At Bay Press – förlag

With poems that both calm and awaken, Mary Barnes brings her Ojibwe roots to the fore and elegantly coaxes out the seemingly quiet world we often take for granted in What Fox Knew. In this masterful first collection, Barnes reveals this world anew, with tempered grace.

When a deranged loner kills twenty-six people in a Pennsylvania schoolyard, the country is stunned and devastated. Among those catatonic with grief is Jo Matheson, an organic farmer who has lost her goddaughter in the shooting. Sam Jackson, an egotistical right-wing TV talking head, has sliding ratings and faces imminent cancellation. He arrives in Pennsylvania and during a rant, he blames the parents of the dead children. He intends the tirade to be his last salvo but, incredibly, his ratings climb, while Jo watches from her farmhouse in upstate New York, incensed. Sam rides the wave, shouting that it’s time to take the country back from the left-wing weaklings who don’t have the courage to protect their children. When he is asked to run for Congress, he accepts and amplifies his message. Watching these developments in horror, Jo finally decides that there actually is something she can do.She kidnaps Sam’s ten-year-old daughter.

Rath has been on a downward spiral. And it’s not just him – the world is a polluted mess, corporate influence has replaced independent thought, and his fiancée has decided that Rath is no longer worth her time.While Rath embraces his multiple vices, he never expected his next bender to land him in another world entirely. He finds himself in Sarah’s world —an untainted parallel universe to his own: a pristine woodland where every person is the absolute master of their domain, and where Rath’s AI chip isn’t dictating his every move.The opportunity to change his life presents itself in permutations of reality, but Sarah wants nothing more than to follow Rath back to his world. As their mirror worlds collide, Rath teeters on the edge of oblivion.

In the post-punk, global economy of the 1980's, four young women from very different backgrounds are united by a common goal: justice. Curb Angels features fearless female characters on a mission that crosses borders and challenges the status quo. In the face of exploitation and violence against women, they carve their own path and leave a touch of well-deserved wreckage along the way. Powerhouse team Lisa Mendis and Christopher Ducharme join forces in this tour-de-force graphic novel debut to push boundaries and buttons as they explore culturally taboo subjects through sequential art.

During the heatwave of July 2017, Ariel Gordon spent two days sitting on the patio of downtown Winnipeg’s Tallest Poppy, writing snippets of poems which she hung from the boulevard tree using paper and string. Passersby were invited to TreeTalk too — their secrets / one-liners / meditations / haiku were also hung from the tree. By the end of the weekend, the elm had a second temporary canopy of leaves: 234 poems, 111 written by Gordon, 107 written by passersby, and 16 from other sources.Gordon has assembled all these voices into a long/found poem that asks: what does it mean to live in the urban forest? What does it mean to be in relationship with each other but also with the more-than-human? The book also includes pen and ink illustrations by Winnipeg artist Natalie Baird.Since 2017, Gordon has also hung poems in trees at the Sage Hill Poetry Experience in Muenster, SK, the Prairie Gate Literary Festival in Morris, MN, and at the Winnipeg Folk Festival as part of the Prairie Outdoor Exhibition. Stay tuned for more TreeTalk-ing!

In this final installation of the Overhead Series, Lucy Hemphill once again transports the reader with intimate revelations on identity by exploring both her personal and ancestral relationship to the forest and the quiet sentinels that root together everything. Hemphill’s prose is extraordinary in its combination of self awareness yet unselfconscious honesty and skillful restraint, creating a sense of connection under the tangle of foliage and limb that ever-reach skyward. Masterfully illustrated by artist Michael Joyal, his evocative dendrological drawings contribute to the overall sensory and transcendent experience.

The Muse Sings and the poet sings songs of love and longing from states of joy, self-doubt, vexation, curiosity, affection, observation, mock-indignation…The poems speak for themselves and sometimes “they talk all at once.” In seductive acts of language itself, they invoke and embrace the Muses as much as they do the writers who would become muses, from ancient Homer and Shakespeare to poets of contemporary time.These poems are the seasoned work of a trickster poet in his prime with a crow’s eye trained on the world. No silent words on the page, these: they are alert, thoughtful, at turns cheeky and saucy. The poems all but produce decibels despite the inked imprint on the page that would fix them silent in place, until a living voice sets them free.

A collection of mini-narratives that have been posted on Facebook every day since 2009. This book will collect posts from the entire collection in one cohesive volume of work. Award-winning artist Cliff Eyland and famed writer George Toles combine their unique talents in a book like no other, tackling apropos issues related to climate change, politics, relationships, death, and sex with wry humour and deft tone.

