ISBN 978-0-9864924-3-3
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In thirty-seven short movements of mixed verse, prose and dialogue, the poem chronicles the death of a love, and the ensuing struggles for understanding and dignity. A modern Psalm, an elegy or lamentation, it is steeped in the Bible, the ancient and modern classics, in rich West Indian-inflected cadences. Interlocutors hound the speaker, in the manner of Job’s friends. Bitter reminders of other days, of the extent of his loss, tempt him to self-pity, despair, violence. Then, unexpectedly, a provisional calm descends as the speaker, reflecting on the lives of his immigrant parents, learns something of grace and stoicism, survivorship and redemption.

Roy Lewis was born in West Bromwich, Birmingham. He has been writing poetry for as far back as he can remember. He has worked as an actor on film radio and television and has been a long time member of the Stratford Festival Company.

Book design by Christian Snyder.  Cover art by Aron Tager.

ISBN 978-0-9864924-2-6
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“My real name is Amanda Vrazda and I suppose I owe you a story.” Thus begins an extraordinary narrative. In passage after passage of virtuosic prose, from erotic fantasy to Bible thumping to John Donne, from urban Ontario to hillbilly Tennessee to French Quarter New Orleans, the metaphysical and psychological pressure on the narrator, and on the reader, mounts seamlessly towards an unforgettable and inevitable conclusion, the true identity of the shape-shifting Molasses.

Antonio Michael Downing was born there, grew up here and spent much time elsewhere in between. This is his first novella in years.

Book design by Christian Snyder.  Cover photo by Ilia.

“Masked as a revenge tale, Molasses patty-cakes perspectives from chapter to chapter as characters identities are exposed and discovered. A mysterious Le Downing propels the plot while Molasses – a performance pseudonym Downing uses – is the man everyone wants, but can’t understand. Bordering a line between a gritty exploitation film-like storyline and post-modern text, this novella is a high-speed chase through the American south. This may be Downing’s ‘first novella in years,’ as his bio states, but let’s hope it’s not his last.”  —Telegraph Journal, Canada

“Downing, who was born in Trinidad, drew heavily from his family’s history for the framework of Molasses. Loosely explained, it follows the lives of two young women who each face an identity crisis when the man they both love, Molasses, suddenly leaves. “This idea of loss forcing someone into an external odyssey that really is an internal journey is a part of my personal story,” Downing says.

“As a child, the death of my grandmother when I was 12 precipitated my immigration to Canada where suddenly everything that I knew about life was thrown into question. This profoundly shaped the way I engage with the world. I think the journey of (the book’s main characters) Ophelia and Amanda Vrazda are personifications of my own quest to reconcile loss with identity.”

As a writer, Downing describes himself as a sensualist, trying to draw from all five senses. He is also keenly aware of the rhythmic potential of words. “The experience of reading Molasses, I’m told, is very confusing at times but rewarding if you pay close attention to the unfolding sensations. I’m very fond of Michael Ondaatje — another colonial island child-immigrant — Albert Camus and Kathy Acker. But I really think my love of jazz and punk rock music like Miles Davis and the Clash, and the hymns I learned on my grandmother’s lap in Trinidad, has had more influence on how I write.” — The Record, Kitchener, Ontario, Canada

ISBN 978-0-9864924-1-9
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Colin and Dwight are on a mission to Los Angeles to find Uncle Skip, who is obsessed by the unsolved 1947 Black Dahlia murder. “She wasn’t some self-loathing skank who turned tricks for drugs and money,” Skip admonishes them, “She was Elizabeth Short. Born twenty-nine July in nineteen and twenty-four in Hyde Park, Massachusetts, and murdered—very, very savagely—on, or around, the fifteenth of January, nineteen hundred and forty-seven . . . I want you to show her the respect she deserves.” A five-pound-burrito-challenge, a near-death curbing and one titty-bar later, a kind of truth emerges. The Dahlia Boyz learn something about respect and dignity.

