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Adult Division News
June 2020
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Dear Friends,

We are so pleased to welcome many new clients to our agency this Spring. And because many are using this time do even more reading, reviews for our clients' work keep pouring in. 

We are eager to discuss these books with you in more detail. If a title catches your eye, or if you are interested in a meeting with the agency, do not hesitate to contact us. 

All best wishes,
  Rave Reviews

Praise for Catherine Bush's BLAZE ISLAND (World Rights Available Ex: Canada, Goose Lane Editions). Contact Samantha Haywood:

"BLAZE ISLAND is a fascinating and prescient story. With climate change as the backdrop, Catherine Bush's lyrical portrait of the northern island landscape and a young woman's passion for the land offers a frightening warning of how big business will surely adapt to the changes to benefit itself. Bush's story is compelling-we watch the hurricane unfold, as only a brilliant writer can show us-and offers a moving and soulful primer for climate survival. -Shani Mootoo, author of Moving Forward Sideways Like a Crab and Cereus Blooms at Midnight

"Bush's BLAZE ISLAND is a fierce box of wind. Open its cover and you feel at once the fury of the weather to come, the future of the planet in novel form."  -Brad Kessler, author of  Birds in Fall and Goat Song

"Climate change is both an external and internal phenomenon in Catherine Bush's brilliant new novel, BLAZE ISLAND. Bush brings together a complicated cast of three-dimensional men and women, all fighting with and against each other in the name of saving the planet... or making a buck. A tale of greed, hope, and love, it is a beautifully written and challenging novel by one of Canada's best writers."  -Michael Redhill, Giller Prize winning author of
Bellevue Square

"[Bush's] books are structurally daring and psychologically penetrating." 
-Padma Viswanathan, author of the Giller Prize shortlisted novel  The Ever After of Ashwin Rao

"Riveting and morally complex, BLAZE ISLAND is a beautiful, kaleidoscopic work that offers a resounding reply to the question of how literature might wrestle with the deepest threat facing the planet, anthropogenic climate change. In the absence of saviours and easy consolation, what Bush has created is an allegory of hubris and humility and an exhilarating space in which to re-imagine multi-species relationships and stories."  -Kyo Maclear, author of Birds Art Life and Stray Love

"BLAZE ISLAND is a beautiful, far-seeing, and fiercely intelligent novel about the most critical question of our time--the weather systems that threaten to collapse us both from outside and from within. Catherine Bush writes like she is our last storm watcher, and BLAZE ISLAND, her urgent panoramic of our fragile world. Every sentence has the lush exactitude of a poem, and the book, as it stuns and pivots, the stampeding heart of a thriller." 
-Claudia Dey, author of  Heartbreaker and  Stunt

Praise for Scott Chantler's BIX (World Rights Available: English North America, Simon & Schuster). Contact Samantha Haywood

"Chantler's treatment of the musician's life is distinctly creative... [A] marvel of imaginative illustrated narration." - Kirkus Reviews

"[M]elancholic, gorgeously orchestrated... This graphic biography of an artistic innovator mimics the music he loved: chaotic, creative, and open to interpretation."
-Publishers Weekly 

"Chantler's comic, joyful and elegiac.... [is] something wonderfully new. As his introduction states, he's 'visualizing musical rhythms,' a formalist experiment that succeeds on every level, the more so considering that this story of music is sung with barely any words at all. It's a lyrical conception appropriate to the story of jazz legend Bix Beiderbecke."  -Booklist

"Eisner-nominated Chantler (Two Generals) utilizes the deliberate cadence of panels alternating with layered multipanel visual bursts to denote musicality and the excitement of life in this nearly worldless graphic biography, a daring and bold experiment that stunningly succeeds." -Starred review,  Library Journal

"[We're] accustomed to seeing beautiful work by award-winning cartoonist Scott Chantler, but this book is particularly special... This book's a gem, and so is Chantler." 
-The Toronto Star 

Praise for LIKE RUM-DRUNK ANGELS by Tyler Enfield (World Rights Available Ex: Canada and World French, Goose Lane Editions, March 2020 (publicity temporarily suspended due to Covid-19). Contact Shaun Bradley for US and film and television inquiries; Contact Stephanie Sinclair for international rights.

