The King's Co-op Bookstore

While the pandemic is great for listening to podcasts, running the bookstore right now has made it pretty tough to actually make episodes! We hosted the bookstore's first official Zoom event last night with Danny Caine, owner of Raven bookstore in Lawrence Kansas, and this episode is the recording from that live Zoom event!

When a company's workers are literally dying on the job, when their business model relies on preying on local businesses and even their own vendors, when their CEO is literally the richest person in the world while their workers make low wages with impossible quotas... wouldn't you want to resist?

Danny Caine, owner of Raven Book Store in Lawrence, Kansas has been an outspoken critic of the seemingly unstoppable Goliath of the bookselling world: Amazon. In this book, he lays out the case for shifting our personal money and civic investment away from global corporate behemoths and to small, local, independent businesses. Well-researched and lively, his tale covers the history of big box stores, the big political drama of delivery, and the perils of warehouse work. He shows how Amazon's ruthless discount strategies mean authors, publishers, and even Amazon themselves can lose money on every book sold. And he spells out a clear path to resistance, in a world where consumers are struggling to get by. In-depth research is interspersed with charming personal anecdotes from bookstore life, making this a readable, fascinating, essential book for the 2020s.

Pick up a copy of the book at www.kingsbookstore.ca

Bookings is back during the pandemic! Paul is virtually joined by Peter Counter to talk about all things horrific and his new book Be Scared of Everything: Horror Essays. They talk about specific horror books, films, and video games along with larger discussions on the nature of horror itself.

Peter Counter is a prolific television and video game critic who writes about culture and technology in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Counter started his writing career as a playwright, graduating from York University’s Theatre Studies program in 2010, with a specialization in collective creation. His essay “Saint Tornado-Kick” was published in the 2019 Eos Award-winning anthology Empty the Pews. Peter writes about horror on his website www.everythingisscary.com. You can also find him every Friday night on Instagram where he hosts a regular segment, “Friday Night Fright Club,” in which he leads an audience through a choose-your-own-adventure live event.

Please be advised this episode contains a content warning for discussions of trauma, violence, PTSD, and suicide.

Order your copy of Peter's book from the King's Co-op Bookstore here: https://tinyurl.com/PeterCounter

Paul is joined by Amy Shira Teitel, a spaceflight historian, author, and public speaker who, much like her subjects, is one of the few academically trained young women in her field. Amy came to talk about her new book Fighting for Space: Two Pilots and Their Historic Battle for Female Spaceflight.

Amy has written for more than two dozen websites including the BBC and Time Magazine online, earned a Group Achievement Award from NASA as part of the New Horizons Mission to Pluto team, and appears frequently as an expert interviewee on a number of TV shows and documentaries. She also maintains her blog, The Vintage Space, and its companion YouTube channel.

Video version of event here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhUPCAlaKQ0

We hosted the Halifax Launch of Desmond Cole's The Skin We're In & he is joined by poet, professor, and activist El Jones, anti-racism activist Dr. Lynn Jones, and Fatouma Abdi who challenged Prime Minster Justin Trudeau to stop the deportation of her brother Abdoul Abdi.

A bracing, provocative, and perspective-shifting book from one of Canada's most celebrated and uncompromising writers, Desmond Cole. The Skin We're In will spark a national conversation, influence policy, and inspire activists.

In his 2015 cover story for Toronto Life magazine, Desmond Cole exposed the racist actions of the Toronto police force, detailing the dozens of times he had been stopped and interrogated under the controversial practice of carding. The story quickly came to national prominence, shaking the country to its core and catapulting its author into the public sphere. Cole used his newfound profile to draw insistent, unyielding attention to the injustices faced by Black Canadians on a daily basis.

Both Cole’s activism and journalism find vibrant expression in his first book, The Skin We’re In. Puncturing the bubble of Canadian smugness and naive assumptions of a post-racial nation, Cole chronicles just one year—2017—in the struggle against racism in this country. It was a year that saw calls for tighter borders when Black refugees braved frigid temperatures to cross into Manitoba from the States, Indigenous land and water protectors resisting the celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, police across the country rallying around an officer accused of murder, and more.

The year also witnessed the profound personal and professional ramifications of Desmond Cole’s unwavering determination to combat injustice. In April, Cole disrupted a Toronto police board meeting by calling for the destruction of all data collected through carding. Following the protest, Cole, a columnist with the Toronto Star, was summoned to a meeting with the paper’s opinions editor and informed that his activism violated company policy. Rather than limit his efforts defending Black lives, Cole chose to sever his relationship with the publication. Then in July, at another police board meeting, Cole challenged the board to respond to accusations of a police cover-up in the brutal beating of Dafonte Miller by an off-duty police officer and his brother. When Cole refused to leave the meeting until the question was publicly addressed, he was arrested. The image of Cole walking out of the meeting, handcuffed and flanked by officers, fortified the distrust between the city’s Black community and its police force.

