FREE SHIPPING FOR ALL OF MARCH!

It's our birth month! On March 23, Breakwater Books, Newfoundland and Labrador's premier publisher, turns 50! And we couldn't be more excited. To celebrate, we're offering FREE SHIPPING all month on all titles purchased through our online shop (all free shipping sent as Canada Post Expedited Parcel). That's right, order as much as you want, and we'll cover the Canada Post shipping costs anywhere in the country. Not only that, we're celebrating with events and features and sales all year long. See below for more details on what's coming up in March. 

And what a great time to celebrate! Already in 2023, two of our books are on the Winterset Award shortlist, two more are in contention for Newfoundland Reads, and our new books are arriving to attention an acclaim. 

Make sure you check below for links to all this exciting info, and make sure you vote for Breakwater authors in the NL Reads poll that chooses which book our province will read together.  

 


 

UPCOMING EVENTS

March 21, 7:30pm (doors open at 6pm for 50%-off book fair in the second space!)
LSPU Hall in St. John's
Featuring performances by Breakwater dramatists: Leah Lewis, Paul David Power, Fionn Shea, Bernadine Stapleton, Agnes Walsh, Des Walsh

 

March 23, 4pm - 6pm

Community Centre, Miawpukek Conne River

Bringing the Knowledge Home: Towards and Encyclopedia of Local Knowledge, vol 2 

With appearances by: Pam Hall and Jerry Evans

 

March 26, 8pm

LSPU Hall in St. John's

The Pratt Lecture: It Takes a Village

Featuring: Peter Balkwill

 


 

BREAKING NEWS

All Set for Winterset


Big showing for Breakwater Books! Congratulations to all three authors on the shortlist! (Two Breakwater authors, and one Breakwater anthology editor!) 

Curious? You can shop for The Raw Light of Morning, Hunger, and Lisa Moore's anthologies of new writing at these links. 

Remember! Free shipping for all of March. So buy for yourself AND for cousin Cecil living in Fort Mac. 

VOTE FOR BREAKWATER!


It's down to the wire! A full half of the books currently surviving for NL Reads are Breakwater Books! Congratulations to Terry Doyle and Claire Wilkshire, whose books you can purchase at these links. 

Voting continues until March 14. Get in there and vote for Breakwater! 

JOBS! JOBS! JOBS!

Want to work in publishing? We're looking for a crackerjack Finance and Office Administrator. If the post below sounds like you, get in touch! 

We work with Digitally Lit, a program that employs youth to read, think about, and critically engage with books. They're looking for new "Youth Ambassadors" in NL, so if you know someone local in the 13 - 25 age range who loves books and likes to talk about them, please pass on this posting!

 


 

ON THE NOSE: BOOKS PERFECT FOR MARCH

It's hard to believe March is already upon us! Besides being the birth month of Breakwater, it's also the month of St. Patrick's Day, the start of iceberg season, and the traditional first day of Spring (though perhaps not everywhere here...) 

We dug into the backlist to bring you some books suitable for a wet March afternoon:

  • Melt, Heidi Wicks
    Melt explores the life-sustaining anatomy of friendship and the complex relationships we have with our pasts.



  • Once Upon an Iceberg, Sheilah Lukins
    Errol is off on another adventure! With his new-found friend Gus, Errol travels to Twillingate to help search for Gus’s father. Shifting radiantly between the late nineties and the present day,

     

  • The March Hare Anthology, Adrian Fowler, ed. 
    The March Hare Anthology commemorates twenty years of one of Canada¹s most successful literary festivals. Blending local and inte ational writers from Canada, Ireland and the world with the cream of Newfoundland and Labrador¹s professional musicians, The March Hare is a unique celebration of words and music. 

  • Lost in Newfoundland, Michael Winsor
    Lost in Newfoundland is an artistic compendium of Newfoundland’s visual wonders—its seascapes, landscapes, cityscapes, and natural inhabitants.



  • Land of the Rock: Talamh an Carraig, Heather Nolan
    The speaker in the poems that form Land of the Rock: Talamh an Carraig travels through Newfoundland and Ireland looking for meaning in words, places, and behaviour. 

 


 

MARCHING INTO 50: Explore our Winter titles! 

What's coming up at Breakwater Books? Picture books? Poetry? Drama? Novel? Critical thinking? The answer is: YES.