On 49th Shelf's Most Anticipated: Spring 2020 Fiction Preview List
On CBC Books' spring reading list: 40 great books to read this season

"Cormac McCarthy meets Gabriel Garcia Marquez."  -Winnipeg Free Press

"The great strength of LIKE RUM-DRUNK ANGELS is its relentless, page-turning pace. [It is] a surreal, often hilarious fracturing of traditional western tropes, imbuing classic elements (train jobs, shootouts, long talks around the campfire) with a spirited post-modern awareness, including Greek mythology, tales from the Arabian Nights, and a surprisingly effective cosmic existentialism. LIKE RUM-DRUNK ANGELS demonstrate(s) not only that the western is thriving but that it is vital and fresh. Far from antiquated or old-fashioned, the form admits a freedom of storytelling that allows idiosyncratic creators to stake their claims firmly in their own particular (and often peculiar) landscape and create magic out of the wild." -Robert J. Wiersema,  Quill & Quire

"LIKE RUM-DRUNK ANGELS combines all the best of any adventure story, there's action, there's story twists, certainly heaps of clever dialogue and many amiable characters. And of course, a love story. LIKE RUM-DRUNK ANGELS is one of the best novels I've read so far in 2019/2020."  -Miramichi Reader

Praise for Perdita Felicien's MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER (World Rights Available Ex: North America, Doubleday 2021). Contact Samantha Haywood

"We are not defined by when we fall; rather, it's the journey of where we come from that holds the deepest definition of self. Perdita Felicien is so much more than a champion athlete. This phenomenal, human story shows a Canada many people will never know, the power of a mother's love for her daughter, and the indefatigable resilience in the face of so much struggle. I could not put this book down." -Clara Hughes, six-time Olympic medalist and author of Open Heart, Open Mind

"Perdita Felicien first stole our hearts as a world champion, but now she takes us behind the scenes to the heartache of her tumultuous childhood and to the grit she needed to triumph over adversity. Her story is for everyone who dreams big. This book made me laugh and cry and cheer out loud. It's a winner-like Perdita herself." -Sally Armstrong, journalist

"Per dita Felicien takes on the ambitious feat of chronicling an intergenerational story of resilience and succeeds with unflinching clarity. Her controlled and poised prose details raw and often messy emotions with intelligence and compassion, while the fierce honesty with which she writes emphasizes the magnitude of maternal love and the bonds of family. A memoir with a commanding voice, MY MOTHER'S DAUGHTER is a love letter to mother-daughter relationships."  -Zalika Reid-Benta, Giller Prize-nominated author of  Frying Plantain

Praise for THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE by Adnan Khan (World Rights Available Ex: World English, Arsenal Pulp Press). Contact Stephanie Sinclair:

"Adnan Khan's THERE HAS TO BE A KNIFE...seek[s] to put the reader into uncomfortably close proximity with ugly masculine entitlement and toxic behaviour.... the book is a claustrophobic and often disorienting character study and a sharp dissection of how grief-wrongly channelled and enflamed by grievance-can fuel destructive masculine behaviour, inciting flailing verbal aggression on the internet and in everyday life."  -The Walrus

Praise for Sarah Leavitt's AGNES, MURDERESS (World Rights Available Ex: Canada, Freehand Press, Fall 2019). Contact Samantha Haywood:

"Leavitt convincingly captures the atmosphere of the gold rush in her portrayal of the miners who frequent the inn and the sex workers Agnes employs there."  -The Comics Journal


Praise for THEY SAID THIS WOULD BE FUN by Eternity Martis (World Rights Available Ex: Canada English McClelland & Stewart). Contact Stephanie Sinclair:

Selected by CBC as a Great Read for International Women's Day!

