River Street Writing

09/17/2026

Join us for the Toronto Launch of Middlemen by Maria Cichosz!

The follow up to Maria’s acclaimed novel, Cam & Beau, Middlemen is set to release with NoN Publishing fall 2026! Join us on October 22 at 6:30 pm to celebrate the launch of this highly anticipated read. The event will be hosted by Kate Maddalena (Disgustatory! A Gothic Rhetoric of Consumption).

About Middlemen:

Toronto, mid-2010s: the economy is tanking, the opioid crisis is about to explode, and Beau Larky is drifting through the city in a drug-fuelled haze, photographing extravagant weddings to bankroll his habit. When he learns that Cam, his former roommate and one-time lover—now a celebrity academic on the West Coast—has suffered a breakdown, Beau is seized by an unexpected need to see him after years of silence. His impulsive trip to California ignites the resentment of Stacey, the professor’s soon-to-be wife, and Cliff, their former drug dealer turned real-estate shark, now too busy riding the housing boom to care about anything but the market.To “middle” is to sell drugs to support one’s own habit, but also to linger, to stall, to refuse to decide.

Middlemen is a dark, unflinching story about class, distance, addiction, and the blurry line between human and financial relationships. Above all, it is a break-up letter to Toronto, the novel’s meanest character.

Maria Cichosz is a writer, critical drug studies scholar, and professor of literature and creative writing at Victoria College in the University of Toronto. Their work has appeared in Critique, The Los Angeles Review of Books, The Literary Review of Canada, American Literature, and on the CBC Literary Awards shortlist, among other places. She is the author of two novels, Cam & Beau (2020) and Middlemen (2026), as well as On Drugs, a forthcoming entry in Biblioasis’s Field Notes series.

About the host:

Kate Maddalena is an associate professor of writing and media studies at the University of Toronto Mississauga. She researches knowledge-making media, futurisms, and the popular uptake of science. She writes about stuff like LEGO, drugs, microbiota, wellness cultures, and ghosts.

Maria Cichosz Kate McKinney Maddalena Queen Books

09/16/2026

Q: Your novel London Gothic has been described as a “propulsive read”, “a funerary-edged love letter to southwestern Ontario”, and a “murder mystery”. Did you set out to write a page-turning crime novel?

A: The short answer is: no. The long answer is, of course, longer and more complicated.

A few years ago I stumbled across excerpts from an interview of Canadian novelist Timothy Findlay by Graeme Gibson (Margaret Atwood’s late husband), where Gibson said that Findlay’s first novel, Last of the Crazy People, reminded him of “Southern Gothic”. Findlay replied that it was – in fact it was Southern Ontario Gothic. I had not heard the term before but I ruminated on it, especially since I was born and raised in the heart of Southwestern Ontario — London. When the image of a father and son burying a body late at night in a field came to me (as it does to one), I decided to pursue the image through this genre of Southern Ontario Gothic.

Read the rest of our interview with Ed Seaward, author of London Gothic (Dark Winter Press, 2026), by visiting our blog:

http://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/7/24/hjy7iul9mqi89zys3kw12qitrq7vfm

📖: Ed Seaward DarkWinter Literary Magazine

✨: Margaret Atwood

09/15/2026

09/15/2026

Just in time for spooky season! 🕷️ 😬

Here is a clip from a recent CTV Your Morning interview with seasoned family physicians Dr. Wilson and Dr. Jensen, authors of Family Rooms, published by Piquant Press, September 15, 2026.

As Canada faces a major shortage of family doctors—an estimated 20,000 by 2031—this powerful and moving collection of real-life stories explore what the discipline truly is, the challenges it faces, and what it can become in the hands of a new generation of doctors.

Family Rooms invites readers into the spaces where care happens—and where the future of family medicine is being shaped. A portion of the authors’ proceeds, generously supported by Blue Heron Books, will be donated to the Uxbridge Hospital Foundation in support of the new Uxbridge Hospital.

You can order Family Rooms wherever books are bought or borrowed, including at piquantpress.ca.

09/15/2026

Nice! Elizabeth Urso’s thrilling Hail Mary was named a most anticipated fall 2026 read by SheDoesTheCity!

Hail Mary will be released with Rising Action Publishing on September 22, 2026.

More about the book:

The Foreman family has made their fortune burying the dead(and not just funeral services, allegedly). Mary Foreman fled North Shore Township years ago to escape her family’s legacy. But when her estranged mother reappears during a local election, reigniting rumors of corporate corruption and criminal activity, Mary’s uncle summons her to help with his campaign.

Mary leaves Toronto and takes up residence in Foreman House—the now-vacant gothic mansion once home to the Foremans and their infamous funeral business. She also secures a teaching job at her alma mater, St. Joseph’s School for Girls, set to unearth the time capsule her great-grandmother helped mastermind. But when the time capsule is opened, the family’s legacy rears its ugly head once again.

Embroiled in a criminal investigation—one with eerie parallels to several cold cases—Mary begins to unravel a truth rooted in her cursed matrilineal line, the haunted funeral home she grew up in, and the crime her mother stood trial for decades earlier. Crushed by the weight of the township’s suspicion, Mary must fight to prove her own innocence. Not only of recent crimes, but past ones, too. For this is the North Shore of Lake Huron, and the past is always present where the dead don’t die.

Elizabeth Urso is a Canadian author of genre-blending suspense novels. If you enjoy atmospheric settings, haunted people, and unsolved crimes, you’re in the right place. Her debut novel, HAIL MARY, publishes in September 2026 with Rising Action Publishing (distributed by Simon & Schuster).

