Literary Collections

In 2004, settler scholar Emanuelle Dufour became aware of a “silence” with regard to residential schools and ongoing colonialism, systemic racism, inadequate curricular material in schools, and sought to find answers by meeting with community members, Elders, spokespeople, students, professionals, families, and many others.

Dufour is an artist at heart, and the product of her findings became a “carnet de rencontres,” a notebook of coming-togethers, in which her fifty+ interlocutors are rendered “speaking,” quite literally, on and within the pages, while advocating for the importance of Indigenous cultural security within the education system. Their presence is undeniable, and their voices carry the narrative.

Originally published as C'est le Québec qui est né dans mon pays!, this translation creates a bridge, from one colonial language to another, that will enable conversations across and beyond spaces and languages. It aims to shed light on colonial mainstream narratives in Canada and, more precisely, in Québec, by considering the politics of linguistic hegemony and the double exiguity that Indigenous peoples often find themselves in, calling for a better understanding of how the province’s specific colonial history has had a profound and continued impact on its 11 Indigenous Nations. This book’s unusual (academically-speaking) form as a “carnet”, or diary, becomes an anthology of statements of witnessing, which, coupled with the illustrative narrative, bears its decolonizing mission. Quebec Was Born in My Country! ultimately is about foregrounding common and collective experiences, with the crucial goal of furthering education.

Erasing Frankenstein showcases a creative exchange between federally incarcerated women and members of the prison-education think tank Walls to Bridges Collective at the Grand Valley Institution for Women (GVI) in Kitchener, Ontario, and graduate and undergraduate students from the University of New Brunswick (UNB) in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Working collaboratively by long-distance mail, the artists and contributors made the first-ever poetic adaptation of Frankenstein, turning it into a book-length erasure poem. An erasure poem is an example of "found art," a poem created by piggybacking on an existing text; the words that are not part of the poem are erased or blacked out, and what is left is the poem. This book presents the original erasure poem alongside reflections from participants on the experience.

Iuri Samarin and Baroness Rahden were intelligent and cultured people who moved easily in nineteenth-century Russian and European society and whose comments on leading personalities, religious, political, and social questions still have relevance for today. The Correspondence of Iu Samarin and Baroness Rahden introduces the reader to a side of Russian intellectual life that deserves more attention than it has generally received, if only because it opens the door to a broader view of Russian society.
Iuri Samarin was one of the most prominent and effective Slavophils, exerting a powerful influence on the development of Russian society in his lifetime as a political reformer and publicist. His work deserves attention, and this correspondence reveals much about the quality of his learning, his personality and character, and his philosophy of politics and religion.

Universal in scope, yet focusing on recognizable Canadian places, this collection of essays connects individuals’ love of nature to larger social issues, to cultural activities, and to sustainable technology. Subjects include activism in Cape Breton, eco-feminism, Native perspectives on the history of humans’ relationship with the natural world, the inconsistency of humankind’s affinity with nature alongside its capacity to destroy, and scientific and traditional accounts of evolution and how they can come together for the welfare of Earth’s ecology. These essays encourage us to break down the power-based divisions of centre versus marginal politics, to talk with our perceived enemies in environmental wars, to consider activism as a personal commitment, and to resist the construction of a “post-natural” world.
Using a combination of personal memoirs and formal essays, Every Grain of Sand seeks to involve readers in the extraordinary places they inhabit—and usually take for granted—and will appeal to both the general reader and to students in humanities, social sciences, and environmental studies. It is unique for its presentation of entirely Canadian perspectives on ecology and environmental issues.

The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology recovers a new regional archive of “black prairie” literature, and includes writing that ranges from work by nineteenth-century black fur traders and pioneers, all of it published here for the first time, to contemporary writing of the twenty-first century. 

This anthology establishes a new black prairie literary tradition and transforms inherited understandings of what prairie literature looks and sounds like. It collects varied and unique work by writers who were both conscious and unconscious of themselves as black writers or as “prairie” people. Their letters, recipes, oral literature, autobiographies, rap, and poetry- provide vivid glimpses into the reality of their lived experiences and give meaning to them.


The book includes introductory notes for each writer in non-specialist language, and notes to assist readers in their engagement with the literature. This archive and its supporting text offer new scholarly and pedagogical possibilities by expanding the nation’s and the region’s archives. They enrich our understanding of black Canada by bringing to light the prairies' black histories, cultures, and presences.