Spring 2012 Catalogue

QUATTRO BOOKS Home of the Novella TM

S P R I N G 2 0 1 2

Quattro Books presents a borderless, post-national literature, unafraid of breaking the taboos surrounding origin; we are interested in powerful, meaningful writing regardless of its linguistic, cultural or national background, in the process contributing to a community that embodies the multiplicity, excitement, and future directions of contemporary Canada.

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Immigrant Songs:The Poems, Fiction and Letters of Rosario D ’Agostino Collected, Edited and with an Introduction by Antonino Mazza Poetry and Prose | 120 pages | $16.95 Rosario D’Agostino Immigrant Songs is a posthumous collection of the works of Rosario D’Agostino. It includes poems, a story, a chapter of an unfinished novel, and letters. These fragments from a seminal Italo-Canadian writer whose life was cut too short are part of the literary history of the Canadian Immigrant.

A poignant and significant voice from a Canadian literary past that we should know better.

Rosario (Saro) D’Agostino is an important Italo-Canadian writer who was one of the first to write about the immigrant experience as far back as the early 1970’s. His work has influenced many other writers including Gianna Patriarca, Pier Giorgio Di Cicco, Luciano Iacobelli, and Mary di Michele, even though he published little over his lifetime.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-90-9

Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously Mark Frutkin

Literary Essays | 120 pages | $16.95

Colourless Green Ideas Sleep Furiously is a collection of short essays that are pithy, aphoristic, and full of fresh insights and witticisms in the manner of Kafka’s Parables and Paradoxes, Eduardo Galeano’s Book of Embraces, or Pascal’s Pensées. “Mark Frutkin has distilled his meditations on language, reason, myth and mystery into nuggets to tickle you into new ways of thinking.” – Mark Fried, translator of Galeano.

A mind-expanding book to be savoured morsel by morsel; a model of imaginative thinking.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-96-1

Mark Frutkin, who currently lives in Ottawa with his family, is an author by trade with an interest in the geography of the imagination. He has published a slew of poetry and prose, which has appeared in Canada, the USA, England, Russia, Poland, Holland, South Korea, Turkey and India. In 2007, his novel, Fabrizio’s Return, won the Trillium Award for Best Book in Ontario and the Sunburst Award. In 1988, his novel Atmospheres Apollinaire was short-listed for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction as well as the Trillium Award.

Bravo! A Selection of Prose and Poetry by Italian Canadian Writers Caroline Di Giovanni, Editor

Anthology | 150 pages | $16.95

The stories and poems of Bravo! are diverse in style, but converge in an appreciation of the experience of immigration. In a rich display of literary fervour each author expresses his or her own view of life in translation with poignant observation. The influences of both cultures, Italian and Canadian, can be found weaving through the pages of the anthology as authors delve into the challenges they have endured, the perseverance they have relied on and the eventual rewards of their labours.

Di Giovanni illuminates the depths of literary talent in the Italian Canadian community.

Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni grew up in suburban Philadelphia and came to Toronto to study at St. Michael’s College, U of T. After graduate work in Boston, she returned to Canada in 1972, married Alberto Di Giovanni, and has since lived in Toronto as an active participant in the vibrant Italian Canadian community. She has edited two editions of the anthology Italian Canadian Voices (1984 and 2006). Her first book of poetry, Looking at Renaissance Paintings and Other Poems (2008), was published by Quattro Books.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-90-9

Life Without Ken Klonsky

Fiction | 120 pages | $14.95

Life Without portrays a system of justice more intent upon securing convictions than fully examining available evidence. Tricked into confessing and saddled with an incompetent attorney, Joel Ascher is wrongly convicted in the stabbing murder of his pregnant wife, Marsha. He is imprisoned for life without the possibility of parole. His situation is hopeless – he even loses the support of his parents – but he can never quite let go of hope. Life Without reflects Ken Klonsky’s years of first-hand experience with the wrongly convicted and exposes elements of comic absurdity within the justice system.

Ken Klonsky leads readers into the farcical yet terrifying maelstrom of the wrongly convicted.

Ken Klonsky, co-author of Dr. Rubin Carter’s Eye of the Hurricane, is a former Toronto teacher and writer now living in Vancouver. He works as Director of Media Relations, and advocates for prisoners, at Innocence International, the organization conceived by Dr. Carter to help free wrongly convicted prisoners worldwide. Songs of Aging Children, Klonsky’s collection of short stories about troubled youth, was published in 1992, and Taking Steam, a play co-authored with the late Brian Shein, was staged in New York and Toronto in 1983.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-86-2

Romancing the Buzzard Leah Murray

Fiction | 120 pages | $14.95

Like a blazing star, an amazing man falls into the author’s life, sparking an all-encompassing love.