Over the course of a lifetime, we all experience catch-of-breath moments that stir exquisite awareness of life’s transience. Such fleeting moments we share with poet Christian McPherson and his space-suited avatar negotiating bumpy terrain. In this collection the meandering, often self-deprecating poet considers and records moments of truth and insight common to us all as he registers his joys and regrets, and raises rants in postured outrage. A refreshing and often humorous honesty prevails. As the dedication promises, these poems are for those who go to a job every day but dream of something more. McPherson delivers.

When a costumed, pike-spiked body turns up after a traditional historic reenactment of the 1645 Battle of Thornford, the Reverend Tom “Father” Christmas and the villagers of Thornford Regis find themselves in a battle of their own as they deal with events from the murky, more recent past. C.C. Benison’s latest intriguing and delightful Father Christmas mystery will leave cozy mystery readers puzzling over the outcome and, like a refreshing English cream tea, wishing there were more.

What does it mean to work for a living?Told in short prose, Glass Bricks tells the story of Lester’s experience working both traditional and non-traditional jobs. Sometimes raw and often humourous, Lester shares stories about learning to work, working, and moving on. Glass Bricks explores the significance of our basic human right to work in an era where the struggle to find meaningful, full-time employment is all too real.

Reluctant amateur detective, Reverend Charles Lauchlan, departs the prairie city of Winnipeg and travels abroad to Scotland with his fiancé Maggie on a bicycle tour of the highlands. Two near fatal accidents put members of the tour on edge and, to make matters worse, a shadowy figure seems to be observing their every move. Stuck in the remote highland countryside, the group is thrown back on their own resources. While Charles and Maggie are trying to decipher what these strange events mean, they make another grisly discovery. It’s murder most foul and we’re not just talking about Scottish weather. So Many Windings is the second in a three book series that began with Put on an Armour of Light (winner of the Michael Van Rooy Award for Genre Fiction). Deftly wrought, meticulously researched, and scintillating with charm and period prose, Macdonald weaves a winding, cross-country tale that will require all of the detective's ingenuity and test the measure of his resolve.

A bilingual collection of renga poetry by two of Canada's most celebrated poets in English and in French, each writing in his respective language in response to the other. A project of discourse itself, shared in dialogue between two poets, as they explore Novalis’ definition of poetry as “the truly absolute real.” The poetic act is world-changing, the agglomeration of atoms as they fall through space – a sort of “elective affinity”, or state of grace – to constitute Being. If Lao Tzu reminds us that the Dao that can be named is not the eternal Dao, this renga, suffused with elements of the natural world, also recognizes that, in the words of Angelus Silesius, ‘‘the unnameable, which we usually call God, is expressed and revealed through the Word.’’ Léveillé and Bloggett share an unprecedented dialogue that possesses both paradox and complete clarity of word in Canada's two official languages.

Miraculous Sickness deals with society's views and treatment of schizophrenia from ancient times to modern day.  From the cure for demon possession to the recovery model, Miraculous Sickness sheds light on a subject matter still shrouded in misconceptions and myth. In this collection of poetry, we get a sense how our approach to dealing with mental illness and those affected has evolved, yet how far we have yet to go. Skillfully wrought poems that detail her own lived experience, the poet expounds upon difficult terrain with careful footing so as to create a dialogue for all to consider.

The weight of history lies on the spine of memory. That heft and delicate balance are palpable in these rich poems that echo with grief, longing, and observed beauty. From the silence and complexity of the northern wilderness to the vast prairie landscapes stretching across the province, Through Disassembled Houses of Perfect Stones explores self, ancestry, and community through poems which dwell on the page with a satisfying density of imagery. Combining careful observation with sensitive reflection, this work examines the poet's memory and experience as a father, son, husband, and descendent of European settlers married into an Indigenous family living in Northern Manitoba.

The Loyal Daughter is a novel in stories, told from the perspective of mother, daughter, and granddaughter and spans the 1940s to modern day. A young woman in a village in Communist China finds herself scrapping her way through the crowded streets of Hong Kong. She immigrates to an isolated Northern Ontario city and finally settling in Toronto. When she finds herself stuck in a small apartment above a clothing store, with four kids, her mother, two siblings, and a husband who is never home, the promise of a new beginning fades. Filled with heart-breaking sacrifices, struggles, and secrets that shape her identity, The Loyal Daughter stands testament to a woman’s true resilience.

