River Street Writing

04/25/2026

Five of the amazing poetry titles we’ve been celebrating are featured on the Ms. Magazine Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026 list!

Thank you to Ms. Magazine, Karla J. Strand and Violet Pandya for spotlighting Canadian published poets and poetry.

Books featured:

💫: Here’s to Letting Go by Blaine Thornton, forthcoming with Latitude 46 Publishing, May 21, 2026

🦢: A Little Feral by Maria Giesbrecht, forthcoming with Write Bloody Publishing, May 8, 2026

🖤: Wound Archive by Anna Veprinska forthcoming with Gordon Hill / The Porcupines Quill, April 2026

🌸: We Gladly Feast on Those Who Would Subdue Us by Roxanna Bennett, forthcoming with Gordon Hill / The Porcupines Quill, April 2026

✨: Descântec For My Split Tongue by Adriana Oniță forthcoming with Palimpsest Press, May 15, 2026

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04/24/2026

“For me, a poem is ‘finished’ when it flows so smoothly that lines will randomly pop into my consciousness like catchy song lyrics. I know it’s time to step away from the page when everytime I make a change, no matter how minor, I revert back to the original.”
—Karolina Bednarek, author of Consumed (Dark Winter Press, 2026).

Read the full interview at our blog:

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/4/22/power-q-and-a-with-karolina-bednarek

✨Karolina is hosting a free “Night Market” at Dog Eared Cafe in Paris, Ontario on Saturday May 23rd 7-10pm featuring Consumed along with three other local poetry collections. Join her if you can!

About Consumed (DarkWinter Press, 2026):

Consumed invites readers to explore what we take in—and what takes hold of us. Through four progressive sections: Nature, Nurture, Distractions, and Peace, Karolina reflects on the intersections of observation, emotion, and curiosity. Each poem is paired with an original photograph, offering an additional lens to interpret the everyday. Guided by experimentation and a spirit of wonder, this collection encourages quiet reflection on life’s tenderness.

Karolina Bednarek is an emerging writer from Southern Ontario. Her poetry appears in Tower Poetry Society, DarkWinter Literary Magazine, and Dog Eared Poetry Vol: 1. She’s a regular reader at Poetry Nights hosted by Dog-Eared Cafe. Karolina also writes book and film reviews, as well as opinion pieces, connecting with literature and art through social media. You can find her writing on Instagram : .queen.reviews and Substack: Read_my_thoughts. This spring, DarkWinter Press is publishing her first poetry collection Consumed.

💛: .queen.reviews

04/22/2026

It’s , and we are delighted to share this review of Liz Johnston’s powerful novel, The Fall-Down Effect (Book*hug Press).

Thank you to The BC Review of Books and to Trish Bowering for the thoughtful and incisive review.

“For those of us who call British Columbia home, it’s hard not to be awed by the breathtaking beauty of the forest, from the rainforest on the coast to the more temperate forests of the southeastern region. The forest is both a precious ecosystem and a resource, and so becomes a flashpoint for the inherent tension between environmentalism and commercialization.

This conflict is at the heart of Revelstoke, BC-raised Torontonian Liz Johnston’s book The Fall-Down Effect. Against this natural background, the debut novelist also explores how a thriving family is a unique ecosystem with its own fragility and resilience.“

Read the full review:

https://thebcreview.ca/2026/04/21/2899-bowering-johnston/

🌲: .d.s.johnston

04/22/2026

ICYMI: CBC producer Daphné Santos-Vieira spotlighted Jaime Forsythe’s beautiful long poem, Yield on The Next Chapter with the excellent Antonio Michael Downing.

Yield is an unforgettable long poem that lingers in the postpartum void, exploring the porous boundary between land and sea, and being lost and found. It was just released with Hamilton, Ontario’s award-winning press, Wolsak & Wynn.

Thank you to Daphne for celebrating Canadian published poetry!

More about Daphne:

Daphné Santos-Vieira is a content editor for CBC Books and the coordinator of the CBC Literary Prizes.

More about Jaime:

Jaime Forsythe’s previous books are I Heard Something(Anvil Press, 2018) and Sympathy Loophole (Mansfield Press, 2012). Her poetry and fiction have appeared in Arc, EVENT, Grain, The Malahat Review, Geist, The Ampersand Review and This Magazine, among others. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph and currently lives close to where she grew up in Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki.

