River Street Writing

06/20/2026

Coming this fall! My Love is a Durian by Kelly Kaur, University of Calgary Press, October 15, 2026.

DM us to request a review copy!

In My Love is a Durian, Singapore and Canada twine and intertwine, the places adopted and left behind bunch and twist. Kelly Kaur leads readers through markets in Singapore and up mountainsides in Kananaskis. These poems enliven the senses, from the taste of durians eaten fresh to the chill of snow melting on the cheek, as they dance the insider-outsider dance.

My Love is a Durian seeks belonging without judgement, a place to rest, a place to work, and a place to grow. It shares the easy happiness of time with friends and family, the tension of coming of age, the fear and joy of making a life. These poems tangle with ideas of colour and race, freedom and acceptance. These are poems that reach out to readers to create empathy, connection. My Love is a Durian lifts up the voices that sing in the margins of the world.

Kelly Kaur is a writer, author, and speaker. Her poems, short stories, and nonfiction have landed on the moon, published on beer cans, danced on stage, and travelled to galleries and museums.

💚: Kelly Kaur UCalgaryPress

06/18/2026

Take a peek at the launch of Take This for the Pain: Essays on Writing and Life by Alex Boyd, released with Palimpsest Press.

Big love to Another Story Bookshop in Toronto for hosting!

Remember to support your local independent bookstores. They are a heart of our literary communities.♥️

About Take This for the Pain: Essays on Writing and Life:

Pulling from twenty-five years of essays, articles, and reviews, Alex Boyd’s Take This for the Pain is a curious look at art and culture in a rapidly changing world. Boldly tackling topics ranging from faith to aging to memorable jobs, Boyd’s work finds inspiration in the philosophies of writers like George Orwell, William Stafford, and Charlotte Brontë. If you’ve ever wondered about the value of poetry in the 21st century, or whether graffiti is a valid art form, Take This for the Pain reveals how art can reinforce selfhood and galvanize social change. Moreover, it includes a range of reviews that covers a number of overlooked, deeply worthy books.

Alex Boyd has written for publications such as The Globe and Mail and Taddle Creek magazine. He helped establish Best Canadian Essays, co-editing the first two collections of work selected from Canadian magazines. His poetry collections are Making Bones Walk (2007) winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and more recently The Least Important Man (2012). In 2018 his first novel was published: Army of the Brave and Accidental, a retelling of The Odyssey reviewed as “timely, original and profound.”

Learn more: https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/take-this-for-the-pain-alex-boyd/

🫶🏼: Another Story Bookshop Alex Boyd Palimpsest Press Nonfiction Writers Workshop

06/17/2026

“Tidelight’s bloom. To be eaten at sunrise.” The instructions hissed through his mind. “Before it opens.”

—from Not All Dragons by David Ly (Wolsak & Wynn)

Read the full excerpt on our blog at RiverStreetWriting.com.

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/3/20/excerpt-from-not-all-dragons-by-david-ly

About Not All Dragons:

In a land of magic and myth, Rhys awakens on the shore of Lanilia with mysterious wounds on his back and no memory of his life before. Disoriented, he stumbles on the Mernese estuary protected by the mermaid Delia, who is quickly intrigued by this male who doesn’t smell like any Lanilian she’s ever met and who is unable to answer questions about himself. Determined to figure out his past, Rhys convinces Delia to help, and begins a dangerous journey to discover who he is, or was, and who he might become as they hunt for the truth beneath story and prophecy.

David Ly brings readers a fascinating and fresh take on dragons and destiny in this captivating debut novel.

David Ly is the author of Mythical Man (Anstruther Books, 2020) and Dream of Me as Water (Anstruther Books, 2022), both shortlisted for ReLit Awards for Poetry. He co-edited, with Daniel Zomparelli, Q***r Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022). He is the Poetry Editor at This Magazine. More at davidlywrites.ca.

Author photo credit of David: Joy Gyamfi

🐉 : David Ly Wolsak and Wynn Publishers

06/15/2026

Enter to win a copy of The Widow’s Crayon Box by beloved internationally acclaimed poet and biographer of women’s creativity, Molly Peacock (W.W. Norton & Co.) — available in paperback!

To enter, share this post to your story and tag us River Street — that’s it!

“Peacock works her trademark lyrical magic.”
-ALEX GURTIS, RAIN TAXI

About The Widow’s Crayon Box:

After her husband’s death, Molly Peacock realized she was not living the received idea of a widow’s mauve existence but instead was experiencing life with all 152 colours of the crayon box. The result is a collection of gorgeous poems, which are joyful, furious, mournful, bewildered, sexy, devastated, whimsical and above all, moving. They illuminate both the life as a caregiver and the crystalline emotions one can experience after the death of a cherished partner. With her characteristic virtuosity, her fearless willingness to confront even the most difficult emotions, and always with buoyancy and zest, Molly charts widowhood in the 21st century.

Molly is the author of eight volumes of poetry, including The Widow’s Crayon Box, The Analyst: Poems and Cornucopia: New & Selected Poems, all from W.W. Norton, she recently wrote a book about a half-century friendship, A Friend Sails in on a Poem. As a poetry activist, Peacock was the co-founder of Poetry in Motion on New York’s subways and buses, the founder of The Best Canadian Poetry series, and the creator of The Secret Poetry Room at Binghamton University.

🖍️: Molly Peacock Poet W. W. Norton & Company

06/14/2026

“I was able to hear the actual birdsong the poets talk about.”

