This page covers literary works (fiction, drama, and poetry) about or by authors from British Columbia. This is by no means an extensive list, but rather a starting point for your research. Looking for a title or author not listed on this page - try using the search box below. If you cannot find a specific title, you can either request for UFV Library borrow it from another library or that the UFV Library purchases the item (see the corresponding links below).
Genius of Place by Here is a small selection of BC authors (who either were born, lived a significant amount of time, or died in BC) in the UFV Library collections:
|
|
111 West Coast Literary Portraits by 
Apples Under the Bed: Recollections and Recipes from B.C. Writers and Artists by 
The Essentials by 
The Voyage That Never Ends: Malcolm Lowry's Fiction by 
Constance Lindsay Skinner by 
"From the bestselling author of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility, an exhilarating novel set at the glittering intersection of two seemingly disparate events--the exposure of a massive criminal enterprise and the mysterious disappearance of a woman from a ship at sea Vincent is a bartender at the Hotel Caiette, a five-star glass-and-cedar palace on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island... The Glass Hotel moves between the ship, the skyscrapers of Manhattan and the wilderness of remote British Columbia, painting a breathtaking picture of greed and guilt, fantasy and delusion, art and the ghosts of our pasts." - Summary
"A brilliantly inventive new novel about loss, growing up, and our relationship with things, by the Booker Prize-finalist author of A Tale for the Time Being One year after the death of his beloved musician father, thirteen-year-old Benny Oh begins to hear voices... With its blend of sympathetic characters, riveting plot, and vibrant engagement with everything from jazz, to climate change, to our attachment to material possessions, The Book of Form and Emptiness is classic Ruth Ozeki--bold, wise, poignant, playful, humane and heartbreaking." - Summary
"Tragedy strikes a Native community when the Hill family's handsome seventeen-year-old son, Jimmy, mysteriously vanishes at sea. Left behind to cope during the search-and-rescue effort is his sister, Lisamarie, a wayward teenager with a dark secret. She sets off alone in search of Jimmy through the Douglas Channel and heads for Monkey Beach--a shore famed for its sasquatch sightings. Infused by turns with darkness and humour, Monkey Beach is a spellbinding voyage into the long, cool shadows of B.C.'s Coast Mountains, blending teen culture, Haisla lore, nature spirits and human tenderness into a multi-layered story of loss and redemption." - Summary
"A bold new story that bridges Native and white cultures across a bend in a river where the salmon run... The novel hovers beautifully in the fluid boundary between past and present, between the ordinary world and the world of the spirit, all disordered by the human and environmental crises that have knit the white and Native worlds together in love, and hate, and tragedy for 150 years." - Summary
"Taken from their families when they are very small and sent to a remote, church-run residential school, Kenny, Lucy, Clara, Howie and Maisie are barely out of childhood when they are finally released after years of detention. Alone and without any skills, support or families, the teens find their way to the seedy and foreign world of Downtown Eastside Vancouver, where they cling together, striving to find a place of safety and belonging in a world that doesn't want them. The paths of the five friends cross and crisscross over the decades as they struggle to overcome, or at least forget, the trauma they endured during their years at the Mission... With compassion and insight, Five Little Indians chronicles the desperate quest of these residential school survivors to come to terms with their past and, ultimately, find a way forward." - Summary
