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Creative nonfiction

  • Author:
    Reinke, Steve
    Summary:

    Steve Reinke is one of the most intriguing artists we've got; his scope is enormous, his imagination absolutely singular. His video art — The Hundred Videos, Anthology of American Folk Song, Anal Masturbation and Object Loss — practically define the genre. Reinke tells us, in 'Kitchener–Berlin,' his appreciation of Philip Hoffman's film of that title, that experimental video is centred around voice — a decidedly peculiar and literary notion. It makes good sense, then, that this experimental video artist is also an accomplished prose writer. Collected herein are Reinke's best recent prose pieces. Hybrids of criticism, fiction and personal essay, these pieces all engage — by pillaging, by honouring, by scrutinizing, by cannibalizing — an other's work: the films of Frank Cole, the videos of Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby, the photos of Douglas Ischar, the writings of Dr. Paul Brouardel and the psycho­analysis of Melanie Klein, to name just a few. Funny, absurd and tartly poignant, these texts document the process and reach of an artistic mind at the height of its powers.

  • Author:
    Komba, Neema, Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama
    Summary:

    Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. Representing the very best of African creative nonfiction, Safe House brings together works from Africa's contemporary literary greats. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa. This creative nonfiction single from the Safe House anthology is poet Neema Komba's memoir of her visit to an ancestral landmark in Tanzania.

  • Author:
    Humphreys, Helen
    Summary:

    A breathtaking mix of observation, prose, natural history, and art. We tend to look at landscape in relation to what it can do for us. Does it move us with its beauty? Can we make a living from it? But what if we examined a landscape on its own terms, freed from our expectations and assumptions? This is what celebrated writer Helen Humphreys sets out to do in this beautiful, groundbreaking examination of place. For more than a decade Humphreys has owned a small waterside property on a section of the Napanee River in Ontario. In the watchful way of writers, she has studied her little piece of the river through the seasons and the years, cataloguing its ebb and flows, the plants and creatures that live in and round it, the signs of human usage at its banks and on its bottom. The result is The River, a gorgeous and moving meditation that uses fiction, non-fiction, natural history, archival maps and images, and full-colour original photographs to get at the truth. In doing this, Humphreys has created a work of startling originality that is sure to become a new Canadian classic.

  • Author:
    Summary:

    The second incisive issue of a digital literary journal born out of self-isolation. During this trying time, the journal aims to lift spirits and engage minds with stimulating poetry, works of fiction, and art, while also publishing opinion pieces, personal essays, and cultural commentary.

  • Author:
    Gibran, Kahlil
    Summary:

    The Prophet is a book of 26 poetic essays about Al-Mustafa who has lived in the foreign city of Orphalese for 12 years is about to board a ship which will carry him home. He is stopped by a group of people, with whom he discusses many issues of life and the human condition. It is one of the most popular set of poems of all time.

  • Author:
    Kociejowski, Marius
    Summary:

    Marius Kociejowski follows up his now classic 'The Street Philosopher and the Holy Fool' with 'The Pigeon Wars of Damascus'. A metaphysical journalist in search of echoes rather than analogies, hints as opposed to verities, Kociejowski discovers once again at the periphery of Damascene society for the outcast is often made of the very thing that rejects him a way to understand the challenges and changes refashioning post-9/11 Syria and the Middle East, reminding us once again of the deeper purpose of travel: to absorb and understand the spirit of a place, and to return changed.

  • Author:
    Kociejowski, Marius
    Summary:

    In the game of bocce, no matter how intensely you study the world's surface, there is always a chance an unseen pebble will knock your ball in an unexpected direction. In these essays, poet, antiquarian bookseller, and celebrated travel writer Marius Kociejowski chronicles serendipitous encounters with authors, manuscripts, and eccentrics, in which 'the curious workings of fate' and 'art's unbidden swerve' intervene to shift the course of fortune. Carried by keen wit, aphoristic prose, and a rich sense of characterization, and featuring chance meetings and comic misadventures with such figures as Bruce Chatwin, Zbigniew Herbert, and Javier Mar'as, 'The Pebble Chance' is a sumptuous offering of belles lettres exploring the incandescent moments when skill and providence collide.

