Munro Books

Join Munro’s Books on Victoria Day to meet the authors of four local books: Collin Varner's 50 Keystone Flora Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest and 50 Keystone Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest; Taryn Eyton's Backpacking on Vancouver Island; and Dave Doroghy and Graeme Menzies' 111 Places in Victoria That You Must Not Miss! 12:00-1:30 p.m.: Collin Varner and Taryn Eyton About 50 Keystone Flora Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A keystone species is an organism that defines and supports an entire ecosystem, filling a vital ecological niche. Without these species, the ecosystem would be radically altered or even collapse. This pocket-sized field guide by bestselling naturalist Collin Varner highlights 50 keystone trees, flowering plants, fruit-bearing plants, marine plants, and fungi found across the Pacific Northwest bioregion—including Douglas Fir, Sitka Spruce, Large-leafed Lupine, Wild Mint, Salal, Salmonberry, Marine Eelgrass, Red-belted Polypore, and more. Each entry features clear photography, etymology, descriptions, habitat information, risks and warnings. This convenient and easy reference is perfect for casual walkers, hikers, campers, and beachcombers, and draws awareness to the importance of conservation and protection of these crucial species. About 50 Keystone Fauna Species of Coastal British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest: A keystone species is an organism that defines and supports an entire ecosystem, filling a vital ecological niche. Without these species, the ecosystem would be radically altered or even collapse. This pocket-sized field guide by bestselling naturalist Collin Varner highlights 50 keystone birds, mammals, amphibians, insects, fish, shellfish, and mollusks found across the Pacific Northwest bioregion—including the American Crow, Bald Eagle, American Beaver, California Sea Lion, Sea Otter, Orca, Coyote, Grizzly Bear, Giant Pacific Octopus, Chinook Salmon, Pacific Tree Frog, Pacific Banana Slug, Mixed Bumblebee, and more. Each entry features clear photography, etymology, descriptions, habitat information, risks and warnings. This convenient and easy reference is perfect for casual walkers, hikers, campers, beachcombers, sailors, paddlers, and whale watchers, and draws awareness to the importance of conservation and protection of these crucial species. About Backpacking on Vancouver Island: Discover 35 of Vancouver Island’s best day hikes and overnight trips. Vancouver Island is home to legendary backpacking routes, and this expertly researched book takes you to the best of the best, whether you’re looking for a weekend trip to a mountain peak, a multi-day adventure to a secluded beach, or an easy day trip to a waterfall. The author, Taryn Eyton, is an experienced backpacker and Leave No Trace Master Educator. In addition to sharing the best backpacking routes on the Island, she provides practical advice to promote fun wilderness experiences and minimize your environmental impact. Every featured backpacking trip includes: Elevation, distance, and time information Route descriptions and trail maps Points of cultural and natural history Tips on where to camp and where to find water Information about fees, permits, and reservations 1:30 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.: Dave Doroghy and Graeme Menzies About 111 Places in Victoria That You Must Not Miss: Authors Dave Doroghy and Graeme Menzies take you to find the cool, the quirky, and the unusual places hidden in Victoria amidst the fascinating architecture and glorious outdoor scenery. Visit the place where author Rudyard Kipling slept. Explore Canada’s largest ant farm. Answer the call of nature in a pub’s haunted loo. Or take a date to a secluded, waterfront fish-and-chips shop. See the world’s tallest totem pole while it still stands. If it’s history you’re after, consider that James Cook was the first non-indigenous person to set foot near here in 1778. Later, the Hudson’s Bay Company established the spot as a trading post, naming it Fort Victoria after the reigning British queen. Vestiges of the old British Empire can still be spotted in the majestic colonial buildings in the inner harbor, the red double decker buses on its busy streets and the occasional old fashioned British telephone booths. God Save the King! WHEN: Monday, May 20th from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. WHERE: At Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. Outside, weather permitting, or inside the store. WHAT: Book signings with Collin Varner, Taryn Eyton, Dave Doroghy, and Graeme Menzies HOW: This event is free to attend.

