University of Alberta Press

10/15/2026

It's LitFest in Edmonton and we have several authors participating in conversations, panels, and workshops. Please join us!
https://bit.ly/4pZAJ9k

1. Friday. October 16 | 7 pm
Aaron Hughes and Senator Paula Simons are at LitFest, talking about Our Rights and Freedoms: A Biography of Canada’s Charter. Edmonton Public Library, Muttart Theatre, 7 Sir Winston Churchill Square NW. Free of charge!

2. Saturday. October 17 | 10 am
Alice Major and Richard Harrison are at LitFest to talk about their new books. Rice Theatre at The Citadel, 9828 101A Avenue NW. Tickets are $20.

3. Saturday. October 17 | 4 pm
Panelists Lisa Martin, Richard Harrison, and Zena Sharman sit down in a LitFest panel to discuss the process of grief and its many nuances.
Rice Theatre at The Citadel, 9828 101A Avenue NW. Tickets are $20.

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There are so many good sessions during LitFest. We hope that you look at the complete schedule when planning your festival activities.

We are connected to a number of other presenters and bet you will recognize many more: Rona Altrows, Vivek Shraya, Jennifer Bowering Delisle, Naomi McIlwraith, Oliver Rossier, Luciana Erregue-Sacchi, Leslie Vermeer, and Nisha Patel.

Workshop/Scribo ergo sum: I write, therefore I am (what I write) Workshop with Richard Harrison October 18, 2026 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm Richard Harrison will facilitate a workshop about using writing to discover and create yourself. Bring pen, paper, and a willingness…View Event

10/14/2026

Honouring Baha Abu-Laban, who passed away this fall. We published three collections with Dr. Abu Laban between 1983 and 1991.
The Muslim Community in North America
Muslim Families in North America
The Human Sciences: Their Contribution to Society and Future Research Needs

https://bit.ly/4hUh1sj

10/13/2026

“As you might expect of a short story collection from a poet, TOAST FOR TWO TONGUES by Gisèle Villeneuve, is beautifully written throughout, with lyrical, sensual descriptions that immerse you in her characters’ worlds.” Dr. Alice Violett

Full blog post: https://bit.ly/4xTb6tw
Book page: https://bit.ly/4h3DST2

10/09/2026

Today's blog post introduces Francina Cousins, our newest PhD Intern. She is committed, delightful, and talented, with a great sense of humour!

"Having lived on a tropical island all my life, I consider surviving my first Edmonton winter to be my greatest accomplishment to date."

https://bit.ly/3VzYgmF

10/08/2026

In the Notes at the end of the book, Gisèle Villeneuve relates the genesis of TOAST FOR TWO TONGUES as a collection of narratives.

"In a real diner, a server answers my question about an item on the menu: 'Bilingual Toast is like French toast. Except the English side is sweeter than the French side.' Years later, I recovered that irresistible quirky anecdote. And here it is, in the first sentence of the eponymous opening story. This allowed me to redesign the found texts in entirely new mises en scène. Each of the other narratives in the collection has a similar pedigree."

https://bit.ly/4h3DST2

10/08/2026

"[CROSSING INTO CANADA] is not just an essential historical document of one war but a conversation about changing Canadian conceptions of war, borders, safe havens and political action. For Mountz, the wars of the past are embedded within the concerns of the present....
You end each chapter feeling as if you’ve had a difficult, deep and generous conversation with a stranger who might very well be your neighbour...
In a time when the border between Canada and the US is increasingly guarded and deeply political, this collection of personal narratives reminds us of the power of sanctuary and of the pain and beauty in seeking new life in opposition to war."
Benjamin Hertwig, Alberta Views

Full review: https://bit.ly/3TwtkTJ
About the book: https://bit.ly/4agkxLf

10/07/2026

Edmonton friends! Mark your calendars.

October 16 | 7 pm | Muttart Theatre, EPL. Free.

Join Senator Paula Simons for a thought-provoking discussion with author Aaron Hughes at a critical time in our country.

Host: Evan Osenton, Alberta Views magazine

https://bit.ly/4dk5GjZ

10/06/2026

Toronto friends: Mehdi Kashani's book launch is Thursday, October 15, at 6:30 pm at TYPE Books on Dundas. All are welcome to join the celebration!
https://bit.ly/3TCq4pW

10/05/2026

LITFEST 2026: October 17. Together and Alone: Normalizing Grief Panel.

Panelists Lisa Martin, Richard Harrison, and Zena Sharman sit down to discuss the process of grief and its many nuances.

In NIGHTHAWKS, Lisa Martin traces a creaturely interconnectedness, traversing land, ecology, and other boundaries amid crises unfolding at a global scale. These poems parse aspects of human embodiment—emotion, relationship, mortality—and reflect on how to live through moments of intense personal and political upheaval. Long verses about the remnants of marriage and divorce, and a sonnet cycle about the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, sit alongside lyrical explorations of midlife loneliness, mothering, and grief. Philosophical ruminations on form and language are also present, asking what good is a poem, a verse, in a world so full of things one might hold an aversion to? “What if I write a line, follow it in, what if/the line tears what I didn’t mean to open?” Martin’s experimental collection engages in exquisite emotional truth-telling, asking how we can hold and tend the world with more attunement and care.

In this latest collection Richard Harrison has created a companion to his Governor General Award–winning collection On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood. In My Mother Joins the Resistance, Harrison considers his mother’s life – from her time as a child during WWII’s Operation Pied Piper, up until its end, in 2017, when terminally ill with cancer, she chose MAiD – with elegant, deeply felt poetry. These are beautiful poems, ones that piece together a person, a life and a family over generations. These are poems that examine the wounds passed down through a family, alongside the love, and see the echoes of both – the wounds and the love – in the world around us.

Staying Power: On Queerness, Inheritances, and the Families We Choose by Zena Sharman is a beautiful and honest memoir of care work, grief, parenting, and chosen family in the wake of intergenerational trauma. It recounts the author’s experiences of raising three children in a four-parent q***r family after her mother’s death and a divorce drastically reshaped her life. Staying Power asks, “If leaving has helped you survive, how do you learn to stay?” It finds answers in q***r kinship, femme erotics, Leatherdyke lineages, and the radical possibilities inherent in doing motherwork outside of motherhood, recognizing that sometimes you fight the thing you want most.
Date: Saturday, October 17
Time: Doors: 3:30 pm, Program: 4:00 pm
Tickets: $20, $10 (student/low income)

10/05/2026

"THE WAKING GLACIER is, at once, an immersive and impressionistic travelogue of a tall-ship voyage to the High Arctic, a meditation on a life-long fascination with glaciers, and a personal, poetic account of internal and external landscapes.

In vivid, alluring fragments, Dianne Chisholm conveys us to a realm of shale, ice, and sea, still mostly inhospitable to human habitation, and also the fastest-warming area on the planet. Her lyric takes us to the edge of language’s capability to interpret and witness our rapidly changing world." Jean McNeil, Ice Diaries

https://bit.ly/4xOsZds