Invisible Publishing

“Well of course they do.”

A raucous and lovely launch for Sallie Fullerton’s Baby Face/Face de bébé last night at . Thank you to the audience for filling the room and buying ALL the books, for Sallie for their wonderful reading, to the DOCUMENTS team, and to Suzanne Girard, the luminous photographer whose work fills the book.

Booksellers, esteemed members of the media (social or otherwise), particularly eager readers: galleys/advanced review copies of our fall/late summer books are ready to make their way into the world. Drop a comment/DM or fill out the form linked in our bio to get your hands on one.

AUGUST: A Nation of Tinkerers: A History of Electronic Music in Canada from 1945 to 1985 by Michael Rancic

SEPTEMBER: Floating Islands by Joyce Mansour, translated by Emilie Moorhouse

OCTOBER: The Furrow by Valérie Manteau, translated by Claire Foster

NOVEMBER: Fair by Jen Calleja

We’re launching BABY FACE/FACE DE BÉBÉ by Sallie Fullerton, with photographs by Suzanne Girard, at 7PM on June 4 at . Come celebrate the first book in the newly rehomed DOCUMENTS series.

About the book:

“A helluva aesthetic toast to human le***an magic and ancestor worship, daggers, womyn and q***rs.”—Eileen Myles

Constructed with the tools of poetic and documentary convention—fragmentation, oral history, rhythmic and imagistic leaps—Baby Face / Face de bébé weaves a portrait of Denise Cassidy, known as Baby Face, the first woman to own a le***an bar in Montréal.

Iconoclastic and authoritative, revered and feared, Baby Face’s story remains nevertheless largely undocumented. Yet for those in the know, the Montréal q***r scene is nearly impossible to recount without her. The story of Baby Face is, too, the story of a formative time and place in North American le***an culture and a testament to those who have worked to preserve her history.

Blending photographs by Baby Face’s personal photographer Suzanne Girard with archival clippings, spliced interviews, audio from independent films, and other marginalia, the book offers a window into a particular moment in q***r life—and a nod to the DIY methods often used to preserve histories relegated to the margins.

Today we’re celebrating the publication of Susannah M. Smith’s third book: The Alchemy of Paradise.

“A luminous novel told in snippets, The Alchemy of Paradise considers how best to live in the face of loss.”—Carolyn Wilson-Scott, Foreword Reviews

In this novel, a curator confronts grief, loss, and mortality by arranging the fragments of her life—objects, memories, impressions—into a fragile order.

Set in contemporary England, with Venice shimmering at its core, The Alchemy of Paradise follows her attempt to preserve what might otherwise vanish, shaping a collection that makes survival possible. When order fails to yield meaning, she turns to the alchemical, where matter shifts into metaphor and loss becomes transformation.

A novel of ideas told through poetic essays and reflections, The Alchemy of Paradise explores the tension between collecting and transmuting, order and disorder. In the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s collections, and in dialogue with writers like W.G. Sebald, Patti Smith, and Leanne Shapton, it meditates on the ways that art and imagination allow us to chart personal maps through the universal yet individual territories of loss. Refusing collapse into despair, The Alchemy of Paradise offers curation itself as a restless, ongoing practice of creation and renewal.

Susannah M. Smith is the author of The Fairy Tale Museum (Invisible Publishing) and How the Blessed Live (Coach House Books). Her short fiction, poetry, and visual art have appeared in various publications. She lives in Vancouver.

It’s publication day for Sallie Fullerton’s Baby Face / Face de bébé (featuring photographs by the legendary Suzanne Girard) the first book in the rehomed and reimagined DOCUMENTS series.

Constructed with the tools of poetic and documentary convention—fragmentation, oral history, rhythmic and imagistic leaps—Baby Face / Face de bébé weaves a portrait of Denise Cassidy, known as Baby Face, the first woman to own a le***an bar in Montréal.

Iconoclastic and authoritative, revered and feared, Baby Face’s story remains nevertheless largely undocumented. Yet for those in the know, the Montréal q***r scene is nearly impossible to recount without her. The story of Baby Face is, too, the story of a formative time and place in North American le***an culture and a testament to those who have worked to preserve her history.

Blending photographs by Baby Face’s personal photographer Suzanne Girard with archival clippings, spliced interviews, audio from independent films, and other marginalia, the book offers a window into a particular moment in q***r life—and a nod to the DIY methods often used to preserve histories relegated to the margins.

Happy Canadian Independent Bookstore Day! We literally wouldn’t survive without them. They are the bloody, beating hearts of the book industry. ♥️

Pictured is today’s display at Another Story Bookshop in Toronto, created by Saul Freedman-Lawson (). Big shout outs, today and always, to our faves at , , , , , , , , , , , and, of course, . (And many, many more!)