Andrew Hunt teaches at the University of Waterloo and is the author of two books on the Vietnam era in American History. His next book will be about Ronald Reagan and cold war culture in the 1980s. He writes a regular newspaper column and blogs on veganism and animal rights. This is his first novel.

Book design by Christian Snyder.

“The horrific 1947 slaying of a Los Angeles woman named Elizabeth Short caused a news media sensation. And in the decades since, the so-called Black Dahlia case has been the inspiration for books, pop songs, movies and even video games. University of Waterloo history professor Andrew Hunt uses the continuing interest in the unsolved murder as a backdrop for this darkly funny novella, published by Blaurock Press of Kitchener. As the story opens, young Colin Ellis, owner of the struggling Bazooka Video & Media shop in Atlanta, is summoned by his Aunt Harriet who begs him to cross the country to track down his Uncle Gordon, the estranged younger brother of Colin’s father, Melvyn. Melvyn has Alzheimer’s disease and it’s distressing to Harriet that he is calling out for Gordon, an odd duck who is believed to be in Los Angeles leading guided tours of sites with connections to the Black Dahlia case. Colin’s cousin, Dwight Sperry, agrees to join the mission and together they fly west. Dwight’s a colourful character who speaks in an appropriately colourful way, but he more than meets his match when the two pals finally catch up to Uncle Gordon. Hunt, who was born in Calgary and raised in the United States, has an ear for the spoken word and the lively conversations that he has penned are an entertaining feature of this tale, which is a carefully crafted blend of scenes both funny and forlorn”.— John Fear, May 14,  Waterloo Region Record, Ontario, Canada

ISBN 978-0-9864924-0-2
$25.00
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“My name is Jerry Carson.” And so it begins. All Carson men leave home early, and between departure and return, between flight and reconciliation lies the journey. Trial by water and by fire, trials of betrayal, imprisonment, loneliness and loss. As in all fairy tales there are Helpers and Instructors: canny old men, carny freaks, a pair of hoboes, a miner, a shaman, a fortune-teller, Mary of the yoga class, Marie of the hot-air balloon. New Orleans, Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, Florida, by truck, boxcar, ship, horseback. The final trial, however, is back home in the trailer park, in a letter from the dead.

Colin Fullerton lives and writes in Halifax, Nova Scotia. This is his first novel.

Book design by Christian Snyder. Cover art by Leslie Watts, Long Path (2008).

ISBN 978-0-9784321-9-5
$20.00
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The final days of Jørgen Mikkelsen. A man of no family or property, a disappointed artist and lover, a reluctant Resistance fighter, a man with intolerable burdens of memory and regret. Alone with his thoughts, a curiously lucid madman imprisoned in an attic room, Jørgen conjures out of his past a parade of ghosts. Dominating Jørgen’s disjointed narrative, however, is the haunting, imperious, tragic figure of Anna Hauge, whose circuits ran up and down the seamy streets of Vesterbro in wartime Copenhagen.

S.K.Johannesen is author of Sister Patsy (Pasdeloup Press, 2003), Luggas Wood (Blaurock Press, 2007), and many short stories, essays and memoirs. He is editor of Blaurock Press and lives in Stratford, Ontario.

Book Review by Andrew Hunt, The Record, Friday, April 23, 2010

“Johannesen’s latest, The Yellow Room, shines on all levels. Like his first two works, it is impressionist literature that explores the inner thoughts and experiences of its protagonist. In this case, the first-person narrator is Jørgen Mikkelsen, a man whose life has been all over the map: artist, anti-Nazi resistance fighter, skilled cabinetmaker and a man haunted by the ghosts of his past.

“The richness of the story is found in its memorable vignettes of the people Mikkelsen encounters in his journeys. The time he spends in hiding during the Nazi occupation of Denmark gives him plenty of opportunities to reflect on his past, and his memories are strikingly vivid. Those memories are the subject of his writings while holed up in a room that is “pale yellow. Almost white where the sun is reflected.”

and:

“…every sentence, every word, is beautifully rendered, like a painting.”

and:

“The Yellow Room reminded me of E.L. Doctorow’s Homer and Langley….  The stories are quite different …. But the two books share a powerful narrative voice in which dialogue is spare, yet the descriptions are so vivid that you remember scenes long after you’ve put the book down.”

