2026 Spring Preview: Short Fiction, Graphic Novels & Poetry

Over the course of three instalments, Q&Q presents the titles we’re most excited about this spring. This week’s instalment features short fiction, graphic novels, and poetry. Nonfiction titles will be featured next week. Last week’s instalment looked at this season’s novels.

Q&Q’s spring preview covers books published between Jan. 1 and June 30, 2026. All information (titles, publication dates) was supplied by publishers.

SHORT FICTION

This spring’s crop of short story collections includes books from award-winners and short-story masters, as well as books from debut authors and a debut title in the genre from novelist and memoirist Ruth Ozeki.

The Age of Calamities
Senaa Ahmad
Henry Holt/Macmillan Publishers, Jan.

Smash and Grab
Mark Anthony Jarman
Biblioasis, Feb.

Master of the form Mark Anthony Jarman returns with a new collection of short stories that continue his chronicling of the wayward and unlucky.

Weird Babies
Jaclyn Desforges
The Porcupine’s Quill, March

Seasons of Glass and Iron
Amal El-Mohtar
Tordotcom/Macmillan Publishers, March

The Life of a Creature
Nadja Lubiw-Hazard
Arsenal Pulp Press, April

Mom Camp
Véronique Darwin
Assembly Press, May

The Good Eye
Jess Gibson
Knopf Canada/Penguin Random House Canada, May

Tales of the Mountains and the Sea
Dania Idriss
Freehand Books, May

These genre-bending stories from first-time author Dania Idriss feature Lebanese women at pivotal moments in that country’s history, from a teenager possessed by the spirit of her recently deceased grandmother to a young girl worried her brother is falling in with the wrong crowd as civil war breaks out on the streets.

Layaway Child
Chanel Sutherland
Astoria/House of Anansi Press, May

Debut author Chanel Sutherland won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize in 2025, and this collection features stories that explore the lives of Caribbean families fractured by migration and the complexities of growing up between worlds.

The Typing Lady: And Other Fictions
Ruth Ozeki
Viking/Penguin Random House Canada, June

Toast for Two Tongues
Gisèle Villeneuve
University of Alberta Press, June

GRAPHIC NOVELS

New titles from Joe Ollmann and Michael DeForge are among this season’s forthcoming graphic novels, as is an anthology of graphic shorts from 25 Canadian artists marking Conundrum Press’s 30th anniversary.

The Woodchipper
Joe Ollmann
Drawn & Quarterly, Feb.

Nowhere
Jon Claytor
Goose Lane Editions, March

Closing Act
Chris W. Kim
Conundrum Press, March

All the Cameras in My Room
Michael DeForge
Drawn & Quarterly, April

30×30: Thirty Years of Conundrum Press
Andy Brown, ed.
Conundrum Press, May

POETRY

Spring’s lineup of verse includes new titles from celebrated poets and debut voices alike.

The Distance of a Shout: Selected Poems
Michael Ondaatje
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada, Feb.

Interposition
Kaie Kellough
McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada, March

This long poem from Griffin Prize winner Kaie Kellough uses language borrowed from news, entertainment, war, advertising, and technology to examine how our current culture sells online versions of ourselves back to us.

Spruce to Cedar
Lasänmą
Brick Books, March

New-Fangled Rose
Sue Sinclair
icehouse poetry/Goose Lane Editions, March

(Di Brandt: Mortimer Mackenzie)

My Great-Grandfather Danced Ballet
Misha Solomon
Brick Books, March

Ultra Blue
Graeme Bezanson
House of Anansi Press, April

Pitiful
Brandi Bird
House of Anansi Press, April

The deeply personal poems in Brandi Bird’s second collection deal with the poet’s ongoing struggles with eating disorders and depression and explore the relationship between sexuality and eating disorders.

Little Dragons
Di Brandt
Turnstone Press, April

(Richard Harrison: Keeghan Harrison)

I Used to Be a Pisces
Camilla Gibb
Book*hug Press, April

Cannibal Rats
Richard Greene
Signal Editions/Véhicule Press, March

My Mother Joins the Resistance
Richard Harrison
Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn, April

Richard Harrison, who won the 2017 Governor General’s Award for English poetry for On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, turns again to the familial with this collection of poems that consider his mother’s life, from her childhood during the Second World War to her decision in 2017 to end her life with MAID while terminally ill with cancer.

The Bright Afters
Sadie McCarney
ECW Press, April

The Wren
A.F. Moritz
House of Anansi Press, April

We Survived Until We Could Live
Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike
University of Calgary Press, April

Dad Era
Jordan Abel
Coach House Books, May

Qaf’s People
Sadiqa de Meijer
Signal Editions/Véhicule Press, May

The poems in this latest collection from Governor General’s Award winner Sadiqa de Meijer are set in an imagined landscape drawn from Islamic mythology and explore mixed-race identity, diaspora, family history, and the perils of belonging.