04/21/2026

“Joudrey’s writing is polished and finely tuned, with pared-down prose that gives the narrative clinical precision. The novel’s power lies in the questions it raises: about identity, memory, and what remains when everything has been forgotten. A clever, suspenseful take on memory and identity.”
-Publishers Weekly, BookLife

What a phenomenal advanced review of M.C. Joudrey’s forthcoming novel, Marmalade Parade (Guernica Editions, May 1, 2026).

Remember, you can pre-order the book now from wherever books are bought or borrowed! 🍊

Want to request a review copy? Drop us a DM.

More about Marmalade Parade:

Marmalade Parade is a mesmerizing short novel that explores themes connected to different forms of memory. Memory as construct that is both built, destroyed, and altered daily, its reliability fleeting.

A first-person narrator arrives at a house set high in the mountains in an undisclosed, remote location. He is confused, disoriented, and guarded. The home is owned by a man who is suffering from an illness affecting his memory. Both must navigate their combined gaps in memory to determine why they’ve been brought together.

M. C. JOUDREY is an award winning Canadian writer, artist and designer. His second novel Of Violence and Cliché was released 2013, followed by his collection of short storiesCharleswood Road: Stories in 2014 (nominated for a 2015 JohnHirsch Manitoba Book Award). His novel Fanonymous was released in 2019 and won the Independent Publisher gold medal for best work of fiction for Western Canada. It was also nominated for two Manitoba Book Awards, including the Margaret Laurence Award for best work of fiction. M. C. Joudrey has been a member of the submission selection committee for the CBC Short Fiction Prize and a jury member for the Manitoba Book Awards. As a designer, his work has been awarded two Alcuin Design Book Awards and the Manuela Dias Manitoba Book Award for Design. He is also a bookbinder and a number of his works are held in galleries internationally.

04/20/2026

Vancouver poet Mallory Tater was on Global News BC to talk about her unguarded and stunning new poetry release Lockers are for Bearcats Only (Palimpsest Press, 2026).

This is poetry that traces the complexities of grief, the importance of destigmatizing dialogue around su***de, and the beauty and complicated core of girlhood friendships while improving our collective understanding of mental health awareness and su***de prevention in an approachable, concrete, and empathetic way.

About Mallory Tater:

Mallory Tater is the author of This Will Be Good: Poems (Book*Hug Press, 2018), The Birth Yard: A Novel (HarperCollins, 2020), and Soft Tissue: A Novel (forthcoming, ECW Press, 2027). She was the publisher of Rahila’s Ghost Press, a now-retired chapbook press. Mallory currently lives in Vancouver, where she teaches at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing. Lockers are for Bearcats Only is her second poetry collection.

04/20/2026

Check out the review of The Fall Down Effect by Liz Johnston (Book*hug Press, 2026).

The Monday issue has dropped!
In this issue:

The Fall-Down Effect by Liz Johnston (Fiction)

The Usual Desire to Kill by Camilla Barnes (Fiction)

Good Guys by Sharon Bala (Fiction)

Hooked by Asako Yuzuki (Fiction)

Rum Diary: Canada, Alcoholism, and the Colonial Sweep (Non-Fiction)

Interview with Naomi MacKinnon, an Independent Bookstore Owner
https://www.theseaboardreview.ca/p/the-seaboard-review-of-books-monday-april-20-2026

04/20/2026

💫 Coming soon! 💫 The Library Cosmic: Stories by Benjamin Berman Ghan, forthcoming with Wolsak & Wynn, May 26, 2026

DM us to request a review copy—just in time for National Short Story Month in May!

A fascinating collection of stories to follow up on Ghan’s debut novel The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits. From golems minding libraries that span millennia, to ghosts pursuing each other across deserts, to robots piecing together texts from lovers in a far future world, these are epic stories, sure to delight readers of looking for magic, wonder and compelling story telling.

Ben Berman Ghan is the author of The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Buckrider Books 2024), as well as Behold the Dead (Anstruther Press 2025), Visitation Seeds (845 Press 2020) and What We See in the Smoke (Crowsnest Books 2019). His work has won the Foreword INDIES Silver Medal for Science Fiction, was longlisted for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic and has been a semifinalistfor the Small Spec Book Award for Science Fiction. He is a PhD Candidate in English and creative writing at the University of Calgary, where he lives with his partner and two cats.

✨: .stained_wreck