When her house in the Jamaican countryside is damaged by a hurricane, Gertrude Samphire is sent by her estranged daughter Celia to Ellesmere Lodge, an assisted living centre. Gertrude is unimpressed with her new wealthy neighbours, and spends most of her time alone. It is only through writing that she finds her voice, and she begins to record her life in a notebook: memories of her gothic childhood, impetuous marriage, and struggles with raising a family. Gertrude slowly comes out of her s...

"This wonderful anthology of fresh voices . . . includes writers from Antigua and Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, Belize, Jamaica, and Trinidad and Tobago." — BooklistAkashic Books and Peepal Tree Press, two of the foremost publishers of Caribbean literature, launch a joint Caribbean-focused imprint, Peekash Press, with this anthology. Consisting entirely of brand-new stories by authors living in the region (not simply authors from the region), this collec...

A historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their "discovery" by Christopher Columbus in 1492Paradise Once is a sweeping historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their "di...

Hurricane Watch: New and Collected Poems brings together Jamaican Poet Laureate Olive Senior's first four books of poetry alongside a new collection. Recipient of the Musgrave Gold Medal in 2005 from the Institute of Jamaica, Senior has long been recognised as a skilful and evocative storyteller but what this book shows is the consistency and range of her achievement. Senior's poems are delicate, formally playful and always finely observed, whether responding to Jamaican birdlife, the larg...

The Pain Tree tells stories that speak to all aspects of Jamaican life. Among the characters we hear from are: poor folk making the best of past hardships (“Coal”); rich folk plotting future selfishness (“The Goodness of My Heart”); an old man, familiar with darkness, who discovers in foreign capitalism a force even he cannot control (“Boxed-In”); a young girl, uprooted to a new country, forced to shoulder her mother’s unspoken burdens in addition to her own (“Lollipop”). Bookendi...

Early in the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, Olive Senior began posting her series of Pandemic Poems on social media. The project was a way of bearing witness to the strangeness of it all and forging a reassuring connection with readers. Each poem is a riff on a word or phrase trending in the first wave of the pandemic - an A to Z of the lexicon newly coined or quickly repurposed for our historic moment. By presenting these words and phrases in sequence, Senior offers a timeline of th...

In this vibrant and exquisitely illustrated picture book by Jamaican-Canadian writer Olive Senior and acclaimed artist Laura James (the team that created the best-selling Anna Carries Water), a young girl learns to love her difficult-to-manage voluminous and Boonoonoonous Hair.

A historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people in the Caribbean whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492Paradise Once is a sweeping historical novel that brings to life the resiliency of the indigenous Taíno people of the Caribbean, whose culture was virtually destroyed within two generations of their “discovery” by Christopher Columbus in 1492.

From the two-time Giller Prize shortlisted author, a dazzling circus of a novel set in the seductive underside of Montreal and New York between the warsTwo babies are abandoned in a Montreal orphanage in the winter of 1910. One is a girl named Rose; the other, a boy named Pierrot. Each display rare gifts that bring them adoration and hatred. As they are made to travel around the city performing clown routines to raise funds for the orphanage, they make plans for a ...

Winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award, The Break is a stunning and heartbreaking debut novel about a multigenerational Métis–Anishnaabe family dealing with the fallout of a shocking crime in Winnipeg’s North End.When Stella, a young Métis mother, looks out her window one evening and spots someone in trouble on the Break — a barren field on an isolated s...

#1 NATIONAL BESTSELLER • WINNER OF THE GOVERNOR GENERAL'S LITERARY AWARD • FINALIST FOR THE MAN BOOKER PRIZE • SHORTLISTED FOR THE BAILEYS WOMEN'S PRIZE FOR FICTION • LONGLISTED FOR THE ANDREW CARNEGIE MEDAL FOR EXCELLENCE IN FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE CANADIAN AUTHORS ASSOCIATION AWARD FOR FICTION • SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZEDo Not Say We Have Nothing is a breathtaking novel that tells the story of three musicians in China before, during...

After the release of Anita Rau Badami's critically acclaimed first novel, Tamarind Mem, it was evident a promising new talent had joined the Canadian literary community. Her dazzling literary follow-up is The Hero's Walk, a novel teeming with the author's trademark tumble of the haphazard beauty, wreckage and folly of ordinary lives. Set in the dusty seaside town of Toturpuram on the Bay of Bengal, The Hero's Walk traces the terrain of family and forgiveness thro...