Lit City
Local loot from King West Books
“We came for the bookstore.”
That’s what we used to tell people when they asked why we moved here. Our house does sit at a convenient distance from a beautiful bookstore, as well as two libraries—one public and one attached to the university.
But it’s more accurate to say that we moved to Hamilton because it seemed like a great place for writers to live—and because so many readers and writers welcomed us.
Twelve years later, that feels truer than ever. Bryan Prince Booksellers (the original neighbourhood draw) is sadly no more, but the same space is loving occupied by King West Books, owned and operated by Dave Kuruc and Teresa Devries, who also own the adjoining Mixed Media, selling pens, art supplies, paper, notebooks and all manner of things that Hamilton artists and writers covet.
Since our arrival, the city has sprouted other bookstores too, including Epic Books and The City and the City Books. And 20 minutes down the highway, the venerable A Different Drummer Books remains a gateway into the Hamilton literary community.
Hamilton boasts the robust independent publisher Wolsak & Wynn, as well as its own lit mag, The Hamilton Review of Books. And it has literary events that are plentiful—like the long running reading series, Lit Live; or the seasonal 6-Minute Memoir—enough to keep you connected and engaged, but aren’t so frequent that you feel overwhelmed.
Tomorrow’s the kick off for GritLit, Hamilton’s annual literary festival.
This year’s festival boasts a variety of Canadian writers from far and near, including six Hamilton authors with new books this spring. The festival’s online, of course, like everything else.
Even though we can’t gather in person, I’m excited to celebrate my colleagues and neighbours. I know how I’m going to spend the rest of April’s rainy days.
My Latest Hamilton Reading List (in all its gritty city glory):
Nothing the Same, Everything Haunted: The Ballad of Motl the Cowboy, is writer, poet and musician Gary Barwin’s second novel (his first was nominated for the Giller Prize) and his…25th(?) book. (His collected works of poetry, For it is a Pleasure and a Surprise to Breathe was published by Wolsak & Wynn last year). The publisher’s catalogue copy calls Barwin’s latest novel “an eccentric quest across Europe after the 1941 Nazi invasion of Lithuania,” while managing not to say that Motl’s quest is for his lost testicles. Myth and memory? A meeting of the poignant and absurd? Sounds like classic Barwin…
A former reporter for The Hamilton Spectator, author Denise Davy technically lives down the road in Burlington, but she still gets to sport the official Local Writer badge we’re issued when we come to the area. Published by Wolsak & Wynn, Her Name was Margaret: Life and Death on the Streets is a highly researched work of journalism that “creates a compelling portrait of a woman abandoned by society.” The Toronto Star hailed Davy’s book as one of the most anticipated this season (putting it in fine company with some of the others on this list).
Half Life is the second novel from Krista Foss (fun fact: she’s also the woman behind the inaugural GritLit festival). Judging from the number of people who’ve asked me, “Have you read it?” this is a book that readers really want to talk about. Half Life is garnering praise for its “raw, absorbing, tender, and witty [portrayal of] a woman's long-overdue reckoning with memory, truth, and the multiverse of familial love.”
Amanda Leduc is a writer, a disability activist and one of the key forces behind Brampton’s The Fold Festival of Literary Diversity (May 1st to 15th—get your passes now), but Hamilton gets to claim her as its own. Leduc is the author of the excellent Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space. Her new novel, The Centaur’s Wife weaves difference, disability, and environmental neglect into a fantastical parable.
Pasha Malla’s newest novel Kill the Mall is billed as a “madcap work of horror-fantasy—a cutting critique of consumer culture as embodied in the fading local mall,” which The Toronto Star says, “probes mischievously into the complex intersections between art, social relationships and business.” What better time to shudder over where our consumer culture has taken us (or left us) than during a province-wide lockdown?
Writer—and local librarian—Brent van Staalduinen has won multiple awards for his short fiction (a collection of stories will be coming out next year), and is adept at considering the darker sides of human nature. Nothing But Life is van Staalduinen’s third novel, but his first for a young adult audience. It explores the aftermath of a school shooting through the eyes of the son of the perpetrator.