Falling for Myself

Dorothy Ellen palmer entered this world with the deck seemingly stacked against her. Born with congenital abnormalities in both feet to a young single woman unprepared for motherhood, Palmer was eventually adopted by a family ... Read More »

January 9, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Fatherless: A Memoir

By Keith Maillard

Keith Maillard never knew his father. He was just a baby when his parents split up, and he grew up with the same two stories from his mother: “‘He was a good dancer,’ was the ... Read More »

December 5, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Voice of Rebellion: How Mozhdah Jamalzadah Brought Hope to Afghanistan

By Roberta Staley

Singer and media personality Mozhdah Jamalzadah brought a vibrant personality and fresh cultural lens to citizens in Afghanistan by way of The Mozhdah Show, an Oprah-style television program that aired in the country during the ... Read More »

December 2, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Art and Rivalry: The Marriage of Mary and Christopher Pratt

By Carol Bishop-Gwyn

Canadian landscape painter Lawren P. Harris told Mary Pratt in the early days of her career that if two artists were to wed, only one would become a success. In her case, Harris declared, that ... Read More »

November 21, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Sister Language

By Christina Baillie and Martha Baillie

Some authors are experimental by choice; others come by it biochemically. Toronto writers Martha Baillie and Christina Baillie, sisters as well as creators of the idiosyncratic co-autobiography Sister Language, have both bases covered. Unconventional in ... Read More »

October 3, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ In My Own Moccasins: A Memoir of Resilience

By Helen Knott

In her haunting, lyrical debut memoir, acclaimed Indigenous activist and writer Helen Knott – recipient of a 2019 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Author honour – sheds light on her addiction and mental health struggles, providing ... Read More »

August 19, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

★ Breaking the Ocean: A Memoir of Race, Rebellion, and Reconciliation

By Annahid Dashtgard

The child of a British mother and Persian father, Annahid Dashtgard “was always trying to fix [her] world.” Dashtgard’s family was exiled from Iran in 1980, the year following the Islamic Revolution that ushered in ... Read More »

August 15, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Hello I Want to Die Please Fix Me: Depression in the First Person

By Anna Mehler Paperny

Anna Mehler Paperny is the kind of person who knows exactly what Anne Sexton meant when, in her poem “Wanting to Die,” she described the “almost unnameable lust” of suicide. Paperny’s memoir begins with her ... Read More »

August 8, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless, and Finding My Way

By Jesse Thistle

Jesse Thistle has lived a hard life. A descendent of Saskatchewan’s Michif “road allowance” people (who lived on small strips of land between homesteads that were unused by the Crown), his parents were not able ... Read More »

July 29, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Reviews

Jim Christy: A Vagabond Life

By Ian Cutler

“[T]he only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn ... Read More »

July 4, 2019 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

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