Join us for the launch of Umbilicus: Poetry and Visuals of the Sensuous at Shelf Life Books. Umbilicus is a meditation on sensuality, sex, blood, hunger, and the sweet ache of shame’s hangover. Carrie Schiffler is an actor, writer, and former exotic dancer. Johanna Stickland is a photographer, painter, poet, and former fashion model. Both are smitten by the female form, intrigued by unpolished beauty and drawn to dark pubs and radiant beings equally. Not only do they share similar interests, they also share DNA. Carrie and Johanna are mother and daughter. Umbilicus is their gift to one another and to those who wish the experience.

The Single Onion kicks into high gear for the fall with five excellent poets: A.B. Dillon, Kate Marshall Flaherty, Diane Guichon, Neil Surkan, and Bernadette Wagner.

WHEN: Thursday, October 17, 7pm

WHERE: Shelf Life Books, 100 - 1302 4th St. SW (shelflifebooks.ca)

The Single Onion takes place the third Thursday of the month, nine times a year. Our event schedule can always be found at:
www.singleonion.com.

For the most up-to-date Single Onion news, check us out on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/singleonion

We gratefully acknowledge the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, The League of Canadian Poets and the Calgary Arts Development

Join us for the official Calgary launch of Jennifer Wynne Webber's With Glowing Hearts: How Ordinary Women Worked Together to Save the World (And Did). Webber, a former actor, will give a lively reading of select scenes from the play.

 

With Glowing Hearts is the inspiring true story of a group of Canadian miners’ wives who came together in 1941 to fight for better working conditions for their husbands and who, as burgeoning social activists, ended up on a remarkable journey to better the world around them.

Jennifer Wynne Webber is the author of numerous plays including Beside Myself, also published by Scirocco Drama, and White Lies, published in the online literary journal Ryga: A Journal of Provocations. Her play With Glowing Hearts recently won the SATAward for “Outstanding Original Script” (Saskatoon and Area Theatre Awards). Her novel, Defying Gravity, was published by Coteau Books and nominated for three Saskatchewan Book Awards including Book of the Year. In the mid-1990s, Jennifer covered the arts for CBC Television in Calgary and, before that, was the co-host of “Alberta Express,” a popular, award-winning provincial CBC television program. Jennifer has also taught writing, worked as a dramaturge, and worked as a professional actor at theatres across Canada. She now lives and writes full time on Vancouver Island.

What can we hope for at the end of the world? What can we trust in when community has broken our hearts? What would it mean to pursue justice without violence? What does it mean to choose love? How can we dream a world where everyone—including trans women of colour—have the possibility to thrive?

I Hope We Choose Love is a hopeful collection of personal essays and prose poems that grow out of activist and community heartbreak. Acclaimed poet, essayist, advice columnist, and community healer, Kai Cheng Thom dives deep into the issues that divide our contemporary communities to make a case for radical compassion and empathy.

I Hope We Choose Love is required reading for anyone who wants to change the world but feels they aren’t good enough, who wants speak truth to power but is afraid of making mistakes, who has made mistakes and wants to forgive themselves.

The evening will feature a reading with Kai Cheng Thom.

Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, and community healer in Toronto. Her novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir was released by Metonymy Press in 2016. Her first poetry book, a place called No Homeland, and her children's picture book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, illustrated by Kai Yun Ching and Wai-Yant Li, were both published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2017. Kai Cheng won the Writers' Trust of Canada's Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers in 2017.

A book club for conservatives and liberals who want to get out of their echo chambers and bridge the great divide. Buy the book, read it, and come join us for a lively discussion.

 

We’ve all felt it: Whether we’ve argued pointlessly with someone on social media, felt our blood pressure rise as we’ve fought over politics with family members, or simply veered delicately away from certain topics, it’s hard to ignore the chasm between those who hold opposing political views. And it feels like it’s getting worse, that politics are getting uglier, and that reasonable discussion is falling by the wayside.

