Anvil Press: 77 books

Shortlisted for a Northern Lit Award Winner of the 38th Annual 3-Day Novel Writing Contest Chalk is a tender story about love and loss, following a broken-hearted thirty-something cubicle worker, free-falling from every ledge of his life. Post-break-up and blue, he feels like nothing...

Homelessness is not new to Vancouver. There have been homeless people in Vancouver since it was founded in 1886. As in other major North American cities, until the late '70s and early '80s homelessness in Vancouver followed the economic logic of boom and bust capitalism. However, since the...

“Reading the Riot Act” is a phrase that has entered the popular lexicon, meaning the action taken by authority figures when they perceive that their “charges” are getting out of hand. The act itself is a seldom-used piece of legislation actually designed to prevent a riot from taking place....

Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards) In Garage Criticism Peter Babiak eviscerates and deflates some of the cultural sacred cows of our time. From Fifty Shades of Grey (“Hot for Teacher: What Fifty Shades of Grey Taught Me About Salacious Grammar, Sexy Women and the Scandalous Conflation...

Finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award Dwight Eliot was born on a baseball diamond in the small town of Seep during a dugout-clearing brawl between his hometown team, The Seep Selects, and a visiting team of barnstorming Cuban All-Stars. Decades later, Dwight returns to town only...

Valery the Great is a crackling, electric collection of dark humour that follows the bizarre and beautiful lives of its protagonists. Sometimes sweet and gentle, sometimes sharply sarcastic, the unique narrative voices in this collection are always powerfully touching. Praise for Valery the...

The Devil You Know is the follow-up volume to Farrell’s critically acclaimed debut collection, Sugar Bush & Other Stories. These stories deal with sex, love, work, birth, and death in alternately moving, shocking, funny, and at times devastating ways. Whether these characters are facing...

The Skeleton Dance takes place on the mean, formerly clean streets of Toronto before the century ticked over into the new millennium. This graphic novel artfully depicts the human casualties and debris piled up around the downtown bank towers. Wiped out in the rush of the thousand-eyed crowd hurrying...

Longlisted for a ReLit Award (2007) Alcuin Society Citation for Excellence in Design The stories in Sugar Bush & Other Stories deal with gender relations, love, and sex in a frank way. Most of the pieces feature female protagonists who navigate their young adult years in some questionable...

Finalist, Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize (BC Book Prizes) Finalist, City of Vancouver Book Prize Long listed for CBC Canada Reads 2015 The Door Is Open is a compassionate, reflective, and informative memoir about three-and-a-half years spent volunteering at a skid row drop-in...

Drinkin’ rye and water with Grandma. Guns in False Creek. Frat boy homies from the North Delta ghetto. Samuel L. Jackson. Phantom Lord & Metallica. A kid who’s got the hots for his mom… Hunh? That’s right. It’s all here in this collection of immediate, lean and visceral...

Montaigne Medal Finalist (Eric Hoffer Awards). Winner of a gold IPPY. The stories in Cretacea and Other Stories from the Badlands mostly take place in hot weather, where dust and sweat envelop everyone and everything. A teenage boy spends a summer with his hard-livin’, hard-drinkin’, messed...

Shortlisted for the City of Hamilton book award At times comic, tender, dark, and arrestingly bizarre, Gary Barwin’s latest fiction collection marvels at the strangeness, charm, and beauty that is contemporary life in the quantum world. Ranging from short story to postcard fiction,...

“Literary escapades enlighten and entertain in this boundary-pushing collection.” (Foreword Reviews) “The maestro is at it again” (The Vancouver Sun) Ten Women is a new collection of short fiction from one of Canada’s preeminent writers. Each of these stories offers us a portrait...