Local authors delivered some riveting reads in 2020
From children's books to world-shaping novels, local authors deliver riveting reads
Say what you will about 2020, it was a captivating year for books by local authors — even if, like Timothy Caulfield’s myth-busting Relax, Dammit!: A Field Guide to the Age of Anxiety — one’s release date got bumped forward a month or six.
Ranging from illustrated children’s books to world-shaping novels to regional photography and beyond, our local output didn’t slow down much with the pandemic — in fact, the Kevin Solez-edited Pandemic Poems took direct inspiration from it! Here’s a look at a few notables …
Griffin Prize-winning Billy-ray Belcourt offered up his memoir, A History of My Brief Body, exploring his origins on the Driftpile First Nation, while Premee Mohamed’s tense, Lovecraftian horror, Beneath the Rising, was named one of The Washington Post’s favourite books this year.
Back to non-fiction, fungal pharmacist Robert Dale Rogers put out another tome in June on his favourite subject — Medicinal Mushrooms: The Human Clinical Trials — citing specific studies on the beneficial effects of our mysterious forest friends. Also exploring our hidden borderlands, Joe Chowamiec’s Abandoned Alberta photo travelogue is a beautiful reminder that all things must pass.
If your liner notes are 242 pages long, can we just call that a book? Scott Cook’s Tangle of Souls is a terrific mix of road observations from the mundane to the universal, and the affixed album is his best so far, too.
In this department, singer-songwriter Mike Plume put out his kids book about hockey (of course), More Than A Game, illustrated by Curtis Irving Johnson.
Meanwhile, former Journal writer Elizabeth Withey’s The One with the Scraggly Beard includes a lovely guest appearance by the old, green Walterdale Bridge.
But my favourite Edmonton book this year, hilariously, would be Bee Waeland’s wordless The Three Bears and Goldilocks — just a wonderful twist on who’s actually the villain in this home wrecker fairy tale.
In light of the fact I chose a book for babies (of all ages) for the top, I asked smart lads Matthew Stepanic and Jason Purcell of the socially conscious Glass Bookshop to provide a list of their more wordy local notables. And so, we’re turning the wheel over to them …
GLASS BOOKSHOP'S TOP LOCAL BOOKS OF 2020 Eskimo Pie, Norma Dunning, Bookland Press
Dunning follows up her powerful short story collection, Annie Muktuk & Other Stories, with a debut collection of poetry where she grapples with issues of assimilation, the project of ongoing colonialism, and how these bear on everyday life for Inuk women.
On Nostalgia, David Berry, Coach House Books
One of the greatest cultural critics of our time takes on the topic of nostalgia, mining politics, entertainment, social media and more to trace the history of the condition from its origins as a psychological diagnosis to an affect that pervades daily life, perhaps now more than ever.
Divine Animal, Brandon Wint, Write Bloody North
Brandon Wint’s debut collection is an affirmation of Black joy and sorrow, where he moves with generosity and tenderness toward a non-colonial vision of liberation and ecology, utilizing language to break and re-make possible worlds (you can hear him talk about his collection on the new podcast, Glass Bookshop Radio.)
Mad Cow, Alexis Kienlen, Now or Never Publishing
Alexis Kienlen’s debut novel, Mad Cow, was an instant bestseller, interested as it is in farming life in small-town Alberta, setting a mother and daughter to understand the strange affliction that starts picking off local cattle while enduring a tragedy that challenges their very livelihoods.
Always Brave, Sometimes Kind, Katie Bickell, Touchwood Editions
Katie Bickell’s debut novel is told in a series of stories spanning from 1990 to 2016, through cycles of boom and bust in the oilfields, government budget cuts and workers-rights policies, the rising opioid crisis, and the intersecting lives of people whose communities sometimes stretch farther than they know.
Humane, Anna Marie Sewell, Stonehouse Publishing
Former Edmonton poet laureate Anna Marie Sewell’s debut novel has it all, including an unlicensed PI named Hazel working to help Indigenous women and girls in Edmonton, who steals a dog from a shelter after receiving a dream message from her grandmother. It all comes together to tell a story that asks what it means to be human and what it means to be humane.
A Small Silence, Jumoke Verissimo, Cassava Republic Press
A Nigerian poet and novelist, Verissimo has written an elegant and timely novel about an activist who has just been released from prison, and the young student who enters his life to sit with him. The two quickly becoming companions to one another’s solitude, memories and histories.
Crown Ditch & the Prairie Castle, Kyler Zeleny
This limited-edition (and now out of print, sadly) photography collection documents the Prairies and places where landscape, industry, and people collide, for better or worse. It features essays by Zeleny and Aritha van Herk.
Beyond the Food Court, Ed, Luciana Erregue-sacchi, Laberinto Press
Edmonton’s newest publisher devoted to under-represented Canadians, ESL writing and world literature in translation, launched into the literary scene with this anthology featuring 14 creative non-fiction pieces that delve into the subtleties, diversity and individuality of ethnic cuisines beyond the standard offerings of a North American food court.
The Adventures of Isabel, Candas Jane Dorsey, ECW Press
A big name in the speculative fiction world, Dorsey’s turning her genre-bending powers to the mystery genre. In the hard-boiled style of Raymond Chandler, The Adventures of Isabel features a queer, nameless (and witty) amateur detective whose first case is the murder of a friend’s beloved granddaughter.