Book design by Christian Snyder. Cover art by Susan Benson.

edited by Douglas Glover

ISBN 978-0-9784321-7-1
$24.00
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“—a magnificent poet, prolific, protean and deeply, intensely, personal. She is a metaphysical poet, concerned with ends and existence, yet she grounds everything in the specific and the concrete.

“Reading and rereading her, one begins to notice, beyond the narratives of love and death and the concrete references to loved ones and beloved places, insistent recurrences—water, islands, plant lore, horses, seahorses—unfolding into myth, comedy, eros and personal anguish.”

—Douglas Glover, from the Introduction

Karen Mulhallen is Editor-in-Chief of the award-winning magazine Descant. She has published ten books of poetry and authored, co-authored, edited and co-edited magazines, anthologies, columns and critical articles on culture and the arts. She also teaches literature at Ryerson University and lives in Toronto.

Book design by Christian Snyder.  Cover art by Virgil Burnett.

ISBN 978-0-9784321-6-4
$20
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A hybrid narrative, different voices, contrasting worlds. One strand—banal, cruel, funny, sentimental by turns—a coming-of-age tale, a middle-class schoolboy awakens to the facts of class and sex in post-war England. The other strand a sordid tale of manipulation, betrayal and murder in Toronto, Kingston and Montreal. These stories are brought together in the narrator’s pursuit of the truth about life in general and his life in particular. Haunted by bad faith, in others and in himself, he nevertheless gropes toward insight into the nature of personal responsibility.

Eric Schachter is a Montreal writer and film-maker now living in Harlem. His previous book Skandalon is an astoundingly candid exercise in personal and family archaeology. He may be reached at skandalon.net.

Comments on a very early draft of Dry Bones:

“I think you are probably a good person.”
—Ivan Illich

“A cool investigation of class and crime.”
—Robertson Davies

“The best study of violent crime I have ever read.”
—June Calwood

“Everything rings true except for the fact that you actually liked [Bonnie and Ricky].”
—Timothy Findley

“It is not clear as to whether this is fact or fiction.”
—Leslie Fiedler

“I return this unread, as I have been accused in the past of stealing other people’s material.”
—Margaret Atwood

Book design and cover art by Christian Snyder.

ISBN 978-0-9784321-8-8
$20
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A Manhattan fable of talent and mediocrity, ambition and genius, art and commerce, crime and punishment. Owen Higdon, hungry artist’s-agent, likeable chancer and compulsive gambler, has staked everything on selling Philip Snowcroft’s new painting. Finality is his friend’s culminating achievement as an artist, a work of epic scale, raw passion, moral authority—and worth a lot of money. Unfortunately, there are other stakes in play, in an increasingly desperate and dangerous game. Owen must choose. The next roll of the dice will be for his own soul.

Jason Schneider is co-author of Have Not Been The Same: The CanRock Renaissance, author of Whispering Pines: The Northern Roots Of American Music, and one of Canada’s most respected music journalists. His first novel, 3,000 Miles, was published in 2005. He lives in Waterloo, Ontario.

Book design by Christian Snyder. Cover art by Barry Lorne.

ISBN 978-0-9784321-5-7
$20.00
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Lilla, Joey and Clara Pentangeli, their father Salvatore and their mercurial mother Seraphina live on Paradise Street behind a giant billboard, in a charmed world filled with operatic heroines. Seraphina idolizes Maria Callas. Between bouts of housework, she re-enacts Violetta’s death scene from La Traviata, dresses in a kimono like CioCioSan in Madama Butterfly, and concocts outrageous tales for her three enchanted children. She also reveals one or two secrets from her past. At last real-life tragedy overtakes the house on Paradise.

