Being a woman isn’t easy, but when you add the realities of life to the mix, the results can be disastrous. No Stars in the Sky (House of Anansi Press Inc., 2022) is a collection of stories about the human experience from different women’s perspectives. Spanning time and continents, these stories are like quilts sewn with a female thread. Author Martha Bátiz has a special talent for creating real and relatable characters as well as illuminating details that construct a series of agonizing yet buoyant narratives. 

Liberal candidate and political science educator Kate Graham used stories from her podcast No Second Chances to write No Second Chances: Woman and Political Power in Canada (Second Story Press, 2022), an anthology of women in politics and their childhoods, motivations, and journeys into politics. Read about female candidates from around the country and 13 elected ministers and premiers that have struggled to make it onto the Canadian political scene.

More than 75 years after liberation, most survivors have passed on, but the trauma has not. Author Marsha Lederman is a child of survivors left with the effects of her parents' experiences that percolated into her adulthood. Kiss the Red Stairs: The Holocaust, Once Removed (McLelland & Stewart, 2022) is a captivating memoir of exploring her parents' harrowing stories to find consolation in the face of a difficult divorce.

I’ve been waiting for a book from columnist, essayist, journalist, author, and mother Stacey May Fowles since her last published work in 2017 — I just wish this would have come when my daughter was younger. But Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood (Book*hug Press, 2022) is the opposite of disappointing. Even now, as a budding writer and single mother, each of the 20 essays by some of Canada’s most brilliant writers spoke to me. These intimate and hopeful pieces recount the struggles and rewards of motherhood and creativity, and the prices we pay when we choose to pursue one or the other – or both.