River Street Writing

River Street Writing A ragtime team of creatives celebrating amazing literature from within Canada. 📚✹ Join the party, pals!

09/01/2026

Catch Ian Brown—award-winning author of The Boy in the Moon—on Global News talking about his new book, SEVENTY (Penguin Random House Canada, 2026).

Watch the full interview:🔗

https://tr.ee/xKgrzoKh3m

In SEVENTY, Brown recounts his daily reckoning with the milestone age of seventy. Fearlessly candid, often funny and relentlessly real, Brown asks the terrifying questions we all have about growing old, even when he doesn’t want to know the answers.

As the percentage of the Canadian population over eighty-five will triple in the next twenty-five years, Brown contemplates his mortality and that of his contemporaries for readers of all ages. Growing old—anything after seventy—is a grave challenge, but also enormously liberating: if there is something you want to say or do, now is your chance to say it or do it. “I have to keep taking chances,” Brown reckons. “I don’t want to give in too soon.”

SEVENTY is available wherever books are bought or borrowed.

📖: Ian Brown Penguin Random House Canada

Today is the final day of month, and we are delighted to feature Ron Andrea’s review of Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret T...
09/01/2026

Today is the final day of month, and we are delighted to feature Ron Andrea’s review of Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties by Marie-JosĂ©e Poisson, translated by Flora-Lee Bendit.

The review was published The Historical Fiction Society. đŸȘ¶

“Credit is also due to Flora-Lee Bendit for her translation into clear, idiomatic English. She retains enough French to stretch Anglophone readers without discouraging them.”
—Ron Andrea, The Historical Novel Society

More about Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties:

Past connects to present, mystery combines with romance, and cultures unite in this novel of historical fiction. Accomplished communications professional Lou Ashby travels from Montreal to Paris to find the thread that links her to her French ancestry, unaware of events running parallel to her search. In fact, historian Geoffroy Le Hideux is investigating a mysterious find at the ÉlysĂ©e, the official residence of the president of the French Republic, but also the former home of a woman who had a far-ranging influence on her era. Fate brings Lou and Geoffroy together, and they work with friends and family from both sides of the Atlantic to unlace the secret ties that bind her to one of France’s most famous and infamous historical figures.

♄: Marie-JosĂ©e Poisson Guernica Editions Historical Novel Society NYC

August 31st is International Overdose Awareness Day — a day that “provides an opportunity to reduce stigma, learn the si...
08/31/2026

August 31st is International Overdose Awareness Day — a day that “provides an opportunity to reduce stigma, learn the signs of opioid poisoning, carry naloxone, and take first aid training.”
— Canadian Red Cross/Croix-Rouge

We are spotlighting Middlemen, the highly-anticipated forthcoming novel by Toronto-based critical drug studies scholar Maria Cichosz, who brings her research-based perspective to her stunning fiction.

Maria is also currently writing On Drugs, a forthcoming entry in Biblioasis’s Field Notes series.

To “middle” is to sell drugs to support one’s own habit, but also to linger, to stall, to refuse to decide. Middlemen is a dark, unflinching story about class, distance, addiction, and the blurry line between human and financial relationships. Above all, it is a break-up letter to Toronto, the novel’s meanest character.

—

“Every man, unless he is born decided, has his own conversion story. All men convert, because all men worship, whether they know it or not.”

—from Middlemen by Maria Cichosz, forthcoming with NoN Publishing, October 15, 2026

—

Read the full excerpt:

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/middlemen-excerpt

📖: Maria Cichosz

If we want opportunities for writers and readers to continue existing, we have to support them. Funding for the arts is ...
08/31/2026

If we want opportunities for writers and readers to continue existing, we have to support them. Funding for the arts is precarious.

Junction Reads is a long-running reading series in Toronto that showcases authors from across the country. This season, the organizers have not received the granting support that usually helps sustain them, and they need our help.

If you can, please go to www.junctionreads.ca/donate and contribute. Even a few dollars goes a long way.

Of course, we know that not everyone is able contribute funds. Liking, reposting, and sharing this message is a wonderful way to support fundraising efforts too.

