There’s a pre-order link up on Amazon for my new YA novella, Mountain, coming out in May from Inanna. Inanna also published my previous book, the flash novel Motion Sickness, illustrated by the brilliant S.K. Dyment. Editor/publisher Luciana Ritucelli, designer Val Fullard, plus the many interesting Inanna authors I get to meet at events–I feel blessed by so many amazing new people in my life. Inanna supports emerging authors more than any press I know, and events often feature first time novelists as well as award winners on their sixth book.

From the publisher’s blurb:

Seventeen-year-old Camden splits her time between her father, a minor rock star, and her mom, a scruffy “hardware geek” who designs and implements temporary and sustainable power systems and satellite linkups for off-grid music and art festivals, tree-sits, and attends gatherings of alternative healers. Lark, Camden’s father, provides her with brand-name jeans, running shoes, and makeup, while her mother’s world is populated by anarchists, freaks, geeks, and hippies. Naturally, Camden prefers staying with her dad and going to the mall with his credit card and her best friend, but one summer, when Lark is recording a new album, Camden accompanies her mother, Laureen, to a healing camp on a mountain in Northern California. After their arrival, Laureen heads to San Francisco, ostensibly to go find her lover. She never comes back and unknown to her daughter is found murdered. Alone, penniless, and without much in the way of camping skills, Camden withdraws. Things begin to look up when she is befriended by Skinny, a young man in charge of the security detail at the camp who knew her mother as a child. The summer ends and Camden heads back to Toronto to find her dad, with whom she’s lost touch, and it’s only there she learns Laureen’s disappearance is tied, unexpectedly, to the secrets Skinny tried to keep from her for months, until, finally, he couldn’t.

Here’s the pre-order link. I’m usually averse to shameless self-promotion, (I think it was the way I was raised) but I’ve heard pre-orders can make a big difference to sales later on, so if you’re thinking of getting Mountain anyway, buying it before the launch is good for me, good for Inanna Publications, and good for the independent bookstore I hope you’ll order from.

The Inanna journal, “Canadian Women Studies”, is the only publication of its kind in Canada; it accepts fiction, non fiction and academic work in order to bring the academic and literary worlds closer together. If you publish a poem in CWS and you’re a scholar, it counts as an academic publication–how cool is that? Inanna tables at educational book fairs in Canada and the US as well as at literary festivals, and I love having my work made available to this important readership.

You can find out more about “Canadian Women Studies” here. They are always looking for new work for their themed issues, so please submit.

Here is the current call for subs:

Violence Against University and College Women
Local and Global Manifestations, Shared Experiences, and Prevention Practices
(33.1,2 Summer 2017)

Universities need to be safe places in order for all learners to thrive. However, this is not the case for university and college women in many countries around the world, who experience sexual violence including rape, sexual coercion, sexual harassment, unwanted sexual contact, and stalking. Yet research on the scope, causes, and prevention of sexual violence against university and college women in most countries remains sporadic, underdeveloped, or nonexistent. Current research has also failed to examine the issue across local and national contexts in order to clarify shared experiences, common root causes, and best practices. Knowledge of the manifestations of the issue in institutions of higher education in countries in the Global South is especially lacking. In this special edition of the Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme (CWS/cf), we invite contributions that explore critically the various aspects of the issue. The editors seek especially contributions located in countries in the Global South as well as studies utilizing various research methodologies and theoretical frameworks across the social sciences and the humanities.
Possible Topics include:

•How does the issue manifest itself in specific universities and locales?
•How do women experience violence in spaces of higher education? How are these experiences and their effects shaped by individual and broader historical formations related to race, class, sexuality, religion, and other difference?
•What are local, national and international root causes for violence against university and college women?
•How have women on campuses responded to violence?
•How have university and college administrators and counsellors responded (or not) to the issue?
•What structures and policies addressing the issue are in place at campuses? Are these policies effective?
•Whose and what knowledge, experience and worldviews inform the design of intervention and prevention programs?
•What help is available to support victims of violence on campuses?
•What are local understandings, framing and meaning making related to “sexual violence” and “university/college woman?”
•Is there a relation between space and violence on campuses?

Your ideas for additional topics are welcome.
Invited are articles, research reports, oral histories, alternative forms of narration, poetry, drawings, and other art works that illuminate these issues.

DEADLINE: February 28, 2017

Articles should be typed, double-spaced, and a maximum of 16 pages long (4000 words). A short (50-word) abstract of the article and a brief biographical note must accompany each submission. Please send a hard copy of your manuscript as well as emailing a copy. We give preference to previously unpublished material. If possible, please submit graphics or photographs to accompany your article. Please note CWS/cf reserves the right to edit manuscripts with respect to length and clarity, and in conformity with our house-style. To encourage use of the material published, CWS/cf has granted electronic rights to Gale Group, Micromedia Proquest and the H. W. Wilson. Any royalties received will be used by CWS/cf to assist the publication in disseminating its message.

Write or call as soon as possible indicating your intention to submit your work.
Canadian Woman Studies/les cahiers de la femme
210 Founders, York University, 4700 Keele St. Toronto, ON M3J 1P3
Telephone: (416) 736-5356 Fax: (416) 736-5765 E-mail: cwscf@yorku.ca
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I found an Inanna T-shirt online at the fabulous Tin Can Forest, and Luciana and I each ordered one. We are planning to wear them to the Inanna Spring Launch at Glad Day Books’ new location at 499 Church Street, in Toronto on May 24th in the evening. Mark it on your calendars–more info to come! Glad Day has been running some great book events in their new space and I’m really looking forward to this.

If you’d like to order your own T-shirt, that link is here.