Tanya Talaga, Jane Philpott among finalists for Shaughnessy Cohen Prize

Journalist Tanya Talaga and former health minister Jane Philpott are among the authors shortlisted for this year's Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing.

The Writers' Trust of Canada announced the finalists on Wednesday, while the winner will be named at the annual Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa in September.

Talaga, who previously won the prize in 2018, made the list for "The Knowing," which jurors describe as "a searing new perspective on how this country’s most fundamental institutions are weaponized against Indigenous communities."

Philpott, meanwhile, is shortlisted for "Health for All: A Doctor’s Prescription for a Healthier Canada," which the jury praises for its helpful description of the "overwhelmingly complex health-care issues at stake."

Canadian book industry calls on government to keep it out of trade war

TORONTO - Canada's literary institutions are banding together on the eve of an expected announcement about counter-tariffs on U.S. imports that could include books.

Booksellers big and small, libraries and publishers are advocating for books to be left off the list of American-made items subject to tariffs from the Canadian government, saying such a move would devastate the industry and restrict the open flow of information. 

While many Canadian-owned publishers print their books domestically, the majority of books sold here are imported from the U.S., said Jack Illingworth, executive director of the Association of Canadian Publishers.

"A tariff will drive up either the cost (booksellers) charge their consumers or reduce their profit margin," Illingworth said. 

Latest ‘Hunger Games’ novel has best ever opening for blockbuster series

NEW YORK (AP) — The latest “Hunger Games” novel sold more than 1.5 million copies worldwide during its first week, the biggest opening ever for Suzanne Collins' blockbuster series.

“Sunrise on the Reaping” sold 1.2 million copies in the U.S alone, more than double the pace of its immediate predecessor, “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” and more than triple the number for “Mockingjay,” which came out in 2010. The new book was published March 18 to highly favorable reviews. Stores around the world held midnight parties.

“After nearly a year of anticipation, sales for ‘Sunrise on the Reaping’ have exceeded all expectations, as has the overwhelmingly positive critical and fan response to the book across the world,” Scholastic's president, Ellie Berger, said in a statement released Thursday.

The five “Hunger Games” books have sold tens of millions of copies and have been the basis for a billion dollar movie franchise. The adaptation of “Sunrise on the Reaping” is scheduled for Nov. 20, 2026.

Memoir by retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy will be released this fall

An upcoming memoir by retired Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has a new title and release date. Kennedy's book also will come out as a single publication, not in two volumes, as once planned.

Simon & Schuster announced Thursday that “Life, Law, & Liberty” will be released Oct. 14, one year later than scheduled. Kennedy's memoir was originally titled “Life and Law.” A spokesperson for Simon & Schuster, which first announced Kennedy's book deal in 2024, said the changes were part of the “natural evolution of the editing process.”

The 88-year-old Kennedy, who stepped down from the court in 2018, is expected to trace his life from his childhood in Sacramento, California, to his 30 years as a justice. He was known as a moderate conservative who cast decisive votes on same-sex marriage, campaign finance and abortion, among other cases.

Salman Rushdie’s first book of fiction since his stabbing will be published in November

NEW YORK (AP) —

Salman Rushdie has a collection of novellas and short stories coming out this fall, his first published fiction since being stabbed repeatedly and hospitalized in 2022.

Random House announced Thursday that Rushdie's “The Eleventh Hour,” billed by the publisher as “five interlinked stories and novellas that explore the eternal mysteries of the eleventh hour of life,” will be released Nov. 4.

According to Random House, Rushdie's new book will include such “unforgettable characters” as a “musical prodigy with a magical gift,” the ghost of a Cambridge don who helps a student “avenge the tormentor of his lifetime” and a literary mentor who has mysteriously died. “The Eleventh Hour” is set in three parts of the world where Rushdie has lived: India, England and the U.S.

Musician Neneh Cherry and medic Rachel Clarke are among finalists for a major nonfiction prize

LONDON (AP) — A moving memoir by Swedish singer Neneh Cherry and the gripping story of a heart transplant by British doctor Rachel Clarke are among finalists for the Women’s Prize for Nonfiction, set up to help fix the gender imbalance in nonfiction publishing.

Cherry’s “A Thousand Threads” and Clarke’s “The Story of a Heart” are on a six-book shortlist for the 30,000 pound ($39,000) prize.

The other contenders include two books about nature and the environment: “Raising Hare” by British writer Chloe Dalton, and “What the Wild Sea Can Be” by U.K. biologist Helen Scales.

Also on the list are “Agent Zo,” British historian Clare Mulley’s biography of a World War II resistance fighter, and China-born British lawmaker Yuan Yang’s “Private Revolutions,” which explores the lives of young women in modern-day China.

Book Review: ‘Baldwin, Styron and Me’ a valuable contribution to current debates about DEI

The new book “Baldwin, Styron and Me” is an intellectual reflection that serves as a valuable contribution to the current debates about race, equity and identity.

Author Mélikah Abdelmoumen is the daughter of a Tunisian immigrant father and Québécois mother who uses the lens of her background to examine the complex relationship between American writers James Baldwin and William Styron.

