Poet and small press publisher Amanda Earl hosts an evening that spotlights three of the spring’s most anticipated novels, all published by Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press. Join us for a taste of all three books and a conversation on identity, desire and the need for stories that speak to the true diversity of the human experience.
Little Fish is the debut novel by Casey Plett, the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning story collection A Safe Girl to Love. It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's grandfather–a devout Mennonite farmer–might have been transgender himself. Can Wendy unravel the mystery of her grandfather's world and reckon with the culture that both shaped and rejected her? She's determined to try.
Sodom Road Exit is the second novel by Lambda Literary Award winner Amber Dawn. It might read like a conventional paranormal thriller, except that Starla is far from a conventional protagonist. Where others might feel fear, Starla feels lust and queer desire. When others might run, Starla draws the horror nearer. And in turn, she draws a host of capricious characters toward her?all of them challenged to seek answers beyond their own temporal realities.
Jonny Appleseed, by Joshua Whitehead, is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams. A debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and proud NDN glitter princess who must reckon with his past when he returns home to his reserve. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Jonny has one week before he must return to the “rez"–and his former life–to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother).
Books available for purchase at every event: Proceeds support our free children’s literacy programs.
If we're lucky, we'll find one or two books in a lifetime that change the language of story, that manage to illuminate new curves in the flat vessels of old letters and words. This is one of those books.
Poet and small press publisher Amanda Earl hosts an evening that spotlights three of the spring’s most anticipated novels, all published by Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press. Join us for a taste of all three books and a conversation on identity, desire and the need for stories that speak to the true diversity of the human experience.
Little Fish is the debut novel by Casey Plett, the author of the Lambda Literary Award-winning story collection A Safe Girl to Love. It's the dead of winter in Winnipeg and Wendy Reimer, a thirty-year-old trans woman, feels like her life is frozen in place. When her Oma passes away Wendy receives an unexpected phone call from a distant family friend with a startling secret: Wendy's grandfather–a devout Mennonite farmer–might have been transgender himself. Can Wendy unravel the mystery of her grandfather's world and reckon with the culture that both shaped and rejected her? She's determined to try.
Sodom Road Exit is the second novel by Lambda Literary Award winner Amber Dawn. It might read like a conventional paranormal thriller, except that Starla is far from a conventional protagonist. Where others might feel fear, Starla feels lust and queer desire. When others might run, Starla draws the horror nearer. And in turn, she draws a host of capricious characters toward her?all of them challenged to seek answers beyond their own temporal realities.
Jonny Appleseed, by Joshua Whitehead, is a unique, shattering vision of First Nations life, full of grit, glitter, and dreams. A debut novel about a Two-Spirit Indigiqueer young man and proud NDN glitter princess who must reckon with his past when he returns home to his reserve. Off the reserve and trying to find ways to live and love in the big city, Jonny becomes a cybersex worker who fetishizes himself in order to make a living. Jonny has one week before he must return to the “rez"–and his former life–to attend the funeral of his stepfather. The seven days that follow are like a fevered dream: stories of love, trauma, sex, kinship, ambition, and the heartbreaking recollection of his beloved kokum (grandmother).
Books available for purchase at every event: Proceeds support our free children’s literacy programs.
