Twenty-twenty-three has been a terrific year.
For you, our readers, we’d like to extend our holiday offer: 30% off all titles using the coupon code giftfreehand
Offer lasts until 11:59:59 PM on January 7, 2024.
We’ve also lowered the free shipping amount so that every cart over $35 gets free shipping.
Freehand celebrates its fifteenth year as a publisher this year! To mark the occasion, we sent a complimentary book to each of our authors, from 2008 all the way to this fall. Thank you to all of them. It’s their brilliance that makes Freehand what we are, a publisher dedicated to strong and sharp and shiningly fine Canadian writing.
We set out each day to create a sense of community, to bring these works out to their readership. And we’ve heard from many Freehand authors which of our books is their favourite. Below, you can read some of their responses.
Of Barbara Joan Scott’s The Taste of Hunger, Dawn Promislow wrote: “The novel transported me to the hardscrabble life of the Canadian prairies of the 1920s, a richly imagined world which immersed me completely. A wonderful depiction of time and place, and deeply imagined interior lives of its characters, especially that of a little girl. Not only precise and beautiful realism, however, but also the magic of folklore (the Ukrainian Baba Yaga), which threads its way through the consciousnesses of the characters, through the Canadian farmsteads and outpost prairie towns, and finally, through my, the reader’s, consciousness too. Magic.”
On Dede Crane’s One Madder Woman, Emily Saso wrote: “A beautiful and deeply entertaining novel based on the life of Berthe Morisot — the only female painter in the OG Impressionists boys’ club. Set in 19th century Paris, it’s about a city and a sisterhood under siege, ART, and lust. Historical fiction at its best. I’m a Dede Crane super fan now.”
Of Leona Theis’s If Sylvie Had Nine Lives, Doreen Vanderstoop wrote: “[it] is one of the most ingenious books I’ve ever read – to allow an intricate, multi-threaded story to wash over a reader with such ease displays incredible writing chops. Not to mention that the book design beautifully elevates the text.”
Of Sharon Butala’s Season of Fury and Wonder, Mikka Jacobsen wrote: “[The book] is front to back a lesson in what the short story can do. Butala’s work is searching and powerful and riveting.”
Of Keith Maillard, who penned In the Defense of Liberty, The Bridge, and Twin Studies, Sara Power wrote: “His work is rich with vulnerability and revelation. Keith’s imagination has a way of welcoming his readers, making them feel at home across diverse time periods and settings.”
Of Esmé Claire Keith’s Not Being on a Boat, Michael Hingston wrote: “Keith’s 2011 novel is a beautifully controlled comic riff on the dangers of how quickly an all-inclusive vacation insulates us from the outside world (which may or not be actively imploding).”
Of Rosemary Nixon’s Are You Ready to Be Lucky?, Barbara Joan Scott wrote: “When I think of Rosemary Nixon’s writing, an image of a quarter bouncing off an army cot always comes to mind: the metaphor for something meticulously made, able to stand up to the most exacting scrutiny.”
Of Susan Olding’s Big Reader, Michelle Syba wrote: “Passionately reflective, the essays in Big Reader remind me of the many ways that literature has enlivened my days—a journey ordinary and epic, intimate and expansive, and quietly subversive. There’s nothing more cozy and thrilling than sitting down with a good book about good books. I also love the cover’s imperfect Courier font on a library catalogue card. I can almost smell the sweet decay of yellowing paper when I look at it.”
Here’s to another fifteen years of brilliant writing. We’ll continue to work tirelessly to get these books into readers’ hands.