  • Author:
    Pollan, Michael
    Summary:

    What should we have for dinner? When you can eat just about anything nature (or the supermarket) has to offer, deciding what you should eat will inevitably stir anxiety, especially when some of the foods might shorten your life. Today, buffeted by one food fad after another, America is suffering from a national eating disorder. As the cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast food outlet confronts us with a bewildering and treacherous landscape, what's at stake becomes not only our own and our children's health, but the health of the environment that sustains life on earth. Pollan follows each of the food chains--industrial food, organic or alternative food, and food we forage ourselves--from the source to the final meal, always emphasizing our coevolutionary relationship with the handful of plant and animal species we depend on. The surprising answers Pollan offers have profound political, economic, psychological, and even moral implications for all of us. --From publisher description.

  • Author:
    Sledge, John S.
    Summary:

    The Mobile River presents the first-ever narrative history of this important American watercourse. Inspired by the venerable Rivers of America series, John S. Sledge weaves chronological and thematic elements with personal experiences and more than 60 color and black-and-white images for a rich and rewarding read. The Mobile River appears on the map full and wide at Nannahubba, 50 miles from the coast, where the Alabama and the Tombigbee rivers meet, but because it empties their waters into Mobile Bay and subsequently the Gulf of Mexico, it usurps them and their multitudinous tributaries. If all of the rivers, creeks, streams, bayous, bogues, branches, swamps, sloughs, rivulets and trickles that ultimately pour into Mobile Bay are factored into the equation, the Mobile assumes awesome importance and becomes the outlet for the sixth largest river basin in the United States and the largest emptying into the Gulf east of the Mississippi River. Previous historians have paid copious attention to the other rivers that make up the Mobile’s basin, but the namesake stream along with its majestic delta and beautiful bay have been strangely neglected. In an attempt to redress the imbalance, Sledge launches this book with a first-person river tour by “haul-ass boat.” Along the way he highlights the four diverse personalities of this short stream — upland hardwood forest, upper swamp, lower swamp and harbor. In the historical saga that follows, readers learn about colonial forts, international treaties, bloody massacres and thundering naval battles, as well as what the Mobile River’s inhabitants ate and how they dressed through time. A barge load of colorful characters is introduced, including Indian warriors, French diplomats, British cartographers, Spanish tavern keepers, Creole women, steamboat captains, African slaves, Civil War generals and admirals, Apache prisoners, hydraulic engineers, stevedores, banana importers, Rosie Riveters and even a few river rats subsisting off the grid — all of them actors in a uniquely American pageant of conflict, struggle and endless opportunity along a river that gave a city its name.

  • Author:
    Lamwaka, Beatrice, Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama
    Summary:

    Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. Representing the very best of African creative nonfiction, Safe House brings together works from Africa's contemporary literary greats. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa. This creative nonfiction single from the Safe House anthology is Beatrice Lamwaka’s memoir of conflict in northern Uganda.

  • Author:
    Coady, Lawrence W.
    Summary:

    A contemporary account of tracking a historical explorer across Labrador. In the mode of Leonidas Hubbard and William Cabot, Hesketh Prichard set out with a group of adventurers in the early 1900s, determined to cross Labrador. Disregarding local advice, his expedition headed up a box canyon and climbed five-hundred-metre cliffs all with a canoe in tow- a gruesome portage. The canoe was later abandoned. The Lost Canoe is the account of the contemporary search for Prichard's lost canoe. Over three summers Larry Coady coaxed friends and strangers into searching for Prichard's canoe, retracing Prichard's route, verifying landforms and campsites, and mapping the entire trail. Only hard-nosed hikers immune to blackflies and mosquitoes were enticed to participate. Prichard's original 1910 photographs and accounts of his journey, published in Through Trackless Labrador, are paired with Coady's own photographs and writings. The narrative that results reveals a struggle against the elements to cross the ancient landscape of northern Labrador, a subarctic mix of boreal forest and open tundra. The book will appeal to a broad audience, from historians and geographers to adventurers and hikers.

