My News
Do you have book publicity questions?
I’m doing a workshop on book publicity, self-promotion, and marketing. What are your questions?
Let me know in the comments.
Kirby News
Order Softie by KIRBY!
Poetry. Chapbook. 24 pages.
“Fairy knows / Where when to take cover, fuck in the / Shadows. Dance in the night of day.”
To celebrate their appearance at Soft Fest 3 (with the Angie Quick), Kirby put together a chapbook of new writings, Softie, to especially mark the occasion!
knife | fork | book 10th Anniversary Season (2026/27)
Support KFB on Patreon
In the News
Canada’s secret arms trade with Israel, exposed: This hard-hitting report exposes the damning data—hundreds of shipments, hundreds of thousands of bullets—and the Canadian government’s web of lies that has been concealing its role in arming genocide in Gaza.
Read the report (PDF)
Action Items
Letters
Here are some letter templates and contact information if you’d like to contact the PM or your MP’s about Canada’s complicity in genocide.
Contact Info for Current Members of Parliament (Canada)
Reject Carney's Statements- Call for Action Against Forced Starvation - Send A Letter Now!
Anita Anand: anita.anand@international.gc.ca - Tel: 613-995-4014 or 905-338-2008 and Mark Carney, Office of the Prime Minister of Canada, PM@pm.gc.ca, Tel - 613-957-5555
Reunite & Evacuate Gazan Canadians Direct Family Members from Gaza to Canada
Petitions
Donations
Yousef’s Campaign to Study in Canada (a friend of mine is trying to support her friend Yousef in Gaza’s study visa to attend university in Canada).
Thread Bravely: support Gaza families (and earn a cool tee)
Events
August 27, 2025 - Poets for Palestine (Toronto)
What I’m Watching
Mosab Abu Toha talks to Jon Stewart
Broken Promises
A live stream of the Landscapes of Injustice exhibit opening at the Nikkei National Museum on September 26.
The Colorado Experience: Amache
Over 7500 Japanese Americans were interned in the Granada War Relocation Center.
Atomic People
Atomic People explores the human fallout from the atomic bombs used in an act of war.
What I’m Reading
The Dispossession of Japanese Canadians, Landscapes of Injustice
Can you imagine someone taking your home, all of your possessions, and your freedom? In 1942, the Canadian government uprooted 21,460 Japanese Canadians from British Columbia’s coast.
They boarded trains, bringing only what they could carry. Officials promised to protect the rest. Instead, Japanese Canadians were dispossessed: everything was stolen or sold.
Together, researchers and community members have sought to understand this history. Landscapes of Injustice presents our results in four claims.
Update from the Giller Boycott
After nearly two years of pressure from authors and book workers, the Giller Prize has ended its partnership with Scotiabank, and has announced its partnership with the Azrieli Foundation is slated to end in 2026. We will continue to boycott until it is clear the Giller has severed ties with Indigo Books, and all organizations complicit in genocide as sponsors.
I Lost My Job at the Whitney, but the Art Community Lost Much More by Sara Nadal-Melsió in Hyperallergic
It will surprise no one that the cancelled performance of Palestinian mourning was also a call to pay attention to the entangled violences of settler colonialism, anti-Blackness, and Indigenous genocide. The title was borrowed from a line in late Palestinian writer Mahmoud Darwish’s 2002 poem “State of Siege.” and the piece was originally commissioned by Jewish Currents. Palestinian-American artists Fadl Fakhouri, Noel Maghathe, and Fargo Tbakhi planned to interpret a score through gestures to create a global space to mourn and resist the Palestinian genocide by connecting it, across time and space, to other colonial genocides. This bears repeating, because it is truly extraordinary: The Whitney Museum of American Art censored a performance score with texts by Natalie Diaz, Christina Sharpe, and Brandon Shimoda. Think about this for a minute.
rob mclennan writes about Speech Dries Here on the Tongue: Poetry on Environmental Collapse and Mental Health
Sometimes the only way to respond to a crisis is to write through it, providing a clarity of thought and potential action, and this collection, put together as the result of a public call, provides an assemblage of first-person lyric narratives by some two dozen Canadian poets that shake to the roots of mental health and climate concern, providing both observational comfort and clarity to their sharpness.
What I’m Reading on Substack
What I’m Listening To
In July 2010, a woman was on vacation with her boyfriend of six years — they were traveling around Italy in a van. One day, she was looking for a pair of sunglasses in the glove box, and she found a passport. It had her boyfriend’s photo — but a different name.
Lindsey and Jessica are part of a group called Police Spies Out of Lives.
Freedom School Events
Driving in Palestine is a touring exhibition by Rehab Nazzal. Aug 9–30 • Vines Den, 825 E. Hastings St • Unceded Territories • Vancouver.
August 15, 2025 - Freedom School’s Print for Palestine is raising funds to support Palestinian people in Canada who are trying to save their families’ lives, and to support ongoing legal challenges to uphold human rights, which includes Palestinian people. Fri, 15 Aug, 6pm - 9pm PDT - The Vines Den, Vancouver, Canada
August 11, 2025 - Film Screening and Artist Talk with Hehab Nazzal
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