National Network for Equitable Library Service

Compulsive Acts explores the films, plays and personality of prolific playwright, novelist, filmmaker and poet Sky Gilbert through the eyes of a handful of the people who have observed his work closely over the past two decades -- as audience members and arts workers.

Born near Park Valley, Saskatchewan, on Crown land, often referred to by locals as a road allowance community, Maria Campbell is the oldest of 8 children. Much of her early years are revealed in Halfbreed, the book which would ultimately ensure that Campbell's life would take a path as a writer, an artist, a community worker and social rights advocate.

This collection features essays on Nova Scotia-born poet, playwright and literary critic George Elliott Clarke. Instrumental in promoting the writing of Canadian writers of African descent, Clarke's work has won awards including the Governor General’s Award for poetry, a National Magazine Gold Medal Award for Poetry, the prestigious Trudeau Fellowship Prize, the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction, the Martin Luther King, Jr. Achievement Award, and The Premiul Poesis (Romania).

Frank Lentricchia was born to working-class parents in Utica, New York, on May 23rd in 1940. He earned his M.A. from Duke University in 1963, and his Ph.D. in 1966. His first two books were about modern poetry, and he then began to write more about literary theory, publishing his ground-breaking books in the early 1980's.

A richly woven story about life in the heart of Umbria, this travel narrative is filled with nostalgic and personal recollections of the city's history, architecture, culture, and its unique people.

In the original introduction to Pascal D'Angelo's Son of Italy, the renowned literary critic Carl Van Doren praised D'Angelo's autobiography as an impassioned story of his "enormous struggles against every disadvantage." In his narrative of his fruitless labor as a "pick and shovel" worker in America, D'Angelo, who immigrated from the Abruzzi region of Italy, describes the harsh, often inhumane working conditions that immigrants had to endure at the beginning of the twentieth century.

The problem of consciousness may just be a semantic one. The brain absorbs a sea of sensory input, the tiniest fraction of which reaches the shore of our awareness. We pay attention to what is most novel, most necessary at the time. At its most reductive, the word 'consciousness' refers to the synchronized firing of neurons across multiple areas of the brain, the mental experience of attending. But should consciousness be summed up simply by its subsconscious mechanism? I would prefer a more imaginative answer.

Nominated for a 2014 Saskatchewan Book Award Françoise Mouly, an editor and publisher of uncommon taste and creativity, and an artist in her own right, has spent nearly four decades transforming comics. With her husband, Art Spiegelman, Mouly founded the landmark magazine RAW, which showcased artists such as Ben Katchor, Chris Ware, Charles Burns and Sue Coe, and, along with Spiegelman's Maus, brought an avant-garde sensibility to the popular art form.

'Teenage Head changed the face of music in this country. I would not be who I am today without their first record ... In 1979 they were the only band that mattered.’ – Hugh Dillon In the late 1970s and early 1980s, no Canadian band rocked harder, louder or to more hardcore fans than Hamilton, Ontario's own Teenage Head. Although usually lumped in the dubiously inevitable 'punk rock' category of the day, this high-energy quartet consisting of four guys who'd known each other since high school were really only punk by association.

From Michael Jordan to George Bush Sr. Craig Hodges has never been shy about speaking truth to power. In this well-told, passionate, and historically literate memoir Hodges, a two-time NBA champion and world famous three-point shooter, shares the triumphs and struggles of a life long quest to improve the condition of the Black community.