Thank you to Junction Reads all your work uplifting Canadian books and authors. ♄

Toronto book lovers: save this date! On Wednesday, September 30 at 6:30 PM, Elizabeth Urso will be launching her highly-...
08/30/2026

Toronto book lovers: save this date! On Wednesday, September 30 at 6:30 PM, Elizabeth Urso will be launching her highly-anticipated gothic thriller, Hail Mary, at Flying Books on College Street.

Join Elizabeth, who will be in conversation with Ashley Tate, for the riveting start to spooky season reading.

More about Hail Mary (Rising Action Publishing):

Welcome to North Shore Township, where you can never dig a grave too deep, and you can never keep a secret for too long.

Hail Mary tells the story of the discovery of human remains at a woman’s alma mater-a Catholic school for girls where Mary Foreman now teaches-reignites longstanding fears about her family’s funeral business, leading North Shore Township to question (again) if her family bury the dead or the living, too.

Elizabeth Urso is a Canadian author of genre-blending suspense novels. If you enjoy atmospheric settings, haunted people, and unsolved crimes, you’re in the right place. Her debut novel, HAIL MARY, publishes in September 2026 with Rising Action Publishing (distributed by Simon & Schuster).

Elizabeth is a graduate of Laurentian University, the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law, and the Humber School for Writers. Born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, she now lives wherever her partner—an Infantry Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces—is posted, along with their dog Harriet (the Spy).

đŸŠ· đŸ”„ 📖 : Elizabeth Urso Rising Action Publishing

Would you get a look at acclaimed Canadian authors, Darlene Madott (left) and Ed Seaward, pictured in Toronto yesterday ...
08/29/2026

Would you get a look at acclaimed Canadian authors, Darlene Madott (left) and Ed Seaward, pictured in Toronto yesterday at the First Annual Toronto Writing & Publishing Picnic.

Look for their fantastic new books coming out soon!

📖: Closing Ceremonies and Dying Times (interlinked short stories exploring love, heartbreak, friendship, and grief) by Darlene Madott, forthcoming with Guernica Editions, September 1, 2026

📖: London Gothic (a mystery/thriller novel in the tradition of Timothy Findlay’s Southern Ontario gothic) by Ed Seaward, forthcoming October 2, 2026 with Dark Winter Press

Remember, you can pre-order these books to your local library or bookstore. You don’t need to look to find exceptional literary talent. It’s right here at home. ♄

📚: Darlene Madott Ed Seaward Guernica Editions DarkWinter Literary Magazine

Saying you don’t like poetry because you didn’t like what was taught to you in school is like saying you don’t like musi...
08/27/2026

Saying you don’t like poetry because you didn’t like what was taught to you in school is like saying you don’t like music because you didn’t like the DJ’s playlist at your cousin’s hoedown country wedding.

Don’t let somebody else’s taste limit your enjoyment of art. As Canadian novelist, playwright, essayist, children’s book author, and poet Adele Wiseman wrote, “Life is limited to what you’re alive to.”

Like musicians and other artists, poets work across a staggering variety forms and styles. Just because you haven’t enjoyed a small selection based on what you’ve been exposed to so far doesn’t mean there isn’t poetry out there that will expand your world and enrich your life.

Stay curious, friends.

Here are 7ïžâƒŁ rangy and wonderful collections of poetry coming out this fall.

All are available for pre-order into your local independent bookstore or library.

📖: the lake-shaped excuse by Conyer Clayton, forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, October 6, 2026

📖: Missing Mapledown Love Parkette by Chris Chambers, forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, October 6, 2026

📖: My Love is a Durian by Kelly Kaur, University of Calgary Press, October 15, 2026

📖: Ritual, Interrupted by David Ly, forthcoming with Palimpsest Press, September 15, 2026

📖: oceanleaving by Daze Jefferies, forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press, September 1, 2026.

📖: grenoside by Jessica Popeski, forthcoming with Gordon Hill Press, September 2026.

📖: A City Thin as Paper by Chris Pannell, forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, October 6, 2026

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