Up-and-coming Vancouver trans author Harman Burns joins NBN host Hollay Ghadery to talk about Burns’ novella, Yellow Barks Spider (Radiant Press, 2024).

Yellow Barks Spider takes place in the Canadian prairies, but it seeks to explore this landscape through the intimate lens of a ten-year-old trans kid. Set against the backdrop of the placid countryside, dusty summers and barren winters, it is both a queer coming-of-age novella as well as a deeply psychological character study, reflecting on the nature of memory, trauma, and self-discovery.

More about Yellow Barks Spider:

In the threadbare prairie town where Kid grew up, life moves slowly. For a troubled ten-year-old, the vast landscape of open skies and barren winters is a place of elemental magic and buried secrets. As the summers pass by, Kid explores a world of weed-choked yards, murky lakes, and a traveling carnival. But when Kid finds himself increasingly haunted by strange spider-infested visions of his next door neighbor’s shed, he falls deeper and deeper into his haunted inner world, eventually turning to mind-altering substances to combat his growing torment. Confronted by this psychic pressure, the book itself begins to crumble, splintering into disparate narrative voices as the workings of Kid’s imagination become animate, tactile—and language self-destructs.

Emerging from this crucible, Kid surfaces into adulthood as she moves through love, sex, and self-discovery as a trans woman. But when she returns to her hometown following the death of a family member, she is forced to reckon with all the fears she once left behind. Yellow Barks Spider is an unforgettable portrait of trauma, isolation, and self-compassion. At its heart, it is a deeply-felt exhumation of memory, love, and the human spirit.

About Harman Burns:

Harman Burns is a Saskatchewan-born trans woman, filmmaker, sound artist and writer. Her practice is informed by folklore, nature, the occult and bodily transfiguration. Her writing has been published in Untethered Magazine and Metatron Press, and was shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction. Burns currently resides on the unceded ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples (Vancouver).

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at her website.

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The Donoghue Girl (Latitude 46, 2024) is heart-wrenching historical fiction from beloved Canadian author, Kim Fahner. .With her incomparable ability to create immersive worlds, Fahner tells the story of an Irish Catholic family in a Northern Ontario mining town almost a hundred years ago.

Willful, headstrong Lizzie is our relatable protagonist and we follow her through an uncertain courtship, a difficult pregnancy, an absent husband, and family expectations that threaten to undo her. The result is a riveting tale that transports us back in time, while also encouraging us to examine patriarchal systems and expectations that continue to shape and subjugate the lives of women today. With an unforgettable cast of characters and a gripping take on Canadian history, Fahner has gifted us a complex and moving tale in The Donoghue Girl.

More About The Donoghue Girl:

Longing for a life bigger than the one she inhabits, Lizzie Donoghue thinks she’s found a simple escape route in Michael Power, but soon discovers that she might have been mistaken…

The Donoghue Girl is the story of Lizzie Donoghue, the spirited daughter of Irish immigrants who desperately wants to not only escape Creighton—the Northern Ontario mining town where her family runs a general store—but also the oppressive confines of twentieth-century patriarchy.

About Kim Fahner:

Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario, Canada. She has published two chapbooks, You Must Imagine the Cold Here (Scrivener, 1997) and Fault Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023), as well as five full books of poetry, including: braille on water (Penumbra Press, 2001), The Narcoleptic Madonna (Penumbra Press, 2012), Some Other Sky (Black Moss Press, 2017), These Wings (Pedlar Press, 2019), and Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022). Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a full member of the League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. She was Poet Laureate for the City of Greater Sudbury from 2016-18.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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PEI author Steven Mayoff's newest book, The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023) masterfully disrupts the idyllic picture often painted of Prince Edward Island. This is a darkly funny and thrilling story of spiritual dissonance and cultural satire in Canada's most wholesome province.

