National Network for Equitable Library Service

The Last Word investigates the debased art of eulogy. Through insightful, surprisingly playful readings of famous eulogies (from a scene in Love Actually to Jacques Derrida's heart-rending essays on the deaths of his peers), Cooper argues against the socially sanctioned desire to avoid thinking about death that results in clichéd memorials, honouring neither the living nor the dead.

Avant Desire moves through Brossard's body of work with a playful attentiveness to its ongoing lines of inquiry. Like her work, this reader moves beyond conventional textual material to include ephemera, interviews, marginalia, lectures, and more. Just as Brossard foregrounds collaboration, this book includes new translations alongside canonical ones and intertextual and responsive work from a variety of artist translators at various stages of their careers.

Translators connect languages and landscapes, sparking conversations that enlarge our imagination. In Canada, where translation has had an especially important role to play, the nature of the connections has changed. These wide-ranging essays, by Canada's most prominent translators, chart a journey that begins with the sharp divides of English and French in the 1970s and then confronts the much more complex explosion of identities today.

"Simon Roy first saw The Shining when he was ten years old. Roy encountered the movie by chance while idly flipping through the channels on the television, but one scene in particular in which the hotel's chef speaks telepathically to young Danny Torrence left an indelible mark upon him: "The doubling of Chef Hallorann's voice created in me such a powerful unease that I can still feel it, intact, thirty years later. ...

Writing is, and always will be, an act defined by failure. The best plan is to just get used to it. Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them—which is to say, to console them in their misery.

Approached by an ecumenical society representing many faiths, from Judeo-Christians to fellow members of First Nations, Harold R. Johnson agreed to host a group who wanted to hear him speak about the power of storytelling. This book is the outcome of that gathering. In The Power of Story, Johnson explains the role of storytelling in every aspect of human life, from personal identity to history and the social contracts that structure our societies, and illustrates how we can direct its potential to re-create and reform not only our own lives, but the life we share.

Roald Dahl is one of the most famous children's book authors ever. Now in this Who Was ...? biography, children will learn of his real-life adventures. A flying ace for the British Air Force, he was married to an Academy Award-winning actress. He also wrote books and screenplays for adults.

Ted Geisel loved to doodle from the time he was a kid. He had an offbeat, fun-loving personality. He often threw dinner parties where guests wore outrageous hats! And he donned quirky hats when thinking up ideas for books-like his classic The Cat in the Hat. This biography brings an amazingly gifted author/illustrator to life.

Everyone loves Harry Potter. Now kids can learn about Harry's creator! In 1995, on a four-hour-delayed train from Manchester to London, J.K. Rowling conceived of the idea of a boy wizard named Harry Potter. Upon arriving in London, she began immediately writing the first book in the saga. Rowling's true-life, rags-to-riches story is as compelling as the world of Hogwarts that she created. This biography details not only Rowling's life and her love of literature but the story behind the creation of a modern classic.

A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning writer Alexander Chee.Alexander Chee, an essayist of "virtuosity and power" (Washington Post), selects twenty essays out of thousands that represent the best examples of the form published the previous year.