Things have been quiet on the surface as 2021 gets underway here at New Star, but behind the scenes we’ve been wrapped up in the final touches of four new books ready to hit shelves this spring.

But we’ve taken some time to come up for air and take stock of what’s happening topside and put together a classic review of reviews.

In the months following our much anticipated virtual launch of The Smallest Objective by Sharon Kirsch – the highlights of which you can watch here – buzz for the memoir continued, with Mike Cohen at The Suburban describing the book as “an intricate memoir about the treasures that the past can bring in the face of a difficult present.”

In an interview for his 12 or 20 series, Rob McLennan speaks with Kirsch on the creative process, literary influences, and the role of the author. Most recently, Sharon was interviewed by Lisa Hasleton, in which Sharon shares an excerpt from the book and notes the necessity of an undisturbed ‘bubble’ in which to write – something we’ve perhaps all had an abundance of.

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As we anticipate the forthcoming Soft Zipper by George Bowering, Brian Fawcett ruminates on Bowering’s recent Writing and Reading.

“Writing and Reading was like having a conversation with George at a sort-of-formal dinner party. His voice moves at an easy pace in the mostly short essays, and is seldom far from playfulness. But along with that there is also a deeper, ruminative quality to the book that signals that a fine mind is thinking over serious subjects.”

Fawcett also dives into Bowering’s previous Pinboy (2012, Cormorant) and No One (2018, ECW). You can read the full piece over on dooneyscafe.com.

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We also caught wind of a fascinating article from Diane Selkirk over on BBC Travel which highlights the history of the Gulf Islands and its earliest, often forgotten, Hawaiian settlers. Selkirk speaks with Jean Barman, author of Maria Mahoi of the Islands, originally published in 2004 as the 13th book in the Transmontaus series, with an updated second edition released in 2017. The article touches on some of Mahoi’s life as Selkirk recalls visiting Russell Island where the family had lived from the early 1900’s.

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Jean Walton’s Mudflat Dreaming, number 23 in our Transmontanus series, has recently been reviewed by Paloma Pacheco in The Tyee. Pacheco says Mudflat Dreaming is unlike any other book she’s read, here’s a highlight:
“Mudflat Dreaming flows like an oral history, as if Walton had sat her readers down around a campfire and opened up a treasure trove of memories, photos and keepsakes that lead her down all manner of absorbing trails in telling her tale.”

On the horizon we have Michael Tregebov’s fourth novel, The Renter. Followed shortly by Sean McCammon’s debut Outside as well as The Wig-Maker, a joint poetry title from Janet Gallant and Sharon Thesen. Rounding out out Spring 2021 list is, of course, Soft Zipper from the inimitable George Bowering.
Covers and previews of these titles are coming very soon.
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Here at New Star Books we’re excited to announce the second and final event in the Spring We Never Had Book Launch Series, the hungrily anticipated launch for Hungry Slingshots by Louis Cabri, LIVE! at The Zoom on Sunday, November 15.

Special Guest Roger Farr will be opening for Louis Cabri with a set from his new production After Villon.  Your host/MC for this Sunday matinee book launch / reading is Clint Burnham.

Hungry Slingshots, Louis Cabri’s first book since Posh Lust in 2014, presents fifteen new works anchored by the eponymic series riffing on a poetic form all the rage during an interesting (17th C.) moment in French history.  Ranging in form but not intent, Hungry Slingshots is redolent with the sights, sounds, and tastes of the present spectacle.

Roger Farr is the author of long-ago 2019’s I Am a City Still But Soon I Shan’t Be and IKMQ.  His work-in-progress After Villon translates also interesting 15th century French person François Villon.

The Zoom show gets under way at 3 pm EST, noon PDT.  Please send us a note at info@newstarbooks.com for the Zoom link.

The May release of Sharon Kirsch‘s family memoir The Smallest Objective, set in Montreal, was unavoidably quiet, what with the more immediate concerns demanding our attention back then.  Originally planned for the spring, our Montreal launch was postponed indefinitely.

But time Zooms along, and virtuality has taken on a whole new reality.  So we are pleased at last to be able to announce the Montreal launch for The Smallest Objective on Tuesday November 24th at 8:00 pm EDT.  Please join host Jeanette Kelly and author Sharon Kirsch on Zoom for a talk about her book, and the family and civic history that comes to the surface with her mother’s old age and passing.