In Episode 29 of the Happy Hearing Podcast, Dr Rosette Ruth Aguilar AuD MBA CCC-A and hearing loss health advocate Carly Sygrove are joined by award-winning author of In the Bear’s House, Bruce Hunter.

From the hosts:

“Bruce shares his lifelong journey with hearing loss, his experience living bimodally with a cochlear implant and hearing aid, and the profound emotional impact of hearing new sounds later in life, including birdsong for the very first time.

Bruce also discusses finding your “superpower” through adversity, and shares how hearing technology transformed not only his hearing, but his writing, relationships and connection to the world around him.

🎧 Episode 29 is available now wherever you get your podcasts”

Link: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/happy-hearing/id1694015392?i=1000769445336

💫: Hearing Loss Coach Frontenac House Ltd.

06/13/2026

DM us to request a review copy! ♥️

The lake-shaped excuse, my third collection of poetry, is out Oct 6 2026. Pre-orders now available in the US and Canada!

—

A conversation between mother and daughter beyond death; an elegy, a prayer, a regret

‍Conyer Clayton's third poetry collection, the lake-shaped excuse, is a book about grief and so, like most grief books, it is ultimately a book about love. The voices of a long-dead mother and a still-living daughter merge and twin and separate in a series of long poems that mirror yet fall apart from one another, much like the speakers' lives. In these poems the reader is guided through the window to the lake, into the body, away from the body, into remembering then unremembering.

We see the toad in the firepit, the neighbour picking wildflowers in the front yard, their mother's hands, rubbing their eyes to sleep. the lake-shaped excuse is a conversation beyond endings, where laughter and silence reflect on the still surface of the water.

—

“Brilliant and painful” —Mikko Harvey

"...Clayton is a poetic force to be reckoned with."
—Kate Siklosi and Dani Spinosa of Gap Riot Press

—

US and Canada fall 2026 and winter 2027 tour dates with all sorts of folks I love coming soon. Xo

Cover design by Natalie Olson

06/13/2026

Our Reviewer-in-Residence, Catherine Owen’s second review is live!

Owen writes: “[…]Theresa Kishkan who, in her lyrical memoir, The Art of Looking Back, has assumed the difficult task of telling her tale of a man’s (a well-known painter, Jack Wilkinson’s) obsession with her in her early 20s and beyond (and even more disturbingly, his passion for his own daughter, whose image is often the doppelganger for Kishkan’s). In this narrative, she risks her own obsessiveness too, as she quests, in a plethora of short, titled segments, for the reasons behind this discomforting pursuit, returning to the wound of it to examine pain’s parameters, what once lay beyond the frame of her younger incomprehension.”

Read the review:

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/5/1/the-art-of-looking-back-review-catherine-owen

About The Art of Looking Back:

At 23, Theresa Kishkan met an artist who became obsessed with her. She was young, she was flattered, and the situation quickly overwhelmed her. He drew and painted her for a few months, after which she went away for a year. When she returned, she was determined not to resume the relationship.

But the artist made contact with her after the birth of her first child and became a family friend, bringing gifts of paintings. Those images hung in Theresa’s home, and one in particular reminded her almost daily of her younger self, in ways both positive and not so much. She avoided looking too closely at his images of her and at his long, passionate and often troubling letters.

Decades later, while sorting old correspondence, she was taken back to those early days and began, at last, to write about her relationship with the now-deceased artist. The Art of Looking Back is a meditation on the male gaze, on reclaiming one’s younger self, and on agency: how we lose it, how we find it again. This poetic memoir asks questions about older men and younger women and girls, and the persistence of that dynamic in art.

Theresa Kishkan Nonfiction Writers Workshop

06/12/2026

Brent van Staalduinen's new novel THE PEACE THIEVES (Thistledown Press) is a compelling and ambitious novel about the search for peace during a civil war and through its long, complicated aftermath.

Read an excerpt from the book here: https://alllitup.ca/excerpted-the-peace-thieves

06/11/2026

DYK: Books by Canadians only made up 14% of print book sales in Canada in 2025 and Canadian-owned publishers made up a mere 6.2% of the total market share of books sold in Canada? (BookNetCanada.ca)

Reading Canadian published books not only enriches our culture and supports our literary arts, but it also bolsters our economy.

If you’ve been looking to read more Canadian published literature, join us here at River Street. Want to review books with us? Drop us a DM!

Featured in this post are six authors and six reads from six different Canadian publishers. We’ve included their Instagram handles below. Follow along!

📱 Michael Mirolla, How About This…? (At Bay Press)

🐑 Guy Elston, The Chatacter Actor Convention
(Gordon Hill/The Porcupine’s Quill)

🏊‍♀️ Alison Gadsby, Breathing is How Some People Stay Alive (Guernica Editions)

❤️‍🔥 Jennifer LoveGrove, The Tinder Sonnets (Book*hug Press)

🪖 Brent van Staalduinen, The Peace Thieves (Thistledown Press)

🪻: Hollay Ghadery, The Unravelling of Ou (Palimpsest Press)

🪶: Michael Mirolla Alison Gadsby Guy Elston Jennifer LoveGrove Brent van Staalduinen

📚: At Bay Press Guernica Editions Book*hug Press Palimpsest Press Gordon Hill Press & The Porcupine's Quill Thistledown Press Hollay Ghadery

Location: Novel Idea Bookstore

Photo credits: Alison Gadsby