Lots of literary goodness and books for kids! Check out our list below, with titles releasing throughout February, March, and April! 

The Ewe Who Knew Who Knit You
Cara Kansala 
(Kids - Available now)



This magically illustrated story celebrates the power of friendship and kindness and teaches us to be proud of the things that make us unique.

When the warm winds summon the woollies of the world to the land of ice and fire, Lämmin the lamb sets out on an adventure to find out who she is and where she came from.

“Who Knit You” is a common question in Newfoundland and Labrador. It means “where do you come from and who do you belong to?” On her around-the-world adventure to find out “who knit her,” Lämmin meets friends everywhere she goes, realizing that your family can be whoever you choose. “We all belong together, and we’re knit by who we love.” 

It Takes a Village: Spinning the Collective Yarn
The 2023 Pratt Lecture
Peter Balkwill
(Non-Fiction - Available now)



It Takes a Village: Spinning the Collective Yarn reflects on the collaborative process through which we discover our singular stories. It argues that sharing oral traditions is the best means to blaze pathways to performance.

Every day we tell stories, and listen to them, in countless exchanges with people in all walks of life. Not all of the stories we tell are ours. Our stories are raised up from the communities that are our people, and they are added to the words that end up making us who we are. How do we find the ones that let us land here and now?

Peter Balkwill’s It Takes a Village: Spinning the Collective Yarn is the 2023 Pratt Lecture, the oldest public lecture at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador. The Pratt Lectures were established in 1968 to commemorate the legacy of E. J. Pratt. Over the years, the series has hosted world-renowned authors and scholars, including Northrop Frye, Seamus Heaney, Helen Vendler, Mary Dalton, George Elliott Clarke, and Dionne Brand.  

IsThisAnOlogy? 
Amanda Bulman and Ruth Lawrence, illustrations by Leon Chung
(Kids - March 15)



IsThisAnOlogy? is a journey of discovery! Andie interviews different “ologists” and learns all about different types of science.

IsThisAnOlogy? explores big jobs, big science, and the biggest questions. Learn about fossils, bird migration, beekeeping, the science behind making food delicious, and the chemistry involved in cheese making.... IsThisAnOlogy? features illustrations, interviews, comics, photographs, charts, recipes, and experiments you can try at home. Science can be a fun hands-on activity!  

The Dialysis Project
Leah Lewis 
(Drama - April) 



The Dialysis Project is the first-person story of agency and resilience.

The Dialysis Project is a one-woman play about the experience of a home dialysis patient administering her own medical treatments every other day. The play explores what it’s like to live with a lifelong chronic condition requiring regular medical procedures for survival, and touches on themes of identity and resilience.  

Chores
Maggie Burton
(Poetry - April)



This semi-autobiographical collection of poetry offers an historical snapshot of domestic life that views women’s labour, relationships, and sexuality through a feminist lens.

Chores is about families and the domestic work of settler women on the island of Newfoundland. A comedy and a tragedy in equal parts, Chores explores everyday life with all its pleasures and suffering.

The simple, indirect, and accessible language of Chores creates vivid, recurring images of food, household objects, body parts, and animals. The poems scrutinize the physical and social details of domestic labour and of the conditions in which women did, and continue to do, the work of sustaining life.  

If We Caught Fire
Beth Ryan 
(Fiction - April)



Set in St. John’s, If We Caught Fire explores the complexities of life in a blended family.

When her mother decides to remarry, Edie’s calm and orderly life is knocked off kilter. The groom’s son, Harlow, is a joyful adventurer who shows up for the wedding and quickly recruits Edie as his sidekick. Just when she thinks she’s figured him out, Harlow reveals a depth and darkness she didn’t see coming. Edie and Harlow—and their new unwieldy family—do an elaborate dance all summer, trying to discover what they are to one another. By Labour Day, they’ve created connections, tested boundaries, and found they’ve come together and apart in unexpected ways.

Edie and Harlow, the main characters in If We Caught Fire, navigate the world in disguise, creating personas that they believe hide their pain and vulnerability. The characters struggle to define themselves and others, to make sense of how they feel and act, to understand what they value and need. As they try to form connections with one another, they realize that labels can both create clarity and impose limits. Their families have been shaken by death, trauma, addiction, secrecy, and infidelity, which leaves them all feeling unsteady as they try to form a new blend