Our Halifax location, also known as Bookmark II, is situated on the corner of Spring Garden Rd and South Park St in beautiful downtown Halifax. We’re directly across from the Public Gardens, and within walking distance to a number of fantastic stores, restaurants and cafes.
Make sure to stop in and say hello to Mike and the rest of our staff, and if you’re from out of town, send us a note or your special orders online!
Hope to see you soon!
Don McKay has lived in several areas of Canada – southwestern Ontario, New Brunswick, Vancouver Island and, currently, Newfoundland – and his books have won the Griffin Prize, as well as two Governor Generals’ Awards. A selection of his poems translated into Italian was recently published. His most recent books of prose are The Muskwa Assemblage (2009) and The Shell of the Tortoise (2011), both published by Gaspereau Press. His new collection of poetry from McClelland & Stewart, Paradoxides, is forthcoming this spring. For the first full week of March 2012, McKay is the short-term Writer in Residence at Saint Mary’s University.
“McKay’s poetry is always a re-envisioning of things, a finding of the wilderness inherent in them – the birch groves in the lawn chairs – connecting them to their original selves, or selves they might dream of being…. Like a basketball player aiming at the hoop from very far off, McKay stretches language and imagery right to its limits; sometime it’s as if he’s aiming at the hoop from way outside the court – in another city, perhaps…” – Barbara Colebrook Peace
Jacob McArthur Mooney’s debut book of poetry was the much acclaimed The New Layman’s Almanac. A poetry commentator and critic, Mooney writes the popular Vox Populism blog, and was recently in residence in the Pierre Berton House in the Yukon. A Nova Scotian now living in Toronto, he is a graduate of the MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph-Humber. In the spring of 2011 McClelland & Stewart published his second book of poetry, Folk, which deals with local and distant effects of the 1998 Swissair crash off Halifax, and with neighborhoods around Toronto’s Pearson International Airport.
“This is Canada speaking, loud, clear, quirky and unashamed to be itself.” – The Globe & Mail
Time: Wednesday, March 7th @ 7p
Location: Room 101, The Atrium, 923 Robie St., Saint Mary’s University
Admission: Free
Lydia Redmond and her granddaughter, Sarah Redmond, two Black Loyalist women are evacuees during the American Revolution. Their journey out of slavery in South Carolina takes them to Birchtown, Nova Scotia, the first all Black community in North America. Their desperate struggle to build a life in, a cold, wretched place filled with injustice and poverty is endless. Lydia tries to fit the left-over pieces of her slave past back together before she dies by delving into long held secrets that threaten her safety and life. Her granddaughter, Sarah, must adjust to her new life while overcoming many difficulties to establish herself as a free person on her journey into womanhood. Happiness is a rare commodity, but possible, as Sarah struggles to bring meaning and joy to her life.
Time: Thursday, February 23nd @ 12p
Location: Spring Garden Rd. Memorial Public Library
Admission: Free
A first for the Halifax Regional Municipality – a publication cataloguing three centuries of the history of theregion through its public art: 114 public monuments, cenotaphs, sculptures and statuary illustrated with over 280 full colour photographs, many detailed histories, with nine maps and directions depicting the location of each . . . plus six walking tours of the historic downtown regions. A must for all citizens and visitors. If you listen these pieces will speak to you.
Time: Wednesday, February 22nd @ 12p
Location: Spring Garden Rd. Memorial Public Library
Admission: Free
Tammy Armstrong, originally from St. Stephen, New Brunswick, has travelled to more than twenty countries, lived for several years in Vancouver – where she completed an MFA at UBC – and is now based in Fredericton. This year she is in the U.S. on a Fulbright Scholarship, studying for a PhD in Animal Studies at Georgia State University. She has published two novels (Pye-Dogs and Translations: Airstream) and four collections of poems – Bogman’s Music (a Governor General’s Award nominee), Unravel, Take Us Quietly and, most recently, The Scare in the Crown (Goose Lane, 2010).”Armstrong’s writing has impressed me for its daring syntax, imaginative language, offbeat imagery. Hers are poems of sensual impact” – Todd Swift
Nick Thran has published two collections of poetry, Every Inadequate Name (nominated for the Gerald Lampert Award) and Earworm (Nightwood, 2011). After growing up in western Canada, Spain, and California, he lived in Toronto and in Brooklyn, New York. He has been a Goldwater Teaching Fellow and MFA candidate at New York University, and this year is living in Fredericton, where his wife, poet Sue Sinclair, is the current writer-in-residence at UNB. ”Side-stepping the more likely subjects, Thran’s poems freewheel through a rangy lyricscape of our urban, cultural life. Sprawling, irrepressible, Earworm darts with wild control and energy, like a skateboard in a car park, taking the reader along on its engaging ride.” – David O’Meara
Time: Thursday, February 16th @ 7pm
Location: SMU Atrium 101
Admission: Free
There’s a killer on the premises of Christy Burke’s pub in Dublin, according to graffiti spray-painted on the wall. Father Brennan Burke, Christy’s grandson, is asked to investigate the vandalism. Brennan has been tending bar a bit himself and is not all that keen on probing into the lives of his clientele. But he has little choice once a body is found and the property investigation becomes a murder inquiry. The pub’s current owner, issuing orders from his cell in Mountjoy Prison, wants the problem solved, and for reasons of his own does not want the police anywhere near the building. Brennan enlists the help of his pal Monty Collins and fellow priest Michael O’Flaherty, and the three of them uncover dark secrets in the lives of the pub regulars, secrets some might kill for. But there is something else going on. For Brennan, the murder investigation is overshadowed by even more ominous events in Belfast, events that may be coming home to roost in Christy Burke’s. Sinister figures are spotted in and around the pub, people are being followed in the street, and Brennan comes to possess explosive information that he cannot reveal to security forces or to anyone else. Brennan is compelled to take a hard look at Irish history and his family’s place in it, and Michael’s sunny optimism about his ancestral home is about to be sorely tested, when an act of violence in Northern Ireland sends out shock waves that reverberate all the way to Dublin.
Time: Wednesday, February 8th @ 7pm
Location: Keshen Goodman Public Library
Admission: Free
