53 pp; $5.95, paper

“This play is about very modest people, with modest desires, who seem to know that contentment arises from gratitude and a sense of one’s identity, reinforced by memory and companionship.”
– Canadian Literature, #116, Spring 1988

“It is refreshing to read a play that, while showing the physical frailties of old age, emphasizes the humanity of the old.”
– BC Library Association Reviews

It is rare for working-class women to be given a voice in literature; Helen Potrebenko has long had the reputation of giving women this voice. From the waitress in the title story, to a fictitious interview with a not so fictitious author (herself) on CBC’s Morningside, Potrebenko once again makes people the subject, not the object of their own lives. This diverse collection of stories introduces Potrebenko fans and new readers alike to biting social satire with real people and real lives firmly attached.

“A hard hitting social satirist, Potrebenko attacks conventional middle-class assumptions by understanding them from within.” — The Vancouver Sun

“Helen Potrebenko’s collection of short fiction, Hey Waitress and Other Stories, is just plain good reading. Her stories expose us to a medley of ordinary lives; stories of office temps, bank clerks, secretaries, and waitresses are told with honesty, accuracy and warmth.” — Quill and Quire

“… so real and touch that postmodern jargon seems incapable of deconstructing it.” –Canadian Literature

190 pp; 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 , $12.00, paper
ISBN 0-920999-12-3. 1989

Smiling Under Water is a collection of stories about travelling internally into the depths of relationships and into the narrator’s own heart.

“Hollingsworth’s humour is like the sting in a scorpion’s tail; it flashes in a character description or lurks in the final line of a paragraph.” — The Globe and Mail

135 pp, 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 , $12.00, paper
ISBN 0-920999-14-X. 1989

Oker is a Beaver Indian from Peterson Crossing, British Columbia.

“Remember” is a poignant and timely poem about growing up in a residential school, and about how white society is now encouraging her to reclaim her culture:

How can I,
I replied.
You pounded these sinful ways out of me
Remember?

Broadside
Illustration by Russell Teed
Designed by Elaine Littmann
8 1/2 x 14
$5.00
1996

5 1/2 x 8 1/2; 14 pp, saddle-stitched chapbook. 1993
ISBN 0-920999-24-7, $3.50

“As Canada attempts to entrench self government into the constitution, aboriginal people within the work force in and outside the justice system will continue to face resistance within the institutions that serve … this is an acknowledgement of those who do the balancing act between two cultures.”

This essay takes a critical look at white bureaucracies that control services to aboriginal people.

ISBN 0-920999-28-X; $4.50. 1995

“Whether I were testifying at this trial or not, my name would come up over and over again as that woman whose books are seized at the border, and I have no defence against it. And I bitterly resent the attempt to marginalize, trivialize and even criminalize what I have to say because I happen to be a lesbian, I happen to be a novelist, I happen to have bookstores and publishers who are dedicated to producing my work.”

Novelist Jane Rule’s powerful and moving testimony at the Little Sister’s trial is presented in its entirety.

5 1/2 x 8 1/2; 16 pp
saddle-stitched chapbook
ISBN 0-902999-30-1
$4.50
1996

“One does then have to look at another need for knowledge — that knowledge of why things do not get done that seem to be the appropriate, useful, honourable and decent thing to do … the real problem for any community group is to answer the question, what do you do … not about the gathering of knowledge, but rather about questions of structure and power and responsiblity.”

Dr. Ursula Franklin, a Quaker and a feminist, is particularly concerned about the social impact of technology as it affects issues of peace and justice. In this speech, she challenges community organizations working for social change to question whether the information highway is a road which willl really take them where they want to go.

168 pp; $12.95, paper
ISBN 0-920999-0-0
A woman encounters a fag hag, a medieval queen and a seventeenth-century voyageur in an airport lounge…The fall of the Berlin Wall becomes a backdrop for an international lesbian love-triangle. Sexy and funny, these stories move across identities and communities, from Baba’s kitchen and suburban shopping malls to the demi-monde of queer sex and love. Layered with metaphors and lust, this is gutsy, sensual writing juxtaposing lesbian street lore with explorations of feminism, family and cultural location.

“Bociurkiw writes with a sure hand — a hand that is gentle and compassionate as well as swift and sharp. This book feels like panne velvet, lustrous and rippling. Its humour is generous and deep.” –Beth Brant

“In a movement against forgetting, words under the skin of difference spell episodic tales of love and cultural memory. The Woman Who Loved Airports untangles the pleasures (and sometime sadness) of women who defy convention, lesbian and otherwise.” — Janice Williamson

This book was originally published by Press Gang Publishers in 1994, and is now distributed by Lazara Press.