"I've never been so angry that a book had to end. [Eternity] is so generous in her storytelling, so gifted in the way she sorts through her feelings, and her honesty is awe-inspiring. Her essays about family, about growing up, about gender, about race, about sexuality, and about trauma stick with you for days after finishing them, and I think we're all very lucky to be alive in a time when Eternity's chosen to write. Her pieces are so important, and her vulnerability is inspiring. I can't say enough about the magnitude of this book, or the way it feels like she's sitting next to you, simply sharing her story." -Anne T. Donahue, writer and author of
Nobody Cares 

Praise for PALLBEARING by by Michael Melgaard  (World Rights: House of Anansi Press ). Contact Marilyn Biderman:

"Melgaard's quiet genius, like so many Canadian short-story writers before him, is in finding remarkable drama in the mundanities that make up an unremarkable life." -Anne Thériault, in the Quill and Quire 




Praise for Michelle Parise's ALONE: A Love Story (World Rights Sold: Dundurn). Contact Samantha Haywood

"The storytelling is exemplary. The way the narrative unfolds, moving back and forth in time,  conjures up the full scope of emotion-horror and anxiety and wonder and happiness. Parise's is a very particular story but in many ways it's universal and familiar. The thing I'm m ost struck by is the neat way she walks the tightrope between hope and despair, darkness and light." -Sharon Bala, on the podcast "Alone: A Love Story" 

"Page by page, Michelle Parise's story of love, betrayal, loss, and ultimately redemption, is filled with moments of grace, humour, pain, hope, and wisdom. Beautifully and powerfully written, ALONE left me heartbroken and inspired at the same time."  -Terry Fallis, two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour

"Michelle Parise's writing makes me feel like I can be more myself. She is remarkable at rendering the (nearly) universal human experience of deceit into a tightly woven tapestry of vulnerability, rawness, and humour, and while she's doing it, makes you contemplate your inner life with more acceptance and compassion."  -Britt Wray, PhD, broadcaster and author of  Rise of the Necrofauna

"Dating, love, marriage, parenthood, and scrape-yourself-off-the-floor heartbreak is illuminated in ALONE: A LOVE STORY. Michelle takes us into the heart's dark corners with dark humour and deep honesty, pouring out her story like a funny, fierce friend who trusts you with everything. I don't know anyone who won't see themselves somewhere in this story (but be glad Michelle's the one doing the telling). Ultimately, ALONE:A LOVE STORY gives us something we all want: to feel less alone."  -Christa Couture, writer, musician and broadcaster

"For anyone who has had a marriage fall apart, ALONE is a book to keep close. Parise is unflinching as she reports back from her broken heart and, as strange as this might seem, comforts by showing us the way from loneliness to standing tall...and alone."
- Laurie Brown, music journalist and host of Pondercast

"When someone hurts you deeply (like, REALLY deeply), it can turn you into a special correspondent from the wreckage that is your own heartbreak. It may take all your self-control not to grab strangers by the shirt collar and shout, "He hurt me!" When Michelle Parise's life blew up, she did the more socially acceptable, and thoughtful version of this: she wrote her own love story. It's brave, resonant and oh so raw. In ALONE: A LOVE STORY Michelle turns her greatest shock into a story that lets you get close enough to feel its sting and understand its nuance. Her book doubles as a survival guide for when it's your turn to rethink your relationship with love itself. Plus, Michelle Parise channels some seriously steamy Canadian Bridget Jones divorcee realness and I'm here for it."  -A ndrea Silenzi, host of the podcast Why Oh Why

"A LONE: A LOVE STORY is an emotional memoir of a life exploded-the end of a marriage, referred to as The Bomb--and the chaos that follows. But it's also about what blooms in the wreckage. Beautifully written, intimate, alive and accessible, the story flows like a conversation with your most interesting, wise and exciting friend."  -Emily Urquhart, author of Beyond the Pale

Praise for Marissa Stapley's THINGS TO DO WHEN IT'S RAINING (World Rights Ex: Canada, Simon & Schuster; US, Graydon House; Germany, Rowohlt; Norway, Cappelen Damm; Italy, Sperling  & Kupfer Editori). Contact Samantha Haywood:

"...the remarkable style of Canadian Marissa Stapley, served by translation of Lea Drouet, enchants with her grace and accuracy." - Le Monde


Praise for Amy Stuart's STILL HERE (World Rights Available Ex: US, Gallery; Canada, S&S Canada). Contact Samantha Haywood:

