In her powerful debut collection of poetry, Arielle Twist unravels the complexities of human relationships after death and metamorphosis. In these spare yet powerful poems, she explores, with both rage and tenderness, the parameters of grief, trauma, displacement, and identity. Weaving together a past made murky by uncertainty and a present which exists in multitudes, Arielle Twist poetically navigates through what it means to be an Indigenous trans woman, discovering the possibilities of a hopeful future and a transcendent, beautiful path to regaining softness. 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. A Simple book with few images, which 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.

To celebrate the fifth anniversary of the Indigenous Voices Awards, an anthology consisting of selected works by finalists over the past five years, edited by Jordan Abel, Carleigh Baker, and Madeleine Reddon. Established in 2017, the Indigenous Voices Awards honour the sovereignty of Indigenous creative voices and nurture the work of emerging Indigenous writers in lands claimed by Canada. Through generous support from hundreds of Canadians and organizations such as Penguin Random House Canada, Scholastic Canada, Douglas & McIntyre, Pamela Dillon and Family Gift Fund, the awards have ushered in a new and dynamic generation of Indigenous writers. Past IVAs recipients include Billy-Ray Belcourt and Tanya Tagaq. The IVAs also promote the works of unpublished writers, helping to launch the careers of Smokii Sumac, Cody Caetano, and Samantha Martin-Bird. This anthology gathers together a selection of the finalists over the past five years, highlighting some of the most pathbreaking Indigenous writing across poetry, prose, and theatre in English, French, and Indigenous languages. Curated by award-winning and critically acclaimed writers Jordan Abel (Nisga’a) and Carleigh Baker (Métis), and scholar Madeleine Reddon (Métis), this anthology is a celebration of Indigenous storytelling that both introduces readers to emerging luminaries and returns them to treasured favourites.

In this dark and gripping psychological tale, Ophelia, a woman whose identity was fractured into five separate personalities by her father’s satanic rituals, seeks love, justice and unification. The road to hell is paved with gold, an illusion of the setting sun. The month is October. The year is 1946. The road is in Michigan, north of Detroit. The novel opens with the birth of the fourth alternate personality of a tormented child. Identity dissociation is the mind ́s defense against relentless childhood abuse. Multiple Personality Disorder is the extreme result. When the third alter, too frightened to cope, flees into temporary amnesia, the fourth girl emerges. The first sound she hears is a man ́s voice. He calls her Faith but she isn ́t Faith. Faith is the name of the first girl. She is Ophelia, the novel ́s narrator. Her journey through life begins as the unwilling witness to murder. Her father is the murderer. She falls into a state of oblivion, a black hole of the mind. The next time Ophelia opens her eyes she is inside a house filled with art and music and an aura of evil. The idyllic setting, the shores of a small lake north of Detroit, conceals a sinister reality. On these shores and in nearby woods, gods and demons compete for human souls. Good and evil, free will and fate, fidelity and fanaticism, sacred oaths and prophecies determine the outcome. Ophelia ́s mother is an artist. Her father, Max Mahler, is a brilliant, handsome, charismatic physician. He is also the prophet of a satanic cult, its god the master of the moon. He spins a web of myths and lies and fantasies to lure disciples. His daughter is the victim of sadistic rituals performed to appease the demon ́s lust. Fragmentation is her mind ́s defense. The alters survive by sharing the suffering. In this complex novel, nothing is what it first seems to be. Ophelia ́s first days in a hell of her father ́s creation are a jumble of confused activity. Sometimes she observes a red-haired girl who looks like her, an alter. Sometimes she takes her place. The five alters have separate memories, talents and identities. The descriptions of the bizarre rituals are disturbing, graphic and explicit. They leave no doubt that the girl whose identity splinters is smart and brave. Fragmentation is not an act of cowardice. Ophelia soon becomes the dominant personality. At nineteen, she plots her escape with courage and cunning. She leaves, taking her infant daughter with her. Max lets her go. He knows she’ll return on a predetermined date. The story picks up 25 years later. Ophelia is a mother, a teacher of philosophy, and an artist who has found love, but she hasn’t truly escaped. Her father has located her. Lured by the offer of her mother ́s art, she returns, her pagan faith intact. She is the princess in the tower who has to save herself in order to save others. When her father and half-brother snatch her young granddaughter, she stands in their way. Her courage when she faces two armed men grants the unity she both craves and fears, her god’s gift to her. Her father’s vengeful god takes what belongs to him in death and conflagration. Despite dark psychological undertones and pervasive religious satire,the novel is in essence a romance. The hero is noble. The heroine is beautiful, smart, and brave. Blindspot reads like a myth, a disturbing fantasy. The specific cult is fictional, but horrific acts in the name of religion are not. Memory is the key to identity. When identity is fractured, a question arises. Is the woman who survives parental molestation a reliable narrator, or does her road to hell begin with a single act of intolerable violence and end in a nightmare that unfolds in her mind?

Working within a global frame, The Routledge Companion to Postcolonial and Decolonial Literature considers postcolonial and decolonial literary works across multiple genres, languages, and both regional and transnational networks. The Companion extends beyond the entrenched hegemony of the postcolonial or Anglophone novel to explore other literary formations and vernacular exchanges. It foregrounds questions of language and circulation by emphasizing translation, vernacularity, and world literature. This text expands the linguistic, regional, and critical foci of the emergent field of decolonial studies, pushing against the normative currents of postcolonial literary studies, and offers a critical consideration of both. The volume prioritizes new literatures and critical theories of diasporas, borderlands, detentions, and forced migrations in the face of environmental catastrophe and political authoritarianism, reframing postcolonial/decolonial literary studies through an emphasis on multilingual literatures. This will be a crucial resource for undergraduate and graduate students of postcolonial and decolonial studies.

When asked the question "what is the power of poetry?," writer Ian Williams said "poetry punctures the surface." Williams' statement—that poetry matters and that it does something—is at the heart of this book. Building from this core idea that poetry perforates the everyday to give greater range to our lives and our thinking, the practical and pedagogical aim of this book is twofold: the first aim is to provide students with an introduction to the key cultural, political, and historical events that inform twentieth- and twenty-first-century Canadian poetry; and to familiarize those same readers with poetic movements, trends, and forms of the same time period. This book addresses the aesthetic and social contexts of Canadian poetry written in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries: it models for its readers the critical and theoretical discourses needed to understand the contexts of literary production in Canada. Put differently, readers need a sense of the "where" and "how" of poetic production to help situate them in the "what" of poetry itself. In addition to offering a historically contextualized overview of the significant movements, developments, and poets of this time period, this book also familiarizes readers with key moments of reflection and rupture, such as the effects of economic and ecological crisis, global conflicts, and debates around appropriation of culture. This book is built on the premise that poetry in Canada does not happen outside of political, social, and cultural contexts.

The ArQuives, the largest independent LGBTQ2+ archive in the world, is dedicated to collecting, preserving, and celebrating the stories and histories of LGBTQ2+ people in Canada. Since 1973, volunteers have amassed a vast collection of important artifacts that speak to personal experiences and significant historical moments for Canadian queer communities. Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada is a fascinating exploration and examination of one nation’s queer history and activism, and Canada’s definitive visual guide to LGBTQ2+ movements, struggles, and achievements.