John Barton

A bold experiment in autobiography, Lost Family: A Memoir is a book of sonnets that centres around the deaths of John Barton’s parents and sister, but also tracks much of the poet’s early life in Alberta through to a complicated, restless adulthood. Alongside accounts of love, friends and heroes, intolerance, AIDS, and the struggle for equality, Barton’s collection of poems—his first in six years—explores how being queer rewrites and expands society’s sense of lineage, both given and chosen.

Sherry Simon

Reflections on the art of literary translation.

Translators connect languages and landscapes, sparking conversations that enlarge our imagination. In Canada, where translation has had an especially important role to play, the nature of the connections has changed. These wide-ranging essays, by Canada’s most prominent translators, chart a journey that begins with the sharp divides of English and French in the 1970s and then confronts the much more complex explosion of identities today. Engaging with the politics of meaning but also with the creative role of the translator, these beautifully-written reflections illuminate a practice that is today finally receiving due recognition.

Contributors include Wayne Grady, Rhonda Mullins, Michelle Hartman, Erin Moure, Barbara Godard, Susanne de Lotbinière-Harwood, Linda Gaboriau, Sheila Fischman, Kathy Mezei, Philip Stratford, Louise von Flotow, Ray Ellenwood, Betty Bednarski, William Findlay, David Homel, Jane Brierley, Katia Grubisic.

Culture in Transit was originally published in 1995. This edition, with a new introduction by Sherry Simon, has been revised, and expanded to include four new contributors to reflect changes in the translation scene over the last decades.

Christopher DiRaddo

Twenty-eight-year-old Will, a teacher living in Montreal, has spent the last few months recovering from a breakup with his first serious boyfriend, Max. He has resumed his search for companionship, but has he truly moved on? Will’s mother Katherine – one of the few people, perhaps the only one, who loves him unconditionally – is also in recovery, from a bout with colon cancer that haunts her body and mind with the possibility of relapse. Having experienced heartbreak, and fearful of tragedy, Will must come to terms with the rule of impermanence: to see past lost treasures and unwanted returns, to find hope and solace in the absolute certainty of change. In The Geography of Pluto, Christopher DiRaddo perfectly captures the ebb and flow of life through the insightful, exciting, and often playful story of a young man’s day-to-day struggle with uncertainty.

Christopher DiRaddo

The year Paul turns forty, his friends Wendy and Eve ask him to help them get pregnant. Nothing about the process feels natural to him. But for a gay man of a certain age, making a family still means finding your own way through a world with few ready answers. The eighteen-month journey reveals many insights about Paul’s past and present, from his strained relationship to his father, his overprotective relationship with his partner Michael, and the many friends around him whom he considers his family.