Ottawa, ON / May 11 / 7PM

Join us at Perfect Books for an Invisible Publishing cabaret to celebrate Susannah M. Smith’s The Alchemy of Paradise. Readings by Cameron Anstee, Jennifer Falkner, and the author herself. Moderated by the great Amanda Earl.

//

A curator confronts grief, loss, and mortality by arranging the fragments of her life—objects, memories, impressions—into a fragile order.

Set in contemporary England, with Venice shimmering at its core, The Alchemy of Paradise follows her attempt to preserve what might otherwise vanish, shaping a collection that makes survival possible. When order fails to yield meaning, she turns to the alchemical, where matter shifts into metaphor and loss becomes transformation.

A novel of ideas told through poetic essays and reflections, The Alchemy of Paradise explores the tension between collecting and transmuting, order and disorder. In the spirit of Walter Benjamin’s collections, and in dialogue with writers like W.G. Sebald, Patti Smith, and Leanne Shapton, it meditates on the ways that art and imagination allow us to chart personal maps through the universal yet individual territories of loss. Refusing collapse into despair, The Alchemy of Paradise offers curation itself as a restless, ongoing practice of creation and renewal.

Susannah M. Smith is the author of The Fairy Tale Museum (Invisible Publishing) and How the Blessed Live (Coach House Books). Her short fiction, poetry, and visual art have appeared in various publications. She lives in Vancouver.

Praise for The Alchemy of Paradise

“A luminous novel told in snippets, The Alchemy of Paradise considers how best to live in the face of loss. […] Metaphysical and insightful, The Alchemy of Paradise is an innovative novel.”—Carolyn Wilson-Scott, Foreword Reviews

Every day of Poetry Month, we’re spotlighting a book of poetry.

22.

Still Point
by E. Martin Nolan
cover design by Megan Fildes
edited by Jeff Latosik
published 15 October 2017

Still Point examines North America as unified whole and disrupted centre.

The poems in Still Point contrast the calm and tumult of Hurricane Katrina, the deconstruction of Detroit, the financial crisis of 2008, and the BP Gulf oil spill, weaving lyrical sequences and individual pieces into a coherent whole focused on humanity’s relationship to itself and to nature. Still Point tells a story of beauty and horror, and how normalcy stubbornly persists amid history’s arc.

E Martin Nolan works at The Puritan and teaches at The University of Toronto. Born and raised in Detroit, he attended Loyola University New Orleans and U of T. His writing has appeared in Arc, CNQ, and CV2, among others. He lives in Toronto.

Every day of Poetry Month, we’re spotlighting a book of poetry.

21.

Frost & Pollen
by Helen Hajnoczky
cover design by Megan Fildes
edited by Derek Beaulieu
published 5 October 2021

Longlisted for the UK’s 2022 Laurel Prize

Flower and flour. Coral and choral. Lashes and luscious.

Frost & Pollen is a poetry collection in two acts: “Bloom & Martyr” is a sensuous walk through a menacing garden of flowers and desire, while “Foliage” retells the Arthurian legend of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight from the point of view of the Green Knight, the mysterious figure who teases and torments Gawain. By turns earthy and lush, and punctuated by dark and unsettling undercurrents, these poems converge into an engaging yet evasive feminine exploration of nature and sexuality.

Helen Hajnoczky is the author of Magyarázni, shortlisted for the Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry, Poets and Killers: A Life in Advertising, shortlisted for Expozine’s English Book of the Year award, and the chapbook Bloom & Martyr, winner of the John Lent Poetry/Prose Award. She can be found on Instagram and online at ateacozyisasometimes.com.

Every day of Poetry Month, we’re spotlighting a book of poetry.

20.

Sunny Ways
by ryan fitzpatrick
cover design by Megan Fildes
edited by Laurie Graham
published 4 April 2023

An off-beat examination of the denials that underpin extractive capitalism.

From the cratered lake of Chennai, India to the environmental racism of Neon Genesis Evangelion’s Tokyo-3, Sunny Ways oscillates between images of environmental collapse and resistance.

Standing waist deep in the massive tailing ponds of Alberta’s Tar Sands, Sunny Ways wades through the tangled complicities of climate catastrophe. In the process, the book grapples with the failure of political hope and the intransigence of climate change denialism. Fitzpatrick channels his experiences growing up in the big sky economic pragmatism of Calgary, where oil pays the rent and puts food on the table, into an essayistic pair of long poems that echo the ecological poetics of writers like Rita Wong, Stephen Collis, and Juliana Spahr.

ryan fitzpatrick is the publisher of the online-based and poetry-focused Model Press. He was on the editorial collective of filling Station magazine and helped found the Flywheel Reading Series. He is the author of four books of poetry, including Sunny Ways (Invisible Publishing) and Coast Mountain Foot (Talonbooks). A former resident of Calgary and Vancouver, ryan now lives in Toronto.