Engaged with the past

There are many different ways to tell stories about history, and the books included on this list involve a range of creative-writing approaches while exploring aspects of Canadian history.

Some of their authors use poetry to present topics such as women in the West, a B.C. school for children with disabilities, colonialism in Canada, and the legacies of immigration.

Other books include a graphic novel inspired by the legend of a woman roadhouse owner and serial killer, a woodcut biography of Leonard Cohen, a memoir of life at residential school, and mixed-genre books by Michelle Porter and Mariianne Mays Wiebe.

Approaching Fire, mixed genres and poetry by Michelle Porter

Ghosts Still Linger, poems by Kat Cameron

The Emperor’s Orphans, creative non-fiction by Sally Ito

Burden, historical poems by Douglas Burnet Smith

Kate Wake, multi-genre novel by Mariianne Mays Wiebe

Leonard Cohen: A Woodcut Biography, by George A. Walker

The Burden of Gravity, poems by Shannon McConnell

Agnes, Murderess, graphic novel by Sarah Leavitt

Genocidal Love: Life after Residential School, fictionalized memoir by Bevann Fox

my yt mama, poems by Mercedes Eng

I Am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to My Country?, stories by An Antane Kapesh

Fields of Light and Stone, poems by Angeline Schellenberg

The Red Chesterfield, crime-fiction novella by Wayne Arthurson