"The White Angel is a work of fiction inspired by the cold case of Janet Smith, who, on July 26, 1924, was found dead in her employer's posh Shaughnessy Heights mansion. A dubious investigation led to the even more dubious conclusion that Smith died by suicide. After a public outcry, the case was re-examined and it was decided that Smith was in fact murdered; but no one was ever convicted, though suspects abounded--from an infatuated Chinese houseboy to a drug-smuggling ring, devil-worshippers from the United States, or perhaps even the Prince of Wales. For Vancouver, the killing created a situation analogous to lifting a large flat rock to expose the creatures hiding underneath. An exploration of true crime through a literary lens, The White Angel draws an artful portrait of Vancouver in 1924 in all its opium-hazed, smog-choked, rain-soaked glory--accurate, insightful and darkly droll." - Summary
"Chinatown, Vancouver, of the early 194Os provides the backdrop for this fresh, uplifting, award-winning first novel, told through the reminiscences of the three young children of an immigrant Chinese family." - Summary
"Paul Yee's first novel for adults: an historical account of a Chinese man on a journey to find the mother of his son. For more than thirty years, Paul Yee has written about his Chinese-Canadian heritage in award-winning books for young readers as well as adult non-fiction. Here, in his first work of fiction for adults, he takes us on a harrowing journey into a milestone event of Canadian history: the use of Chinese coolies to help build the Canadian Pacific Railway in British Columbia in hazardous conditions... Boldly frank and steeped in history, A Superior Man paints a vivid portrait of the Chinese-Canadian experience in the 19th century." - Summary
"Stouck and Wilkinson deserve high praise for this anthology, in part because they have permitted the writing to coalesce naturally into a unity, a whole that is more than the sum of its parts. They have selected with admirable subtlety a body of writing that brings the reader a new level of understanding of what animates those who live and write in the 'storm-washed green' ambience of British Columbia. West by Northwest is a marvel." - Globe & Mail
"Islands West offers an exciting cross-section of contemporary story-telling from the BC coast. Some of the stories gathered here are by famous writers like Jack Hodgins, Audrey Thomas, and Alice Munro; but many are by confident new voices, with new angles of vision, and compellingly different stories to tell. Islands West catches this astonishing wave of emerging talent and covers the spectacular waterfront of BC short fiction now." - Amazon.ca
"The South Okanagan Anthology is a collection of short stories and poems by contributors from the Okanagan Valley. The volume commemorates the participants in the National Book Week Festival 1984. Some of the writers are being published for the first time; their exposure through an anthology such as this will certainly be encouraging." - Canadian Book Review Annual Online
"This powerful memoir considers the controversial practice of transracial adoption from the perspective of families that are torn apart and children who are stripped of their culture, all in order to fill evangelical communities' demand for babies. Throughout this most timely tale of race, religion and displacement, Harrison Mooney's wry, evocative prose renders his deeply personal tale of identity accessible and light, giving us a Black coming-of-age narrative set in a world with little love for Black children." - Summary
"If the hurt and grief we carry is a woven blanket, it is time to weave ourselves anew. In the Nłeʔkepmxcín language, spíləx̣m are remembered stories, often shared over tea in the quiet hours between Elders. Rooted within the British Columbia landscape, and with an almost tactile representation of being on the land and water, Spíləx̣m explores resilience, reconnection, and narrative memory through stories." - Summary
"There will soon be no eye-witnesses to the Holocaust. As Tolstoy famously put it, what is to be done? One answer is Out of Hiding, a cross-section of stories collected from one region of the globe —British Columbia, Canada—examining 85 authors and 160 books. Outstanding characters include the heroic whistleblower, Rudolf Vrba, credited by historian Sir Martin Gilbert with saving at least 100,000 lives, as well as Robbie Waisman, likely the only person ever to sneak his way into Nazi prison camps, twice. Discoveries include Dr. Tom Perry’s never-published photos of just-liberated Buchenwald, a little-known Warsaw Ghetto memoir by Stanislav Adler and Jennie Lifschitz, perhaps the only Canadian-born Jew to have survived the camps..."-- Provided by publisher.
