Books

Off The Highway: Growing Up In North Delta
New Star Books (2010)

About 30 km south of Vancouver, just over the Alex Fraser Bridge, lies North Delta, a modern suburb replete with strip malls, single detached family homes and every-half-hour bus service. It was a sleepy bedroom community until 1986 when as part of the Expo 86 development boom, the Alex Fraser Bridge was built to connect the two sides of the Fraser River, drawing its southern banks further into the orbit of the big city.

Part social commentary, part personal memoir, and part history, Off The Highway is Mette Bach’s account of growing up in North Delta. We learn about the valiant efforts of the Burns Bog Conservation Society volunteers who work tirelessly to preserve North America’s largest raised peat bog, and about the Bach family’s arrival in North Delta and their efforts to make a place for themselves in their new world alongside other new Canadians. We also get a glimpse into North Delta’s storied settlement, from the 1860s when Alexander Loggie opened the first cannery to supply the British market with canned salmon, through the post-war housing boom that shaped today’s North Delta.

Buy an autographed copy of Off The Highway for $18.00 + shipping.  

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Visible: A Femmethology (volume one)
Edited by Jennifer Clare Burke
Homofactus Press (2009)

Class. Disability. Transphobia. Race. Body size. Surrogacy. Nationality. Biphobia. Economics. Sex work. Queer families. Misogyny. All of these issues and more comprise Visible: A Femmethology, the only two-volume anthology devoted to femme identity.

Edited by Jennifer Clare Burke the book contains personal essays from over fifty contributors who explore what it means to be a queer femme. Award-winning authors, spoken-word artists, and new voices come together to challenge conventional ideas of how disability, class, nationality, race, aesthetics, sexual orientation, gender identity, and body type intersect with each contributor’s concrete notion of femmedom.

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Fist of the Spider Woman: Tales of Fear & Queer Desire
Edited by Amber Dawn
Arsenal Pulp Press (2009)

Traditional horror often portrays female characters in direct relation to their sexual role according to men, such as the lascivious victim or innocent heroine; even vampy, powerful female villains, such as the classic noir “spider women,” use their sexual prowess to seduce and overwhelm married men. Fist of the Spider Woman is a revelatory anthology of horror stories by queer and transgressive women and others that disrupt reality as queer women know it, instilling both fear and arousal while turning traditional horror iconography on its head.

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Second Person Queer
Edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel
Arsenal Pulp Press (2009)

Second Person Queer is an unusual companion book: an anthology of essays on LGBT life written in the second-person. They take the form of letters to family and friends, missives to homophobes, confessions to lovers, tributes to notables of the past such as Jean Genet and David Wojnarowicz, and words of advice for the next generation. They deal with subject as large and looming as violence, coming out, gay marriage, and AIDS to those as intimate and engaging as How to Love Your Inner Femme, How to Survive Gay Celebrity, and How to Not Be Offended By Everything: A Guide for Asian Men. Powerful, funny, poignant: these are the stories of who you are as a LGBTQ person or the person you would most like to be.

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First Person Queer
Edited by Richard Labonté and Lawrence Schimel
Arsenal Pulp Press (2007)

In the amazing, wide-ranging anthology of nonfiction essays, contributors write intimate and honest first-person accounts of queer experience: from coming out to “passing” as straight, to the devastation of meth addiction, to growing old to living proud. These are the stories of contemporary queer life — and by definition, are funny, sad, hopeful, and truthful. Representing a diversity of genders, ages, races, and orientations, and edited by two acclaimed writers and anthologists (who between them have written or edited almost 100 books). First Person Queer depicts the diversity, the complexity, and the excitement of contemporary GLBTQ life.