Following on the heels of her acclaimed graphic novel debut, Coming to Canada (At Bay Press), singular artist and storyteller Starkie Mak returns with an intimate story about family secrets. Her grandfather, fighting in WW2 for imperialist Japan, is captured and taken as a POW in the USA. Unable to return to Japan, he is disgraced by his own government and forgotten by his own family. Until now. Mak tells a story of secrets, love and one man's longing for the simplest of things, to taste his favourite street treat, Taiyaki.

Poet Sareh Farmand was born in Tehran at the start of the Islamic Revolution. In this brave first collection of poems and prose a narrative arc details her family’s escape from Iran, detailing their time as immigrants in limbo, and finally, as Landed Immigrants in Canada. Using family anecdotes, memory, public documents, and images to outline her family’s story, Pistachios in my Pocket moves from the personal to the universal by exploring the influences of migration, political strife, and cultural identity on humanity. Here is a new voice to the conversation on global citizenship and multiculturalism, as themes of loss, home, and belonging are explored in a new way through a wide socio-political lens and personal accounts of a family’s unique, yet universal experiences. Ultimately, bringing forward the many ways immigrants are haunted after fleeing for safety and what it means to be Canadian.

When Gellhorn, a notable poet, begins a university residency in a "dynamic metropolis" and stays at the illustrious Máximo College, he finds himself scandalized, and for little known reason. Scrutiny by his new academic neighbours is the least of his worries, as he learns of the existence of Aaron Schnell, his physical pseudo-twin, and an actor and film "double."The Chair shares fragments from the oeuvre of Thomas Claque, a recently deceased author who contrived the tale of the pseudo-twins. The Chair's scholarship leads him to the real Máximo College, where he revives those characters and scenarios, before travelling to a smaller prairie town where he reimagines one of Claque's risqué getaways. There he meets a young woman doing her creative thesis on the double in literature.Petra, a police clerk in an entirely different prairie city, receives a photograph of a missing person and recognizes a passenger from her weekday commute. Non-routine surveillance draws her deeper into his world until a global pandemic abruptly stalls her progress. Her romantic prospect soon leads to a greater mystery punctuated by the words, TULPA MEA CULPA, although its uncanny truth will be ultimately less provocative than serial coverage in the Prairie Pulse.Tulpa Mea Culpa is a literary tour-de-force and solidifies Morse as one of Canada's most exciting writers today and proves why he is a two-time Governor General Award nominee.

Welcome to Phantom City where a cat-shaped pendant with magical powers takes a detective on a precarious journey. Award-winning artist and animator Patrick Jenkins has devised a story as affecting as his complex line art. With a mixture of film noir and magic realism, Jenkins employs smoky halftones and sumptuous linework as a binding elements in a sequence of bizarre twists, offering a layered vortex of visual delights without linear paths or escape. Jenkin’s debut is a stunning kaleidoscopic treasure.

Set in Toronto in the blistering summer of 1971, Back to the Garden is about four strangers who take a chance on a new psychological treatment: group therapy. What seems, at first, like a good idea, quickly spirals out of control as the participants connect outside of the sessions in unforeseen and catastrophic ways, each character locked into an escalating crisis. Funny and heart-breaking, Back to the Garden is a love letter to Toronto at a pivotal point in the City's coming of age - when the folk scene was in full throttle, disenchantment over Vietnam was gathering momentum, the authority of the psychiatric establishment was called into question and social forces were pressing for a more inclusive society. The novel's themes of human rights, bullying and mental illness make it increasingly relevant.

Drawing on her Ojibwa roots and storytelling, Barnes shares stories that take the heart on the path to the past, nostalgic though it may be, wherein lies discovery, memories, and rhythms that ease the soul. Touching, tender but never overwrought, Barnes' poetry brings wonder to the spirit of nature and provides a sense of connection to the things most often overlooked.

"This naturalistic novel follows a Black environmental scientist [Mark Smith]. The story is shaped by several cataclysmic events, which suit the novel’s backdrop, in which the Presidency of Barack Obama corresponds with a rise in white nationalism, though climate crisis and racially charged incidents." - The New Yorker

Mark Smith, is a sensitive thirty-seven-year-old environmental scientist of mixed race. He tries to come to terms with his mother’s painful death as he goes through the stages of grief. Mark is also reassessing his relationship with his gay twin sister, Maria, a lawyer. After several failed relationships with women in college, Mark, while at his mother’s funeral in Chicago, reconnects with his high school girlfriend, Christy, an artist who paints self-portraits. He now believes he has finally found true and lasting love, but the country's civil unrest and political division plague the opportunity at a second chance. Major has devised a powerful novel about the cumulative unease and random violence that grip American life and ask what we should do about it.