But she is sometimes frightened by how brightly it burns. It is so easy to believe in him. And he believes, too, in his gift – in his communication with angels. His beliefs also venture into curses, and persecution by churches, and eventually in the evil spirits he thinks he is seeing. Astral attackers are trying to kill him, he says. He claims they feed off the deviance, the ugliness, of her soul. Finally, in his mind, she has been replaced by a duplicate, and by then her only chance for survival is escape.

In an intoxicating narrative mix of poetry, prose, and court testimony, the true story of the author’s journey from love to terror unfolds as her husband’s mind unravels.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-92-3

Leah Murray was born in Chilliwack, British Columbia. With a father in the military, she, her mother and three younger brothers, travelled to postings across Canada, Europe and the USA. She settled down long enough to attend Queen’s University, where she earned a BA in English Language and Literature. Long interested in poetry, it wasn’t until she took a creative writing course taught by Kingston writer Carolyn Smart that her love for writing was ignited. Her work has since been published in a number of Canadian literary magazines.

The Lebanese Dishwasher Sonia Saikaley

Fiction | 120 pages | $14.95

Amir Radi hates washing dishes. When he left Beirut, with a tightly grasped suitcase, he hadn’t expected he’d end up at a Middle-Eastern restaurant with old cooks and dirty dishes. Amir knows his immigrant dream has somehow drowned in foamy dishwater. But one night, he meets Rami and begins to feel less isolated, more hopeful, and closer to overcoming a tragic time in his childhood, something he had tried to leave in Beirut. Set in Montreal and Lebanon, The Lebanese Dishwasher tells the story of one man’s struggle with his past and self-acceptance while burdened with culture and obligation.

Salvaging the immigrant dream can sometimes take an unusual and unexpected sexual detour.

Sonia Saikaley found the solitude to write when teaching English in Japan and she now hones her craft in Ottawa, surrounded by her large Lebanese family. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in Still Point Arts Quarterly, Things Japanese: A Collection of Short Stories, Maple Tree Literary Supplement, and the anthology Lavandería - A Mixed Load of Women, Wash, and Word. She is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers. The Lebanese Dishwasher is her first novella and co-winner of the 2012 Ken Klonsky novella contest.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-82-4

Joanne: The Last Days of a Modern Marriage Marian Engel

Classic Fiction | 120 pages | $14.95

Set in Toronto in the early 1970’s when women’s empowerment was on the rise, Joanne tells of self-realization and self-sufficiency after eighteen years of a gradually deteriorating marriage. Joanne is being treated like an old boot, and this story, written in her diary, delves into the heat of emotions and all the usual problems of lawyers, division of property, disposal of the house, finding a job, handling the overbearing mother-in-law, and the unusual kidnapping of her children. This crisis precipitates a chain of events which lead to the discovery that a happy life is not only possible, but sometimes easier, without a husband.

Written before Bear. Marian Engel is at her best with her sensitive and insightful depiction of a woman in crisis.

Marian Engel (1933–1985) published her first novel, No Clouds of Glory, in 1968. Engel’s Bear, a tale of erotic love between a librarian and a bear, won the Governor General’s Literary award in 1976. Joanne: The Last Days of a Modern Marriage was originally commissioned in 1973 as a radionovel by CBC for the program This Country in the Morning and was later adapted to print.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-72-5

Nevermore: A Book of Hours David Day

Non-Fiction | 150 pages | $20.00

Nevermore is a modern bestiary and a book of remembrance, a distillation of thirty years of research and meditation by author and poet David Day, an acknowledged authority on the extinction of species. In its conception and approach, Nevermore is unlike any other natural history. It is laden with a combined sense of wonder and savagery in its vivid descriptions of first encounters with, and last glimpses of, long forgotten species. It is beautifully illustrated by four distinguished wildlife artists, and unfolds as a requiem to vanished species.

The creatures of Nevermore are as mythical as dragons and unicorns and can only now be found in our imagination.

David Day’s landmark book on animal extinction, The Doomsday Book of Animals, was selected in 1981 as the “Book of the Year” by Time Magazine. Day subsequently published four books emanating from his environmental concerns including The Encyclopedia of Vanished Species (1989) and Noah’s Choice (1990). He has also written nine illustrated books of animal stories and poems for children: his Emperor’s Panda was the runner-up for both the Governor General’s Award and the National Library Award.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-68-8

A Certain Grace Binnie Brennan

Short Stories | 140 pages | $16.95

In the tradition of short story writers Alice Munro and Carol Shields, Binnie Brennan examines the minutiae of ordinary life. During a tipsy night out escaping the frustrations of daily routines, two middle-aged school teachers try their luck at scoring a joint. A long-haul trucker drives an injured butterfly to its breeding ground in Florida, giving them both a much-needed migration. And while struggling with the death of her ex-husband, a single mother questions her place in her family’s lives. A Certain Grace is richly told in spare prose and woven with vignettes of a much-loved grandfather’s life.

