River Street Writing

River Street Writing A ragtime team of creatives celebrating amazing literature from within Canada. 📚✨ Join the party, pals!

Two of the books and authors we’ve been celebrating are on the 2026 Giller Prize Longlist!https://gillerprize.ca/the-gil...
09/08/2026

Two of the books and authors we’ve been celebrating are on the 2026 Giller Prize Longlist!

https://gillerprize.ca/the-giller-prize-presents-its-2026-longlist/

🪻: Unravelling of Ou by Iranian-Canadian author Hollay Ghadery, February 15, 2026 from Palimpsest Press.

https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/the-unravelling-of-ou-hollay-ghadery/

🌊: Your Breath in Charcoal by acclaimed maritime author Nicholas Herring, forthcoming with Goose Lane Editions, September 1, 2026

https://gooselane.com/products/your-breath-in-charcoal?srsltid=AfmBOoqqi-mss9MES9tLGvopqnYcdG5no4ID5itWyz_G8Cj_N9XFqDSp

Swipe left to see the full longlist spread. đź“š

Congratulations to all!

đź“–: Giller Prize Hollay Ghadery Palimpsest Press Goose Lane Editions

“Every case in this book touched my heart a little bit, from newborns fighting to breathe, to dads fighting to stand bac...
09/07/2026

“Every case in this book touched my heart a little bit, from newborns fighting to breathe, to dads fighting to stand back up, the way the community support bleeds through the pages, other doctors running to be where they are needed, the bond we see between these doctors represents the magic they share with their profession and with their patients.”

— Read by Micaela reviews Family Rooms by Dr. Jennifer Wilson and Dr. Carlye Jensen in The Seaboard Review of Books.

As Canada faces a major shortage of family doctors—an estimated 20,000 by 2031—this powerful and moving collection of real-life stories explore what the discipline truly is, the challenges it faces, and what it can become in the hands of a new generation of doctors.

Family Rooms invites readers into the spaces where care happens—and where the future of family medicine is being shaped. A portion of the authors’ proceeds, generously supported by Blue Heron Books, will be donated to the Uxbridge Hospital Foundation in support of the new Uxbridge Hospital.

Join Dr. Jennifer Wilson and Dr. Carlye Jensen on September 27, 2026 from 2 to 5 PM at Mill Run Golf Club in Uxbridge, Ontario to celebrate the launch of this phenomenal book.

Family Rooms will be released by Piquant Press on September 15, 2026. It is available for preorder now.

https://piquantpress.ca/family-rooms-inside-family-medicine/

Photo by: Erika Jensen-Mann, twomann.com

đź“–: The Seaboard Review of Books Jennifer Wilson and Carlye Jensen Carlye Jensen Jennifer Wilson Writers of Rural Canada Nonfiction Writers Workshop

DYK: The Winnipeg Free Press is the only newspaper left in Canada that still regularly reviews poetry? They are also the...
09/07/2026

DYK: The Winnipeg Free Press is the only newspaper left in Canada that still regularly reviews poetry?

They are also the paper with the most robust Canadian book coverage, so if you’ve been thinking about supporting the people who support the arts, The Winnipeg Free Press is an excellent place to start. 📚

One of their most recent reviews was of nightstead—the latest poetry collection by Alberta poet David Martin, published by Ontario publisher Palimpsest Press.

The review was written by poet and critic melanie brannagan frederiksen, whose first full-length book of poetry, the night, the knife, the river, will be published by Manitoba’s At Bay Press in Spring 2027.

“David Martin’s latest collection, nightstead is part elegy for his brother, who died by su***de, part incantation and part cultural examination of memory. The collection is structurally innovative, intellectually compelling and emotionally gripping.”
-melanie brannagan frederiksen, Winnipeg Free Press

♥️: Winnipeg Free Press melanie brannagan frederiksen Palimpsest Press David Martin

09/06/2026

Welcome Elizabeth Urso to River Street! Elizabeth reads from her gothic thriller Hail Mary (Rising Action, September 2026.)

Welcome to North Shore Township, where you can never dig a grave too deep, and you can never keep a secret for too long.

The Foreman family has made their fortune burying the dead(and not just funeral services, allegedly). Mary Foreman fled North Shore Township years ago to escape her family’s legacy. But when her estranged mother reappears during a local election, reigniting rumors of corporate corruption and criminal activity, Mary’s uncle summons her to help with his campaign.

Mary leaves Toronto and takes up residence in Foreman House—the now-vacant gothic mansion once home to the Foremans and their infamous funeral business. She also secures a teaching job at her alma mater, St. Joseph’s School for Girls, set to unearth the time capsule her great-grandmother helped mastermind. But when the time capsule is opened, the family’s legacy rears its ugly head once again.

Embroiled in a criminal investigation—one with eerie parallels to several cold cases—Mary begins to unravel a truth rooted in her cursed matrilineal line, the haunted funeral home she grew up in, and the crime her mother stood trial for decades earlier. Crushed by the weight of the township’s suspicion, Mary must fight to prove her own innocence. Not only of recent crimes, but past ones, too. For this is the North Shore of Lake Huron, and the past is always present where the dead don’t die.

Elizabeth Urso is a Canadian author of genre-blending suspense novels. If you enjoy atmospheric settings, haunted people, and unsolved crimes, you’re in the right place. Her debut novel, HAIL MARY, publishes in September 2026 with Rising Action Publishing (distributed by Simon & Schuster).