"With STILL HERE, Amy Stuart once again writes a powerful, atmospheric, perfectly plotted thriller featuring the ultimate heroine-a flawed, damaged woman on the run whose main goal is to protect everyone she encounters. I was compelled to follow Clare's journey through every stunning word, trying to piece together expertly placed clues, and was astounded how every thread came together in an unexpected, shocking finale. An outstanding read." -Samantha M. Bailey, bestselling author of  Woman on the Edge

Praise for JUST PERVS by Jess Taylor   (World Rights Available Ex: English Canada, Book*hug ). Contact Marilyn Biderman:

 "JUST PERVS imagines a world in which women's sexual desire isn't disgraceful; it's communicated, expressed, fulfilled, and accepted."  -Jessica Rose, Rabble

"...elegantly written and cleverly executed, all aimed at capturing the human condition and the often surprising content of our secret lives."  -Sarah Murdoch of the Toronto Star on Just Pervs

"...readers will dance from emotions like disillusionment and intrigue...Within each tale, the barriers to fulfilling female sexuality are exposed, unearthed, and reimagined, loudly, until the last page... I felt repulsed in the best way possible." -Ash Jodha, This Magazine
  New Clients

Angélique Lalonde is the second eldest of four daughters. Her mother is Métis and her father is Québecois. She dwells on Gitxsan Territory in Northern British Columbia with her partner, two small children and many non-non-human beings. Angélique holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Victoria. She is the recipient of the 2019 Journey Prize, has been nominated for a National Magazine Award and was awarded an Emerging Writer's residency at the Banff Centre. Angélique's work has been published in Prism international, the Journey Prize Anthology, Room, the Malahat Review, Prairie Fire and Mom Egg Review. The stories in her latest collection explore the way beings dwell with one another in homes-homes they have chosen, homes that have been inflicted upon them, bodily homes into which they've been born. angéliquelalonde.com.

Angélique is represented by Stephanie Sinclair.


As a teenager, Hadiya Roderique wanted to take creative writing so badly that she took math at night school an hour away to free up space in her schedule. She took a number of career detours - camp counselor, law student, lawyer, Ph.D. student, podcast host - but writing was always there, calling, in the back of her mind. She burst upon the scene with her debut piece, " Dating While Black" , written for The Walrus. Nominated for 3 National Magazine Awards with her first piece of published writing, including Best New Magazine Writer, she followed this up with her viral essay, "Black on Bay Street", a searing and poignant recounting of her experience as a young, black female lawyer in the Bay Street world. The piece brought Hadiya instant national acclaim, and it went on to win the Digital Publishing Award Gold Medal for Best Personal Essay. Hadiya's writing has been published by The Walrus, The Globe and Mail, The National Post, Flare, Elle, Chatelaine, Vice, and Maclean's, amongst others. In 2017, she was a Literary Journalism Fellow at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. Hadiya is currently working on a dystopian novel that weaves science and afro-futurism together to deftly explore issues of race, gender, inequality and climate change. She is also at work on a TV pilot about her experiences as a black lawyer looking to break free of corporate expectations.   

Hadiya is represented by Samantha Haywood and Léonicka Valcius

Damian Rogers is a critically acclaimed poet and writer. Her debut memoir, An Alphabet for Joanna , is to be published by Knopf Canada in 2021. A riveting portrait of a time and place (the leafy suburbs of Detroit, Michigan and working class neighborhoods of Long Beach, California in the 1970s and 80s), An Alphabet for Joanna is also an unconventional mother-daughter saga, and a creative exploration of how memory shifts and shapes our most intimate relationships.  Author of two poetry collections, her writing has appeared in Brick , The Walrus , Maisonneuve , Hazlitt , and many others. Rogers' first poetry collection, Paper Radio (ECW Press, 2009) was shortlisted for the ReLit Award and the Pat Lowther Award. Her most recent poetry collection, Dear Leader (Coach House Books, 2015) was nominated for the Ontario Trillium Poetry Prize. She lives in Toronto, where she teaches creative writing at Ryerson University.

Damian is represented by Samantha Haywood.

