Elee Kraljii Gardiner Book Launch: sometimes, forest

Don’t miss Vancouver Poet Laureate, Elee Kraljii Gardiner, in Ottawa to launch her third collection of poetry, sometimes, forest, alongside host and fellow reader Chris Turnbull, and Ottawa poet laureate David O'Meara!

sometimes, forest alternatively rails at and desires a fluid beloved, sometimes forest, sometimes lover, friend, mother, or an absence the speaker yearns for in herself. But the coastal temperate rainforest continues foresting, existing independently of the speaker’s wants or needs, a place of both refuge and harm. Returning daily to the same woods, the speaker notices minute seasonal changes and considers her own internal changes too.

Meanwhile, fires, heat domes, and landslides mirror hormonal heat and biological surges. Considering how networks of lateral support mitigate and challenge hierarchical, individualistic structures, sometimes, forest develops a theory of hylofeminism that attends to a deep, communal connection with nature as a relational way of being with the self and the more-than-human world.

ELEE KRALJII GARDINER is the author of three poetry collections, serpentine loop, Trauma Head and, most recently, sometimes, forest from Talonbooks, as well as editor of two anthologies (V6A: Writing from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside and Against Death: 35 Essays on Living). A frequent collaborator, she works across disciplines and administers the Warland Award for hybrid literature. She also directs Vancouver Manuscript Intensive and is the seventh poet laureate of Vancouver. 

Michael Decter Book Launch

Join former Ontario Deputy Minister of Health Michael Decter to launch his book, The Canadian Health Care Guerilla Handbook: How to Fight For What You Need!

Unlike traditional policy books, The Canadian Health Care Guerrilla Handbook focuses on what individuals can actually do when faced with delays, denials, or barriers in the health care system. Packed with real-world examples and practical tools, it serves as a survival manual for Canadians navigating wait lists, treatment approvals, and access to specialists.

MICHAEL DECTER is a former Ontario Deputy Minister of Health and author of numerous books on health policy, investment, and politics. Mike McCarthy is a nationally recognized patient advocate who played a key role in securing justice for victims of the tainted blood scandal and has spent decades fighting for improved access to treatment in Canada.

Amanda Sung Book Signing

Join Amanda Sung for a book signing from How to Break a Girl!

Think Sex and the City—if Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha were Asian Canadian immigrants navigating not just love and career, but the complexities of intergenerational baggage, cultural curveballs, and all the gendered nonsense the world throws at them. This isn't a sob story—it's the sisterhood and sass you love, with a sharper edge and a deeper heart.

AMANDA SUNG is a Taiwanese-Canadian writer who crafts her stories from the inside out—How to Break a Girl, drawn from the scars and triumphs of her own journey as a satellite child growing up in Canada without parents. Amanda holds a Bachelor’s in Communication from Simon Fraser University and a Master of Journalism from the University of British Columbia. How to Break a Girl evolved from her graduate thesis—originally conceived as a memoir, now reimagined as fiction.

Rosanna Battigelli Book Signing

Join author Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli for a book signing from her creative non-fiction collection, Product of Italy, Made in Canada.

In this creative non-fiction collection, award-winning teacher and author Rosanna Micelotta Battigelli depicts roles she has assumed over the decades after immigrating with her family to Canada when she was three. Rebelling at some of the handmade clothes she had to wear in her youth, spending time in hospital as her dad’s health fails, learning some life lessons from her students, and reflecting on the influences of her first language and culture as well as her pride in her adopted country, Battigelli shares these and other stories vividly. Whether navigating the choppy waters of family challenges and loss or recounting lighter moments, Battigelli writes with unflinching honesty, measured doses of humour, and with heart and spirit. The stories encapsulate the moments and incidents that have impacted her in various ways throughout her life, ways that ultimately helped shape her character and sensibilities as a daughter, sister, mother, teacher, and writer.

A multiple award-winning teacher and writer, ROSANNA MICELOTTA BATTIGELLI was born in Calabria, Italy, and immigrated to Canada with her family at three years of age. An alumna of the Humber School for Writers, she has been published in twenty anthologies and journals and has read at many conferences and literary events in Canada, the U.S. and Italy.

John Degen Book Signing

Join author John Degen for a book signing from the murder mystery series, Seldom Seen Road!

Seldom Seen Road is the first in the Burnt River series of murder mysteries featuring the Roth family detective trio. When the body of local environmental activist Paul Robichaud washes up on the bank of a river in the small northern town of Burnt River, blunt-force wounds to his head suggesting murder, Mark Roth is jarred out of his retirement reverie and drawn into the mystery. Who dumped Robichaud into the frigid spring run-off? Is there a connection between his death and both the largest uranium refinery in the world and the local small-time pot trade? How do Robichaud’s wife, Kim Keranen, daughter Algoma, local real estate developer Gillian Larch, and her pot-head son Bobby fit into the puzzle? And who is The Albanian? Mark Roth has the least solid claim on the art of solving murders, but he is driven by the insistent busybody nature of the recently retired. Profoundly hard-of-hearing after a career in musical performance, and equally disappointed with finding himself alone in his world after the death of his beloved wife, Mark stubbornly and clumsily puts himself in harm’s way to draw out the truth. Constable Jeremy Roth, Mark’s long-lost cousin, is the muscle of the group, patrolling the northern highways for the local police detachment and investigating on the ground. Mark’s beloved daughter, Stephanie, building her name as a criminologist at the university in Thunder Bay, gets to the details of the matter using her academic credentials and her innate puzzle-solving instincts. Mark ignores all official advice and his own precarious health as he digs deep into the secrets of his new town. But the town is looking back at him—observing, plotting—and it may prove more than a match for Mark’s loved ones, and deadly to him.

JOHN DEGEN is a poet and novelist with three published books. His debut novel, The Uninvited Guest, was shortlisted for the 2006 Amazon.ca First Novel Award, and given feature reviews in the Globe and Mail and Quill & Quire.

His essays and opinions have been published widely throughout Canada, including in The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Hill Times, Canadian Notes and Queries, The BC Review, THIS Magazine, Quill & Quire, and the Literary Review of Canada. He has served on many boards and advisories in the literary and arts sector including terms as Chair of the Book & Periodical Council, THIS Magazine, and the Canadian Creators’ Coalition. He holds a Master’s degree in Literature from the University of Toronto.

Degen has worked on behalf of other authors for the past thirty years. He is Chief Executive Officer of The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC), and Chair of the International Authors Forum (IAF) in the UK. He lives and works, happily, in Thessalon, Ontario, with occasional reluctant visits to Toronto and Ottawa.

Terry Mosher Book Launch

Join Terry Mosher as he launches Jean’s Drapeau’s Baby here at Perfect Books!

It was fifty years ago, that Montreal hosted the Summer Games of the XXI Olympiad. Over two weeks in July 1976, the city enjoyed the spotlight on glowing international acclaim, revelling in the glory and glamour of hosting such a prestigious event. And the man principally responsible? Mayor Jean Drapeau.

TERRY MOSHER, alias Aislin, has been renowned cartoonist for the Montreal Gazette for decades. He lives in Montreal.