children’s literature to her people during a period of tumultuous change in Japan. Through the gift of Hanako Muraoka’s translations, generations of Japanese readers have fallen in love with a plucky redhead from Prince Edward Island.Spílexm: A Weaving of Recovery, Resilience, and Resurgence
By Nicola I. Campbell. 2021
Captivating and deeply moving, this story basket of memories tells one Indigenous woman’s journey of overcoming adversity and colonial trauma…
to find strength through creative works and traditional perspectives of healing, transformation, and resurgence.Know It All: Finding the Impossible Country (Reflections)
By James H. Marsh. 2022
In Know It All: Finding the Impossible Country, James Marsh tells of his evolution from a troubled childhood to a…
career in publishing that culminated in the creation of The Canadian Encyclopedia. Through friendships, curiosity, the insights of a psychiatrist, and the intimate encounters with the authors he met, he championed a diverse and inclusive view of Canada, which was used to draw the great minds of an impossible nation together in a common enterprise.A Private Spy: The Letters of John le Carré
By John Le Carré. 2022
An archive of letters written by the late John le Carré, giving readers access to the intimate thoughts of one…
of the greatest writers of our time.The never-before-seen correspondence of John le Carré, one of the most important novelists of our generation, are collected in this beautiful volume. During his lifetime, le Carré wrote numerous letters to writers, spies, politicians, artists, actors, and public figures. This collection is a treasure trove, revealing the late author's humour, generosity, and wit—a side of him many readers have not previously seen.Burning Questions: Essays and Occasional Pieces, 2004-2021
By Margaret Atwood. 2022
NATIONAL BESTSELLERFrom cultural icon Margaret Atwood comes a brilliant collection of essays--funny, erudite, endlessly curious, uncannily prescient--which seek answers to…
Burning Questions such as:Why do people everywhere, in all cultures, tell stories?How much of yourself can you give away without evaporating?How can we live on our planet?Is it true? And is it fair?What do zombies have to do with authoritarianism?In over fifty pieces Atwood aims her prodigious intellect and impish humour at the world, and reports back to us on what she finds. This roller-coaster period brought the end of history, a financial crash, the rise of Trump, and a pandemic. From debt to tech, the climate crisis to freedom; from when to dispense advice to the young (answer: only when asked) to how to define granola, we have no better guide to the many and varied mysteries of our universe.Above the Fold: A Personal History of the Toronto Star
By John Honderich. 2022
A remarkable memoir and journalistic history of the Toronto Star, the newspaper that has shaped and continues to shape the…
issues most important to Canadians.Don't let them ruin the newspaper. . . These were the dying words of Beland Honderich to his son, John. The newspaper was the Toronto Star, founded in 1892 by Joseph E. (Holy Joe) Atkinson and, to this day, one of the world’s leading and most respected socially liberal broadsheets. For the second half of its legendary—and sometimes controversial—history, both John and his father, as successive editors, publishers, and family owners, made it into the newspaper we know today. The Star has been, at different times, home base to the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Morley Callaghan, Pierre Berton, June Callwood, Peter C. Newman, Gary Lautens, Robert Fulford, Richard Gwyn, Christie Blatchford, Michele Landsberg, Chantal Hébert, Joey Slinger, and many more. It also brandishes a corporate history unlike any other. In an extraordinary exercise of arbitrary power, the Ontario government held veto power over all of the Star's operations until the paper eventually evolved to the five families of the Torstar Voting Trust, one of which were the Honderichs. And in that process, those families committed in court to observe and promote the intellectual and spiritual basis on which the Star has always operated. Completed just weeks before the author’s untimely death, Above the Fold gives us an on-the-ground account of how the Star, once known primarily for its tabloid sensationalism and screaming headlines, transformed into a bastion of journalistic quality that routinely wins the industry’s highest honours and accolades. Honderich writes about the paper he loved and the challenges it faced over the years, including crippling strikes, boardroom battles, soaring egos, the vicious newspaper wars with various competitors, and, most recently, the shift away from print. He also delves deeply into his relationship with his father, who could be remarkably cold and unfeeling toward his son and others, earning the nickname ”The Beast.” There was great love between the two men but it came at a cost both professionally and, of course, personally. Always worried about accusations of nepotism as he rose to the top job at the paper, John felt he needed to prove himself that much more, which he did—and then some. Honest, frank, generous, and highly informative, Above the Fold is a personal history of one of the most storied and successful newspapers of our time, told through the lives of the father and son who ran it for close to half-a-century.Mistakes to run with: a memoir /
By Yasuko Thanh. 2019
Mistakes to Run With chronicles the turbulent early years of Yasuko Thanh's life, from a rough childhood to her teen…
years as a sex worker to her emergence as a writer. Growing up in a housing project in Victoria, BC, Thanh rebels against her extremely religious parents. She's an honours student, but also a nascent delinquent, cutting herself and getting arrested for shoplifting. By fifteen her parents have kicked her out. She runs away repeatedly from foster homes, acquiring a taste for drugs and alcohol and learning unlikely lessons about sex, power, and friendship. By the time she enters the world of sex work she feels completely abandoned--by her family, her friends, her school, and society. After a stint in jail at sixteen, she meets her pimp, Jesse, and falls in love. The next chapter of her life takes us from the motel rooms of Victoria to the streets of Vancouver, as Thanh endures further hardship: beatings, arrests, Jesse's crack cocaine addiction, and an unwanted pregnancy. It's the act of writing that ultimately becomes a solace from her suffering--but even as publication and awards bolster her, she remains haunted by her past. 2019.George Mackay Brown: The Life
