New Releases by Emily Pohl-Weary

A young adult novel about inner-city teens who live on a razor’s edge and understand that chosen family is just as important as blood. Michie and her best friend Trissa grew up like sisters in a ramshackle duplex owned by their single moms. But now that they’re sixteen, the differences in identity and experience have caused a rift. Michie’s an introvert obsessed with a book called A Girl’s Guide to Murder, and her mom has an organic weed and mushrooms grow-op in the basement. Shiny, extroverted Trissa, on the other hand, dances at the hottest nightclub in town, while her mother holds an ultra-responsible job at City Hall. One night, Michie wakes up one night to find Trissa missing, having left only a cryptic note. The cops write her off as a party girl who’s probably already met a foul end, and the mothers fall apart from fear and grief, but Michie refuses to believe it. Enlisting help from her friend Anwar, who she’s been in love with forever, Michie sets off to look for Trissa, knowing she’s the only one who will. The search takes them into unfamiliar, dangerous territory: the back rooms of Trissa’s luxury nightclub, dark alleyways, the online sex industry, and rural cottage country. As she begins to unravel Trissa’s secrets against a backdrop of cold authority figures, shady characters, and a serial killer who’s been active in the city, Michie knows she’s plunging into danger—but she’s determined to find her chosen sister and to bring her home safely. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. This book is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.

More information to be announced soon on this forthcoming title from Penguin USA.

My research has shown that community-based creative writing groups can be safer spaces for people who are under-represented in the English literary canon to craft and share their stories, poems, and other genres of writing. They can also put the act of cultural production into the hands of participants, redefine the notion of great literature, and provide a counterpoint to institutional learning. These groups are potential spaces for learning how to relate to one another with respect while acknowledging our own privileges, which can ultimately transform hegemonic social relations that exclude and oppress rather than connect and build support. Using critical arts-based inquiry and program evaluation methods, I employ a reflexive technique to investigate the benefits of a single group for youth, Toronto Street Writers (TSW), which I facilitated for six years in the neighbourhood where I grew up. TSW is positioned within a range of literacy and community writing groups across North America, transgressive and anti-oppressive theories around creative writing pedagogy are summarized, and interviews with former participants and staff of TSW are analyzed for insights into how to facilitate sustainable community-based creative writing groups that genuinely benefit members. Interview respondents reported several benefits, including: finding support and community, developing identity and a unique writerly voice, learning writing tools and leadership skills, discovering a more equal/safer learning environment than traditional schooling, and using writing as part of a healing process. These findings support the notion that creative writing groups promote personal and community healing and resilience for people who have been historically silenced.

Winner: 2016 Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry After a Christmas Eve shooting that devastated author Emily Pohl-Weary''s family, she began to hunt through the sorrow and trauma for a sense of hopefulness. In the tradition of Carolyn Forché, Ernesto Cardenal, and Shu Ting, Ghost Sickness is a poetry of witness. It chronicles the impact of violence and poverty on an inner-city Toronto neighborhood, the power of empathy, and the resilience of the human spirit.

When teenage rock star Sam Lee is bitten by a strange creature in Central Park, she discovers she is turning into a werewolf, and must unravel the mystery of the supernatural world before her bandmates and the media find out.

Life On the Edge is a feature-length dramatic screenplay about three inner-city siblings struggling to keep their family together in the face of social and economic obstacles. Jay Brown, the eldest, is a crazy-talented graffiti artist who manages to keep a roof over his siblings'' heads by conjuring cash out of thin air every so often. When he gets paid to paint a mural on the wall of a new club, it seems that things are looking up. But local drug kingpin John wants to keep Jay under his thumb, and shows up to disrupt the opening. Jay''s situation gets worse when the landlord nails a sheriff''s notice to his apartment door, threatening eviction if they don''t pay thousands in back rent. So he panics and takes action in the only way he feels sure about: by returning to his hustling lifestyle. Jay''s world becomes a race to pay back-rent and survive. But trying to keep their home isn''t his only problem. His beautiful, shallow girlfriend Sandy, consumed by her image, is jealous and possessive of Jay''s involvement with the sweet, enterprising Mel. And a rival graff writer falls to his death while tagging over Jay''s mural. While his sister Queenie Brown has a confident exterior, the pressure and uncertainty of their lives is taking its toll, and her secret shoplifting fetish is just one manifestation of how she''s coming apart at the seams. Introspective Little Brown finds the turbulence and pain outside their apartment too much to cope with, and just wants to stay home playing video games on his cherished PS3. With John and the landlord after him, and his siblings at risk, Jay faces a minefield for which he''s unprepared. But he will have to negotiate it successfully if he''s going to keep his family safe and come of age without dying inside.

Introducing a new series A Natalie Fuentes Mystery: 16-year-old Natalie just wants to publish her zine ''My Secret Life'' but trouble find her. After the school caretaker is attacked only Natalie is willing to investigate.

Defiantly exploring the beauty and complexity of the everyday, the poetry of this collection takes on urban life. By sifting through the grit and grime of the city, the poet reveals the isolation, illness, love, and sexuality lurking beneath. Through short, confident bursts with the same startling colorfulness as graffiti on an alley wall, the poems reveal hidden layers of emotion and political motivation.

Judith Merril was a pioneer of twentieth-century science fiction, a prolific author, and editor. She was also a passionate social and political activist. In fact, her life was a constant adventure within the alternative and experimental worlds of science fiction, left politics, and Canadian literature. Better to Have Loved is illustrated with original art works, covers from classic science fiction magazines, period illustrations, and striking photography.

This themed compilation zine discusses and analyzes the image of girls and guns. Included are stories, poetry, an article about being in a Chinatown gang, and interviews with women in the Israeli Army.