Join Munro's Books on May 10th to meet Emma Fitzgerald, author of Hand Drawn Victoria: An Illustrated Tour in and Around BC's Capital City!! For locals and visitors alike, these sketches and stories highlight both the historic monuments and everyday moments that make Victoria shine. You never know quite what you’ll come across in British Columbia’s capital city. With its unmissable landmarks that attract people from around the world, Victoria is also rich in forested beauty, charming houses, and curious people, and is steeped in local history. Following the charm of her previous book, Hand Drawn Vancouver, in this memorable book, Emma FitzGerald captures the coastal city of Victoria and its surrounding communities in over 100 sketches of: Iconic Landmarks: It wouldn’t be a visit to Victoria without stopping by the Empress, Munro’s, or Butchart Gardens. Local Favourites: The longstanding Beacon Drive In and James Bay’s Birdcage Confectionary are some beloved spots honoured within these pages. Beautiful Architecture: Journey back in time by admiring historic buildings, like Queen Anne–style homes and the spiraling Belfry Theatre. Stunning West Coast Landscape: Explore natural wonders, from culturally significant fields of camas flowers to Mystic Beach’s stunning shoreline. Overheard Conversations: What really makes a city are the people who live there—Emma documents snippets of passersby’s conversations as she sketches. Structured by neighbourhood, Hand Drawn Victoria is a beautiful keepsake for locals and visitors alike, and a lovely way to celebrate the city—its buildings, its people, and its essence. EMMA FITZGERALD was born to Irish parents in Lesotho, a small mountainous kingdom in Southern Africa. She moved to Canada at a young age and spent most of her childhood in Vancouver, BC. Emma received a BFA in Visual Art from the University of British Columbia in 2004, and a Masters in Architecture from Dalhousie University in 2008. She has worked in architecture offices across Canada and in Johannesburg, South Africa. Her love of drawing on location led to her first book, Hand Drawn Halifax, and its follow-up, Sketch by Sketch Along Nova Scotia’s South Shore. She then turned her interest in people and places to where she grew up; Hand Drawn Vancouver was published in 2020 as she began working on Hand Drawn Victoria. In between her Hand Drawn series, Emma has illustrated five children’s books, including EveryBody’s Different on EveryBody Street, written by Sheree Fitch. She lives and draws in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia. WHEN: Friday, May 10th from 1:00-2:30 p.m. WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. WHAT: Meet and greet plus book signing with Emma Fitzgerald. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Join Munro’s Books in celebrating new work by two talented poets!! "Chomping / champing / championing / churlish / … / There’s a wolf at the door / that looks exactly like me." Who is the “whiny baby” in this book? Rather than calling names or hurling insults, the candid poems in this collection most often implicate the poet herself. Expansive in form and voice, the poems in Julie Paul’s second collection, Whiny Baby, offer both love letters and laments. They take us to construction sites, meadows, waiting rooms, beaches, alleys, gardens, and frozen rivers, from Montreal to Hornby Island. They ask us to live in the moment, despite the moment. Including a spirited long poem that riffs on the fairy tale “Three Billy Goats Gruff,” these poems are like old friends that at once console and confess. They blow kisses, they remember, and they celebrate the broken and the lost alongside the beautiful. At turns frank, peevish, introspective, and mischievous, the poems share sincere and intimate perspectives on the changing female body, our natural and built landscapes, and the idiosyncrasies of modern life. Whiny Baby calls on us to simultaneously examine and exult in our brief time on earth. JULIE PAUL’s second book of poetry, Whiny Baby, follows the 2017 release of the poetry collection The Rules of the Kingdom, both published with McGill-Queen’s University Press. She is also the author of three short fiction collections, The Jealousy Bone (Emdash, 2008), The Pull of the Moon (Touchwood / Brindle & Glass, 2014), and Meteorites (Touchwood, 2019). Her writing has been published widely in journals and has received recognition from a number of sources. The Pull of the Moon won the 2015 Victoria Butler Book Prize, and The Rules of the Kingdom was a finalist for both the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her personal essay “It Not Only Rises, It Shines” won the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Award from The New Quarterly and her short story “The Expansion” won The Rusty Toque’s Chapbook Award. Unless she’s visiting her daughter in Montreal, Julie lives in Victoria BC, where, in addition to writing, she works as a Registered Massage Therapist. -- "Come, anguish. Help us manage / the plainsong of an open shore, / its language of high tide rich and close, / close and hard to see." The early elegiac poems in Bridestones emerge from the borderlands between life and death, loss and renewal. Drawing on dreams, opera, and visual art, and employing symbolist and playfully surreal imagery, Miranda Pearson questions the ways we tend and grieve – for each other and our environment. Beginning with a sudden bereavement, the first section ends with a long poem, “Clearance,” that depicts the experience of emptying and departing a home – the physicality of a house serving as a vehicle for processing grief. Pearson writes on family trauma, illness, love, and desire with a pervading sense of hauntedness, compressed, lyrical accounts of complex and ambivalent terrain. The impact of a pandemic lurks in the background, and themes of fear run through much of this collection, with poems exploring how we face our fears – or deny and avoid them – and, ultimately, how we grow and adapt. Through meditations on art, myth, archaeology, ceremony, and death, Pearson reveals the veil between life and death when drawn to its thinnest. Like the hovering falcon depicted in “A Song of Roses,” the poems view the world from above: “if earth is body, and sky – God help us, spirit.” MIRANDA PEARSON is widely published in literary journals and anthologies, and Bridestones is her sixth book of poetry. Two of the previous titles, Harbour and The Fire Extinguisher, were shortlisted for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. While completing her MFA at UBC, Miranda served as poetry editor for Prism international, and has since taught at UBC and SFU. Miranda currently lives between the UK and Vancouver. Please join us for readings from these two poets, followed by a Q&A with the audience and refreshments! WHEN: Wednesday, May 1st at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30) WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. WHAT: Readings by Julie Paul and Miranda Pearson from their new poetry collections, followed by a Q&A with the audience. Refreshments will be provided. HOW: This event is free to attend.

