Books & Lit

Are you passionate about urban living and making your community a better place for everyone? Then the Ottawa Urbanism Book Club might be for you!

In an effort to better understand blue space — the aquatic counterpart to green space — local writer Dan Rubinstein has travelled 1,200 miles (nearly 2,000km) by stand-up paddleboard. His recently-published book, Water Borne: A 1,200 Mile Paddleboarding Pilgrimage, documents his voyage and all the conversations he had with journalists and experts along the way.

With its official launch on June 6, Signing Off for the Summer will arrive right on time to be devoured by summer romance lovers. It’s a light, breezy novel with a believable premise, a likeable heroine, and lovely descriptions… It also has a super hot love interest, the guy next door.

On May 7, I got the opportunity to host Jeff McIntyre’s launch of Chapter 4 of his graphic novel, Salmon Run, at Perfect Books downtown. In a room packed with McIntyre’s supporters, we discussed the chapter and what brought him to graphic novels. Here is what he had to say.

Stephanie Anne’s new novel, The Tunnel, might just scare the bejeezus out of you. It officially launched on March 28 at a fun art market event at Studio Staja. In case you missed it, I sat down with Anne afterward to talk about The Tunnel and other blood pumping stuff.

Awesome Ottawa is giving two awards for March, one to Susan Johnston to support walking tours of Ottawa fiction and poetry, and one to Patricia Oliveira to support new mesh nets for basketball courts across the city.

Local author Barbara Leimsner won the 2024 Whistler Independent Book Award (WIBA) for non-fiction with her debut book, Quitting the Master Race: A Daughter’s Journey to Break the Bonds of Hate, and she took the time to talk with me about it.

Ottawa publisher and author of prose and poetry rob mclennan gives us the personal perspectives of various individuals in this collection of more than 30 short stories. Curiosity compels us to read further and learn more about them.

Are you a crime fiction enthusiast looking to knock items off your holiday shopping list? If so, nine Ottawa mystery authors will be gathering on Tuesday, Nov. 19 for Crime for Christmas, the city’s first-ever mystery book fair!

The finalists for the 2024 Ottawa Book Awards were announced Sept. 17, and I can’t wait to read their books!

Letters From You to You is the newest book by Ellie Laliberté, an author and spiritual leader born in Ottawa and living in Hawkesbury. It’s exactly what you think: 21 letters written from the perspective of you, the reader, meant to help you understand and reconnect with yourself.

Rules of the Road: Breakdowns on the Musical Highway by Ottawa’s Stephen K. Donnelly offers two perspectives. The book gives us the inside track on how a Canadian indie band performed, toured, recorded and caroused in the 90s. It is also a personal memoir of Donnelly’s creative journey with music and life, which he expresses in […]

Pulitzer Prize finalist and long-time climate and wildlife activist Lydia Millet will be discussing her anti-
memoir, We Loved It All: A Memory of Life, with poet Stephen Brockwell at the Ottawa International Writers Festival (OIWF) on Saturday, May 4, 2024.

Renowned climate scientist Dr. Michael Mann will discuss his new book, Our Fragile Moment: How Lessons from Earth’s Past Can Help Us Survive the Climate Crisis, at the Ottawa International Writers Festival (OIWF) on Saturday, May 4.

On March 31, 2024, Ottawa author N.P. Thompson’s children’s book River of Crows won a silver medal in the 2023 Wishing Shelf Book Awards.