Book Marks: Short Story Advent Calendar returns in time for Chritsmas

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For 10 years, Hingston and Olsen have been compiling literature and counting down to Christmas.

Michael Hingston will celebrate 10 years of counting the days to Christmas with the release of the incredibly popular Short Story Advent Calendar.

With 250 stories helping literary fans celebrate the holiday season, it’s been a decade of short stories for Hingston. He’s one of the two co-owners of Hingston & Olsen Publishing, the Alberta company that produces the advent calendar.

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“The first year, I was worried it was too weird, that it was pushed too literary at times,” says Hingston. “I underestimated our readers. I didn’t know if they would come with us.”

Those readers did come along for the ride, making it the most popular product in the Hingston & Olsen catalogue and a recurring literary staple; Edmonton continues to be their most popular market for the short story box set. It was also the first project for the Hingston and co-owner Natalie Olsen, a book designer based out of Calgary.

Putting together the advent calendar occupies most of Hingston’s year, pouring over short stories and reaching out to authors to bring together the perfect 25 stories to count down the holiday season.

His favourite? Impossible to say, but he often slots stories he’s fond of into his birthday, Dec. 23.

“Those are ones that are geared to me, exactly the kinds of stories I would want to find in a collection like this,” says Hingston.

Hingston waxes lyrical about his long-running Christmas project while standing in his newest endeavour, Porch Light Books (9867 89 Ave.), which opened Nov. 9. It’s a new and used bookstore where he can curate both the new and used books he would want readers to look for.

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“We’re in a moment in bookselling where we’re moving away from the giant bookstore and moving toward the small bookstore that reflects the owners’ personalities,” says Hingston.

Part of that curation will be the entire Hingston & Olsen Publishing product line currently in print, including copies of the Short Story Advent Calendar.

For more information about the Short Story Advent Calendar, visit the Hingston & Olsen Publishing website 

Jordan Abel takes Governor General’s award

An award-winning author has added to his list with another major Canadian literary award.

Jordan Abel has won the Governor General’s Literary Award in the category of Fiction for his book, Empty Spaces. The book was published last August and reimagines The Last of the Mohicans from an urban Nisga’a person’s perspective, with their relationship to land and traditional knowledge severed by colonial violence.

Abel is one of seven winners in English literature, with another seven in French writing. Each winning author is awarded $25,000, with another $3,000 going to their publisher to promote the book.

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In 2017, Abel won the Griffin Poetry Prize, one of the most prestigious awards in poetry, for his book Injun. He’s currently a professor at the University of Alberta.

For the full list of winners, visit the Governor General’s Literary Awards website 

Returning “home” through new eyes

An Edmonton author and journalist is bringing together stories about belonging and home in a new collection.

Writer and filmmaker Omar Mouallem is one of the editors for Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, out Nov. 19. It’s a collection of personal essays from 26 writers that focus on travelling back to their motherlands and seeing it through the eyes of a visitor. The contributions explore the experiences of first and second-generation Canadians and Americans who are trying to navigate the world of hyphenated identities.

The other editor on the project is Taslim Jaffer. Local writers Steven Sandor and Mariam Ibrahim contributed to the collection. Mouallem’s last book, Praying to the West, won the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction from the Writers’ Guild of Alberta in 2021.

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For more information about the author, visit his website

Former St. Albert Poet Laureate releases new book

The former St. Albert poet laureate released a new book last month, blending genres in an important work for youth struggling with anxiety and depression.

Light Enough to Float, which came out Oct. 8 from Rocky Pond Books, is the latest release from Lauren Seal. The book follows a young girl named Evie after she’s been admitted to an inpatient ward for an eating disorder. The book is part novel and part poetry, calling it “poetry in verse.”

The book was inspired by Seal’s struggles with anorexia, chronic anxiety and depression, as well as her journey as an inpatient and outpatient for an eating disorder at the age of 14.

“I read many fictional books about eating disorders as a teen, and was discouraged to find, at best, stories where recovery was depicted as a straightforward process that occurred when you “wanted it enough”, or, at worst, manuals and toolboxes for deepening my own illness,” says Seal.

She wanted to write a book that had a realistic depiction of recovery, how wanting to heal can be mixed with the struggle and the journey.

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For more information about the author, visit her website

Victor & Me in Paris

An Edmonton author is launching a new mystery series, with the lead character calling the city on the Seine home.

Victor & Me in Paris is the newest book from Janice MacDonald, a long-time mystery author known for the Randy Craig Mysteries series. In her newest book, Imogene Durant is on the move, finding more adventure than she had planned. While visiting the city of lights, she is drawn into a mystery by her neighbour the police detective as she’s working on her own follow-up to an acclaimed book.

Victor & Me was released Nov. 15 and published by Ravenstone Books.

To find out more about the author, visit her website 

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