Written with the same delicacy and lyricism as her award-winning novella, Harbour View, A Certain Grace further exposes Brennan’s knack for the perfect detailing of fleeting moments that opens the spectrum of emotions.

Binnie Brennan’s short stories have appeared in a number of Canadian and American literary journals. Her bestselling novella, Harbour View, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award, longlisted for the ReLit Award, and was co-winner of the 2009 Ken Klonsky Novella Contest.

Binnie is a graduate of Queen’s University and the Humber School for Writers, where she was mentored by M.G. Vassanji and Alistair MacLeod. Born in Toronto, Binnie lives in Halifax, where she is a violist with Symphony Nova Scotia.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-84-8

Contre Dieu | Against God Patrick Senécal

Translated Fiction | 120 pages | $14.95

Translated from the French Contre Dieu, Against God is the gripping, dark tale of a man searching for answers. What happens in the mind of a man when, all of a sudden, he loses all reason for living? When everything in his life collapses around him and he is left with nothing, wondering why fate has been so scornfully unremitting. What stops a man from becoming monstrous when morality is no longer an issue? Those are the questions facing the central character of Against God.

Against God is a one sentence novella from one of the most beloved and read writers in Quebec, whose narrative impales the reader to the page.

Patrick Senécal was born in 1967 in Drummondville, Quebec. He began writing in high school and self-published his short fiction while there. In 1994 he published his first novel, 5150 rue des Ormes, and he has since published dozens of novels, thick and dark, many winning prizes and several becoming films. Patrick published his first novella, Contre Dieu, in 2010, and now Contre Dieu has come to the Anglophone masses with a masterful translation.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-78-7

One False Move Tim Conley

Poetry | 100 pages | $14.95

One False Move is Tim Conley’s debut collection of poetry. As it tightropes along meaning in language, our understandings of, and relationships with, one another, and even our continued survival, it balances elegance with clumsiness, and disenchantment with unrepentant feeling. It is a book for the disenchanted, discombobulated and dissenting, for those who do not believe in wrong numbers, for those who render schematic diagrams on their ballots, for anyone stranded anywhere and for those who long to be stranded, for anyone who thinks that there are not just two sides to the question because questions do not have sides, for those who laugh and are lonely and still laugh because they can’t help it.

One False Move is a book about precariousness. Or at least it very nearly is.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-76-3

Tim Conley is the author of two collections of short fiction entitled Whatever Happens (2006) and Nothing Could Be Further (2011). He was also co-editor of the poetry anthology Burning City. In the time that he isn’t writing he teaches English and Comparative Literature at Brock University.

Where the Terror Lies Chantel Lavoie

Poetry | 100 pages | $14.95

This collection offers five answers to the question its title implies: within us, in wild things, in change over time, in teething, and in being left behind. Beginning in the prairies and moving both in time and direction, the poems navigate the terrors in the territories of love, faith, birth and death. The poet embraces folktales and children’s stories, the Bible and the weather, humanity’s murky past and its murkier future. Chantel Lavoie voices the fears we cherish, as well as the pain we seek, in mythologies near and far from home.

Where the Terror Lies speaks to how we discover our fears even as we seek to cover them up, and in doing so asks questions about whether terror tells the truth.

Chantel Lavoie’s work has appeared in such journals as Books in Canada, Arc, and Contemporary Verse 2. She grew up on a grain farm in Saskatchewan, and has since lived in Guatemala (briefly), Ottawa, Toronto, and now Kingston, Ontario, where she lives with her two sons. She is an assistant professor in the English department at the Royal Military College of Canada.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-74-9

Something Small To Carry Home Isa Milman

Poetry | 100 pages | $14.95 Something Small To Carry Home is an homage to the dead and the living, a family history, a celebration of life’s special occasions and a meditation on poetry itself, its solace and significance through the poets who’ve nurtured and inspired the author. Isa Milman’s poetry has previously appeared in Canadian literary magazines such as The Malahat Review, Other Voices, and Arc, and in anthologies by Frog Hollow and Leaf Press.

A book of poetic remembering, mourning, and praise as exquisitely crafted as it is moving.

ISBN # 978-1-926802-94-7

Isa Milman is a poet and visual artist who lives in Victoria, BC. Born a displaced person in Germany in 1949, she grew up in the United States and came to Canada in 1975. She’s a graduate of Tufts University, and holds a Masters of Rehabilitation Science from McGill, where she taught for a decade. Her chapbook, Seven Fat Years, was published by Frog Hollow Press in 2002. Each of her two previous books has won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for poetry.

