Call Me Gray by Andrew & Bells Larsen, illustrated by Tallulah Fontaine
(Kids Can Press, 2025)
This beautifully illustrated picture book follows a parent and child as they build an ice rink, an activity rooted in tradition and quiet. This year however, something feels different with our main protagonist as they ask their father, “Do you ever feel mixed up about who you are?” In Call Me Gray, Canadian authors Andrew and Bells Larsen tell a heartwarming story about identity, change, and the unwavering love between a father and their queer child. It’s an example of how we can love and protect all of the trans kids in our lives. — Kaitlin Toste
Super Castle Fun Park by Daniel Zomparelli
(Arsenal Pulp Press, Apr. 2026)
Super Castle Fun Park by Vancouver author Daniel Zomparelli is an astounding mix of grief, queer comedy and digital-age fable. Zomparelli’s prose is mystical and hilarious as he presents a version of life that is bleak but intrinsically human. The novel delivers an ironic critique of our simple pleasures — theme parks, faceless companions, mobile games — suggesting these are the source of our greatest loneliness. The only genuine transformation any character experiences comes from human connection; through being truly known and challenged. Moving between the physical and the digital, Zomparelli’s novel introduces us to a bizarre cast of characters that are seeking the answers to life’s big questions. A book of satiric wit and genuine emotional resonance, Super Castle Fun Park ultimately argues that connection, not distraction, is what keeps the dead at bay. — Gitanjali Bal
The Way Disabled People Love Each Other by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha
(Arsenal Pulp Press, Mar. 2026)
Employing language and details that are hyperspecific — the cost of antibiotics, the size of a Costco bourbon or the colour of a cane — Canadian-American writer Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s latest poetry collection mourns and laughs and breaks worlds. One of my favourite poems, “Four months in four days,” unfolds like a palindrome, or like a magic trick, each line an offering of new and old tenderness. For as much as this collection is furious and devastating, it has made me laugh by pulling the rug out from under my feet. The depths of grief here are unimaginable, but so too is the love. What love. — Yvette Sin
Persona by Aoife Josie Clements
(LittlePuss Press, Feb. 2026)
The stunning horror debut by Vancouver-based author and musician Aoife Josie Clements is so disturbingly lifelike that it reads like literary fiction. In work and love and housing, the line between the real and the speculative is thin. Is the company you work for bad enough that the story of your life changes genre, or just evil in the usual way? How real can a childhood part of yourself be before she gets her own apartment? Persona’s two voices, both young trans women unreliably narrating their struggle for meaning and connection, are uncomfortably familiar and easy to love. When you want to look away, keep reading; let this book make you unhappy. — Saul Freedman-Lawson