Elizabeth is a graduate of Laurentian University, the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law, and the Humber School for Writers. Born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, she now lives wherever her partner—an Infantry Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces—is posted, along with their dog Harriet (the Spy).

🔥:

Acclaimed Jamaican-born, Toronto-dwelling author Pamela Mordecai joins us on our blog for a Power Q & A!In this intervie...
09/05/2026

Acclaimed Jamaican-born, Toronto-dwelling author Pamela Mordecai joins us on our blog for a Power Q & A!

In this interview, she speaks to her ideal audience.

Read the interview:

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/power-q-and-a-with-pamela-mordecai

Pamela Mordecai’s newest collection of short stories, Two Days in Mayaro (Goose Lane Editions, 2026) showcases the astonishing range and depth of her writing. Set largely in the Jamaican diaspora, Mordecai’s stories are alive with sound and often driven by dazzling yet subtle reimaginings of lore, ancestry, and history.

Pamela has published poetry, fiction, plays, anthologies and textbooks for children and adults. The Guardian’s Tony Mitton said her “Caribbean Counting Poem” was one of the “Top Ten [children’s] Poems to Remember and Recite,” alongside poetry by Robert Louis Stevenson E. V. Rieu, Charles Causley and Walter de la Mere. This child’s sensibility infuses her writing with what Jim Bartley of the Globe and Mail called “an unexpected yet highly fluid mix of picaresque humour and unsparing human observation.” The jury for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for which she was shortlisted in 2015, described her novel, Red Jacket, as “a b***y meditation on storytelling and the art of writing.” Born in Kingston, Jamaica, she often writes in Jamaican Patwa or Patwa-inflected English. Pamela lives in Toronto.

đź“–: PAMELA MORDECAI Goose Lane Editions

“Elliott Dunstan’s novel Grotesque is a beautifully crafted, gender fluid tale of outcasts and arcane power, old gods an...
09/04/2026

“Elliott Dunstan’s novel Grotesque is a beautifully crafted, gender fluid tale of outcasts and arcane power, old gods and hidden tunnels, monstrous inhumanity and startling tenderness. Its narrator, a patchwork golem working at a gothic B**M club in a rough Cornish harbour town, longs for the return of the mage who’d created them two centuries earlier. But when they recover that mage’s stolen book of secrets from a descendant of someone from that distant past, the narrative takes a brutal Lovecraftian turn.”

— K.R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan and Stan on Guard

DM us to request a review copy of Grotesque, the darkly erotic fairy tale of death and redemption by Elliott Dunstan.

You can also pre-order Grotesque from wherever books are bought or borrowed.

https://bookstore.wolsakandwynn.ca/products/grotesque

More about Grotesque (forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, October 13, 2026):

Bedhyndann is a small seaside town in Cornwall. A town that travellers feel uncomfortable in. A town where sailors often choose to stay on their ships rather than coming into port. A town where the golem Denvyth has lived for nearly two hundred years and where he has been waiting for his master, the sorcerer Arderne, to return for one hundred and fifty of those. To pass the time he amuses himself at the siren Victoire’s private club, helping the humans around him fulfill their most dangerous desires. Until he crosses paths with Summers, a client who wants more from Denvyth than he should and who has the clues to unlock the secret of Arderne’s disappearance.

But Arderne sought to release an old god and once Denvyth follows his master’s last instructions and finishes the sorcerer’s spell, what he unleashes could make him the monster he’s always feared being and destroy the world.

Elliott Dunstan is a trans novelist, poet and historian based out of the Ottawa Valley. Author of several chapbooks and zines, including the long-form poem GULA, he also moonlights as a drag performer and visual artist. Grotesque is his first full-length novel

🥀: Elliott Seth Dunstan Wolsak and Wynn Publishers Kevin Wilson

“Over the Lights Over the Houses is worth the read. Halford’s work of fiction is quick-witted, easy to read through, and...
09/03/2026

“Over the Lights Over the Houses is worth the read. Halford’s work of fiction is quick-witted, easy to read through, and provides material that shows how chaotic family get- togethers take place during the holidays. Underlying the jumbled havoc is a warmth and a caring that makes this novel a fun text to read and experience for the holiday season.”

—National Book Critics Circle member and SUNY Professor of Composition & Communication, Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr.

Read the full review: đź”—

https://substack.com//note/p-214081264?r=1pwkvf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Over the Lights and Over the Houses by Tom Halford, an experimental, darkly funny, and wildly imaginative novel, published by Gordon Hill Press/The Porcupines Quill, 2026.

In Over the Lights and Over the Houses, Nick Kearney decides to surprise his estranged sister with a visit after years of distance and silence between them. Before she moved away to Toronto, the two were inseparable, but time and unresolved pain have transformed their relationship. What begins as an attempt to escape a prolonged personal rut quickly spirals into a surreal and emotionally charged adventure as traumatic figures from the siblings’ past resurface, forcing them to confront the place where everything first went wrong.

At once playful, unsettling, and deeply heartfelt, the novel blends Christmas magic, family tension, absurdity, and emotional reckoning within a literary landscape where anything feels possible. Halford’s writing moves fluidly between humour and darkness, crafting a story that is both wildly entertaining and quietly devastating.

Tom Halford lives in Corner Brook, Newfoundland, with his wife and children. He works as a scholar and teacher at Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland, and is actively involved in coaching youth soccer in his community.

Tom Cyril Trout Halford Gordon Hill Press & The Porcupine's Quill

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