Month-by-month, Cole creates a comprehensive picture of entrenched, systemic inequality. Urgent, controversial, and unsparingly honest, The Skin We’re In is destined to become a vital text for anti-racist and social justice movements in Canada, as well as a potent antidote to the all-too-present complacency of many white Canadians.

Andrea Miller stops by the bookstore and talks with Paul about her new book Awakening My Heart: Essays and Interviews on the Buddhist Life. They talk about who the Buddha was, the nature of suffering, and discuss some of the things she learned from talking with Pema Chödrön, Thich Nhat Hahn, and of course Tina Turner.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop

Paul talks with Dr. Leslie Kern about Feminist City: A Field Guide.

Feminist City: A Field Guide combines memoir, feminist theory, pop culture, and geography to expose what is hidden in plain sight: the social inequalities built right into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. Focusing on gendered experiences of the city, the books grapples with the challenge of claiming urban space amongst barriers designed to keep women “in their place.” From the geography of rape culture to the politics of snow removal, the city is an ongoing site of gendered struggle. Yet the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping new social relations based around care and justice.

Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out a feminist intersectional approach to urban histories and pathways towards different urban futures. Feminist questions about safety and fear, paid and unpaid work, and rights and representation prompt us to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and open space to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop

Paul and Bart stick to the facts while talking about The Truth About Facts, Barts abcedarian poetry collection released from Invisible Publishing.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop

Philip Moscovitch stops by the podcast to talk about all things fermented. Adventures in Bubbles and Brine explores various methods of fermenting foods and introduces Nova Scotian practitioners from enthusiastic amateurs to professional producers. Paul and Phil dish over specific recipes, talk about fermenting practices, and discuss some of the supposed health benefits that come from enjoying fermented foods.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop

Paul sits down with Carol Bishop-Gwyn, author of Art and Rivalry: The Marriage of Mary and Christopher Pratt. They discuss the shared lives of Canada's most famous artist couple and their complicated relationship along with some of the more general difficulties often found in artist couples.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop

CW: Strong language.

Celebrating the publication of This Is Where I Get Off, the debut poetry collection by Kirby, owner/publisher of Toronto's knife | fork | book. Kirby is joined by local poets Alice Burdick, Annick MacAskill, Nolan Natasha, and Bart Vautour, and is hosted by Sam Sternberg.

ABOUT THE POETS

KIRBY’s earlier chapbooks include Simple Enough, Cock & Soul, Bob’s boy, The world is fucked and sometimes beautiful, and SHE'S HAVING A DORIS DAY (knife | fork | book, 2017). They appear in Matrix Magazine, Dusie, Canthius, Carousel, Burning House, The Rusty Toque (Pushcart Nominee) and can be heard on bandcamp. A collection of essays, Poetry Is Queer, from Kirby’s ongoing class/workshop is forthcoming, along with their new chapbook, She Ascended Into Heaven (Anstruther Press, 2020). Their full-length debut, THIS IS WHERE I GET OFF is out now from Permanent Sleep Press. Kirby is the owner/publisher of knife | fork | book, Toronto.

ALICE BURDICK is the author of four full-length poetry collections, Simple Master, Flutter, Holler, and Book of Short Sentences. Deportment, a book of selected poems, came out in November 2018 from Wilfrid Laurier University Press. Her work has also appeared in many chapbooks, broadsides, magazines, journals, and anthologies. She has been a judge for various awards, including the bpNichol Chapbook Award and the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize. She also visits high school English classes as a “Poet In Your Class” through Poetry in Voice/les Voix de la Poésie. She co-owns an independent bookstore in Lunenburg called Lexicon Books.

ANNICK MACASKILL's debut No Meeting Without Body (Gaspereau Press, 2018) was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J. M. Abraham Poetry Award. Her poems have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada and abroad, with recent publications in Best Canadian Poetry 2019, This Magazine, Prism, The Stinging Fly, The Puritan, and Arc. Her second collection will be published by Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2020. She lives and writes in K'jipuktuk/Halifax.

NOLAN NATASHA is a queer and trans writer from Toronto who lives and writes in Nova Scotia. His poems have appeared in The Puritan, The Stinging Fly, Event, Grain, Prairie Fire, The Fiddlehead and Plenitude. He has been a finalist for the CBC Poetry Prize, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Geist postcard contest, Room Magazine‘s poetry contest, and was the runner-up for the Thomas Morton fiction prize. His debut collection I Can Hear You, Can You Hear Me? will be published by Invisible this fall.

BART VAUTOUR is a writer, editor, and teacher. He is editor of the Throwback Series of books for Invisible Publishing and co-editor of a series of texts about Canada and the Spanish Civil War. He lives in K’jipuktuk/Halifax with his partner, daughter, and Marley the dog.

Bookings is recorded and produced by Paul MacKay for the King’s Co-op Bookstore in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Check out the bookstore at www.kingsbookstore.ca or support us through joining our audiobook program at www.libro.fm/kingscoop