Words and music
Fantasy, poetry, satire and other new works by Concordians
By Daniel Bartlett, BA 08
In Alpine Signals: Twentysix Cell Towers in the Engadin (Verlag für moderne Kunst, 2022, $47), Thomas Kneubühler, MFA 03, offers a series of unusual portraits of the Alps that challenge the romantic image of the mountain range.
The book also includes an essay by Rebecca Duclos, professor in Concordia’s Department of Art History and former dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts.
The Latin Student (Flowerpublish, 2022, $30) by Denis Brault, BA 71, tells the story of Holden Hainsworth, an outstanding Latin student in high school and university who has just been hired as a classics professor.
Through flashback, the novel reveals the full fascinating story of Holden’s life, both inside and beyond the walls of academia.
Laurence Hutchman, MA 79, recently published In the Writers’ Words: Conversations with Ten Canadian Poets, Volume II (Guernica Editions, 2022, $25), a book of interviews that gives a larger sense of the nature and the development of contemporary Canadian poetry.
The collection includes in-depth conversations with Brian Bartlett, Roo Borson, George Elliott Clarke, Travis Lane, John B. Lee, Daniel Lockhart, Bruce Meyer, A.F. Moritz, Sue Sinclair and Colleen Thibaudeau.
Joshua Neves, associate professor in the Mel Hoppenheim School of Cinema and Canada Research Chair in Global Emergent Media, has co-written an exploration of the close ties between media technologies and pharmaceuticals.
In Technopharmacology (Meson Press, 2022, $18), Neves examines how technopharmacological projects intensify vulnerability and inequality in the name of human enrichment.
Positive Women of the World (ACT, 2022, $45 – $60) provides a snapshot of some of the lived experiences of women diagnosed with HIV.
Savannah Nast, BA 14, uses 30 interviews to shed light on the many intersectionalities for HIV-positive women, a number of whom are often overlooked, underfunded and neglected by societal and medical systems. All sales proceeds will support a woman living with HIV who is accessing support services at the AIDS Committee of Toronto.
In Bumpkinville (self-published, 2022, free download), David S. Mitchell, BA 89, offers a lively satirical romp of corporate life and pop culture in the 1990s. The brief novel tells the rags-to-riches story of Dorman Brouxall, who transforms from an ex-convict to a country-music superstar.
The book also contains graphics designed by Robert Paul, webmaster and digital content advisor at Concordia.
As a child in Saint Thomas, Barbados, Pat Fitzpatrick Hardt, BA 77, watched planes fly back and forth from a frangipani tree in front of her home. She often wondered if she would get the chance to travel someday.
In the Crook of the Frangipani Tree (self-published, 2021, $20) documents Hardt’s journey from Barbados to Montreal in 1958, where she would build a life as a wife and working mother far from her roots and aging parents.
The Relics of Aiden (Flowerpublish, 2022, $30), a fantasy novel by H.A. Lutfi, MA 13, tells the story of Justin, a young magician entrusted with a life-threatening task by his late mother.
To face his unclear destiny, Justin must search for clues and embark on a mysterious quest with his three best friends.
In her first collection of poems, Ditch Walker (Yarrow Press, 2022, $12), Bernice Angeline Sorge, BFA 85, MA 98, uses haiku to chronicle her observations while walking along the ditches of a gravel road and discovering the interdependence of humans, animals and plants.
In the Key of Dale (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022, $18.95), the first novel from Benjamin Lefebvre, BA 99, is a coming-of-age tale about Dale Cardigan, a 16-year-old queer musical prodigy.
Dale tells his own story through a series of letters he writes to his late father, who passed eight years earlier.
Heather Camlot, BA 94, has written a middle-grade story about the 1895 Dreyfus affair and Emile Zola’s famous open letter, J’Accuse…!
In The Prisoner and the Writer (Groundwood Books, 2022, $14.99), Camlot and artist Sophie Casson use verse and full-page illustrations to bring to life two men whose commitment to truth, justice and equality helped change the world.
Longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize and Canada Reads 2023, Hotline (Esplanade Books, 2022, $21.95) is the fourth novel from Dimitri Nasrallah, MA 03.
The story follows Muna Heddad who, after moving from Lebanon to Montreal with her son in 1986, finds work as a hotline operator at a weight-loss centre. Muna soon discovers that she is privy to many of her clients’ deepest secrets.