On Saturday, April 27th, celebrate Canadian Independent Bookstore Day with Munro’s Books!!! On Saturday, April 27, readers across the country will have the opportunity to support local independent bookshops by participating in Canadian Independent Bookstore Day (CIBD). With more than 150 participating shops expected, CIBD is an annual cultural celebration and an opportunity for book buyers, authors, illustrators, and publishers to acknowledge the vibrant literary ecosystem created by our “indie” bookshops. The stores in this national network act as key community ambassadors, convenors of important conversations, and contributors to vibrant local economies. Here's what will be going on at Munro's: ALL DAY: Earn double points with all purchases! Enter to win one of two prize packages! Match the author to their book cover game! Munro's bookmark photobooth! Bookmark colouring station! Blind Date with a Book! Postcards to Munro's: A display of postcards to Munro's from some of our favourite authors! We've sent Munro's Books postcards to authors, both local and across the country and the world and have asked them to write about a favourite moment at Munro's, or what they love about Munro's, why Munro's is important to them, or just the importance of independent bookstores in general. On April 27th, we'll have these authors' postcards on display for you to read! BOOK SIGNINGS: Come and meet these local authors! 12:00 p.m. - 1:00 p.m. - Gregor Craigie 1:00 p.m. - 2:00 p.m. - Michael Christie 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. - Sho Yamagushiku CHILDREN'S STORY TIME: 3:00 - 3:30 p.m. - with Esi Edugyan 3:30 p.m. - 4:00 p.m. - with Monique Gray Smith We hope you'll join us to celebrate and continue to cultivate the important and special relationship that exists between writers, readers, and bookstores!! WHEN: Saturday, April 27th all day (9:30 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.). WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street in Victoria. WHAT: A celebration of Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! HOW: This celebration is free to attend.

Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launches of new books by two talented local writers!! "I feel like the crud / I accidentally touch sometimes, whatever it is / that collects under cushions on my couch," writes Kayla Czaga in her third collection, Midway, an exploration of grief in all its manifestations. In her search for meaning in the aftermath of her parents' deaths, Czaga visits the underworld (at least twice), Vietnamese restaurants, the beach, London's Tate Modern, Las Vegas casinos, and a fish textbook. Honest, elegiac, characteristically strange, and frequently funny, these poems take the reader through bright scenery like carnival rides with fast climbs and sudden drops. The meanings and messages Czaga uncovers on her travels are complicated: hopeful, bleak-both comforting and not. Along with the parents the poet mourns, this collection showcases a varied cast. A suburban father-in-law copes with a troubling diagnosis. Marge Simpson quits The Simpsons. Death is a metalhead who dates girls too young for him. Midway is a welcome and necessary collection from one of the most celebrated and accomplished poets of her generation. KAYLA CZAGA is the author of two previous poetry collections-For Your Safety Please Hold On (Nightwood Editions, 2014), and Dunk Tank (House of Anansi, 2019). Her work has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Award for poetry and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Frequently anthologized in the Best Canadian Poetry in English series, her writing also appears in The Walrus, Grain, Event, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. She lives with her wife on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen people, the Songhees nd Esquimalt nations. -- Anne Fleming's latest novel, Curiosities, opens with a present-day amateur historian, Anne, who describes her unexpected discovery of five seventeenth-century manuscripts that, astonishingly, tell the same strange story from vastly different points of view. And so it falls upon Anne, the contemporary historian, to piece together these interlocking stories, discover the fate of a pair of lovers, and add her own layer of “truth” to a history and time period when there were no labels for who these lovers might truly be. ANNE FLEMING is the author of Pool-Hopping & Other Stories (Raincoast, 1998), which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Danuta Gleed Award, as well as the much-praised novel, Anomaly (Raincoast, 2005). She is also the author of a middle-grade novel, The Goat (Groundwood, 2017), which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection, shortlisted for Italy’s Premio Strega, optioned for film, and named one of the Top Ten Children’s Books of the Year by The New York Public Library and the Wall Street Journal. Anne Fleming lives in Victoria, BC WHEN: Thursday, April 18th, 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30). WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. WHAT: Readings of new work from Kayla Czaga and Anne Fleming followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings. Refreshments will be provided. The audience will also be serenaded by lute playing from Anne Fleming and local musician, Doug Hensley. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launches of two new poetry collections by local authors! Patrick Grace's debut collection, Deviant, traces a trajectory of queer self-discovery from childhood to adulthood, examining love, fear, grief, and the violence that men are capable of in intimate same-sex relationships. Richly engaged with the tangible and experiential, Patrick Grace's confessional poetry captures profound, sharp emotions, tracking a journey impacted equally by beauty and by brutality. Coming-of-age identity struggles are recalled with wry wit, and dreamlike poems embrace adolescent queer love and connections as a way to cope with the fear and cruelty that can occur in gay relationships. Later poems in the collection recall vivid moments of psychological trauma and stalking and explore the bias of the justice system toward gay men. Collecting memories, dreams, and fears about sexual identity, Deviant makes important contributions to queer coming-of-age and intimate partner violence narratives. PATRICK GRACE is an author and teacher who divides his time between Vancouver and Victoria, BC. He has read at literary festivals around Canada, including Word Vancouver and Versefest Ottawa, and will be appearing at the Edmonton Poetry Festival in late April. He has published two chapbooks: a blurred wind swirls back for you (2023), and Dastardly (2021), exploring aspects of love, fear, and trauma that represent a personal queer identity. Deviant, his first full-length poetry collection, continues to explore these themes. He works as managing editor of Plenitude Magazine, and is this year's judge for The Malahat Review's Far Horizons Award for Poetry. In Tina Biello’s new collection, The Weight of Survival, in a small logging town nestled near Lake Cowichan is an old elementary school. The child of immigrants from post-war Italy attends this school among the population of mostly white, anglo-saxon families. She does not speak English. Her family is one of four who emigrated from southern Italy, to this small forested community. There are other families, from India, who share a kinship of ‘other’ with the Italian families. What happens when your voice, your food, your home is different? How do you know how to be queer when there is no language or place for it? How do you remember a time not spoken of, but passed on through the smell of walnut blossoms in the spring, grapes in the fall? In The Weight of Survival, Tina Biello chronicles this upbringing of otherness, of being shaped by two very different communities, of blending identities into one, and what is left behind in the process. Poet, playwright and actor, TINA BIELLO was born in Lake Cowichan, a small logging town here on Vancouver Island to immigrant parents. She has honed her skills of being from ‘two places’ and speaks a few languages because of it. She believes in the power of poetry to reach in, grab hold and get us through. She had the great privilege of working with mentor Patrick Lane. ‘The Weight of Survival’ is her 4th book of poems. When she’s not writing poetry, she’s gardening, walking dogs and writing plays and more recently a screenplay. She was Nanaimo’s 2nd Poet Laureate from 2017-2020 and has just finished a 3 year cycle of writing librettos for composers with the Vancouver Island Symphony. WHEN: Wednesday, April 3rd at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30). WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street. WHAT: Readings by Patrick Grace and Tina Biello, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of two new mysteries: A Meditation on Murder by Susan Juby and Bury the Lead by Kate Hilton and Elizabeth Renzetti!! In A Meditation on Murder, Butler-detective Helen Thorpe returns to help a wannabe influencer get her life in order—and solve the murders of her fellow content creators—in this hilarious sequel to Mindful of Murder by bestselling author Susan Juby. When Buddhist butler Helen Thorpe is loaned out to help Cartier Hightower get her life in order, Helen finds herself working for a young woman entirely unbound by the fetters of good taste or sound judgment. One of Cartier’s fellow content creators has recently died in a strange accident. Soon after Helen arrives, another is killed in an equally bizarre way. Cartier begins to drag Helen around on the influencer circuit, where neither of them is particularly welcome. Then comes the terrible incident at the EDM nightclub that turns Cartier into a global pariah, at least according to social media. Helen hopes a period of simplicity and reflection and an internet detox will help Cartier find her true