Nightwood Editions - New Titles

	The Lost Coast Salmon, Memory and the Death of Wild Culture AVAILABLE 0-88971-211-5 · Hardback 6" x 9" · 255 pages · $29.95 September 2007 An impassioned lament for the home Bowling once knew and for the river and creatures that continue to haunt his imagination. A 2008 Kiriyama Prize "Notable Book" Finalist for the Writers’ Trust Nereus Non-Fiction Prize Finalist for the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize, BC Book Prize Finalist for the Wilfred Eggleston Award for Non-Fiction, Alberta Literary Awards Longlisted for the British Columbia Award for Canadian Non-fiction Somewhere between joyous affirmation of British Columbia's splendour and momentous grief for the destruction of a once thriving salmon culture comes the newest work from acclaimed poet and novelist Tim Bowling. The Lost Coast is a lyrical, impassioned lament for the home Bowling once knew and for the river and creatures that continue to haunt his imagination. Raised in Ladner, BC, by a gillnetting family, Bowling was a fisherman himself until the mid-1990s. The loss of the West Coast's salmon culture is felt deeply by Bowling; this is a betrayal of his birthright and a decimation of his children's heritage. The Lost Coast asks hard questions of politicians, fishermen, fish farmers, industrialists and of the three million people currently inhabiting Greater Vancouver. What is the story behind the pioneers who built this province? What is the secret life of the killer whale and the great blue heron? And above all else, who caused, and continues to hasten, the diminishment of the Pacific salmon, British Columbia's most totemic creature? With a poet's attention to details of the spirit, and a novelist's flair for character and story, Tim Bowling elevates his cherished homeland to the realm of enduring myth.

	Forage AVAILABLE 0-88971-213-1 · Paperback 5.5" x 8" · 88 pages · $16.95 December 2007 "Her questioning truthfulness demonstrates that Wong is a significant poet." —George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Sunday Herald Winner of the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize Rita Wong's new collection of poems explores how ecological crises relate to the injustices of our international political landscape. Querying the relations between writing and other forms of action, Wong seeks a shift in consciousness through poems that bespeak a range of responses to our world: anger, protest, anxiety, bewilderment, hope and love. In her words, "the next shift may be the biggest one yet, the union of the living, from mosquito to manatee to mom." Forage is accompanied by marginalia, Chinese characters and photos that give depth to the political context in which most of Wong's poems are situated. She is instructive without being pedantic, and thought-provoking while still calling forth humour and beauty.

	Birch Split Bark AVAILABLE 0-88971-215-8 · Paperback 5.5" x 8.0" · 102 pages · $16.95 November 2007 A debut collection of haunting poetry Shortlisted for the Writer’s Guild of Alberta City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize In her debut collection of poems, Birch Split Bark, Diane Guichon uses a quintessentially Canadian image—a birch bark canoe—to speak of those private waters that make us universally human. By writing in the first person of a father, a mother, a son and a daughter, she bridges age to gender, myth to memory and hatred to reconciliation. These poems are brave and brilliantly voiced and her descriptions are as haunting as a loon’s concerto on a silent summer lake. Guichon's characters speak to the plurality of Canadian identity; in four distinct voices, Guichon pulls apart the myths that have created us and continue to dictate who we must be. Birch Split Bark proves that canoes will always write history upon their waters just as poets will write humanity upon the page.

	O Canada Crosswords Book 8 75 Themed Daily-Sized Crosswords AVAILABLE 0-88971-217-4 · Paperback 8.5" x 11" · 115 pages · $12.95 October 2007 Olson and Macleod's puzzles are ingrained with accents of Canadian culture: -Lion's club (CFL) -Stompin' Tom's Bud, e.g. (SPUD) -Map of Québec (CARTE) -Old Hudson's Bay Company supplier (VOYAGEUR) And infused with humour: -Old timer (SUNDIAL) -Lame excuse (BUM LEG) -One who looks like hell, but is tempting (SATAN) A puzzle a day keeps the boredom away! And these are no ordinary puzzles. These 75 cleverly themed crosswords include themes like “Prefix-ation,” “Prime Mini$ter$” and “Let it Snow.” Many of the clues use tricky wordplay and are all about Canada: Child of Chibougamau? (enfant). Saturday night live group? (NHL). With Canadian spellings, Canadian perspectives and Canadian topics, the fact that you wear a toque to go to Timmy’s and pay GST on pretty much everything makes you uniquely qualified to solve these puzzles. Drawing on the trademarks of Canadian identity, O Canada Crosswords Book 8 is for every Canadian. Sharpen your pencils and get ready for a good time!

	Muybridge's Horse AVAILABLE 0-88971-231-X · Paperback 5.5" x 8.5" · 200 pages · $16.95 May 2007 Shortlisted for the 2007 Governor General's Award for Poetry! Part history, part invention, Muybridge’s Horse is a sensual biographical long poem that follows the career of Eadweard Muybridge, a nineteenth-century British-born photographer whose studies of bodies in motion led to the invention of moving pictures. Whether navigating hallucinogenic American deserts, violent coastal geographies, or a feral 1850s San Francisco, Rob Winger’s tale uses an inventive combination of poetic styles and voices, recounting early attempts to capture images on glass. Searching out stereoscopic beauty, Winger’s version of Muybridge carries portable darkrooms from the heights of Yosemite’s domes to the depths of the North and South American coastlines, and ultimately onto an 1878 race track, where a battery of fifty cameras settles a bet about a horse’s stride, forever changing the world’s understanding of movement. Charged with murder, accused of neurosis, compelled to record ruins and wage-slavery, Muybridge conveys the violence implied by the photographic act and the blunt details hidden behind our histories. Elegantly told, Muybridge’s Horse is an evocative exploration of history, personal obsession, passion and negatives.

	Six Ways to Sunday AVAILABLE 0-88971-227-1 · Paperback 5.5" x 8.5" · 216 pages · $19.95 June 2007 “Christian McPherson’s barfly madrigals are smoky and complex, shadowy tales from a shadowy planet, some so afflicted they’ll give you a rash.” —Mark Anthony Jarman Dirty pool halls, greasy restaurants, suburban skateboarder showdowns, and dangerous drug dens—some things in life just aren’t very subtle. And neither are the short stories in Six Ways to Sunday. In fact, they brashly make out with subtlety’s teenage crush, beat subtlety into the sidewalk, take a dump on its favourite patch of daisies, and unceremoniously bury it somewhere in the woods near Morgan Lake, Quebec. Realism is often the central element of short fiction, and often too much. Christian McPherson reminds us that to many people, fictions are central to their realities: lottery tickets, deals with God, the delusion of owning the world—or at least selectively rebuilding it in models, bruise-covering makeovers, a chronic criminal playing parent, beating the bad guys and getting away with the loot, and, most certainly, the divine creation of the perfect chilidog. McPherson infuses his gritty settings with a hyperkinetic imagination and fantastically animated writing style that make his stories impossible to put down or forget. The characters who subsist Six Ways to Sunday are the xenophobic, the substance-abused, the VLT-addicted, and the just plain lost, shining bright and battered in the dingy recesses of the bar.