Elizabeth is a graduate of Laurentian University, the University of New Brunswick Faculty of Law, and the Humber School for Writers. Born and raised in Sudbury, Ontario, she now lives wherever her partner—an Infantry Officer in the Canadian Armed Forces—is posted, along with their dog Harriet (the Spy).

🔥🦷📖: Elizabeth Urso Rising Action Publishing SheDoesTheCity

09/14/2026

Coming soon! ✨ The Case of the Caprice of Lost Time by Rune Christiansen, released October 6, 2026 with Book*hug Press.

DM us to request a review copy.

From the acclaimed Norwegian author of The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life comes an absorbing and intimate novel about the unearthing of family secrets.

Two months following her mother’s death, Norma travels alone to visit her father, Torsten, with whom she has had a strained relationship since her parents divorced. Recently separated herself, Norma is at a crossroads in life and desperate to get away for a while. She views the chance to visit Torsten on the island where he now lives in the family’s idyllic old summer home as a much-needed retreat. From the moment Norma steps off the ferry, a series of mysterious things begin to happen.

While standing on the quay waiting for her father to pick her up, Norma sees the silhouette of a horseback rider under a twisted tree on a hillside. After an unknown woman visits Torsten in the middle of the night, it becomes increasingly clear to Norma that her evasive father is hiding something from her. Norma interprets each of the strange happenings on the island as a sign and begins looking for answers to better understand herself and how her life has unfolded.
With her beloved mother gone, only her emotionally distant father can provide them—unless the truth lies within herself.

Written in lush, sumptuous prose, Rune Christiansen has crafted an exquisite story about one woman’s search for independence, freedom, and a sense of belonging.

RUNE CHRISTIANSEN is one of Norway’s most important literary writers and the author of over twenty books, including works of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. He has won many prestigious awards, including the 2014 Brage Prize for his bestselling novel The Loneliness in Lydia Erneman’s Life. F***y and the Mystery in the Grieving Forest was shortlisted for the Brage Prize, and The Case of the Caprice of Lost Time won the French Transfuge Prize in 2023. Also a professor of creative writing, Christiansen lives just outside of Oslo, Norway.



📖: Rune Christiansen Book*hug Press

09/13/2026

“[…] a book that asks to be experienced as much as interpreted, its language carrying the reader through a future in which memory has become currency and the remnants of humanity are struggling to determine what, and whom, is worth carrying forward.”

-Sara Hailstone reviews Syncopation (Wolsak & Wynn, 2026) by Whitney French

Read the full review:

https://www.sarahailstone.com/book-reviews/syncopation

About Syncopation:

In the aftermath of a Memory War, society is fragmented into strange new cultures, castes and coalitions. Set against a backdrop of retrofitted food garages, microchip-sorting factories and hyperloop terminals, Whitney French brings us a dazzling novel-in-verse where memory is the highest currency and love, like all revolutions, is dangerous, unruly and singed with hope.

O and Z are two young women searching for purpose in a world where a decades-long earthquake reverberates through the Earth’s crust, and the population scrambles to hide from deadly acid rain. Descended from space pirates, O is drawn to the sky, while Z is earthbound, a skilled forager with connections to the black market. The two become travel companions and lovers until, torn between choosing their values or each other, a fateful decision must be made at the el Corazón space station.

In this speculative and intoxicating novel, French offers readers an intricate future-world that resonates so powerfully with our own, as it explores a people gripped in the war-torn politics of migration, memory-keeping, labour and survival.

About Whitney French:

Whitney French (she/her) is a writer, educator and publisher. She is the editor of the award-winning anthology Black Writers Matter (University of Regina, 2019) and Griot: Six Writers’ Sojourn into the Dark (Penguin Random House, 2022). Whitney is a Black futurist who explores memory, loss, technology and nature in her work. She is a certified arts educator and an Assistant Professor in Creative Writing at the University of British Colombia. She is also the co-founder and publisher of Hush Harbour, the only Black q***r feminist press in Canada.

09/13/2026

River Street’s Hollay Ghadery and Selena Mercuri at The Mississauga Literary Festival!

Hollay and Selena were part of a panel facilitated by the phenomenal students at Sheridan College’s Creative Writing & Publishing program to celebrate the launch of Issue 10 of The Ampersand Review.

Hollay is this issue’s cover feature, contributing an in-depth interview with Tali Leiderman (Voron) about her mission to uplift Canadian literature, as well as a look into Hollay’s own writing—including her most recent book, The Unravelling of Ou, which is longlisted for the Giller Prize.

Selena appears in the issue as a reviewer for Carrianne Leung’s excellent novel, Wonderland Road. Selena read from her funny and compelling novel-in-progress, Smooth Jazz & Other Forms of Torture. (This pic was actually snapped by Selena’s agent, Kelvin, of K2 Literary!).

More about The Ampersand Review (from their website):

The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing is a literary magazine published by the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College. We publish poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, essays, interviews, and book reviews.

Our mission at The Ampersand Review is rooted in the belief that reading is both enjoyable and enlightening, and that writing in Canada is dynamic, diverse, and worth celebrating. In our pages we seek to provide a venue for excellent, innovative writing from across the country, representing literary voices from a vibrant spectrum of identities, intersections, backgrounds, creativities, and lived experiences.

Because the “Ampersand” in our name signifies the essential relationship between writing and publishing, we also seek to encourage and promote—through book reviews and other features—a vital and inclusive domestic publishing industry that will allow Canada’s remarkable variety of talented writers to thrive.

We hope that in carrying out our mission, we can spark curiosity, fuel the imagination, and even inspire compassionate civic engagement and social change.

Follow The Ampersand Review here: The Ampersand Review of Writing & Publishing

w/ Selena Mercuri | Writer 🖊️💖 Hollay Ghadery Palimpsest Press Giller Prize Canadian Fiction