nature and maybe acquire some social graces. But Helen’s job gets much harder when Cartier’s friends show up at the lavish ranch where Cartier and Helen have retreated. Soon, Helen finds herself trying to avoid becoming Instafamous while bringing some peace to a girl who very much needs it. This task turns out to be even more impossible when it becomes clear that they have been followed to Weeping Creek Ranch by a murderer. In Bury the Lead, a big-city journalist joins the staff of a small-town paper in cottage country and finds a community full of secrets ... and murder. Cat Conway has recently returned to Port Ellis to work as a reporter at the Quill & Packet. She's fled the tattered remains of her high-profile career and bad divorce for the holiday town of her childhood, famous for its butter tarts, theatre, and a century-old feud. One of Cat's first assignments is to interview legendary actor Eliot Fraser, the lead in the theatre's season opener of Inherit the Wind. When Eliot ends up dead onstage on opening night, the curtain rises on the sleepy town's secrets. The suspects include the actor whose career Eliot ruined, the ex-wife he betrayed, the women he abused, and even the baker he wronged. With the attention of the world on Port Ellis, this story could be Cat's chance to restore her reputation. But the police think she's a suspect, and the murderer wants to kill the story-and her too. Can Cat solve the mystery before she loses her job or becomes the next victim of a killer with a theatrical bent for vengeance? Susan Juby is the award-winning, bestselling author of Mindful of Murder, which debuted at number one on the independent bookstores’ bestseller list and was nominated for the Leacock Medal for Humour. She has also written Getting the Girl, Another Kind of Cowboy and The Woefield Poultry Collective, as well as the bestselling Alice series (Alice, I Think; Miss Smithers; and Alice MacLeod, Realist at Last). Her novel Republic of Dirt won the Leacock Medal in 2016. Susan Juby lives on Vancouver Island with her husband, James, and their dogs, who are convinced they could have lucrative careers as social media stars. Kate Hilton is the bestselling author of three novels: The Hole in the Middle, Just like Family and Better Luck Next Time. When not writing, Kate works with psychotherapy and life coaching clients in the area of transformational change. Elizabeth Renzetti is the author of the essay collection Shrewed: A Wry and Closely Observed Look at the Lives of Women and Girls and the novel Based on a True Story. In 2020, she won the Landsberg Award for her reporting on gender equality. WHEN: Tuesday, March 19th at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30). WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street WHAT: Readings from the authors of Bury the Lead and A Meditation on Murder, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Please join Munro’s Books in launching new mythical novels by Holly Ringland and Tamara Goranson!! Holly Ringland’s new novel, The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding, is a haunting, magical novel about joy, grief, courage and transformation that follows from the international bestselling, The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart. 'On the afternoon that Esther Wilding drove homeward along the coast, a year after her sister had walked into the sea and disappeared, the light was painfully golden.' The last time Esther Wilding's beloved older sister Aura was seen, she was walking along the shore towards the sea. In the wake of Aura's disappearance, Esther's family struggles to live with their loss. To seek the truth about her sister's death, Esther reluctantly travels from Lutruwita/Tasmania, to Copenhagen, and then to the Faroe Islands, following the trail of the stories Aura left behind: seven fairy tales about selkies, swans and women, alongside cryptic verses Aura wrote and had secretly tattooed on her body. The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding is a sweeping, deeply beautiful and profoundly moving novel about the far reaches of sisterly love, the power of wearing your heart on your skin and the ways life can transform when we find the courage to feel the fullness of both grief and joy. Holly Ringland is the author of the award-winning international bestseller The Lost Flowers of Alice Hart, adapted into a seven-part TV series on Amazon Prime, starring Sigourney Weaver. After living between Australia and the UK for ten years, Holly has been based in the Yugambeh region of southeast Queensland since 2020, where she wrote The Seven Skins of Esther Wilding in her "office," a vintage caravan named Frenchie. Tamara Goranson’s The Oath of Bjorn is Book 3 of her Vinland Viking Saga. Anja has just settled into a new life on the silver shores of Vinland with her beloved, Bjorn. But then a local warrior bursts onto the scene seeking revenge, swearing to spill Viking blood. And so Bjorn must risk everything to save the woman he