Memoir & Biography

Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas

Writer, journalist, and filmmaker Omar Mouallem’s Praying to the West: How Muslims Shaped the Americas is a fascinating exploration of the many manifestations of Islam across cultures, traditions, communities, and political lines. Mouallem’s journey takes ... Read More »

November 1, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Permanent Astonishment

By Tomson Highway

Shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, Permanent Astonishment is playwright and novelist Tomson Highway’s brilliant, funny, beautiful account of his childhood in both Canada’s remote North and at the Guy Hill ... Read More »

October 29, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Native Peoples, Reviews

Waswanipi

By Jean-Yves Soucy; Peter McCambridge (trans.)

It was 1963 when a young Jean-Yves Soucy, the late Montreal-based writer, publisher, and journalist, arrived by floatplane for a summer job as a fire warden in the thick boreal forest of Waswanipi in central ... Read More »

October 6, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ My Mother, My Translator

By Jaspreet Singh

“My mother fantasized about becoming a writer. So did her father. Their fantasies became mine. Slowly a strong desire took over and ruined me forever,” writes Jaspreet Singh in his memoir, which marks a return ... Read More »

October 6, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Flower Diary: In Which Mary Hiester Reid Paints, Travels, Marries & Opens a Door

By Molly Peacock

The subtitle to Molly Peacock’s new book about Edwardian-era painter Mary Hiester Reid suggests this isn’t a typical biography or survey of an artist’s work, and indeed Flower Diary is a refreshing treatment of a ... Read More »

October 5, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Vagabond: Venice Beach, Slab City and Points in Between

By Ceilidh Michelle

Cheryl Strayed’s blockbuster Wild marked a formidable shift in the women’s memoir category, essentially taking Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love from a Contiki tour to a blistering bootcamp detox. Somewhere along the marketing way, these ... Read More »

August 26, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Bushman’s Lair: On the Trail of  the Fugitive of the Shuswap

By Paul McKendrick

If Netflix is looking for a thriller with suspicious deaths, greed, gold, government corruption, a secret underground cave, and an eccentric lead character, it would do well to consider first-time author Paul McKendrick’s brisk and ... Read More »

August 24, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

A Womb in the Shape of a Heart: My Story of Miscarriage and Motherhood

By Joanne Gallant

Being human means being made up of countless invisible, uncontrollable processes: muscles contracting, neurons firing, cells dividing. Each of these processes has the potential to go catastrophically wrong, and many of us carry in us ... Read More »

August 11, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Weight of Sand: My 450 Days Held Hostage in the Sahara

By Edith Blais; Katia Grubisic (trans.)

In December 2018, Canadian Edith Blais vanished. The 34-year-old had been travelling for some time with her Italian companion, Luca Tacchetto, on their way to pursue a volunteer work opportunity in Togo. Then, while driving ... Read More »

August 10, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

The Queer Evangelist: A Socialist Clergy’s Radically Honest Tale

By Cheri DiNovo

Marginalized people in her orbit might picture Cheri DiNovo as a pollinating bee, buzzing from one bloom to the next, never in a straight line. The more comfortable and powerful people who are challenged by ... Read More »

June 23, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

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