 | Thursday, July 21, 2022 | |  | | | | Looking for a good summer read?
Fall in love with these rom-com fiction titles by Canadian and international authors. Check it out! | | |  | | | | Johnnie Christmas is a New York Times bestselling author and illustrator, raised in Florida and currently based in Vancouver. As a child, an incident where he almost drowned left him with a fear of the water and a reluctance to learn how to swim.
His latest book is the middle-grade graphic novel Swim Team. In it, a young Black girl named Bree moves from Brooklyn to Florida and struggles with fitting in at her new school. That is, until she reluctantly ends up in the school's swim club and discovers a love for the water.
Christmas spoke with CBC Books about writing Swim Team. | | |  | | | | It's the summer season in Canada!
Check out these comics and graphic novels by Canadian and international creators that are perfect to escape into. | | |  | | | | Mark Critch is a Canadian comedian at the height of his powers. For the past 18 years, he has starred on CBC's flagship comedy show, This Hour Has 22 Minutes. He is also the author of the memoir Son of a Critch, a book about growing up in the 1980s in Newfoundland and Labrador, which was adapted into a TV series for CBC.
An Embarrassment of Critch's is the second memoir by the St. John's comedian. It follows Critch's journey from Newfoundland to the national stage and back again.
Critch spoke with Shelagh Rogers during the 2021 AfterWords Literary Festival in Halifax about An Embarrassment of Critch's and his journey from wanting to be a "serious actor" to being known as a comedian in demand.
| | |  | | Before writing her first rom-com book, Toronto author Lily Chu hadn't given much thought to writing romance novels. The Stand-In sprang from a nudge from her literary agent — but also from Chu's realization that the genre needed better representation of diversity in its characters and stories.
She put her knack for strong characterization and sense of place to work, devising the set-in-Toronto tale of Gracie Reed, who's just trying to hold it together after being fired by her overly "friendly" boss and dealing with being a caregiver for her aging mother.
It's a plot tailor-made for the big (or small) screen — and Chu scored a big win when award-winning actor Phillipa Soo, known for her role in the original Broadway run of the hit musical Hamilton, signed on to voice the audiobook version of The Stand-In, which was released prior to its publication in print.
Chu spoke with CBC Books about representation in romance and crafting stories that resonate with readers through writing The Stand-In. | | | | |  | | | | In May 2018, Lebanese filmmaker Nadine Labaki became the first Arab woman to win a major prize at the Cannes Film Festival with her third feature, Capernaum. It's a heart-wrenching drama about the real lives of immigrant and impoverished children in Beirut, shot with nonprofessional actors.
Born in 1974, Labaki grew up in Beirut during the Lebanese Civil War. She co-wrote, directed and starred in her first two features, both focusing on the lives of women. For Capernaum, she spent four years on the streets of Beirut, gathering stories — with remarkable results.
Labaki spoke to Writers & Company's Eleanor Wachtel when her film was screened at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2018. | | |  | | | | Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Saskatchewan Métis and nêhiyaw writer. When she was just an infant, Bird-Wilson was taken from her Indigenous parents and adopted into a white family, a biographical detail she shares with Ruby, the protagonist of her debut novel Probably Ruby.
In Probably Ruby, Ruby, has little knowledge of her Indigenous heritage. Her parents' separation sparks a chain reaction of events — and her life is beset by alcohol, drugs and bad relationships. Left with no support network, Ruby searches for her unknown roots in the most destructive of places.
Probably Ruby won two awards at the 2022 Saskatchewan Book Awards, including the Regina Public Library Book of the Year Award.
Bird-Wilson spoke with The Next Chapter's Shelagh Rogers about drawing on her own background to write Probably Ruby. | | |  | | A special 20th anniversary edition of late Toronto writer Austin Clarke's award-winning novel The Polished Hoe will be published on Sept. 27, 2022.
The new edition, published by Dundurn Press, will feature a foreword by Clarke's longtime friend, writer and professor Rinaldo Walcott, as well as a new cover commissioned from Toronto visual artist Shawn Skeir.
Skeir's work is rooted in an urban expressionist style and influenced by his Canadian East Coast and African heritage.
First published in 2002, The Polished Hoe went on to win the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and the Trillium Book Award. | | | | |  | | | | Jane Austen died on July 18, 1817. Celebrated for her sharp wit, descriptions of domestic life and subtle criticism of England's economic and class structure, Austen's works continue to be dissected and analyzed in classrooms and beyond.
To commemorate the anniversary of her death, CBC Books has compiled a list of 70 facts you might not know about the celebrated English novelist. | | |  | | | | Summer might be all about sun and fun, but it's also the ideal time to dig into a gripping read about crime and the dark side of human nature.
From thrillers to true crime, these Canadian and international page-turners will keep readers guessing at every turn.
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