The Porcupine's Quill

Don’t suspend disbelief. Don’t arrest it, curtail it, or unfrock it. Disbelief is in the fine print scratched at the bottom of Leon Rooke’s literary contract. ... If we relinquish anything to read Rooke, it should be sobriety.

2006—ReLit Awards, Poetry,
Winner

‘Warning: The following stories contain nudity, violence, pianos, amazingly radiant verbalising, venomous weather, and funny clanking noises in the tiled washrooms of the nation. Viewer discretion is advised.’

2006—ReLit Awards, Short Fiction,
Winner

2006—Hugh MacLennan Prize,
Shortlisted

The Dodecahedron, or A Frame for Frames is a kaleidoscopic puzzle-novel ... of sorts. Twelve stories of seemingly different genres cohere into a book of astonishing literary dimension. Stewart Cole of the Quill & Quire wrote that ‘The Dodecahedron never ceases to be about people: how despite the diversity of our obsessions, convergences prevail among us. One rarely sees a book of such scope and ambition succeed so thrillingly.’

2005—ForeWord Magazine, Book of the Year (Short Stories),
Shortlisted

2006—City of Ottawa Book Award,
Shortlisted

2006—Governor General's Literary Awards,
Shortlisted

2006—Globe Top 100,
Commended

Chris Wiseman stayed at the Marine Hotel in North Berwick, Scotland, in 2000, about eighteen months after the American novelist John Updike. Wiseman believes he stayed in the same room as that in which Updike is reported to have watched High Society (1956). Here Wiseman collects his best work, alongside a section of new and previously unpublished poetry. Described by Lee Shedden of The Calgary Herald as ‘a testament to a lifetime of dedication to the poet’s craft,’ In John Updike’s Room won the City of Calgary’s W.O. Mitchell Award in 2006.

2006—City of Calgary, W O Mitchell Award,
Winner

Edward Gorey and Max Ernst meet Dinotopia in Wonderland.

This is a collection of fantastic etchings by artist Rudolf Kurz, a man of surreal imagination wonderful talent. Allison Sivak of the Canadian Book Review Annual writes, ‘As the evocative title suggests, Looking for Snails on a Sunday Afternoon is about spending time focusing on the disturbing and pleasurable images inside.’

2006—Der Schoenste Bucher aus Aller Welt,
Shortlisted

2005—Alcuin Society,
Commended

2004—Unisource Litho Award,
Winner

‘Early that summer, my grandma dropped dead watching The Price is Right, and the following week Aunt Lois, my mother’s sister, moved in and declared we would no longer be running a breeding factory....’ Vivette Kady’s Most Wanted is an exercise in transcendence and the bizarre; her stories are ferociously written and will be ferociously felt.

2006—Danuta Gleed Award,
Shortlisted

‘P. K. Page’s A Brazilian Alphabet succeeds in being both whimsical and elegiac at once. This mixture of pleasures gives us the feeling we are reading a text long remembered and well-loved, while at the same time charming us with surprises.’

2006—Alcuin Society,
Commended

2006—Unisource Litho Award,
Commended

‘Most of Sarna’s poems are humorous and earthbound, but he can soar when he wants to.’

2006—A M Klein Prize,
Shortlisted

Zero Gravity is Toronto author Sharon English’s second collection of short stories. The book is rooted in Vancouver, with side trips to British Columbia’s Kootenay mountains, Montreal and Delphi, Greece. English’s characters lead accelerated lives only to be seized by spiritual emptiness. Their attempts to escape -- by joining, by quitting, by falling in and out of love -- make for funny, insightful and intense reading. The author presents a fly’s-eye view of urban experience, coming at city life from multiple angles that unite, as the book progresses, into a vivid experience of isolation and adaptation. The book’s unusual imagery and controlled prose deliver an edgy and anxious commentary on a new century.

2006—Globe Top 100,
Commended

2007—Giller Prize,
Long-listed

2007—ReLit Awards, Short Fiction,
Shortlisted

Those who love Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies or Hilaire Belloc’s Cautionary Tales for Children will adore Jim Westergard’s darkly comic portraits. He illustrates each nursery rhyme twice. First, we meet the young and not-so-innocent heroes of the poems. Then we see them in their retirement, in a rogue’s gallery of unrepentant outcasts, crones and sociopaths.

2006—Unisource Litho Award,
Winner