I’m excited to say that Toxemia, my hybrid poetic memoir is now out with Book*hug Press!
I’ll be doing a mini tour of sorts (details below) and am so grateful to Jay/Hazel/Reid/Gareth/Britt/Stuart/Laurie/all-all-all-all at Book*hug and to my editor Tanis MacDonald for all of the work in getting this book to press. Thanks as well too to Kate Sutherland for her use of her beautiful collage art for the cover. And to my family and friends for their never-ending support.
I’ve already had book launches in Picton, St. Catherines, Ottawa and Mississauga with forthcoming launches in Toronto, Hamilton, Kingston, Calgary, and Vancouver. I’m hoping to add a few more dates — in particular in the Maritimes and Winnipeg.
Praise for Toxemia:
“Toxemia is simultaneously a history in/of medicine, a feminist rallying cry, and a raw but scalpel-sharp work of poetry. A genre-blurring text that boldly bloodies lines between poetic and reproductive bodies, between archive and lyric, between manifesto and song, between autoethnography and free verse. A bodypoem flex.” —Sarah de Leeuw, author of Lot
“How much pressure can build in language before the story of women’s health blows apart? In Toxemia, Christine McNair tests the narrative as if it were a problem patient. She charts the events that bring her close to death several times with the skill of the most intuitive midwives and rigorous clinicians, though representation is not diagnostic. This is a beautiful etiological study.” —Elee Kraljii Gardiner, author of Trauma Head and Against Death: 35 Essays on Living
“Toxemia is astonishing. It’s difficult to use positive adjectives for something so searing and widespread as toxicity in all its forms as it is portrayed in this book. But what can be said is that we need this book. We need ‘a pattern that is only legible’ to McNair. If nothing else, in this undetermined narrative, we may read our multiple selves, our own fragilities to systemic damage and unutterable forces beyond our control.” —Madhur Anand, Governor General’s Literary Award–winning author of This Red Line Goes Straight to Your Heart
UPCOMING EVENTS
NOV 4th, TORONTO, ON: The Book*hug fall 2024 Poetry Bash! https://www.facebook.com/events/1047803116623411
NOV 7th, HAMILTON, ON: Book*hug Presents the Fall 2024 Hamilton Launch! https://www.facebook.com/share/Jdk7qWXLBsWGzF9K/
NOV 17th, KINGSTON, ON: Drift/line Reading Series, details forthcoming.
NOV 21st, CALGARY, AB: Single Onion Reading Series, details forthcoming.
FEB 2025, VANCOUVER, BC: Details forthcoming.
Hope to see some of you soon!
CHRISTINE MCNAIR 