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Recent news of Geist writers and artists, gathered from here and there.

Writing for the National Post, Brett Josef Grubisic says that Malarky by Anakana Schofield (Biblioasis) “shifts rapidly from point of view and through decades worth of history, necessitating a puzzle-solving state of mind for the reader.” And Chad Pelley of the Telegraph Journal writes that it is “a wacky, dead serious book.”

According to Brett Josef Grubisic, writing in the Vancouver Sun, Billeh Nickerson has “kept comedy respectfully at bay” in Impact: The Titanic Poems (Arsenal Pulp), and Liisa Hannus at vancouverisawesome.com says that he “allows [the reader] to simply absorb the words.”

Of Michal Kozlowski’s Louis the Tiger who Came from the Sea (Annick), the Deakin Newsletter of Children’s Literature says that “you will find yourself reading this story over and over,” and January Magazine suggests that you “read this one aloud to your little ones: they’ll eat it up.”

Writing in the Globe and Mail about Lynn Crosbie’s Life Is About Losing Everything (Anansi), Laura Penny encourages readers to “imagine Courtney Love with the benefits of a graduate education, or Kathy Acker slightly gentled by CanLit prettiness and politesse” and a reviewer at FASHION calls the book “a feral creature, full of intense love even when it bites.”

off the shelf

Books received recently at the Geist office.

The lover can make the folk hero in Louis: The Heretic Poems by Gregory Scofield (Nightwood), the key can make the lock in Key in Lock by Rona Altrows (Recliner Books), and you, Holden Catfield, can go back to bed or venture outside in You Are a Cat! by Sherwin Tjia (Conundrum).

Fiona Tinwei Lam illuminates Canadian poems on cancer in The Bright Well: Contemporary Canadian Poems about Facing Cancer (Leaf Press) and Bob Robertson enlightens and prepares you for collisions with rogue planets, biblical flooding and attacks by swarms of gnats in Mayan Horror: How to Survive the End of the World in 2012 (Anvil).

Gay detectives slip into the world of e-dating, parking lot romances and menacing blackmailers in Flight of the Aquavit by Anthony Bidulka (Insomniac) and professors bring Dr. Lacan to British Columbia in The Only Poetry That Matters: Reading the Kootenay School of Writing by Clint Burnham (Arsenal Pulp).

R. Shalendra writes a novel, Nathan Dee: Search for the Tree of Life, with the help of an iPhone app (self-published); Kim Clark introduces a character who is capable of only six more orgasms before she dies in Attemptations: Short, Long and Longer Stories (Caitlin); and Ben Stephenson attempts to make decisions, or something, in A Matter of Life and Death or Something (Douglas & McIntyre).

Punk and poetry make eye contact in Amphetamine Heart by Liz Worth (Guernica) and poetry and science go on a date in Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science by Alice Major (University of Alberta). Manuel Vázquez Montalbán explores the joys of business in The Angst-Ridden Executive (Melville House) and a detective tracks what isn’t there in The Vanishing Track by Stephen Legault (TouchWood).

Yasuko Thanh learns to swim in Floating Like the Dead (McClelland & Stewart), Alex Boyd wrestles with self-esteem issues in The Least Important Man (Biblioasis), Edem Awumey considers a bath in Dirty Feet (Anansi) and Pamela Porter finally discovers that special place in No Ordinary Place (Ronsdale).

Two furry friends find their human companion in Puppy Love by Frauke Scheunemann, translated by Shelley Frisch (Anansi), b ill bissett attempts to bend, stretch and break the boundaries of prose writing in Novel (Talonbooks), Jenna Butler blurs the boundaries of identity in Wells (University of Alberta), Marianne Apostolides collects revealing half-truths and memories in Voluptuous Pleasure: The Truth About the Writing Life (BookThug) and Entry Level by Julie McIsaac (Insomniac) is for advanced readers.

ARTISTS IN THIS ISSUE

David Collier is the author and artist of the comic book Collier’s and many book-length comics titles, most recently Collier’s Popular Press and Chimo (both from Conundrum). See more of his work at geist.com.

Eve Corbel is a writer and comics artist, author of “Guide to Literary Footwear,” “Some Lesser-Known Phobias of Writers” and many other works published in Geist, as well as the gone-viral “Lesser-Known Editing and Proofreading Marks.”

Jake Genan is an artist who lives in New York and at flickr.com/photos/jkejake.

Satoko Kubo is a hairdresser and origami artist. As a child she folded one thousand paper cranes (senba zuru) for her grandfather when he was in hospital. She lives in Vancouver.

Sarah Leavitt, a regular contributor to Geist, is the author of the graphic memoir Tangles: Alzheimer’s, My Mother and Me (Freehand), which was shortlisted for the Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. See more of her work at geist.com and at sarahleavitt.com.

Eric Uhlich, who designs and composes Geist, is an illustrator and graphic designer. He created the artwork for the graphic novel Green Skies and for several shorter comics. Visit him at oktober.ca.