More books and publishers
More indigenous stories are being published
Rebecca Thomas, an award-winning spoken-word artist and Mi’kmaw activist, is publishing her first book called I’m Finding My Talk (Nimbus Publishing). A response to Rita Joe’s iconic poem
“I Lost My Talk,” (Joe is often referred to as the poet laureate of the Mi’kmaq people), Thomas’ poem comes in the form of a children’s picture book illustrated by Mi’kmaw artist Pauline Young.
New Brunswick’s Goose Lane Editions is publishing several beautiful Indigenous art books including Itee Pootoogook: Hymn to the Silence by Nancy Campbell.
Sherry Blake, an Inuit throat singer from Labrador, is working on a collection of stories for younger readers to be published by Breakwater Books.
Earlier this year, Nova Scotia’s Pottersfield Press published Elapultiek (We Are Looking Towards) a play by playwright and ecologist shalan joudry, who lives and works in the community of L’sitkuk (Bear River First Nation).
The magic of Anne, L.M. Montgomery and PEI
An enduring love of Lucy Maud Montgomery’s life and the fictional world she created in her Anne of Green Gables books continues to inspire and resonate with writers and readers.
Author Stan Sauerwein draws on the latest Montgomery research and dozens of photographs in his new non-fiction book, Lucy Maud Montgomery: Canada’s Literary Treasure (Formac Publishing).
“The Montgomery world continues to grow,” said Elizabeth Rollins Epperly, author of Imagining Anne: The Island Scrapbooks of L.M. Montgomery (Nimbus Publishing). “The scrapbook is so important,” said Epperly, who serves as a guide through the new edition of the scrapbooks. “You see her mind at play.”
Local Lore
Kate Merlin Hanson, a retired school librarian, is publishing children’s books she’d like to see in New Brunswick libraries. In 2015, her company Chocolate River Publishing published its first book, Bay of Fundy’s Hopewell Rocks by Kevin Snair.
Stormy Passage, Merlin Hanson’s adventure book, designed to give reluctant or struggling readers a push, will be published this fall.
“Children need to hear their stories,” she said. “If you read them something about a place they know about, they get really excited.”
While publishing in a small market is challenging, Hanson is buoyed by her small successes. “I don’t think the books would have gotten published without me. The small publishers are sort of the incubators, and they help tell the untold story.”
Meanwhile, over at The Acorn Press, Terilee Bulger is excited about the company’s fall books, especially Bygone Days: Folklore, Traditions and Toenails by Reginald “Dutch” Thompson, a CBC Radio columnist who loves oral history and folklore and lives in a 170-year-old house in Bunbury, PEI.
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