loves before she steps into the darkness and sets their world ablaze. The Oath of Bjorn is an epic historical novel of gripping adventure and love everlasting – perfect for fans of Vikings and Outlander. Tamara Goranson holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology and Neuropsychology as well as Adjunct Professor status at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada. She published several academic pieces before she turned to writing short stories, creative non-fiction, and historical fiction, winning 3rd prize in the 2019 Vancouver Island Writers’ Association annual general contest for her nonfiction piece, ‘A Voice in Time’. She lives in Victoria with her husband and two daughters. WHEN: Wednesday, March 13th, 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30). WHERE: In-store at Munro’s Books, 1108 Government St. in Victoria. WHAT: Readings by Holly Ringland and Tamara Goranson, followed by a Q&A with the audience and book signings. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Please join Munro's Books in celebrating the launch of the Best Canadian Poetry in English 2024! Local poet Yvonne Blomer will host a reading by five of this year's local poets included in the collection: Nicholas Bradley, Kayla Czaga, Hilary Clark, Anna Moore, and Joanna Streetly. Praise for the book includes: “Buy it, or borrow it, but do read it.” —Arc Poetry Magazine “A magnet, I think, for the many people who would like to know contemporary poetry.” —A.F. Moritz, Griffin Poetry Prize winner WHEN: Wednesday, February 28th, 7:00 p.m. WHERE: Fortune Gallery, 537 Fisgard St. in Victoria WHAT: Readings by Nicholas Bradley, Kayla Czaga, Hilary Clark, Anna Moore, and Joanna Streetly, hosted by Yvonne Blomer. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Please join Munro’s Books in celebrating the launch of Sheila Heti's latest book, Alphabetical Diaries. Sheila will be in conversation with UVic writing professor, Lee Henderson. Munro’s Books is pleased to present two Canadian award-winning authors, Sheila Heti and Lee Henderson, in conversation at their store on Tuesday, February 20th at 7:00 p.m. Sheila Heti will read from her new book Alphabetical Diaries and then chat about it with local fiction writer and UVic creative writing professor, Lee Henderson. The evening will end with a Q&A with audience members and a book signing with Sheila Heti. This event is free to attend. A little over a decade ago, Sheila Heti—the award-winning author of a string of modern classics including How Should a Person Be?, Motherhood, and Pure Colour—began looking back at the diaries she'd kept over the previous ten years, searching for signs of deeper change inside herself. She loaded all 500,000 words of her journals into Microsoft Excel, to order the sentences alphabetically and seek out patterns and repetitions. How many times had she written, “I hate him,” for example? With the sentences untethered from the narrative of her diaries, she started to see herself—and the Self—in a new way: as something quite solid, anchored by shockingly few characteristic preoccupations. Returning to the project over the years, something more universal and novelistic emerged. Alphabetical Diaries is the sublime and probing result—one that rises to the heights of artistry and insight for which Heti is rightfully acclaimed. Sheila Heti is one of our greatest literary innovators and has been pushing boundaries with her work since the age of 24, when she published her first book, the short-story collection, The Middle Stories, in 2001. She’s since won the Governor General’s Award for Fiction and the Vine Award for Canadian Jewish Literature, and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize and longlisted for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. Heti’s fiction and criticism have appeared in the New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, The Paris Review, The New Yorker, and Granta. WHEN: Tuesday, February 20th at 7:00 p.m. (doors at 6:30). WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. WHAT: A reading by Sheila Heti from her latest book, followed by a conversation with Lee Henderson and a Q&A with the audience. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Join Munro's Books in celebrating the launch of Dr. Jen Gunter's newest book, Blood: The Science, Medicine, and Mythology of Menstruation. We'll present Dr. Gunter in conversation with UVic Gender Studies Professor Dr. Thea Cacchioni, followed by a Q&A with the audience (no requests for medical advice, please) and a book signing! Blood, The galvanizing new book from Dr. Jen Gunter, #1 bestselling author of The Vagina Bible and The Menopause Manifesto, dispels the shame, mythology, and misinformation around menstruation with scientific facts, medical expertise, and a fierce feminist perspective. Most of us know about as much about how the uterus and ovaries function as we do about how the liver works. Add in societal shame around the menstrual cycle and it’s