Michelle Alfano is a Toronto writer and a Co-Editor with the literary quarterly Descant. Her short story “Opera,” on which Made Up Of Arias is based, was a finalist for the Journey Prize. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been published in Canada and in the United States. She will be featured in a forthcoming documentary on the passengers, and the children of the passengers, of the Saturnia, an immigrant ship which transported thousands of Italian-born immigrants to Canada in the 1950s and 60s and which will be featured on OMNI-TV. She blogs at alitchick.blogspot.com

“Michelle Alfano’s [Made Up of Arias is a] colourful, beautiful and fascinating story of the Pentangeli family immigrating to Canada” —Stefania Bartucci, “Italian-Canadian author Michelle Alfano connects opera to immigration,” Tandem, February 13, 2011

“I laughed out loud and cried too as I read this wonderful novella…There is such joy in this family, and there is such sorrow too and Michelle Alfano evokes all of that with her stunning prose and her ability to make us see and grow to love this family, and just like in an opera, we also get to see ourselves.” —Rachel Guido deVries, forthcoming review, Voices in Italian Americana, Spring 2011

“Winner of the 2010 Bressani Award for Short Fiction”. This prize was established by the Italian Canadian Writers Conference. It is designed  to honour and promote the literary work of Canadian writers of Italian origin or Italian descent. (Please check out Michelle’s blog for more information on this: alitchick.blogspot.com)

“Made Up of Arias is all the voices of childhood, all the stories that allow a child’s imagination to safely try on adult themes. Alfano is a keen observer, with an eye for detail and a gift for humour.” —Julie Booker, author Silver Hearts

“Michelle Alfano speaks in the beautifully compelling, yet remarkably guileless voice of her protagonist and narrator, Lilla Pentangeli…Michelle Alfano’s mastery of English and Italian, her knowledge of opera, and her ability to elevate the ordinary, are inspiring and transforming.” —Lina Medaglia, author The Demons of Aquilonia

“Michelle Alfano’s Made Up of Arias beautifully evokes an immigrant childhood lived against the backdrop of opera, which stands in for all that her characters have lost or will never attain even while it speaks to the most common and everyday of their tragedies and joys. Alfano writes with the humour and compassion of someone who not only understands her characters, but forgives them.” —Nino Ricci, author The Origin of Species and Lives of the Saints

“Made up of Arias is an important and welcome addition to the tradition of Italian-Canadian literary voices … an outstanding writer whose fiction carves a distinct place in Canada’s national narrative. Beautifully observed, richly comic, heartbreaking and compelling, Made up of Arias, deserves to be read by a broad audience as well as specialists. —Lilia Topouzova, screenwriter The Mosquito Problem

Book design by Christian Snyder. Cover art by Amber Albrecht.

A cycle of spare, sweet-sad, magical tales. A small girl dreams a house floating away. Lolly loves pink. Walter and Hank conduct a juke-box war. Tessie dances with a spectral Sidney Greenstreet. Sadie may or may not have caused Lila to be air-borne. Characters migrate between stories. Down-to-earth realism turns out to be not quite real after all. Limited and damaged lives are refracted and transformed, as in a kaleidoscope, by absurdity, by wonder, by magic and desire. As a character in one of these stories reflects, thinking of the last word in Joyce’s Ulysses, the answer to the mystery of life is YES.

Sylvia Markle-Craine lives in Guelph, Ontario. She has published poetry and short stories. One of her stories won first prize in the Eden Mills Writers’ Festival Literary Contest.

“With some basic ingredients she cooks up just enough magic to make perfect little fables from what on some level amounts to an album of small town gossip. By inviting readers behind closed doors, she reveals worlds rich in character, the quirky opinions and pursuits of those characters, and the diner-friendly language they use to communicate with one another….at the intersection of strangeness and character Markle-Craine writes her most descriptive, sensual sentences to help us tune into the smaller details of daily existence.” —”Off the Shelf”

Book design by Christian Snyder. Cover art by Amber Albrecht.