" In this revolutionary book, renowned physician Gabor Maté eloquently dissects how in Western countries that pride themselves on their healthcare systems, chronic illness and general ill health are on the rise. Nearly 70 percent of Americans are on at least one prescription drug; more than half take two. In Canada, every fifth person has high blood pressure. In Europe, hypertension is diagnosed in more than 30 percent of the population. And everywhere, adolescent mental illness is on the rise. So what is really "normal" when it comes to health?" - Summary
"An unflinching memoir of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds of sexual assault from a resilient, emerging Indigenous voice. Helen Knott, a highly accomplished Indigenous woman, seems to have it all. But in her memoir, she offers a different perspective. In My Own Moccasins is an unflinching account of addiction, intergenerational trauma, and the wounds brought on by sexual violence. It is also the story of sisterhood, the power of ceremony, the love of family, and the possibility of redemption." - Summary
"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 centre in Vancouver’s downtown eastside. In an area most renowned for its shocking social ills, and the notorious distinction of holding the country‘s “very poorest forward sortation area of all 7,000 postal prefixes,” Bart Campbell dismantles our hard-held notions about poverty, the disenfranchised, substance abuse, and the nature of charity." - Amazon.ca
"Where the Power Is: Indigenous Perspectives on Northwest Coast Art brings together contemporary Indigenous knowledge holders with extraordinary works of historical Northwest Coast art that transcend the category of "art" or "artifact" and embody distinct ways of knowing and being in the world. Dozens of Indigenous artists and community members visited the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia to engage with these objects and learn from the hands of their ancestors." - Summary
"These memoirs offer a compelling account of life in early British Columbia from the 1860s to the first decade of the 20th century. The wife of Judge Eli Harrison, one of the province's foremost lawyers and judges, Mrs. Harrison gives intimate glimpses into daily life in Victoria, Nanaimo and New Westminster, and her visits as a young woman to Granville (as Vancouver was then called) for dances and picnics. Mrs. Harrison describes the interests of a well-educated woman of her time who was fascinated by the growth of British Columbia." - Summary
"In this captivating blend of science and memoir, a health journalist and former cellist explores music as a source of health, resilience, connection, and joy. Music isn’t just background noise or a series of torturous exercises we remember from piano lessons. In the right doses, it can double as a mild antidepressant, painkiller, sleeping pill, memory aid—and enhance athletic performance while supporting healthy aging." - Description
"Befitting someone who "speaks things into being," Christmas extracts from family history, queer lineage, and the political landscape of a racialized life to create a rich, softly defiant collection of poems. Christmas draws a circle around the things she calls "holy": the family line that cannot find its root but survived to fill the skies with radiant flesh; the body, broken and unbroken and broken and new again; the lover lost, the friend lost, and the loss itself; and the hands that hold them all with brilliant, tender care. " - Summary
"Personal, primordial, and pulsing with syncopated language, Tolu Oloruntoba's poetic debut, The Junta of Happenstance, is a compendium of dis-ease. This includes disease in the traditional sense, as informed by the poet's time as a physician, and dis-ease as a primer for family dysfunction, the (im)migrant experience, and urban / corporate anxiety." - Summary
"The poems in Stumbling in the Bloom engage the ever-present enticements and entanglements of beauty on life's, and art's, home ground - in wilderness and garden. But this surprising volume, the finale of John Pass's quartet of poetry books, At Large, takes intriguing side trips on the home-stretch, including a wry excursion to the chiropractor, a fanciful flight from a student driver's parallel parking practice, up an "Everest" in Alberta, and on a singularly moving Canadian journey towards and away from the "ground zero" of the 9/11 tragedy." - Summary
"How She Read is a collection of genre-blurring poems about the representation of Black women, their hearts, minds and bodies, across the Canadian cultural imagination. Drawing from grade-school vocabulary spellers, literature, history, art, media and pop culture, Chantal Gibson's sassy semiotics highlight the depth and duration of the imperialist ideas embedded in everyday things, from storybooks to coloured pencils, from paintings to postage stamps. A mediation on motherhood and daughterhood, belonging, loss and recovery, the collection weaves the voices of Black women, past and present." - Summary
"Lyrical poems about contemporary life, especially focused on West Coast life, Salt Spring Island." - Amazon.ca
