It’s Like the Legend is a unique collection of writings from 28 Innu women from Labrador. Woven throughout the memoirs, legends, poetry, essays, speeches and testimonies is an unwavering respect for the sanctity of the land. When NATO began carrying out low-level flight testing over Innu land, Innu women played a significant role in organizing acts of civil disobedience which brought the world’s attention to their plight. Innu women continue to take a leadership role in protecting their land and their traditional way of life; some have been imprisoned for their acts of resistance.

“Bobbi Lee confronts white Canadian society on the ground that it stole from the First Nations of this country. A tough autobiography of an Indian woman’s life from the mud flats of Second Narrows Bridge, Vancouver, to the Toronto of the sixties and seventies, Lee Maracle gives us an important sense of the tough terrain of struggle toward political consciousness which all oppressed peoples undertake. Bobbi Lee is a hopeful work for recovering the possibilities of envisioning a world where we are not beaten down every day.”- Dionne Brand

Beyond Their Years tells the life stories of five Native Canadian women, reconstructed using a variety of historical sources. Each biography is drawn from a different native culture, spread geographically from Saskatchewan to Newfoundland; collectively the stories cover the period from 1656 to 1992. This path breaking book shatters stereotypes by showing the power that native women had in their communities. The images of squaw and Indian princesses can now be replaced by a more realistic view of women diverse in personality and life history. Readers of this book will findthe variety and richness of these women’s lives to be truly absorbing. Beyond Their Years describes the struggles of each woman to preserve and protect her community.

It comes down to this. I believe in each and every Indian woman whose words and pictures lie between the pages of this book.Some hands are comfortable with a typewriter, with a pen. Some hands have only just begun to touch paper and pencil without fear.Our hands are strong. We make baskets, lift heavy machinery, bead earrings, soothe our lovers – female or male – hold our elders. We braid our hair.These hands fight back. We use our fists, our pens, our paints, our cameras. We drive the trucks to the demonstrations, we tie the sashes of our children, dancing for the first time in the circle of the drum. We weave the blankets. We keep us a culture.Our hands live and work in the present, while pulling on the past. It is impossible for us to not do both.- Beth Brant

Thirteen year old Home Girl Gwen Peters has already had more adventures than most people. Orphaned at 11 and trained to be a servant, she travelled by ship to a new life in Canada. Her spunk, sense of humour and the memory of seeing a grand lady of the theatre, Mohawk performer E. Pauline Johnson, have kept her going. It’s a good thing, because there are more challenges ahead. The first one comes after watching two coffins, father and son, lowered into the cold Brantford ground. Soon, Gwen becomes “pilot of the plains” as she and her mistress take the train to a new life in Calgary, Northwest Territories. The year is 1898, and the city is new and growing. It attracts people with fresh visions and hope. But it also attracts those who want to make a quick buck. As Gwen meets people of the land, the Cree and Blackfoot, and a man who helped to build the railway that new Canadians are so proud of, she also meets people who are trying to take this land all for themselves. Good thing Gwen packed her courage in her trunk when she headed west!

“From the Future Bakery to Old Man Dam, Tamai Kobayashi reveals the ordinary and extraordinary lives of Asian-Canadian lesbians and their families with a quiet, intense passion. Kobayashi has a sharp eye for the poetic in the everyday, and for the small resonant truths that gleam amidst the seemingly mundane. Contemplative, gorgeous, and precise, this is a book about how history, personal and global, creates the present and how the present evolves into history.”- Larissa Lai, author of When Fox Is a Thousand

Elizabeth Ruth has gathered the work of 55 of the talented writers who have performed at the reading series “Clit Lit,” now entering its fifth successful year. Clit Lit is the only monthly queer literary series in Canada.With conviction, Ruth says, “Good writing breeds good writing.” Working from this premise, she founded and developed a community-based artistic space where established and emerging writers could meet and learn from each other. Each contributor in this collection is interested in bending or queering the canon in exciting ways that challenge some of our most basic preconceptions about writing, life and love.At Clit Lit writers find inspiration and motivation from each other and are able to showcase their talent in various forms – prose, poetry, spoken word, playwriting, creative non-fiction, storytelling and drag. Bent on Writing offers readers a permanent and lasting record of that work and a how-to guide for establishing their own community-based literary events. This book is more than an anthology; it is a gathering of three-dimensional talent for the two-dimensional page.

A slice of life – lesbian style.First, Keely had a relationship with Darla and then she had one with Carolyn. She seems to have been involved with everyone. And of course there are Beth and Louise.Romance, drama, sex and tragedy all play a part in this engaging work of fiction about a group of lesbians whose lives are intricately intertwined. Popular in style and content, the novel follows these women as they intersect with one another’s lives, sharing happiness, gossip, problems and loss. We see their relationships evolve as they struggle with life, love and aging, coping with their own community and interacting in the larger world. Like the unfolding of real life, the reader is drawn into a complex network of relationships which see the characters dealing with break-ups, lost loves and serious illness. Impossible to put down.

Desire, love, hot sex, cool sex, grieving and thriving asa Jewish dyke – it’s all here in this rich and warm debut collection of short stories. From the flirtatious adventure of Bobby Silverstein to the in yer face politics of Kayla Rosenbaum, In Her Nature beats with the heat-seeking energy of women who grab life by the gut and live it to the max. A delicious slice of life born and lived lesbian.

Jovette Marchessault’s Lesbian Triptych is an anthology of three storeis – “Night Cows,” “A Lesbian Chronicle from Medieval Quebec” and “The Angel Makers” – evoking the best of the new wave of feminist writing in Quebec. Sensuous and fabulous language turns conventional images of women inside out; Marchessault challenges us to remake our patterns of language in a way that explodes the stereotypes of the past and ecstatically explores the contours of a feminist vision for the future. Anglophone readers will find a new magic, new revelations, a new name of women’s experience in the work of this Quebecoise word-spinner.