Neil Smith is a French translator and the author of the critically acclaimed national bestseller Bang Crunch. He has been nominated for the Hugh McLennan Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, Best First Book (Canada), as well as the Journey Prize three times. He has also won the First Book Prize from the Quebec Writers' Federation. He lives in Montreal.
Praise:
"What I love about Boo, and Neil Smith's writing in general, is his ability to create the most imaginative and other-worldly stories, while grounding them in an empathetic emotional landscape. It makes him able to write about adolescents without anything feeling juvenile, and about adults without losing any sense of wonder. Neil is a true original as a writer, and from the first page, Boo is an unforgettable character and Town is an unforgettable setting (this sounds like the promise of standard flap copy, but it's in fact extremely rare). The novel explores the pain of being different and the delight of being unique, with both its main character and the reader going on a most unexpected journey." —Paul Taunton, Knopf Canada
Anita Anand was born in Montreal. She moved back and forth between her hometown and such places as the Bronx; Bedfordshire, England; and Richmond, B.C. In every neighbourhood where she has lived, she has been the only person her age of Indian origin. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Frostwriting and the Louisiana Review.
Praise for Swing in the House:
These stories are full of undercurrents that disturb the surface, and these disturbances, in their turn, dazzle as they reflect light. Anita Anand is a sensitive observer of human behaviour and, because she is unafraid to explore difficult emotions, her stories reveal–in broad strokes and subtle shadings–glimpses of truth.
–Elise Moser, author of Lily and Taylor and Because I Have Loved and Hidden It.
This is a wise, assured and wonderfully intelligent collection that announces the arrival of an exciting new talent. –Dennis Bock
Larissa Andrusyshyn’s first book Mammoth (DC Books 2010) was shortlisted for the QWF First Book Prize and the Kobzar Literary Award. Her poems have been shortlisted for Arc Magazine’s Poem of the Year and the Malahat Review’s Open Season Award. She works with a local non-profit to offer creative writing workshops to at-risk youth. She lives, writes and is planning her zombie apocalypse survival strategy in Montreal.
Andrusyshyn's Proof explores the worlds of entomology, memory and mathematics. What can be proven with empirical evidence and what demands reason. The poems examine the means of observation from the entomologist to the grief stricken mathematician. From break-ups to Dung Beetles, these poems move from microscope to recollection and from the abstract math proof to the visceral sting of the wasp’s barbed quill.