By Maggie Fergusson. 2007
George Mackay Brown was one of Scotland's greatest twentieth-century writers, but in person a bundle of paradoxes. He had a…
wide international reputation, but hardly left his native Orkney. A prolific poet, admired by such fellow poets as Seamus Heaney, Ted Hughes and Charles Causley, and hailed by the composer Peter Maxwell Davies as 'the most positive and benign influence ever on my own efforts at creation', he was also an accomplished novelist (shortlisted for the 1994 Booker Prize for Beside the Ocean of Time) and a master of the short story. When he died in 1996, he left behind an autobiography as deft as it is ultimately uninformative. 'The lives of artists are as boring and also as uniquely fascinating as any or every other life,' he claimed. Never a recluse, he appeared open to his friends, but probably revealed more of himself in his voluminous correspondence with strangers. He never married - indeed he once wrote, 'I have never been in love in my life.' But some of his most poignant letters and poems were written to Stella Cartwright, 'the Muse of Rose Street', the gifted but tragic figure to whom he was once engaged and with whom he kept in touch until the end of her short life.Maggie Fergusson interviewed George Mackay Brown several times and is the only biographer to whom he, a reluctant subject, gave his blessing. Through his letters and through conversations with his wide acquaintance, she discovers that this particular artist's life was not only fascinating but vivid, courageous and surprising.Ginsberg: A Biography
By Barry Miles. 1989
Barry Miles has accounted the life of one of the most extraordinary poets. Drawing on his long literary association with…
Ginsberg, as well as on the poet's journals and correspondence, he presents an account of a controversial life.Expecting: Everything You Need to Know about Pregnancy, Labour and Birth
By Anna McGrail, Daphne Metland. 2013
Anna and Daphne have combined their many years of experience, producing an interesting and well written book based on fact…
rather than opinion, covering conception to postnatal. Most expecting mothers will not be seen by the NHS until around 12 weeks of pregnancy, and this book provides the advice and reassurance needed during this time. It also features a 'read your week of pregnancy', which offers mothers the opportunity to monitor symptoms that can indicate different things at different stages of the pregnancy. Issues broached in the book include: conception difficulties, what tests to opt for, how to break the news at work, when to tell an older child, taking your partner to the scan, opting for a caesarean.Memoirs of My Life and Writings
By Edward Gibbon. 1984
Precious Babies: Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting after Infertility
By Kate Brian. 2011
Infertility never leaves you no matter what the outcome is - it does shape you and it shapes the way…
you bring your children up.One in six couples finds it difficult to conceive, and many thousands of babies are born in the UK every year as a result of fertility treatment. For women who finally have that long-awaited positive pregnancy test, the expectation is that they will now be the same as any other pregnant woman. The reality is that the experience of infertility continues to resonate during pregnancy, birth and often long afterwards. Packed with case histories and informed by expert advice, this is the first book to address the specific practical and emotional issues experienced by women who have struggled to become pregnant and provides much-needed reassurance and support.Contents include: The long-awaited positive result; Pregnancy; Birth; The early days; Postnatal depression; Family life; Trying again; An only child; More than one (twins etc); The teenage years and beyond; Donor families; Miscarriage.The Lazy Girl's Guide to a Blissful Pregnancy
By Anita Naik. 2011
THE LAZY GIRL'S GUIDE TO A BLISSFUL PREGNANCY is your guide to getting pregnant, being pregnant and life after pregnancy.…
It's for all girls who want to find the less stressed way to be pregnant but are too busy to wade through all the books, leaflets and advice. It's about the stuff that's tricky such as how to work when you have 24 hour fatigue and morning sickness. And the stuff that's annoying such as how to deal with the myriad of medical, anecdotal and personal advice thrown at you. But most of all THE LAZY GIRL'S GUIDE TO A BLISSFUL PREGNANCY is about the parts of being pregnant that secretly worry you - pregnancy sex, first time parenting, meeting your new baby and how to avoid turning your chic house into a large oversized playroom! Crammed full of:* Expert advice on pre and post pregnancy fashion and beauty* Essential mum tips on first time motherhood, and surviving labour* Smart advice on the emotional, physical and lifestyle changes of pregnancyTHE LAZY GIRL'S GUIDE TO A BLISSFUL PREGNANCY is your comprehensive and down-to-earth guide to staying sane through nine months and beyond.Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays
By Chelsea Hodson. 2018
I had a real romance with this book Miranda JulyA highly anticipated collection from…
the writer Maggie Nelson has called bracingly good refreshing and welcome that explores the myriad ways in which desire and commodification intersect From graffiti gangs and Grand Theft Auto to sugar daddies Schopenhauer and a deadly game of Russian roulette in these essays Chelsea Hodson probes her own desires to examine where the physical and the proprietary collide She asks what our privacy our intimacy and our own bodies are worth in the increasingly digital world of liking linking and sharing Starting with Hodson s own work experience which ranges from the mundane to the bizarre including modeling and working on a NASA Mars mission Hodson expands outward looking at the ways in which the human will submits whether in the marketplace or in a relationship Both tender and jarring this collection is relevant to anyone who s ever searched for what the self is worth Hodson s accumulation within each piece is purposeful and her prose vivid clear and sometimes even shocking as she explores the wonderful and strange forms of desire Tonight I m Someone Else is a fresh poetic debut from an exciting emerging voice in which Hodson asks How much can a body endure And the resounding answer Almost everything