Memoir & Biography

★ Split Tooth

As a vocalist and composer, Tanya Tagaq cares little for conventional rules of engagement. An Inuk artist from Iqaluktuutiaq, Tagaq’s performances are innovative and face-meltingly intense, and she has collaborated with a wide array of ... Read More »

September 27, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Memoir & Biography

★ Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Authorized Biography

By Andrea Warner

Sometimes biographies about musical heroes read like substantially expanded Wikipedia pages, told in chronological order and sticking to the dry musical facts: albums, hit songs, big concerts, and record deals. Maybe some juicy gossip. Andrea ... Read More »

September 20, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Woo-Woo: How I Survived Ice Hockey, Drug Raids, Demons, and My Crazy Chinese Family

By Lindsay Wong

There’s something almost addictive about The Woo-Woo, the new memoir from Vancouver writer Lindsay Wong. Darkly funny, steeped in the macabre and grotesque, the book is at once an unflinching portrait of a borderline abusive ... Read More »

September 17, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Hungover: The Morning After and One Man’s Quest for the Cure

By Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall

Here’s a drinking game you can play at home: every time Shaughnessy Bishop-Stall’s new book mentions Kingsley Amis – his hero and a giant of both postwar British fiction and guzzling alcohol – take a ... Read More »

August 27, 2018 | Filed under: Health & Self-help, Memoir & Biography

★ All Things Consoled: A Daughter’s Memoir

By Elizabeth Hay

Getting old is no fun. And caring for aging parents is no fun either. In All Things Consoled, Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning novelist Elizabeth Hay lays bare the last few years of her parents’ lives while ... Read More »

August 2, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Machine Without Horses

By Helen Humphreys

In a 2017 Maclean’s magazine interview about her non-fiction title The Ghost Orchard, which blended meticulous research and historical fact with a few dalliances into fiction, Helen Humphreys described how her writing had morphed into ... Read More »

July 26, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels, Memoir & Biography

Mamaskatch: A Cree Coming of Age

By Darrel J. McLeod

In his debut memoir, writer Darrel J. McLeod uses the imagery and tenets of Cree storytelling to make sense of a harrowing childhood. McLeod has written a powerful, unflinching work of non-fiction, one that isn’t ... Read More »

July 19, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

Just Let Me Look at You: On Fatherhood

By Bill Gaston

Some drunks are mean, violent, and needy. Others, like Bill Gaston’s late father, act like a “gentleman” when sober and a “frat boy” when drunk. But even these tamer drinkers can be hard to forgive ... Read More »

June 25, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography

The Boy on the Beach: My Family’s Escape from Syria and Our Hope for a New Home

By Tima Kurdi

Homes: A Refugee Story is the heart-rending account of Abu Bakr al Rabeeah, an Iraqi-born boy who as a child survived the civil war in Syria. Now a high-school student in Edmonton, his story is ... Read More »

June 4, 2018 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Politics & Current Affairs