news | Tuesday November 3, 2026

Where the Blood Mixes in The Vancouver Sun

The Vancouver Sun shouts out the Firehall Arts Centre’s upcoming production of Where the Blood Mixes by Kevin Loring as a must-see play coming to Vancouver this month! Where the Blood Mixes won the 2009 Governor General’s Award for Drama, the 2009 Jessie Richardson Award for Outstanding Original Script, and the
2009 Sydney Risk Prize for Outstanding Original Script by an Emerging Playwright. See all of The Vancouver Sun’s theatre recommendations here.

news | Sunday November 1, 2026

ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn Honoured!

Author of  ᑭᐢᑭᓱᒥᑐᐠ kiskisomitok: ᓀᐦᐃᔭᐤ to remind each and one another ᑳᐯᓵᑳᐢᑌᐠ reuben quinn has been awarded the Aboriginal Role Models of Alberta 2026 award for language preservation. Congratulations, reuben! To learn more about this evening that celebrates Indigenous luminaries, click here.

news | Saturday October 31, 2026

Happy Halloween!

Leaning into the seasonal vibes? Talon is too! Grab a big mug of tea and a warm blanket and dig into these three books to spend quality time with autumn’s favourite bird, the crow in Crowd Source by Cecily Nicholson, spirits and Ouija boards in A Child’s Seance by Weyman Chan, and dastardly schemes in On Thin Ice by Drew Hayden Taylor.

Happy Halloween from Talonbooks!

news | Friday October 30, 2026

Hot Off the Press! Grace of Centuries Has Arrived!

Twenty years in the making, a new book by Victoria-based poet Hope Anderson is here! Anderson’s new book of poetry Grace of Centuries is a researched, moving celebration of Black voices across centuries and continents. Beginning with the African presence in the Bible and travelling through inheritances both collective and personal, Anderson features figures such as Bilali Muhammad, Queen Nzinga, and the Chevalier de Saint-Georges to Gannibal, John Ware, Phillis Wheatley, and more. In so doing, he intervenes in a legacy that for so long did not offer welcome or embrace to so many.

An excerpt from “Grace of Centuries”

“I sailed around Monte Cristo
Having carried Florence in my heart
Yet could not replace Mercédès
Whose story is my morning dew
And Santo Domingo
I can’t outgrow, soaked in my blood
Someday the emperor himself
Without irony
Is imprisoned in le Château de Ham
Before finding the Decree of Memphis
The heartbreak sound found
On two great rivers
As my forebears
In le château de ma peau
Though the difference between
Patriotism and villainy is a matter of dates
Another would remove the chains
that pained my ancestral mère
Whose name my nom de plume
Dumas bears the stamp of the land
The bearing of an abandoned love
When I spoke, a few would listen
Moral wounds may be hidden
But never closed”

news | Wednesday October 28, 2026

sometimes, forest in The British Columbia Review

Neil Griffin reviews sometimes, forest by Vancouver’s poet laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner in The British Columbia Review, saying that “no book … has entered the woods with the verve, erotic thrill, and radical desire of Elee Kraljii Gardiner’s sometimes, forest … Gardiner reinvents ecopoetry … returning it to duff and dirt and mould, where it belongs.” Read the full article here.

news | Tuesday October 27, 2026

A Child's Seance Is Here!

The latest book of poetry by award-winning author Weyman Chan is here! A Child’s Seance opens with two siblings trying to reach their dead mother with a Ouija board and unspools out from there.

An excerpt from “By Age 3 I Forgot Who You Were”

“In the back I’m trying on Lil’s dress.

Just a phase.

Mom, there’s something about Lil’s hair I like, a
lineage repeating this Cassandra afternoon–
your pigtails cascade to a frieze

in those tiny photos of Guangdong,
fifties-scalloped edges of bamboo thicket.
Your village-tested slacks
air out tropical heat, the bridal photo’s breast mound
austere as sepia. 1975. My bowl cut
evoked those time-warp bachelors,
ten to a room. Bellies
gone transparent, like fish on a drying rack.”

A Child’s Seance is a witty, grieving, surreal, astral travelogue. Marrying the personal and the metaphysical, with a leitmotif of classical Chinese portraiture, this book looks at loss, mental health, sexual misfires, and of course, alien abduction. Order your copy here.

news | Saturday October 24, 2026

Bishop University on Taylor Marie Graham

Joannie St-Germain writes about Taylor Marie Graham ’s journey with her play Post Alice, which appears in Cottage Radio & Other Plays Read all about it here on Bishop University’s website.

news | Friday October 23, 2026

Growing My Way Home on All Lit Up

All Lit Up shares an excerpt from Growing My Way Home by Jenn Ashton! Growing My Way Home was a finalist for the 2026 Sunshine Coast Writers and Editors Society’s fourth annual Book Awards for BC Authors in the Indigenous Voices category! Read a slice of this honest and vulnerable work of autofiction here.

news | Thursday October 22, 2026

Elee Kraljii Gardiner on the Cancellation of Poetry in Transit

Arlen Redekop

Vancouver poet laureate Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of sometimes, forest, speaks on the end of the Poetry in Transit program in The Province. Kraljii Gardiner says,“Vancouver is notoriously a beautiful city. Vancouver is also a cruel city in its inequity. Very few places allow us to experience art without payment or art without constraint. Poetry in transit allows both the inconsequential and studied engagement with poetry, when one is least expecting it.”

Read the full article here. You can sign the petition to save Poetry in Transit here.

news | Friday October 16, 2026

The Tao of the World a Quebec Writers Federation Prize Finalist!

The new play The Tao of the World by Jovanni Sy is a finalist for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Prize for Playwriting! Sy’s new spin on a restoration comedy premiered to great acclaim at this year’s Stratford Festival. We are so excited to see this work among all of the wonderful finalists for this year’s Quebec Writers’ Federation awards. Congratulations, Jovanni! Check out all of the details here.