RACHEL ROSE The Octopus Has Three Hearts - Longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize

AMI SANDS BRODOFF The Sleep of Apples

WITH THE CIRCLE OF FRIENDS FOR WOMEN GROUP

Acclaimed poet Rachel Rose makes her fiction debut in a collection featuring an intriguing cast of outcasts who find solace in the animal world. These are clever, engaging stories with a compelling link: the characters, generally living on the fringes of society, all have better relationships with animals than with other humans. They showcase Rose’s trademark combination of whimsy and irony in exploring the universal elements of human condition, from parenthood to sexuality, identity to fidelity.

RACHEL ROSE is the author of four collections of poetry and a memoir, The Dog Lover Unit: Lessons in Courage from the World’s K9, which was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis award for best non-fiction crime book. She is also the Poet Laureate Emerita of Vancouver.

AMI SANDS BRODOFF is the award-winning author of three novels and two volumes of stories. Her latest novel, In Many Waters, grapples with our worldwide refugee crisis. The White Space Between, about a mother and daughter struggling with the impact of the Holocaust, won the Canadian Jewish Book Award for Fiction (The Vine Award). Ami lives in Montreal.

In this masterful new collection Ami Sands Brodoff writes with passion and consummate skill about nine closely-linked characters who walk the tightrope of survival. Set in a gritty Montreal neighborhood that’s been slowly gentrifying, these fierce, original and bracingly honest stories speak to the author’s Jewish heritage, her experience as a cancer survivor and loving mother to a gay son and a transgender son.