86 pp; 6×9
0-920999-03-4; $14.95

Sparks from the Fire is poetry from the pen of a man who has done many things. Sandy Cameron has been a prospector, a miner, a logger and a teacher in many parts of northern Canada from Yukon to Labrador. In the book are poems about the north, about the land and its people and what Cameron has learned from them. Here are epics that bring to life the cold of the north, a near meeting with a grizzly, a sweat lodge and the lonely cry of the loon.

But there are also poems about the author’s own inheritance as he speaks of his mother, his father, his uncle, the war and how his past colours his understanding of his life and how he moves in the world he cares so deeply about.

Sandy Cameron currently lives in Vancouver, where he volunteers at Carnegie Centre in the Downtown Eastside, a neighbourhood that is constantly the target of sensationalist media stereotyping of poor people. In a sequence of poems set here, Cameron describes the real community and the people who live in the heat of Canada’s third largest city.

“If a culture is to be whole — if a culture is to heal — it is vital to hear the voices of all its citizens. Sandy Cameron is one of those voices. He speaks for the ordinary of us — the miner, the fisher, the street worker — the ones who keep the wheel turning. He speaks for the vital of us, the silent of us. Listen!”
~ Kate Braid

“Sandy Cameron is not only my favourite poet, but the best poet I know. Nobody else speaks both personally and collectively of our common histories, oppressions and resistances, nor do many poets speak so directly and clearly with such a beautiful cadence. Cameron’s poems reveal our caring, wisdom and courage, and they also reveal our carelessness, ruthlessness and crimes against one another. But his voice is ultimately that of grace.”
~ Bud Osborn

9 x 13 broadside
Designed and printed letter press by Glenn Goluska at imprimerie dromadaire
$20.00

Bill Hoffer was both controversial and respected as a dealer in
antiquarian books and Canadian modern first editions.

He was also a good friend to many book people in Canada; poet
Susan Musgrave wrote this poem for Hoffer after visiting him shortly
before his death in September 1997.
226 have been published, 200 of which are for sale.

120 pp; $14.95, paper;
ISBN 0-920999-32-8
Cassette: $8.95

“How old is youth
How young is age
How false is truth
How quiet rage?”

Second Thoughts is Elise Goldsmith’s most recent collection of poetry. Her spare, elliptical verse gives rare insight into the daytime shadows and night-time illuminations of a woman writer in her aging years. Whether writing about Edith Piaf, the Persian Gulf War, or the rewards and difficulties of marriage, Goldsmith is always asking us to look more deeply, and more kindly. Delicate, ironic, and gently humourous, these poems touch the heart with their musings on war, old age, social justice, and the enduring power of love.

The book is also available on cassette, read by the author, who has for many years read for the CNIB.

52 pp; saddle-stitched chapbook; $8.50
ISBN 0-920999-34-4

“They asked me a long time ago to write about you; I tried but the writing was just a flat piece of paper whereas you were still round and filled out and vital and would not flat out to fit on paper. I could not explain in writing the inadequacy of writing. You were walking through the woods, with that nice smile, speaking at a rally, rushing off somewhere with multi briefcases, mulling over the Scrabble board…”

In a series of letters/stories, Potrebenko, a long-time friend of social activist and feminist Maggie Benston, tells Maggie what’s been happening in the world since her death in 1991.

$5.00; ISBN 0-920999-07-7

“Where did we get the power to give rights and take away rights? When did we decide to set aside our time-honoured values and beliefs about the value and integrity of all people? In other words, what are we doing as members of our society supporting such non-democratic behaviour, judgments and attitude? If anything as leaders, we should be confronting this unacceptable way of thinking, loudly and clearly, and we should be busy re-affirming and protecting the rights of all.”

Jack Anawak, Canada’s current Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs, gave an impassioned speech in the Nunavut legislature in 2003 arguing against members who wanted to take sexual orientation out of the new act. His speech (which is available in English and Inuktitut in this booklet) helped to precipitate the signing of Nunavut’s first human rights act and two years later, as the issue of same-sex marriage again hits the media during the current election campaign, his words continue to resonate.

For a CBC story about the booklet, check out their website.

CD $15.99; 20% discount for 10 or more
Proceeds will be donated to the Carnegie Centre Music Program in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Much like a kobzar, Roman Bociurkiw performed across Canada for many years, until finally settling down in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. He passed away in his sleep on July 5, 2002.
This CD brings together the best of Roman’s recorded bandura music from the past fifteen years. It represents the eclectic mix of classical, pop, and traditional Ukrainian songs Roman’s listeners loved.

For more information about Roman Bociurkiw, go to his website.