The Smallest Objective begins with a family mystery, a story of a treasure the author’s late father was said to have “buried” decades before under the master bedroom floor.  The treasure hunt takes unanticipated turns, and brings to the surface a whole bunch of clues to, and glimpses of, a history only partially comprehended at the time.   Not readily visible structures come into focus: the lingering effects of an unknown aunt’s early death; the ambiguities of a black sheep uncle’s life; the latent anti-semitism that altered the course of her grandfather’s, and his family’s, path.  These secrets unfold as the author deals with her mother’s advancing dementia.

Jeanette Kelly is an arts journalist and host of Cinq à Six, Quebec’s Saturday afternoon culture show on CBC Radio One.   Montreal’s iconic Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore will have a (virtual) table where copies of Sharon’s book can be acquired.

Overshadowed by events as it might have been, The Smallest Objective has certainly not gone unnoticed.

Ainslie MacClellan interviewed Sharon for CBC Montreal’s All In a Weekend.  Watch it here.  Over on CTV News Montreal, Sharon was interviewed by Caroline Van Vlaardingen, available to watch here. Rose Marie Whalley interviewed Sharon for CKUT’s Older Women program, broadcast on September 16.  You can listen to it here.

Martin Barry for the Westmount Independent interviewed Sharon Kirsch, and Mike Cohen wrote about The Smallest Objective for The Suburban.  “This new memoir is based on impeccable research, and the prose is equal parts unsentimental, edifying and engaging,” Sharon Chisvin said of it in her review in the Winnipeg Free Press.  Bill Arnott‘s take, in the Miramichi Reader: “In this particularly well-crafted memoir, author Sharon Kirsch shares her experience of exploration, healing and loss. Akin to an intricately detailed slide under a microscope, this suite of stories, in fact, a collection of newly discovered memories, is a familial jigsaw puzzle—a series of mysteries, reassembled by way of meticulous research and the astute observation of a writer in her prime.”

Over on the Internet, Books by Women (“Women Writers, Women’s Books”) ran an excerpt from The Smallest Objective.  It’s been the subject of a podcast on The Book of Life, a popular podcast about Jewish-themed books, hosted by a children’s book librarian in Florida.   Goodreader Andrew, of Toronto, Ontario, gives it all five stars, and has this to say: “A wonderful book … Memory is an important subject of the book, including the failing memories of her parents as they age. Objects, such as scraps of newspaper clippings, ornaments, postcards and seashells are also deployed with great effect, and affect — the things that remain when memory fades.”  And Orcasound featured The Smallest Objective earlier this summer.  Sharon’s book is even on Broadway!

The Smallest Objective was one of five books featured by 49th Shelf for September, World Alzheimer’s Month.  Sharon Kirsch, incidently, is a graduate of the Humber College School for Writers, and her new book is featured in the September 2020 issue of the Humber College Alumni News.

The Smallest Objective is also available in e-book form. You can find it over on Kobo or Kindle!

Some of our loyal readers may have noticed that this space has gone kind of uh quiet since May, and might be wondering why.  (One or two of you have even asked.)

Not to worry, the COVID hasn’t got us, yet, knock on wood.  It’s a much ollder malady than that we’ve been fighting: decaying 1’s and 0’s.  Our current website, the exact one you’re looking at, is fourteen years old, and one week from today, the version of Cuneiform that our site was coded in, will no longer be supported by our website host.

So we’ve been working feverishly to make sure that you still get this site after October 1.

In the meantime, the old, decaying site has been returning alarming error messages with increasing frequency as it approaches its original code’s end-of-life.  So, apart from the basic bibliodata pertaining to each of our current and forthcoming books — which is 100 percent up to date — we’ve kept blog posts to a minimum (and very successfully, we might add).

If you’ve made it this far, you’re probably curious about what HAS been happening with our books, news that hasn’t been making our site.  Here’s a for-instance, our author Sharon Kirsch talking to Ainslie MacLellan about her memoir The Smallest Objective on CBC’s All in a Weekend.  If you’re intrigued by the interview, send us a note at info@NewStarBooks.com to tell us what you thought, and we will send you, absolutely gratis, a copy of Sharon’s book in your preferred format: print, Kindle or ePub.