From award-winning author Merilyn Simonds, a remarkable biography of an extraordinary woman — a Swedish aristocrat who survived the Russian Revolution to become an internationally renowned naturalist, one of the first to track the mid-century decline of songbirds.2022 Foreword Indies Award Winner for the Editor’s Choice Prize, non fiction“[A] lyrical, passionate, and deeply researched portrait.” — Margaret Atwood

To whom do we offer refuge — and why?After a life that rubbed up against the century’s great events in New York City, Mexico, and Montreal, 96-year-old Cassandra MacCallum is surviving well enough, alone on her island, when a young Burmese woman contacts her, claiming to be kin. Curiosity, loneliness, and a slender filament of hope prompts the old woman to accept a visit. But Nang’s story of torture and flight provokes memories in Cass that peel back, layer by laye...

**NATIONAL BESTSELLERMerilyn Simonds's Walking with Beth allows us to eavesdrop on two women, one already a centenarian, talking frankly about what scares us all: growing old. It's a book with a unique take on longevity, full of wisdom, tenderness, joy and the passions that sustain a very long life.**In the spring of 2021, Merilyn Simonds asked her friend Beth Robinson if she’d like to go for a walk. Simonds had just turned 70, still active, still writing, but ente...

What begins as a road trip through America soon becomes a journey of discovery into themselves and into the heart of the next-door neighbour they thought they knew. For Wayne Grady, the thrill of landscape and history is tempered by memories of racism and his own family roots. Merilyn Simonds, her ear tuned for the offbeat, finds curious echoes of the ex-pat promised land she grew up with. Together they travel against the tide of American history, followin...

An intimate narrative exploring the past, present, and future of booksFour seismic shifts have rocked human communication: the invention of writing, the alphabet, mechanical type and the printing press, and digitization. Poised over this fourth transition, e-reader in one hand, perfect-bound book in the other, Merilyn Simonds — author, literary maven, and early adopter — asks herself: what is lost and what is gained as paper turns to pixel?Gute...

In a dark and stifling Kingston attic overflowing with old letters, pamphlets and clippings, an incredible discovery was made: scores of flimsy sheets of paper, hastily scribbled upon—a clandestine correspondence between a schoolgirl living in the village of Portsmouth in 1919 and a convict imprisoned in Kingston Penitentiary.A dazzling blend of historical detective work and imaginative recreation, The Convict Lover takes the reader on a haunting, unforgettable journey through the ...

A graceful and sharply observed book of inspiration that uses the garden as its central museA New Leaf traces a year of growing seasons at The Leaf, Merilyn Simonds' acreage in eastern Ontario. A lifelong gardener, Simonds works the soil and the soul for wide-ranging revelations about everything from flowers that keep time, to the strange gift of compost, to great gardens of the world, to things lost and found underground.She is joined on her journ...

A whimsical, provocative romp through a woman’s life with penises.   Originally published in the anthology In the Flesh, edited by Lynne van Luven and Kathy Page, Brindle & Glass (2012). I didn’t know what to expect. Not a pale, soft snail curled on a taut peach (peach because of the cleft, though it looked more like a rubber ball, it was that exact dull pink, the texture rough).             Wan...

What is a garden? A yearning to bring nature close? Or a bid for total control?  The Paradise Project explores in 17 short-short stories the human response to the planted world. Meet the minor diplomat who populates the earth with his lurid purple-fruited plant; the woman encased in a circling bower; the artist who paints a garden for love; the writer who adds a goldfish to a stranger's sidewalk idyll; the couple who contentedly care for a father's garden until Will comes...

Following the death of an uncle, a woman moves through a CT scanner to the brink of her own mortality.Originally published in Going Some Place: Creative Nonfiction Across Canada, edited by Lynne Van Luven, Coteau Books (2000).Beep. Take a breath and hold it.That is all.Beep. Take a breath and hold it.That is all.Beep. Take a breath and hold it.The machine gives the command and I obey, sucking in air as if through a straw. But have I t...

On the sudden death of her husband, Mary Ann sells her worldly possessions and sets off to visit seven people she has never met.Originally published in the anthology Seventeen Women Undress a Man, published in Germany (2005) and in The Netherlands (2007), this story was published in Dutch in Vrij Nederland (2006) and in English in The Walrus (2005), where it won the Silver Award for Fiction at the National Magazine Awards.Mary Ann didn’t think she would want the casket open...