9 Books Published by Insomniac Press on AALBC — Book Cover Collage

In a mix of short fiction, poetry, dub poetry, and hip hop, some of Black Canada’s foremost writers from across generations explore history, community, love, and healing. The collection consists of writing from Catherine Bain, George Elliott Clarke, Gayle Gonsalves, Joanne C. Hillhouse, Clifton Joseph, Dwayne Morgan, Motion, Jelani Nias (J-Wyze), Djanet Sears, Mansa Trotman, and the editor, Althea Prince.

In Shell, Olive Senior continues her ongoing investigation of the natural world, the nature of poetry and the power of her Caribbean heritage. She is our guide through realms of miniature elegance, those of shells in their abundant manifestations. With her grace, generosity and world-renowned lyricism, Senior gives us hen’s eggs as hymns, molluscs as metaphors, shells of all kinds — sometimes fragile, sometimes unyielding — as home, as womb, as token and as totem. Ultimately, she places these shells, small and delicate, at the heart of the Jamaican cane fields, revealing a history rich with culture and haunted by slavery. These are Senior’s most powerful and affirming poems to date.

Using nature as both model and metaphor, Toronto resident Olive Senior delves into birds, flying, and Caribbean life in her third book of poems. Following her much-loved collections, Gardening in the Tropics and Talking of Trees, this long-awaited book of poems is sure to delight readers around the world. Translated into several languages, represented in numerous anthologies, and broadcast in Canada, Britain, and the Caribbean, Senior’s work enjoys international acclaim. Her work is taught at universities around the world, and her short story collection, Summer Lightning, has been a literature textbook in Caribbean schools. She has taught creative writing workshops at universities in Canada, the US, the UK, and the Caribbean, and is on the faculty of the Humber School for Writers. Praise for Over the Roofs of the World "Olive Senior’s Over the Roofs of the World is a richly crafted, cunning and precise collection of poems. The songs found here move gently through the world and summon grace." — Judges’ citation, 2005 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry

Ladies of the Night is set in Toronto and Antigua. With women’s loves and lives as their focus, the stories contain dramatic twists and turns: some humorous, others shocking and disturbing, all leaving a haunting melody behind. The Toronto stories capture the issues women face as they walk the ground of intimate and family relationships in that city. The Antiguan setting of some of the stories are reflective of Prince’s insight into relationships, captured in her novel and essays. The characters reveal their different ways of managing a range of struggle, pain, rage, love and pure unadulterated joy. The humour of some stories complement the plaintive sadness and emotionality of the strings some other stories pluck.

The popular relationship guru blows the whistle on perpetual bachelors, with wise words for women seeking nuptial-minded men.

A male radio host once chided William July for being so open about the playboy mentality. “Man, stop giving away all of our secrets to the women,” the host said. But July, who has been happily married for six years, believes that this kind of secrecy and game playing is harmful to everyone. A self-proclaimed former “General in the Bachelor Corps,” July now openly reveals the tricks of the bachelor trade to help women find guys who are genuinely ready for commitment. Confessions of an Ex-Bachelor delivers no-nonsense dialogue on:

• The three stages of bachelorhood, and how to tell whether your date will ever graduate past groom-a-phobia
• How to hold your man accountable and stand your ground—without making him feel trapped
• Overcoming cultural cues that make men see marriage as a life in chains
• Where to find your future groom
• How to translate a bachelor’s double-talk
• Getting past the stereotypes of divorced men, “nice guys,” and how men feel about being stepfathers

A must read for every single woman who wonders what her guy is really thinking, Confessions of an Ex-Bachelor is full of revelations and rewarding advice.

The relationship coach returns, delivering straight talk on the bachelor mentality and how women can break through it.

In his popular work advising troubled couples and singles, William July II has uncovered certain unmistakable truths about most men, particularly those who think of marriage as a form of torture. Moreover, he’s discovered that women often try so hard to conquer their boyfriends’ fears that they end up scaring them even more. Now, in The Hidden Lover, July delivers the kind of no-holds-barred dialogue that women and men should have but don’t, covering hot topics like these:

• Single, Successful, And Not Interested In Marriage! What’s Up With That?

• Why There is a Hidden Lover Inside Every Man.

• Disappearing Acts: How Hidden Lovers Hide While In Relationships.

• Women Who Frighten Away Potential Husbands.

• I’m Not Superman: How Trying to Be Superman Can Affect a Relationship.

Getting to the heart of commitment phobics and the women who fall in love with them, The Hidden Lover offers the kind of realistic, compassionate advice that thousands of not-so-swinging singles have been waiting for.

Like Jamaica Kincaid’s Lucy, Althea Prince’s new novel beautifully traces a woman’s struggle to negotiate the transition from life in the Caribbean to life in the concrete utopia of urban North America. Sayshelle, her mother Reevah and her aunts Sage and Juniper Berry stand at the centre of this breathtaking new novel. Loving This Man is about Antigua, about politics and class, but more than anything, about the mother-daughter bond that exists in these women’s lives. The Antiguan section of the novel describes Reevah’s relationship with her husband Emmanuel, whose fiery political beliefs are silenced by a tragic early death; Sage’s failed relationships with Rogain and Rommel, men who use and control her, to the point where she allows her daughters to suffer; and Juniper Berry, headstrong and forthright, who divorces her first husband and stakes her claim on Clifford, a man she senses she has known in a previous life. In the novel’s second section, Sayshelle has moved to Canada, where she makes a life for herself against the background of historical forces such as the Black Power movement, the feminist revolution and the Vietnam War. Sensuous, specific in its evocation of Toronto and Antigua, Prince’s novel is a must for anyone who follows Black Canadian, Caribbean and Post-colonial literatures.

Following in the highly personal tradition of essayists such as Dionne Brand and bell hooks, Althea Prince culls thirty years of lived experience into an important new collection, Being Black. A writer and sociologist, Prince tackles the complacency she sees in some manifestations of Black Canadian culture - such as Toronto’s popular Caribana festival - as well as in white society’s attitudes towards Black culture, as revealed by Prince’s involvement with the notorious Writers’ Union of Canada-sponsored Writing Thru Race conference. With an introduction by well-known poet and media personality Clifton Joseph, Being Black will appeal both to readers with an interest in Black Canadian culture, and fans of Prince’s short fiction and children’s books. Praise for Being Black "[Prince’s] first collection of essays, Being Black, may win her the recognition she also merits for her short fiction volume, Ladies of the Night and Other Stories." - George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Chronicle Herald

Why are men so afraid of showing their feelings? What scares men about commitment?

In Understanding the Tin Man, bestselling author William July II tackles these age-old questions, revealing what every woman wants to know about her man, and what every man needs to know about himself. Boys, conditioned to become emotionally closed off, all too often end up like the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz–hollow on the inside, and unable to cultivate honest, loving, mutually satisfying relationships.

Understanding the Tin Man presents a simple, step-by-step program for men who want to change, and for women who want to help their men overcome the Tin Man syndrome. You will learn to recognize a Tin Man, understand why men really fear intimacy, see through the tactics men use to avoid commitment and relationships, identify the five situations in which even the most emotionally numb man will share his feelings, and, most important, learn how to help a Tin Man change his life. With thought-provoking questions and self-improvement exercises for both men and women at the end of each chapter, Understanding the Tin Man is a powerful tonic for relationships and a much-needed voice of reason on the battlefield of the sexes.