Samson Grief, a reclusive painter from Prince Edward Island, is confronted by three red-haired figments of his imagination in the form of Judas Iscariot, Fagin, and Shylock. They claim to be messengers of “The Supreme One”, a genderless deity who has decreed PEI to be the new Promised Land, who also wants Samson to build the Island’s first synagogue. Scared, confused, and seriously doubting his sanity, Samson eventually, though grudgingly, accepts the challenge amid increasingly bizarre obstacles in a new dystopian world.

About Steven Mayoff:

Steven Mayoff (he/him) was born in Montreal and moved to Prince Edward Island in 2001. His books include the story collection Fatted Calf Blues (Turnstone Press, 2009), the novel Our Lady of Steerage (Bunim & Bannigan, 2015), the poetry chapbook Leonard’s Flat (Grey Borders Books, 2018), the poetry collection Swinging Between Water and Stone (Guernica Editions, 2019) and the novel The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief (Radiant Press, 2023). As a lyricist, he has collaborated with composer Ted Dykstra on Dion a Rock Opera, which will receive its world premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre in Toronto in February 2024. His website is www.stevenmayoff.ca

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Set in 1898, Harriet Morrow is 21, supports her 16-year-old brother, and has been accepted as the first female detective at the Prescott Agency. She’s given one week to find Agnes, maid to the wealthy Pearl Bartlett, who lives in one of the Prairie Street mansions on the south side of Chicago. Harriet, who prefers wearing men’s shoes and hats and has no intention of ever getting married, immediately notices that Agnes has been taken, probably by force, from her attic apartment. Harriet visits Agnes’s family and neighborhood and riding her trusty bicycle begins searching for clues across the city while grappling with someone in the agency who is trying to sabotage her. If she doesn’t solve the case, she’ll be booted from the agency, and Harriet Morrow can’t let that happen in Rob Osler’s charming novel, The Case of the Missing Maid (Kensington Books Publishing 2024).

Rob Osler was born and raised in Boise, Idaho and earned a B.A. in Philosophy at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, WA. Soon after, he moved to Chicago and began a decade-long career as an advertising copywriter, creating television campaigns for Kellogg’s and Tropicana, among others. After a transition to brand strategy and returning to school for an MBA at the University of Washington in Seattle, he spent two decades in senior roles at agencies and corporations in Seattle and San Francisco. Writing throughout, his focus was on business communications and brand strategy, with published articles in The Journal of Brand Management. Rob turned to fiction writing in his fifties. His first-ever publication was a short story, ANALOGUE, set in Seattle’s tech industry, published in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. The story won the 2022 Mystery Writers of America Robert L Fish Award. His debut novel, DEVIL’S CHEW TOY, also set in Seattle and published the following year, was a finalist for the 2023 Anthony, Agatha, Lefty, and Macavity Awards and was A Year’s Best by CrimeReads. His second-ever published short story, MISS DIRECTION, set in Palm Springs, CA, and appearing again in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, was a finalist for the 2024 Edgar Allen Poe Awards. His new historical series “Harriet Morrow* Investigates,” set in Chicago during America’s Progressive Era, launches with THE CASE OF THE MISSING MAID, which earned a Publishers Weekly Starred Review and is an Amazon Editors Pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. After living in Boise, Chicago, and Seattle, Rob now resides in California with his husband and a tall gray cat, who, depending on the day, goes by the name Noodles, Mr. Chomps, or Monkey.

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At a New Delhi conference, an Assamese writer is interrogated on why he writes about magical folktales instead of the insurgencies. A mother splashes around in the village lake to mask the lovemaking sounds of her son with another man. A newly arrived graduate student in Minnesota navigates living arrangements with his white roommate, Mike, and Mike's Indian girlfriend.