"Mona Fertig was born in Vancouver on February 14, 1954 and grew up in Kitsilano. She attended the Vancouver School of Art and was the Education & Special Events Co-ordinator for the Surrey Art Gallery. In 1978, at age 23, she opened the Literary Storefront in Gastown, Vancouver. Its literary salon concept was inspired by Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Co. bookstore in Paris during the 1920s. The Gastown facility hosted readings and housed the first B.C. office of the Writers' Union of Canada (1978-1982)." - ABC Bookworld
"Livesay won the 1944 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry for Day and Night (1944), and in 1947 won the same award for Poems for People (1947). This early recognition of her work culminated in her award of the Royal Society of Canada’s Lorne Pierce Medal in 1947 for distinguished contribution to Canadian literature. Later in her career, she was awarded the Queen’s Canada Medal in 1977 and the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case (for gender equality) in 1984. Livesay was named an officer of the Order of Canada in 1987 and Order of British Columbia in 1992..." - Athabasca University
"From the Kwantlen First Nation village of Squa'lets comes the tale of Th'owxiya, an old and powerful spirit that inhabits a feast dish of tempting, beautiful foods from around the world. But even surrounded by this delicious food, Th'owxiya herself craves only the taste of children. When she catches a hungry mouse named Kw'at'el stealing a piece of cheese from her dish, she threatens to devour Kw'at'el's whole family, unless he can bring Th'owxiya two child spirits. Ignorant but desperate, Kw'at'el sets out on an epic journey to fulfill the spirit's demands." - Description
"Where the Blood Mixes is meant to expose the shadows below the surface of the author's First Nations heritage, and to celebrate its survivors. Though torn down years ago, the memories of their Residential School still live deep inside the hearts of those who spent their childhoods there. For some, like Floyd, the legacy of that trauma has been passed down through families for generations. But what is the greater story, what lies untold beneath Floyd's alcoholism, under the pain and isolation of the play's main character?" - Summary
"Includes works by: George Ryga, Beverly Simons, John Lazarus, Sharon Pollock, John MacLachlan Gray, Peter Anderson and Phil Savath, Sherman Snukal, Morris Panych, Margaret Hollingsworth, Sally Clark, Betty Lambert, Dennis Foon, David Diamond with Hal Blackwater, Lois G. Shannon, and Marie Wilson, Joan MacLeod, Betty Quan, Colin Thomas, and Marie Clements." - Amazon.ca
"This is the story of a Métis soldier fighting for Canada on the Western Front of Europe during World War I. Vancouver 1914: a young Indigenous man named Jonathon Woodrow, desperate to prove himself as a warrior, enlists to fight in the Canadian army. Relying on his experience in hunting and wilderness survival, Private Woodrow quickly becomes one of the most feared trench raiders in the 1st Canadian Division. But as the war stretches on, with no end to the fighting in sight, Woodrow begins to realize that he will never go home again. A 2017 finalist for the Playwright Guild of Canada's prestigious Carol Bolt Award for Playwrights, Redpatch focuses on how First Nations soldiers and communities contributed to Canada's involvement in the First World War." - Summary
"In the British Columbia frontier in 1905, missionary Robert Maclean has an ever-increasing foothold of power and influence. Into the swirling melee of shifting allegiances steps Precious Conroy, Maclean's adopted daughter. Precious is unaware that she was sent away for schooling to avoid the shame and discrimination which would occur should the secret get out that she is part Native. The son of the local chief, himself a product of a mixed marriage, is in love with her but so too is the son of the house. What will happen when, as it must, the secret of her parentage gets out? Determined to walk her own revolutionary path for freedom, Precious's actions trigger in others all the prejudices and hypocrisies of the day. Skinner pulls no punches, and her indictment of these prejudices, both Native and white, religious and secular, while often couched in humour, touches as many raw nerves as ever." - Summary
"Described by Variety as ‘Yukon Gothic,’ Claudia Dey’s acclaimed Trout Stanley is set in northern British Columbia, on the outskirts of a mining town between Misery Junction and Grizzly Alley... Trout Stanley is about three people who confuse codependence for co-operation and afliction for affection. An eccentric, captivating story in which the biggest catch of all is love." - Coach House Books
"Rita Joe is a Native girl who leaves the reservation for the city, only to die on skid row as a victim of white men's violence and paternalistic attitudes towards First Nations peoples. As perhaps the best-known contemporary Canadian play and a poetic drama of enormous theatrical power, The Ecstasy of Rita Joe had a major influence in awakening consciousness to the "Indian problem" both in whites and Natives themselves. Cast of five women and 15 men. With a preface by Chief Dan George. The Ecstasy of Rita Joe premiered November 23, 1967 at the Vancouver Playhouse." - Summary
You can use the following resources to find information on titles and authors from BC. Associations will likely also have news and updates that may feature interviews or prize winners.