  • Author:
    Shyba, Volodymyr, Matwijszuk, Mykola
    Summary:

    Publisher proceeds from the book go to humanitarian aid for Ukrainian people displaced by Russian aggression. The Little Book was originally published in 1932 and made a vital contribution to the curriculum for Canadian-Ukrainian children in prairie schools. The book features charming parables and poems to help children from kindergarten to grade 9 to understand Ukrainian language and culture. This audiobook features Ukrainian narrative with English translations of these lovely rhymes and verses, along with musical accompaniment on guitar of traditional Ukrainian folk songs. Slava Ukraini.

  • Author:
    Haysom, Simone, Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama
    Summary:

    Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. Representing the very best of African creative nonfiction, Safe House brings together works from Africa's contemporary literary greats. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa. In this creative nonfiction single from the Safe House anthology Simone Haysom reports on the life of a Cape Town petty criminal.

  • Author:
    John, Elnathan, Allfrey, Ellah Wakatama
    Summary:

    Illuminating African narratives for readers both inside and outside the continent. Representing the very best of African creative nonfiction, Safe House brings together works from Africa's contemporary literary greats. In a collection that ranges from travel writing and memoir to reportage and meditative essays, editor Ellah Wakatama Allfrey has brought together some of the most talented writers of creative nonfiction from across Africa. This creative nonfiction single by Elnathan John is from Safe House anthology and documents Elnathan John’s visits to a community facing social exile in northern Nigeria.

  • Author:
    Di Michele, Mary
    Summary:

    The poems in The Flower of Youth depict the coming of age and into sexual difference of the great writer and film director, Pier Paolo Pasolini. The time of this story is World War II; the place is German-occupied northern Italy. Unlike his younger brother, Guido, who took up arms to fight in the resistance, Pasolini chose to help his mother set up a school for the boys, mostly sons of farmers, too young to fight or be conscripted. The situation ignited an internal war that nearly eclipsed the historical moment for the young Pasolini, a battle within between his desire for boys and his Catholic faith and culture. The book is a kind of novel in verse including a prologue and epilogue that details di Michele's search for Pasolini, her pilgrimage to the place and research into the time that shaped him as a man and as an artist.

  • Author:
    Riley, Scott
    Summary:

    After watching the World Cup on television, a group of Thai boys is inspired to form their own team. But on the island of Koh Panyee, in a village built on stilts, there is no open space. How will a group of Thai boys play soccer? The boys can play only twice a month on a sandbar when the tide is low enough. Everything changes when the teens join together to build their very own floating soccer field. This inspiring true story by debut author Scott Riley is gorgeously illustrated by Nguyen Quang and Kim Lien. Perfect for fans of stories about sports, beating seemingly impossible odds, and places and cultures not often shown in picture books.

  • Author:
    Harvey, Brian
    Summary:

    When biologist Brian Harvey saw a thousand fish blundering into a Brazilian dam, he asked the obvious: What's going to happen to them? The End of the River is the story of his long search for an answer. The End of the River is about people and rivers and the misuse of science. Harvey takes readers from a fisheries patrol boat on the Fraser River to the great Tsukiji fish market in Japan, with stops in the Philippines, Thailand, and assorted South American countries. Finally, in the arid outback of northeast Brazil, against a backdrop of a multi-billion dollar river project nobody seems to want, he finds a small-scale answer to his simple question. The End of the River is a journey with many companions. Some are literary, some are imaginary. But mostly they're real characters, human and otherwise: a six-foot endangered catfish, a Canadian professor with a weakness for Thai bar girls, a chain-smoking Brazilian Brunnhilde with a passion for her river, a drug-addled stick-up artist. The End of the River is about fishermen and fish farmers and even fish cops; there are scientists and shysters as well as a few Colombian narcotraficos and some very drunk, very hairy Brazilian men in thongs. Funny and sad, The End of the River is a new kind of writing about the environment, as far off the beaten track as you can get in a Land Rover driven by a female Colombian biologist whose favourite expression is Oops - no road! A wonderful and engaging read with a samba beat, on the plight of the planet's living waters. The End of the River is the book Nemo would write if he could. A great way to open peoples' eyes.--Thomas E. Lovejoy, President, Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment

  • Author:
    MacKinnon, J. B.
    Summary:

