HAMILTON READS
Here’s a holiday round-up of great local books to help you check off any book lover. Get your holiday shopping list ready!
The festive season is upon us, and there’s no better gift than a local read for the book lover in your life. Bonus points if you support one of the city’s independent booksellers. Here are just a few titles to get you inspired!
Smoke
By Nicola Winstanley
You might be familiar with Nicola Winstanley’s award-winning picture books for children, which include How to Give Your Cat a Bath and A Bedtime Yarn. Most recently, it’s her foray into short fiction that’s capturing readers’ attention. Moving between Winstanley’s previous home in New Zealand and Canada, Smoke is a series of connected stories that consider themes of intergenerational trauma, fate, and compassion through multiple points of view. Published by Hamilton’s Wolsak and Wynn, it’s a fascinating exploration of resilient and complex characters.
Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding our Future Through the Wampum Covenant
By Daniel Coleman
Also published by Wolsak and Wynn, Grandfather of the Treaties: Finding our Future Through the Wampum Covenant is the most recent book by Daniel Coleman, an English professor at McMaster University who studies and
writes about Canadian literature, whiteness, the literatures of Indigeneity
and diaspora, and the cultural politics of reading. Named among CBC Books' Canadian nonfiction to check out this fall, Grandfather of the Treaties introduces readers to the founding Wampum covenants that the earliest European settlers made with the Haudenosaunee nation, showing how
returning to these covenants today could heal our society. Coleman's
previous book, Yardwork: A Biography of an Urban Place, was shortlisted
for the RBC Taylor Prize.
Poppy & Pa
By Kristyn Jewell
Dundas author (and doctor) Kristyn Jewell is a lifelong reader who, at 39,
wrote her first story. The result is Poppy & Pa, a charming book for young people and grown-ups alike, inspired by her own father and his legacy. It
tells the story of Poppy, who can’t wait for summer to arrive so she can
travel to Muskoka to visit her beloved Pa. Together, they share stories, food, and adventures, making countless memories along the way. Told in
memorable prose, Poppy & Pa is complemented by the whimsical
illustrations of Chelsea Peters.
Mosaic through East-Facing Glass: A Collection of Personal Essays
By Marg Heidebrecht
How did your life change when the pandemic uprooted us all? That’s the question we’ll be asking ourselves for years, maybe decades, to come. In early 2020, Dundas’s Marg Heidebrecht had just released her book In the Shade: Friendship, Loss & the Bruce Trail, a meditation on walking and grief. Continuing her routine
of writing 90 minutes a day anchored her during the pandemic. Four years later, she’s back with a new book of personal essays, Mosaic Through East-Facing
Glass, a stunning collection of insights and humour intended as a legacy for
family and friends. A retired educator, Heidebrecht shows readers she’s
still got a lot to teach, offering timeless wisdom for an ever-changing world.
Zebra Meridian
By Geoffrey W. Cole
Over the years, Oakville’s Geoffrey W. Cole has worked as a rock and roll singer,
a Segway tour leader in Rome, a grizzly bear caretaker, a Lego robotics instructor, and a municipal engineer. As if that isn’t already the resumé of the most interesting person in the room, he’s also added author to the list. His collection
of short stories Zebra Meridian was released this fall by local publisher Stelliform Press, which publishes novellas, novels, short story collections, and works of creative non-fiction that address our world’s most pressing problems, including climate change and ecological destruction. The 13 stories in Zebra Meridian
bring together elements of fiction, fantasy, and horror, encouraging readers to delight in how humans find connection in a disconnected world.
Scandal at the Alphorn Factory
By Gary Barwin
Scandal at the Alphorn Factory: New and Selected Short Fiction, 2024–1984
is the latest book by writer, composer, and multidisciplinary artist Gary Barwin
whose writing career has spanned — you guessed it — 40 years. Bringing
together new and uncollected stories, it harnesses Barwin’s unique brand of playfulness, humour and originality, serving as the perfect gift for anyone who
is looking for a crash course in one of Hamilton’s most innovative storytellers.
