The sun is shining, the clocks have jumped ahead and it kind of sort of smells like Spring out there!

Feels like it’s time for some Spring Readings! Please join us on March 29 at 5:00pm at the Anansi Book Shop, 128 Sterling Road. We’re so happy to introduce you to 4 new books to add to your shelves and the talented writers who penned them. This month, we welcome J.R. McConvey, Jess Taylor, Hannah Brown and Nur Abdi! There will be refreshments and a raffle. PWYC ($5-$10 suggestion).

J.R. McConvey is a writer and producer working in Toronto, Ontario. His stories have been shortlisted for the Journey Prize, the Bristol Short Story Prize, and the Matrix Lit Pop award, and appeared in the Malahat Review, Joyland, EVENT, The Puritan, The New Quarterly and other publications. He won the 2016 Jack Hodgins Founders’ Award for Fiction. Different Beasts is his first book and was published by Goose Lane in 2019.
Jess Taylor is a Toronto writer and poet. Her second collection, Just Pervs, was released by Book*hug in Canada in September 2019. Recently, a short story from that collection, “Two Sex Addicts Fall in Love”, was long-listed for The Journey Prize and included in The Journey Prize Anthology 30. The title story from her first collection, Pauls (BookThug, 2015), “Paul,” received the 2013 Gold Fiction National Magazine Award. Jess believes that collaboration and helping other writers is an important part of her writing practice and continues to organize events in the community. She is currently working on a novel, Play, and a continuation of her life poem, Never Stop.
Born in Hastings County, Hannah Brown currently lives in the Beach neighborhood of Toronto. She is a prize-winning screenwriter with two degrees in film from York University. After a happy sojourn teaching English and film at the college and collegiate levels, she recently returned to writing full-time, and has had her work published in several literary magazines. “The Happiness” was (parenthetical) magazine’s 2016 Journey Prize entry and her short story in Superstition Review #15, “On Any Windy Day” is recommended by Emily Wilson, along with the Broadway hit, Hamilton, as a fine companion work to Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey. Brown has been invited to read at the Leeds International Festival in May of this year from her debut novel, Look After Her, published by Inanna Publications
Nur Abdi grew up in the territory now known as Somaliland. In the 1980s, when a civil war was raging in Somalia, he sought refuge in Canada and became a citizen in 1994. Opposing the repressive government ruling Somalia at the time, Abdi wrote articles in newspapers and magazines. He lives in Toronto. Published by Mawenzi House The Somali Camel Boy is his first novel.