Over the course of three instalments, Q&Q presents the titles we’re most excited about this fall. This week’s instalment features short fiction and poetry. Next week’s final instalment will feature nonfiction titles. 

Q&Q’s fall preview covers books published between July 1 and Dec. 31, 2025. All information (titles, publication dates) was supplied by publishers.

SHORT FICTION

A wide range of short fiction offerings this season includes a follow-up collection of contemporary Arctic horror stories, the first anthology of speculative short stories by Black Canadian writers, a collection of Steven Heighton’s best work, stories written in a Syrian prison, and fiction about ambition and regret, love and passion, and queer chosen families.

Sacred Rage: Selected Stories
Steven Heighton
Biblioasis, Aug.

Suddenly Light
Nina Dunic
Invisible Publishing, Sept.

Noted for her intimate, carefully crafted realism, Nina Dunic, the author of the 2023 breakout novel The Clarion – winner of the Trillium Book Award and longlisted for the Giller Prize –  explores relationships in this first collection of short fiction that includes longlisted and award-winning stories. 

Taaqtumi 2: An Anthology of Arctic Horror Stories
Inhabit Media
Inhabit Media, Sept.

Big of You
Elise Levine
Biblioasis, Sept. 

Elise Levine’s new collection of stories, which range from the real to the fantastical, examines ambition and the quest for independence even as individuals are haunted by memory and the past.

A Chapter of Accidents: Twenty-seven Rediscovered Stories
Lucy Maud Montgomery; Carolyn Strom Collins, ed.
Nimbus Publishing, Sept. 

Runs in the Blood
Matthew J. Trafford
Arsenal Pulp Press, Sept.

A Fast Horse Never Brings Good News
Cary Fagan
Book*hug Press, Oct.

As the Earth Dreams: Black Canadian Speculative Stories
Terese Mason Pierre, ed.
Spiderline/House of Anansi Press, Oct.

This anthology of speculative fiction by Black Canadian writers, including francesca ekwuyasi, Whitney French, and Zalika Reid-Benta, encompasses not only the dystopic but also magic carpets, and themes of death and immortality, family, hope, and joy.

Princess Nai and Other Stories
Jamal Saeed
ECW Press, Oct.

Planet Earth
Nicholas Ruddock
Astoria/House of Anansi Press, Nov.

POETRY

This fall’s offerings feature new work from established voices in verse – including Billy-Ray Belcourt, katherena vermette, and Canisia Lubrin – as well as debuts and sophomore collections that explore everything from the tension between devotion and doubt to the finite nature of mortality. 

The Idea of an Entire Life
Billy-Ray Belcourt
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada, Sept.

The poems in this collection take various forms, from sonnets to field notes to fragments, as Griffin-winning Cree poet Billy-Ray Belcourt probes the many sides of queer Indigeneity.

I Would Like to Say Thank You
Joseph Dandurand
Nightwood Editions, Sept. 

Non-Prophet
Qurat Dar
icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, Sept. 

The Character Actor Convention
Guy Elston
Porcupine’s Quill, Sept.

The Reign
Shane Neilson
icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, Sept.

Infinite Audition
Charlie Petch
Brick Books, Sept.

This collection is an exploration of the possibilities of spoken word poetry – and part theatre audition resource – from poet, playwright, and multidisciplinary artist Charlie Petch. The poems are organized into three sections – one for solo performance; one for musical, puppetry, and dance collaborations; and one for audition monologues for trans and nonbinary actors.

Crohnic
Jason Purcell
Arsenal Pulp Press, Sept. 

We’re Somewhere Else Now
Robyn Sarah
Biblioasis, Sept. 

The Garbage Poems
Anna Swanson and April White, ill.
Brick Books, Sept. 

Over the course of eight years, Gerald Lampert Award–winner Anna Swanson collected trash from some of her favourite swimming holes and created poems from the text printed on that garbage. Artist April White created individual portraits of the litter, and the resulting work is being published as an illustrated poetry collection. 

NMLCT
Paul Vermeersch
a misFit book/ECW Press, Sept.

procession
katherena vermette
House of Anansi Press, Sept.

In her third collection, Governor General’s Award–winner katherena vermette explores the reality of being at once a descendant and a future ancestor, in poems that are about being one small part of a larger lineage living in the same Prairie place.

November, November
Isabella Wang
Nightwood Editions, Sept. 

Several Small Animals Enclosed in a Benedictine Monastery
Vera Hadzic
A Feed Dog Book/Anvil Press, Oct. 

I’ll Get Right On It: Poems on Working Life in the Climate Crisis
The Land and Labour Poetry Collective, ed. Anjali Appadurai, foreword
Roseway Publishing, Oct.

The World After Rain: Anne’s Poem
Canisia Lubrin
McClelland & Stewart/PRHC, Oct.

the book of sentences
rob mclennan
University of Calgary Press, Oct. 

Goose
Melanie Dennis Unrau
Assembly Press, Oct. 

Melanie Dennis Unrau created the hand-traced visual poems in this collection using text and images found in the 1938 and 1956 editions of Northland Trails by S.C. Ells, a mining engineer who was sent to northern Alberta to complete a survey of the commercial potential of the oilsands. The book featured Ells’s poems, short stories, and illustrations of the landscape. 

2025 fall preview: Fiction
2025 fall preview: Middle grade and graphic novels
2025 Fall Preview: Picture Books
All 2025 fall previews

Correction, July 31: This story has been updated to reflect the fact that Nina Dunic’s novel The Clarion was longlisted, not shortlisted, for the Giller Prize.