 

What can ordinary people do to bridge the great divide? We can read books that smart and reasonable people have written in defense of their views and we can talk about these books with others who may or may not wear the political stripes we do.

 

Come to Shelf Life Books for a monthly book club that does just that. Ideally, participants will have read the book assigned for that day, and will come prepared to discuss it. All of the books on our list will be made available by Shelf Life. We will meet from 10 am to noon on the last Saturday of every month.

Join us in launching Alycia Pirmohamed's chapbook Faces that Fled the Wind (BOAAT Press) at 2 p.m. on October 26th. Alycia will be reading a short selection of poems alongside her very talented friends Laura Schoenberg and Amy LeBlanc.
 

Join us for a Metatron Press book launch and reading at Shelf Life Books. We will be celebrating the launch of Kaitlyn Purcell's ʔbédayine, her Metatron Prize–winning debut novella!

READINGS: Kaitlyn Purcell (Edmonton), Joshua Whitehead, Trynne Delaney.

In Edmonton, Ronnie learns what it is to be a young Indigenous woman, almost-alone in the city; unable to hear herself over its noise, see through the glare of its lights to find the ground beneath her feet. Stories of addiction, self-discovery, and the love of a good friend come together to form ʔbédayine, Kaitlyn Purcell's breathtaking debut.


KAITLYN PURCELL is an artist, poet, storyteller, and scholar. She is a proud member of Smith’s Landing First Nation, and the Writing Revolution in Place creative research collective. She is a PhD student at the University of Calgary studying Indigenous Literatures, Creative Writing, and Community-Based Learning. Her work is inspired by her experiences as a troubled adolescent in Edmonton, detached from her Dene roots. She has won numerous awards for her creative work, such as the Metatron Prize for Rising Authors (2018), the Alberta Foundation for the Arts Young Artist Prize (2017) and the Stephen Kapalka Memorial Prize in Creating Writing (2015).

JOSHUA WHITEHEAD is an Ojibwe-Cree, Two-Spirit member of Peguis First Nation (Treaty 1). He is the author of full-metal indigiqueer and Jonny Appleseed. Currently, he is an ABD doctoral student at the University of Calgary.

TRYNNE DELANEY is pursuing her MA in English and Creative Writing at University of Calgary. She is interested in representing multiplicities of identity on north-eastern landscapes. Her most recent work was collaborating on the design and writing of ASTIGMATISM zine, which highlights genre writing from BIWOC in the University of Calgary English Department.

METATRON PRESS is a literary publisher based in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal, Canada) on unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territory. Since 2014, Metatron has been publishing beautiful first books by noteworthy, up-and-coming authors. Metatron books are cultural artifacts that offer present and future readers access to the thoughts, feelings, triumphs and fears of a new generation of writers. Publishing a few books per year in paperback pocketbooks and e-book format, their catalogue boasts an array of quick-hitting, edgy and spirited poetry and short story collections, novellas, and novels.
 

It's that time of year again folks: NōD Magazine is releasing another issue! Featuring local and international artists and writers, this event is not to be missed.

Join us at Shelf Life Books to launch Ian Kinney's fantastic new book of poetry, Air Salt in a gala afternoon reading.

Featuring Ian Kinney with Colin Martin, Natalie Simpson, Suzette Mayer, and Paul Zits and hosted by Helen Hajnoczky, this will be a gala afternoon and a poetic celebration not to be missed

One of CBC Books "23 Collections of Canadian Poetry to to Watch For," Air Salt brings together narrative, verse, image, found language, and more in a challenging, prototypic work of post-traumatic writing.

In Air Salt, Ian Kinney (un)writes hospitalization and recovery, using poetry as neuro-rehabilitation. A memoir written by an amnesiac, this collection stitches splintered narratives with projective verse, cutting up and reassembling found text from Get Well Soon Cards, emails between friends, excerpts from personal journals, written records of eye witnesses, the police and EMS reports, relevant Real Estate listings, nurses’ charts, doctors’ notes, hospital brochures, and Kinney’s Neuropsychological Assessment: all increasingly recombinant, all increasingly in chorus.