    In a brilliant work of imaginative nonfiction, prize-winning author J.B. MacKinnon asks, what would happen - to our economy, our ecology, our products, ourselves - if we stopped consuming so much? Is that alternative world one we might actually want to live in?
    "We can't stop shopping. And yet we must. This is the consumer dilemma."
    The planet says we consume too much: In North America, we burn the Earth's resources at a rate five times faster than they can regenerate. And despite our efforts to "green" our consumption - by recycling, increasing energy efficiency, or using solar power - we have yet to see a decline in global carbon emissions.
    The economy says we must always consume more, because, as we've seen in the pandemic, even the slightest drop in spending leads to widespread unemployment, bankruptcy, and home foreclosures. 
    Addressing this paradox head-on, J.B. MacKinnon asks, What would really happen if we simply stop shopping? Is there a way to reduce our consumption to Earth-saving levels without triggering an economic collapse? 
    At first, this question took him around the world, seeking answers: from America's big-box stores, to the hunter-gatherer cultures of Namibia, to communities in Ecuador that consume at an exactly sustainable rate. Then his thought experiment came shockingly true, as the coronavirus brought shopping to a halt and MacKinnon's ideas were tested in real time. 
    Drawing on experts ranging from economists to climate scientists to corporate CEOs, MacKinnon investigates how living with less would change our planet, our society, and ourselves. Along the way, he reveals just how much we stand to gain. 
    Imaginative and inspiring, The Day the World Stops Shopping will empower you to imagine another way.

  • Author:
    Naylor, Carl
    Summary:

    Combining his skills as a veteran journalist and well-practiced storyteller with his two decades of underwater adventures in maritime archaeology, Carl Naylor offers a colorfully candid account of remarkable discoveries in the Palmetto State's history and prehistory. Through a mix of personal anecdotes and archaeological data, Naylor's memoir, The Day the Johnboat Went up the Mountain, documents his experiences in the service of the Maritime Research Division of the South Carolina Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology, a research arm of the University of South Carolina. Shared in a companionable tone, this insightful survey of Naylor's distinguished career is highlighted by his firsthand account of serving as diving officer for the excavation of the Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley in 1996 and the subsequent excavation of its victim, the U.S.S. Housatonic. He also recounts tales of dredging the bottom of an Allendale County creek for evidence of the earliest Paleoindians, exploring the waters off Winyah Bay for a Spanish ship lost in 1526 and the waters of Port Royal Sound for a French corsair wrecked in 1577, studying the remains of the historic Santee Canal near Moncks Corner and searching for evidence of Hernando de Soto's travels through South Carolina in 1540. Naylor describes, as well, his investigations of suspected Revolutionary War gunboats in the Cooper River, a colonial and Revolutionary War shipyard on Hobcaw Creek, the famous Brown's Ferry cargo vessel found in the Black River, a steamship sunk in a storm off Hilton Head Island in 1899 and a mysterious cargo site in the Cooper River. Throughout these episodes, Naylor gives an insider's view of the methods of underwater archaeology in stories that focus on the events, personalities and contexts of historic finds and on the impact of these discoveries on our knowledge of the Palmetto State's past. His narrative serves as an authoritative personal account of South Carolina's ongoing efforts to discover and preserve evidence of its own remarkable maritime history.

  • Author:
    Crozier, Lorna
    Summary:

    In a series of playful and startling prose meditations, celebrated writer Lorna Crozier brings her rapt attention to the small matter of household objects: everything from doorknobs, washing machines, rakes, and zippers to the kitchen sink.

    Operating as a sort of literary detective, she examines the mystery of the everyday, seeking the essence of each object. She offers tantalizing glimpses of the household's inhabitants, too, probing hearts, brains, noses, and navels. Longing, exuberance, and grief color her reflections, which at times take on the tenor of folktales or parables. Each of the short portraits in The Book of Marvels stands alone, but the connections are intricate; as in life, each object gains meaning from its juxtaposition with others. Crozier approaches her investigations with a childlike curiosity, an adult bemusement, and an unfailing sense of metaphor and mischief. With both charm and mordant wit, she animates the panoply of wonders to be found everywhere around us and inside us.

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