In agile and frank prose, The Way You Want to Be Loved: Short Stories (Gaudy Boy, 2024) tells the stories of queer, displaced lives from India's Northeast, an underrepresented region in English fiction. A hybrid cast of characters represents the common people in these thirteen stories, whether western-trained academic or village sorcerer, army soldier or local politician, homeward-bound son or dutiful daughter-in-law. They wrestle with diasporic melancholia, the social pressures of familial duty, and the search for their own personhood, even as they live in a world where personhood is continually compromised and reshaped under oppressive forces larger than themselves. Aruni Kashyap offers up a powerful critique of the malfunctioning democracies of India and the US, deftly balancing devastation and tragedy with a darkly humorous tone that has readers questioning their laughter.

At its core, The Way You Want to Be Loved explores what it means to love, desire, and long for life under the duress of everyday and state-sanctioned violence and discrimination.

Arnab Dutta Roy is Assistant Professor of World Literature and Postcolonial Theory at Florida Gulf Coast University.

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Suzy Krause’s latest speculative fiction novel, I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024) is a compulsively readable and cosy story.

Marlen and Hilda Jorgensen’s family has received two significant pieces of news: one, Marlen has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. Two, a cosmic blast is set to render humanity extinct within a matter of months. It seems the coming Christmas on their Saskatchewan farm will be their last. Preparing for the inevitable, they navigate the time they have left together. Marlen and Hilda have channeled their energy into improbably prophetic works of art. Hilda’s elderly father receives a longed-for visitor from his past, her sister refuses to believe the world is ending, and her teenaged nephew is missing. All the while, her daughter struggles to find her way home from Berlin with the help of an oddly familiar stranger. For everyone, there’s an unsettling feeling that this unprecedented reality is something they remember.

About Suzy Krause:

Suzy Krause is the bestselling author of Sorry I Missed You and Valencia and Valentine. She grew up on a little farm in rural Saskatchewan and now lives in Regina, where she writes novels inspired by crappy jobs, creepy houses, personal metaphorical apocalypses, and favorite songs. Her work has been translated into Russian and Estonian.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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With this dry observance Peter Darbyshire introduces us to Cross, a man who has lived thousands of years, though he’d prefer not to have, and who is now hunting angels in a Barcelona filled with tourists, phone cameras and deep mystery.

The Mona Lisa Sacrifice (Poplar Press, 2024) is a layered supernatural thriller, filled with history, magic and beloved characters. When an angel promises to deliver Judas, a forgotten god of a forgotten people, to Cross for revenge if he can find the real Mona Lisa, a cascading set of mysteries involving a sisterhood of gorgons, Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Morgana le Fay and renegade angels is set in motion. Everything hangs in the balance. Even the fate of the world.

This compulsively readable novel is the first in The Cross series and follows the reluctant hero Cross across time as he battles renegade angels trying to start a new holy war on Earth, hunts down a deadly ghost that is haunting Hamlet productions and assembles a crew of Atlanteans, pirates, vampires and the damned to stop Noah from ending the world. It’s a wild romp through history and literary culture, with a cast of characters that includes a band of very mischievous faerie, literary characters such as Alice from the Wonderland tales and a modern-day Frankenstein’s creature, an enigmatic Christopher Marlowe, gorgons, and much more.

More about Peter Darbyshire:

Often referred to as Canada’s Neil Gaiman, Peter Darbyshire is the author of six books and more stories than he can remember. He lives near Vancouver, British Columbia, where he spends his time writing, raising children and playing D&D with other writers. It’s a good life.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Queerness, labels, and allyship are central themes in this moving collection of stories set in Turkey, where Middle Eastern and Euro-American expressions of identity collide and naming one's orientation is a fraught endeavor. An eleven-year-old undergoes hand surgery that will allow him to wear a wedding ring in adulthood. Two college roommates reach an erotic understanding as they indulge in dessert. A sex worker travels with an American same-sex marriage activist through the Aegean countryside. A passionate hookup during Istanbul Pride ends in tear gas. Two friends' tempers flare over cold red wine on a hot summer night by the Dardanelles. A father bonds with his son and his son's drag-queen boyfriend over classic Turkish cinema on the Mediterranean coast.

In Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (UP of Kentucky, 2024), Serkan Görkemli weaves together interconnected narratives of four Turkish characters—Hasan, Gökhan, Nazlı, and Cenk—who search for clarity, love, and acceptance amid social change. Set in a rich mixture of urban and rural locales, the stories take place from the 1980s through the 2010s against the backdrop of Turkey's transition from military-backed secularism to the rise of the religious right, local and global media representations of queer individuals and culture, and the emergence of affirming LGBTQ+ identities. Görkemli creates a complex, engaging network of plots about his characters' struggles and triumphs in navigating families, communities, and themselves. Braving discrimination, they strive to embrace their identities and find joy, solace, and approval within a society that marginalizes who they are and how they love.

Serkan Görkemli (he/him) is the author of two books: Sweet Tooth and Other Stories (University Press of Kentucky) and Grassroots Literacies: Lesbian and Gay Activism and the Internet in Turkey (SUNY Press; winner of the 2015 Lavender Rhetorics Book Award presented by the Conference on College Composition and Communication). His creative nonfiction is forthcoming in Image; his fiction has appeared in Ploughshares, the Iowa Review, Epiphany, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Joyland, Foglifter, and Chelsea Station. He was a 2023-24 faculty fellow at the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, a contributor in fiction at the 2019 Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and a fiction fellow at the 2018 Lambda Literary Writers Retreat. Originally from Türkiye, he has a PhD in English from Purdue University and is an associate professor of English at UConn Stamford.

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Born nameless, in a rigid, autocratic society that has relegated all women to non-person status — Unmales — two women fight against their invisibility in Autokrator (Cormorant Books, 2024), the gripping saga by Canadian author and screenwriter Emily Weedon. 

The disappearance of yet another Domestic means Cera must take on extra duties and tend the rooms of The Cratorling, the young successor to the autocracy. Face-to-face with him, Cera realizes he is her son, taken from her at birth. She vows to make herself known to him, no matter the cost.

Driven by a Machiavellian mind and ego, Tiresius has successfully hidden her Unmale status in plain sight for years. She rose through the ranks of the autocracy to reach the highest levels of government. She revels in the power she has attained, but her ruse makes her a gender criminal, which is an act punishable by death.

Both Cera and Tiresius are determined to achieve their goals, but, for better or worse, their actions begin to dismantle the framework and foundations of the autocracy itself.

Hopeful and cautionary, Autokrator reimagines gender and power in society against the backdrop of an epic, deeply etched, speculative world.

About Emily Weedon:

Emily A. Weedon is a debut author and an award-winning screenwriter. She co-created the series Chateau Laurier, the most awarded web series in the world in 2023. She and co-writer Kent Staines were awarded Best Writing in a Web Series at the Canadian Screen Awards in 2023. Emily has been a graphic designer, musician, set painter, and art director. She played music professionally and has released 3 EPs. She lives in Toronto, Ontario with her daughter, Ginger.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, is due out with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is the host of the 105.5 FM Bookclub, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets and a co-chair of the League’s BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com.

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Lisa Swayze has been the General Manager at Buffalo Street Books for 7 years and will transition to becoming the Executive Director of the bookstore’s new literary nonprofit in 2025. Lisa is on the board of directors of the American Booksellers Association and the Downtown Ithaca Alliance.

Jessica Stockton-Bagnulo is the owner and co-founder of Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn, New York, where she also currently serves as the Events & Marketing Manager (because she loves hosting parties). She has worked in independent bookstores in New York City since 2000, has served on the board of NAIBA and various other book industry boards and committees, and is currently on the board of the American Booksellers Association (along with lovely colleagues Lisa and Jake). She lives with her husband and daughter (both avid readers, thankfully) in Brooklyn.

Lisa's Favorites: 

Jessica's favorites:

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