Jennifer Sookfong Lee was born and raised in Vancouver's East Side, and she now lives with her son in North Burnaby. Her books include The Conjoined, nominated for International Dublin Literary Award and a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, The Better Mother, a finalist for the City of Vancouver Book Award, The End of East, Gentlemen of the Shade, and Chinese New Year. Jen teaches at The Writers' Studio Online with Simon Fraser University, edits fiction for Wolsak & Wynn, and co-hosts the literary podcast, Can't Lit.

Jennifer is represented by Samantha Haywood and Stephanie Sinclair.

Jesse Thistle is Métis-Cree and an Assistant Professor at York University in Toronto. He is a PhD candidate in the History program at York where he is working on theories of intergenerational and historic trauma of the Métis people. Jesse has won the P.E. Trudeau and Vanier doctoral scholarships, and he is a Governor General medalist. Jesse is the author of the Definition of Indigenous Homelessness in Canada published through the Canadian Observatory on Homelessness, and his historical research has been published in numerous academic journals, book chapters, and featured on CBC Ideas, CBC Campus, and Unreserved. His writing has also appeared in Toronto Life and The Walrus among others. His memoir, which has been consistently at the very top of our bestseller lists since its debut, From the Ashes: My Story of Being Métis, Homeless and Finding My Way, which details his childhood, youth, and early adulthood, dealing with issues such as foster care, homelessness and addiction, is a #1 national bestseller, an Indigo Best Book of 2019 and a CBC Canada Reads finalist! You can follow him on Twitter at @michifman.

Jesse is represented by Samantha Haywood.

Leanne Yong is an Asian-Australian author who loves writing the diaspora experience into contemporary and fantasy fiction. Outside of writing, she owns an escape room that was a finalist in the Top Escape Rooms Project, and plays far too many video games for her own good.

Leanne is represented by Andrea Cascardi.

Niigaanwewidam James Sinclair is Anishinaabe (St. Peter's/Little Peguis) and an Associate Professor at the University of Manitoba. He is an award-winning writer, editor and activist who was named one of Monocle Magazine's "Canada's Top 20 Most Influential People" and he won the 2018 Canadian columnist of the year at the National Newspaper Awards for his bi-weekly columns in The Winnipeg Free Press. In 2019 he won Peace Educator of the Year from the Peace and Justice Studies Association based at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. His creative work can be found in books such as The Exile Edition of Native Canadian Fiction and Drama, newspapers like The Guardian, and online with CBC Books: Canada Writes. He is also the co-editor of the award-winning Manitowapow: Aboriginal Writings from the Land of Water (Highwater Press, 2011), Centering Anishinaabeg Studies: Understanding the World Through Stories (Michigan State University Press, 2013) and The Winter We Danced: the Past, the Future and the Idle No More Movement (Arbeiter Ring Press, 2014). He has written national curriculums for Indspire and the Assembly of First Nations and is a former secondary school teacher who has trained educators and students across Canada. His first book on Anishinaabeg literary traditions will be coming out with the University of Minnesota Press in 2021. Niigaan is preparing a book on the struggles for Canada's future in the centre of reconciliation called Wînipêk: Life from the Centre.

Niigaan is represented by Stephanie Sinclair.

Tunchai Redvers [she/they] is a Dene/Métis two-spirit social justice warrior, writer, and wanderer from Treaty 8 territory, Northwest Territories and currently living in Tkaronto. By the age of 25 she has been named one of MTV and WE Day's Top 10 Drivers of Change in Canada, is a published author and performer, is the recipient of the Lawson Foundation's Emerging Leaders Award, and is the Co-Founder of We Matter, a national organization dedicated to Indigenous youth hope and life promotion. Carrying a Master of Indigenous Social Work and wearing many hats, she has received national and international recognition for her art, writing and advocacy which focuses on intergenerational trauma, 2SLGBTQ+ rights, youth and womxn's empowerment, and the decolonization and indigenization of identity, mental health and healing. Having spent considerable time living, travelling, speaking, and working with Indigenous communities internationally and across Canada, she considers herself a nomad just like her ancestors.

Tunchai is represented by Stephanie Sinclair. Photo by Red Works Photography. 
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