NNELS Upgrade

<p>Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards)</p> <p>The stories in <i>Cretacea and Other Stories from the Badlands</i> mostly take place in hot weather, where dust and sweat envelop everyone and everything. A teenage boy spends a summer with his hard-livin’, hard-drinkin’, messed up uncle and has to fight for a position in his new, temporary “family.” A recent widower gets swept up in the world of the local swingers’ scene. A band of misfits struggles to survive at a makeshift commune.

<p><i>Kaspoit!</i> puts speculative illustration to the most profuse series of crimes ever to take place on Canadian soil. Set in the lower mainland of Vancouver, the time is now—criminals are brazen, cops are cynical—and no one is trying to solve the disappearance of dozens of women.</p> <p>Throughout, the novel conveys a savage, dystopian depiction of a netherworld teeming with gangland crime, sexual exploitation, betrayal and murder.

<p><i>The Incomparables</i> is the debut novel from the Trillium nominated author of <i>Animal</i>. Lydia Templar is obsessed with fabric, the texture and weight of cloth. Through fabrics, curtains, costumes, she expresses herself in a way she feels incapable of doing in words. For the past ten years she’s apprenticed in the wardrobe department of a small Shakespearean theatre company and has finally been given the opportunity to showcase her designs.

<p>Winner, 3-Day Novel-Writing Contest (1999)</p> <p>Winner, Inaugural ReLit Award (2001)</p> <p>Salacious, funny, and painfully emotive, <i>Skin</i> is a provocative and ruminative parable about our deep-rooted urge to ostracize the freakish and shun the disfigured among us. An unconventional love story, Bowman probes the surface to reveal deeper, more lingering impulses connected to desire, understanding, and love. It is only on very extraordinary occasions when beauty and the beast get together, but they do here.

<p>Winner, 2011 ReLit Award</p> <p>From the author of <i>Pontypool Changes Everything</i>, <i>Ravenna Gets</i> is a new collection of “wheeled” stories that continue the author’s exploration of “apocalypse ?ction.”</p> <p>In a single convulsion of homicide, the population of Ravenna tries to erase the population of Collingwood.

<p>Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007)</p> <p>Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design</p> <p>The stories in <i>Sugar Bush & Other Stories</i> deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable ways. They make some ill-advised choices, which are driven by their na?ve quests for ?individuality? while at the same time having an almost pathological need to be loved by everyone--especially men.

<p>Longlisted for the ReLit Award (2006)</p> <p><i>Going to New Orleans</i> is the story of Lewis King, a jazz trumpet player who lands a gig in the Big Easy. King is a genius on cornet, but his private life is emotionally, morally, and financially bankrupt. He’s a heavy drinker and compulsive sexual manipulator, prone to paranoid fits of violent rage. His girlfriend, Ms Sugarlicq, can’t keep her pants on.

<p>Longlisted for the ReLit Award</p> <p>Editor's Pick, <i>Vancouver Sun</i></p> <p><i>Dirtbags</i> is a novel about reckoning?with one?s past, one?s choices, and one?s expectations for the future.

<p><i>Burqa of Skin</i> is a dense collection of writings from Nelly Arcan, channelling harrowing disenchantment and indignation. From her very first novel, <i>Putain</i> (Seuil, 2001), Arcan shook the literary landscape with her flamboyant lyricism and her preoccupations with such recurring themes as our culture’s vertiginous obsession with youth, and its reverse: the draw of death. Now beyond the ripples of scandal Arcan’s work has caused, here are the last echoes of her work, and it is as stunning as it is brief.

<p>Drinkin’ rye and water with Grandma. Guns in False Creek. Frat boy homies from the North Delta ghetto. Samuel L. Jackson. Phantom Lord & Metallica. A kid who’s got the hots for his mom…</p> <p><i>Hunh?</i></p> <p>That’s right.