not surprising that misinformation is widespread. But, as women’s health advocate and trusted OB-GYN Dr. Jen Gunter writes, “you don’t have to think about your liver 5 days a month for 30 years, so I’d argue people should know more about the uterus." Enter Blood. In her new book, Dr. Gunter offers a clear, no-nonsense guide to reproductive anatomy and answers all the questions you never knew you had about menstrual bleeding—for example, where does the blood come from? And where does it go if you miss a period? Why do we even menstruate in the first place? With her expertise and trademark wit, Dr. Gunter debunks myths and challenges patriarchal attitudes toward this natural bodily process. Dr. Jen Gunter is board certified in OB/GYN and pain medicine. She writes about the intersection of women's health, sex, science, and pop culture for the New York Times. She has been called a fierce advocate for women's health, Twitter's gynecologist, and "strangely confident" by GOOP.com. She believes an empowered patient requires facts and she is here to fix the medical Internet and smash the patriarchy. Dr. Thea Cacchioni is an Associate Professor of Gender Studies at UVic. Her research examines the medicalization of sex, gender, and sexuality, broadly, as well as through specific diagnoses such as Female Sexual Dysfunction and Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. She is interested in the ways in which doctors, psychiatrists, and more recently, drug companies shape understandings of "normalcy" and "deviance" across categories of gender, racialization, and class. Her work examines the pathologization of some sexual acts and identities and the "healthicization" of others. WHEN: Saturday, February 24th at 7:00PM (doors at 6:30) WHERE: Victoria Conference Centre Lecture Theatre, 720 Douglas St. in Victoria WHAT: Dr. Jen Gunter in conversation with Dr. Thea Cacchioni, followed by a Q&A with the audience (no requests for medical advice, please) and a book signing HOW: Tickets can be purchased HERE: https://jengunterblood.eventbrite.ca Book plus ticket: $42 (includes a copy of BLOOD to be picked up at the event) Ticket: $20

Please join Munro’s Books in launching Better Next Year: An Anthology of Christmas Epiphanies!! Christmas is trumpeted as a time of peace, joy, bounty and goodwill. Believers and non-believers alike covet the spirit of the holidays even when circumstances are screwed up. Recollections from acclaimed Canadian authors combine with emerging voices from across the country in an anthology that debunks the popular depiction of Christmas while delivering its messages of hope and renewal. Writers marginalized by personal circumstance, faith, and race share memories of surviving bleak Christmases past: holidays spent in shelters, or on the streets; families marred by alcohol and violence; personal struggles with addiction, poverty or grief; isolation and loneliness. Despite these and other obstacles, contributors strive to salvage the spirit of the season. This event will be hosted by the book's editor, J. J. Lee and will feature readings from Joseph Kakwinokanasum and Jordan Kawchuk. WHEN: Friday, December 1st from 6PM-8PM WHERE: Caffe Fantastico Roastery, 965 Kings Rd. WHAT: Hosted by J. J. Lee, readings from Joseph Kakwinokanasum and Jordan Kawchuk HOW: This event is free to attend

Please join Munro’s Books for a book signing with beloved local author, Darrel J. McLeod!! Darrel J. McLeod will be in-store to sign copies of his debut novel, A Season in Chezgh'un. A subversive novel by acclaimed Cree author Darrel J. McLeod, infused with the contradictory triumph and pain of finding conventional success in a world that feels alien. James, a talented and conflicted Cree man from a tiny settlement in Northern Alberta, has settled into a comfortable middle-class life in Kitsilano, a trendy neighbourhood of Vancouver. He is living the life he had once dreamed of—travel, a charming circle of sophisticated friends, a promising career and a loving relationship with a caring man—but he chafes at being assimilated into mainstream society, removed from his people and culture. The untimely death of James’s mother, his only link to his extended family and community, propels him into a quest to reconnect with his roots. He secures a job as a principal in a remote northern Dakelh community but quickly learns that life there isn’t the fix he’d hoped it would be: His encounters with poverty, cultural disruption and abuse conjure ghosts from his past that drive him toward self-destruction. During the single year he spends in northern BC, James takes solace in the richness of the Dakelh culture—the indomitable spirit of the people, and the splendour of nature—all the while fighting to keep his dark side from destroying his life. WHEN: Thursday, November 2nd from 12:30-2:00 PM. WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government Street. WHAT: A book signing of A Season in Chezgh'un with Darrel J. McLeod. HOW: This event is free to attend.