BACKLIST QUATTRO FICTION The Ballad of Martin B.

by Michael Mirolla ISBN # 9781926802534 Mahler’s Lament

by Deborah Kirshner ISBN # 9781926802619 Surrender

by Peter Learn ISBN # 9781926802510 Constance, Across

by Richard Cumyn ISBN # 9781926802596 In the Mind’s Eye

by Barbara Ponomareff ISBN # 9781926802497 Tobacco Wars

by Paul Seesequasis ISBN # 9781926802121 Gaze

by Keith Cadieux ISBN # 9781926802107 The Sea

by Amela Marin ISBN # 9781926802091

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The Panic Button

by Koom Kankesan ISBN # 9781926802305 $16.95 Grace

by Vanessa Smith ISBN # 9781926802268 $16.95 Break Me

by Tom Reynolds ISBN # 9781926802329 $16.95 Shrinking Violets

by Heidi Greco ISBN # 9781926802367 $16.95 Real Gone

by Jim Christy ISBN # 9781926802015 $16.95 The Adventures of Micah Mushmelon

by Michael Wex ISBN # 9781926802628 $16.95 Retina Green

by Reinhard Filter ISBN # 9781926802114 $16.95 A Gardener on the Moon

by Carole Giangrande ISBN # 9781926802053 $16.95

Good Evening, Central Laundromat

by Jason Heroux ISBN # 9781926802046 $16.95 Of All the Ways To Die

by Brenda Niskala ISBN # 9780981018669 $16.95 The Cousin

by John Calabro ISBN # 9780981018638 $16.95 Harbour View

by Binnie Brennan ISBN # 9780981018645 $16.95 The Extraordinary Event of Pia H.

by Nicola Vulpe ISBN # 9780981018607 $18.95 A Pleasant Vertigo

by Egidio Coccimiglio ISBN # 9780981018652 $14.95 Wit in Love

by Sky Gilbert ISBN # 9780978280666 $16.95 Room Tone

by Gale Zoë Garnet ISBN # 9780978280611 $16.95

QUATTRO POETRY Without Blue

by Chris D’Iorio ISBN # 9781926802558 When the Earth

by Lisa Young ISBN # 9781926802633 jumping in the asylum

by Patrick Friesen ISBN # 9781926802572 And, tell, tulip, the summer

by Allan Graubard ISBN # 9781926802640 Rough Wilderness

by Rosemary Aubert ISBN # 9781926802411 Saugeen

by Rob Rolfe ISBN # 9781926802398 Book of Disorders

by Luciano Iacobelli ISBN # 9781926802282 Strong Bread

by Giovanna Riccio ISBN # 9781926802343

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Interstellar

by Allan Briesmaster ISBN # 9780978280604 $16.95 hold the note

by Domenico Capilongo ISBN # 9781926802084 $16.95 syrinx and systole

by Matthew Remski ISBN # 9781926802077 $16.95 Sew Him Up

by Beatriz Hausner ISBN # 9781926802022 $16.95 Psychic Geographies and Other Topics

by Gregory Betts ISBN # 9781926802008 $16.95 The Sylvia Hotel Poems

by George Fetherling ISBN # 9780981018690 $15.95 Ten Thousand Miles Between Us

by Rocco de Giacomo ISBN # 9780981018676 $16.95 A River at Night

by Paul Zemokhol ISBN # 9780981018614 $16.95

FOURFRONT EDITIONS Rain Dance Art by Viktor Mitic ISBN # 9781926802664

$39.95

Behind the Whip: Dominatrix Art Photography by Maria Coletsis ISBN 9781926802381 $40.00

This Is How I Love You

by Barbara Landry ISBN # 9780978280680 $15.95 Looking at Renaissance Paintings

by Caroline Morgan Di Giovanni ISBN # 9780978280680 $15.95 The Hawk

by Rob Rolfe ISBN # 9780978280673 $15.95 My Etruscan Face

by Gianna Patriarca ISBN # 9780978280635 $16.95 Garden Variety Edited by Lily Contento ISBN # 9780978280642 $16.95 MIC CHECK Edited by David Silverberg ISBN # 9780978280659 $16.95 Evidence

by Samuel Andreyev ISBN # 9780981018683 $16.95

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Quattro Staff

Editorial Board

Advisory Board

Allan Briesmaster: allan@quattrobooks.ca Beatriz Hausner: beatriz@quattrobooks.ca John Calabro: john@quattrobooks.ca Luciano Iacobelli: luciano@quattrobooks.ca Maddy Curry: maddy@quattrobooks.ca

Allan Briesmaster Beatriz Hausner John Calabro Luciano Iacobelli Russell Smith A. F. Moritz

Heather Cadsby Howard Engel Margaret Christakos Claudio Gaudio