“Baldwin, Styron and Me” is the first book to appear in English by Abdelmoumen, a scholar and editor of a literary journal in Quebec. It was translated by Catherine Khordoc, a professor in the Department of French and Indigenous and Canadian Studies at the Carleton University in Ottawa.

Abdelmoumen seems to identify with Baldwin, always feeling like an outsider in her native Quebec, where people who looked like her didn’t always feel welcome. She writes that amid the nationalism that surrounded her growing up, she often felt like a stranger, an extraterrestrial.

Book Review: Debut poetry collection ‘Scream/Queen’ views trans identity through horror

The LGBTQ+ community has a long, sometimes fraught relationship with the horror genre; there’s a kinship in the Othering, in being feared and hated and cast out from society. CD Esklison’s new poetry collection examines this connection, whether overtly or by putting the two things side by side and leaving the associations up to the reader's interpretation.

Eskilson’s broad talent belies the fact that “Scream/Queen" is a debut. Certainly the poet is well published, with many entries in the collection previously appearing in various anthologies and websites, but the cohesiveness of the collection makes the book seem almost predestined.

“Scream/Queen” is broken into parts with titles that play on sub-genres. “Para/Normal,” “Found/ Footage,” and “Body/Horror” take a more literal second meaning as the individual words separated by a slash.

Employing a whole range of poetry types, from the more common couplets and free verse to blackout and cleave poetry, Eskilson's voice pitches between lyrical legato and percussive staccato. The book’s back cover mentions off-handedly that the author was in a band once, a fact that seems random until you experience the musicality of their language.

Book Review: ‘There Is No Place For Us’ shines lights on a homeless population often ignored

The public's perception and debate over homelessness is usually fixated on people living on the street, encampments or shelters. That view ignores an even larger segment of the population, often dubbed the “invisible homeless,” people without stable housing who are living with friends or family or other locations such as extended-stay hotels.

That population is the focus of Brian Goldstone's book, “There Is No Place For Us: Working and Homeless in America.” It's a revelatory and gut-wrenching exploration of an often-ignored homeless population that is key to understanding poverty in America.

The book follows the lives of five families in Atlanta, a city where gentrification has pushed rent and housing costs out of reach for many low-income workers.

Goldstone's narrative pulls readers into the daily challenges that the families face daily, from navigating a byzantine process for housing vouchers to enduring laws that offer more protections to landlords than renters.

Book Review: ‘Lollapalooza’ is an entertaining history of festival’s role in alternative rock rise

The least enjoyable part of “Lollapalooza: The Unscripted Story of Alternative Rock's Wildest Festival” for readers might be seeing the $27.50 ticket price for the inaugural festival in 1991. The cheapest tickets for the reconfigured version of Lollapalooza this year start at about $189.

With hundreds of interviews from the musicians, promoters and others, Richard Bienstock and Tom Beaujour compiled a comprehensive and entertaining oral history of the festival that was crucial in the rise of alternative rock in the 1990s.

When Lollapalooza was introduced in 1991 as a traveling music festival, “it was if a switch had been flipped,” the pair write. Conceived of as a farewell tour for Jane's Addiction, the festival introduced audiences to acts such as Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine, Smashing Pumpkins and Soundgarden.

The book provides plenty of behind-the-scenes stories, including its fair share of fights, and tidbits including how close Nirvana came to headlining the tour in 1994 before Kurt Cobain's death.

Muslims’ plight, imam’s words led U of M trio to al-Qaeda

Four years after 9/11, a student enters the Muslim prayer room at the University of Manitoba where a commemorative service has just ended.

“I don’t feel any sympathy for victims of terrorist attacks. They don’t care about us, so why should we care about them?” Ferid Imam tells fellow student Youcef Soufi.

The brief exchange between Imam and Soufi is a pivotal moment in the author’s Homegrown Radicals: A Story of State Violence, Islamophobia and Jihad in the Post-9/11 World.

Soufi has performed a valuable service for all Canadians — Muslims and non-Muslims — by telling the story of three of his classmates at the University of Manitoba and the path they took to join al-Qaeda.

Fadal’s treatise on menopause offers facts, insight, personal stories… and hope

For women in search of menopause advice, it’s a tricky landscape to navigate. Separating the snake oil from the science requires a special kind of savvy that many midlife women have developed, courtesy of years of experience having their wallets and vulnerabilities targeted.

Wang’s moving, meticulously researched fiction disrupts expectations of war novels

Vancouver-born author Jack Wang is well-known for his short stories, which have appeared in numerous prestigious literary journals in Canada and the U.S. His debut collection, We Two Alone, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize and longlisted for CBC’s Canada Reads. The stories follow the path of the Chinese diaspora over the past century, poignantly describing the ways Chinese-Canadians have been excluded in this country.

In his first novel, The Riveter, Wang turns his focus on the Second World War and the efforts of Chinese-Canadians to become accepted into Canada’s military.

Josiah Chang works as titular riveter, labouring in Vancouver to build cargo ships to replace the 66 vessels a month being sunk in the Atlantic by the Germans.

However, the novel opens with a prologue that introduces us to Josiah as he is flying over France, about to parachute into battle from a plane that is under attack. We see him survive the botched drop and then Wang takes us back through the events that bring Josiah to this point.