Please join us for a book signing with award-winning, globe-trotting, history-hunting storyteller, Ken McGoogan! In his latest book, Searing for Franklin: New Light on the Great Arctic Mystery, arctic historian Ken McGoogan approaches the legacy of nineteenth-century explorer Sir John Franklin from a contemporary perspective and offers a surprising new explanation of an enduring Northern mystery. Two of Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin’s expeditions were monumental failures—the last one leading to more than a hundred deaths, including his own. Yet many still see the Royal Navy man as a heroic figure who sacrificed himself to discover the Northwest Passage. This book, McGoogan’s sixth about Arctic exploration, challenges that vision. It rejects old orthodoxies, incorporates the latest discoveries, and interweaves two main narratives. The first treats the Royal Navy’s Arctic Overland Expedition of 1819, a harbinger-misadventure during which Franklin rejected the advice of Dene and Métis leaders and lost eleven of his twenty-one men to exhaustion, starvation and murder. The second discovers a startling new answer to that greatest of Arctic mysteries: what was the root cause of the catastrophe that engulfed Franklin’s last expedition? The well-preserved wrecks of Erebus and Terror—located in 2014 and 2016—promise to yield more clues about what cost the lives of the expedition members, some of whom were reduced to cannibalism. Contemporary researchers, rejecting theories of lead poisoning and botulism, continue to seek conclusive evidence both underwater and on land. Drawing on his own research and Inuit oral accounts, McGoogan teases out many intriguing aspects of Franklin’s expeditions, including the explorer’s lethal hubris in ignoring the expert advice of the Dene leader Akaitcho. Franklin disappeared into the Arctic in 1845, yet people remain fascinated with his final doomed voyage: what happened? McGoogan will captivate readers with his first-hand account of travelling to relevant locations, visiting the graves of dead sailors and experiencing the Arctic—one of the most dramatic and challenging landscapes on the planet.

Please join Munro’s Books for the launch of new books by two beloved local poets! Award-winning poet Arleen Pare’s latest collection, Absence of Wings, is both an intimate family portrait and a public documentation of how we, as a society, can fail to protect our children. Absence of Wings depicts the extraordinary and tragically foreshortened life of A.—Paré’s niece, Brazilian, adopted, racialized, and living with multiple mental health diagnoses. In her deft and clear poetics, accompanied by documentary pieces in the tradition of C.D. Wright’s One with Others, Paré is both witness to and emotionally engaged in the life and death of A. The result is deep and heart-felt, both factional and fictional, poetry and prose, holding its subject, A., heart-close and 3,000 miles away. Absence of Wings unfolds on many levels; it embraces the private and public spheres; it is as intimate as family, as worldly as the public and personal politics that surround each life. It both observes and embraces, always with the important question of the world’s unprotected children in mind. In A Brief and Endless Sea, award-winning poet Barbara Pelman presents a life lived in poetry, delving into the small moments and spaces containing the greatest offerings of love, hope and possibility. Born out of waiting out the lockdown during the early days of the pandemic, Barbara Pelman’s A Brief and Endless Sea explores a life in retrospect, beginning with a high school typing class and ending with the Angel Purah, cutting the ties that bind a soul to a body. Many of the poems in this collection are rooted in Jewish tradition: the prophet Isaiah’s words of comfort; the rabbinical story of the Lost Princess, that angel and her counterpart, the Angel Duma. Pelman takes us to difficult places—the dissolution of a marriage, caring for a parent with dementia. But she doesn’t leave us there, waiting. Using the power of words to map a route out, A Brief and Endless Sea pulls us toward life in all of its vibrant details—the simple beauty of a small garden of tomatoes and roses, the pleasures of teaching poetry, long walks with a grandson, and encounters with spirituality. For Pelman, there is comfort in the making of a poem and in the “smallest life you can love.” Like the glosa form she turns to often, something small transforms into something larger, expansive. In A Brief and Endless Sea, the ordinary becomes extraordinary, and waiting in itself presents fertile ground for hope and possibility. WHEN: Thursday, November 9th at 7PM (doors at 6:30) WHERE: In-store at Munro's Books, 1108 Government St. WHAT: A reading and Q&A with Arleen Pare and Barbara Pelman. HOW: This event is free to attend.