true crime

Must-Read Books from Recent Canadian Graduates: Part 2 of The List So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

So many new authors on this list! (For comparison, see the first list here.) Congratulations to all the newly published authors (at least since the first list), to all the authors who were published long before I reviewed your books, I’m reading as fast as I can, and to all the authors who’ve been published that I still haven’t got to … I’m reading as fast as I can! And to anyone reading this, if I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know. And the winners are:

(Edited to add: Apparently I missed quite a few books that should go on this list. I’ve added them at the top of the list so you won’t miss them. There have been several more deals but the books aren’t out yet and I’m unable to find complete information about them.)

Barone, Rina (class of 20??) Art Always Wins: The Chaotic World of Avant-garde Pioneer Al Hansen, (press and year?)

Jaffer, Taslim (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home. Book*hug Press, 2024.

Kierans, Kim (class of 2025), Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty. Bighorn Books, 2024.

Kuzmyk, Emma (class of 2025) with Addy Strickland, This Wasn’t On the Syllabus: Stories from the Front Lines. Simon & Schuster, 2024.

McKay, Lori (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets. Nimbus Publishing, 2024.

Moore, Chris (2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Moscovitch, Philip (2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More. Formac Publishing, 2019.

Simpson, Sharon J. (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition. Harbour Publishing, 2025.

John Larsen’s (Class of 2023 I think) book is not out yet–due in 2026 I think. 

Book cover of 'Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas' by Gloria Blizzard, featuring a colorful abstract background with wavy lines.
Book cover for 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.
Book cover for 'The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed' by Gwen Lamont featuring a black and white photograph of a corridor with scattered leaves.

Book cover design for 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful illustrations of leaves and flowers, with the subtitle 'The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest'.
Book cover for 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring various species of fish against a light blue background.
Book cover of 'Peace by Chocolate' by Jon Tattrie, depicting the Hadhad family by the sea, highlighting their journey from Syria to Canada.

University of King’s College MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction: Books Published So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 3 Comments

If you’re already on this list, congratulations! You’re in terrific company. If you’re not on this list, keep putting yourself (and more importantly your book) out there. Meanwhile, in case you’re curious, here’s what (I think) the list is so far. If I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know.

Book cover of 'The Heart of a Superfan' by Nav Bhatia, featuring a smiling man in a Raptors jersey and a black and red jacket, with a white turban, against a purple background.
Book cover for 'Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood' by Pauline Dakin featuring a vintage roadside scene.

Cover of the book 'Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary' by Catherine Fogarty, featuring an image of the penitentiary.

the Eiffel Tower with the book title overlaying it

cover of book No Place to Go with image of empty toilet paper roll.

Book cover of 'Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition' by Laura Pratt, featuring a stylized image of a rose with a smoky effect and the word 'Canadian' in the top right corner.

Book cover for 'How to Share an Egg' by Bonny Reichert, featuring an illustration of an egg on a blue background with the title and author's name displayed.

Book cover of 'Still, I Cannot Save You' by Kelly S. Thompson, featuring a person in red walking on a sandy shore with a vast landscape in the background.

Inside the Deadly Kingston Pen Riot: Have Any Lessons Been Learned?

/ Lynne Melcombe / 2 Comments

There are those who firmly believe that if you do the crime, you do the time, and it doesn’t matter if the prison time you serve is cruel and inhumane; in fact, the worse it is, the happier they are. If you’ve broken the law, they believe, you deserve whatever you get. The worse the punishment, the less likely you’ll be to reoffend. 

Book cover of 'Murder on the Inside' by Catherine Fogarty, featuring the title, subtitle about the Kingston Penitentiary riot, and an image of the prison.

Never mind research that’s shown not only that prison time doesn’t work as a deterrent but that people tend to come out more likely to offend than when they went in; or that racial and cultural minorities are significantly over represented in prison systems; or that disproportionate numbers of prisoners (compared with the general population) suffered child abuse or neglect, including sexual abuse, undiagnosed and untreated concussions, learning disabilities, and ADHD than in the general population. Many people still believe prisoners get what they asked for by committing crimes and that should be the end of that. 

Except it’s not, because it’s one thing to deprive people of civil rights and something entirely different to deprive them of human rights. And when you deprive them of basic human rights for long enough, eventually they will fight back—and the consequences could be dire. 

Catherine Fogarty’s (class of 2018) Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary (Biblioasis, 2021) details exactly how dire the consequences were on April 14, 1971, when prisoners at Kingston Pen decided they’d had enough and started a riot to protest their living conditions. Fogarty writes in the Introduction:

The early 1970s was a time of great political and social upheaval, and what was happening in our prisons reflected that change. Deteriorating prison conditions and the increasing awareness of basic human rights were creating a combustible penal environment … Prisoners wanted to be treated like humans instead of numbers and they were demanding to be heard.

But what began as a rallying cry to the outside world for prison reform and justice quickly dissolved into a tense hostage taking, savage beatings and ultimately murder. For four terrifying days, prisoners held six guards hostage as they negotiated with ill-prepared prison officials and anxious politicians, while heavily armed soldiers surrounded the prison and prepared for an attack.

The deadly ingredients had been brewing long before that fateful night in April. The warden … had alerted his superiors in Ottawa that the prison was dangerously overcrowded and understaffed. … But the danger signs were not heeded, and the years of mistreatment, bitterness and distrust ultimately created a human volcano … 

“When the rebellion finally erupted,” Fogarty continues, “it made headlines around the world” ultimately costing the lives of two men and changing the lives of many more. 

Canadians often think of our history as “boring,” but Fogarty’s telling of this pivotal event is anything but. Researching and writing the book took five years, numerous trips to Kingston, hours in Ontario’s provincial archives and Queen’s University archives, interviews with dozens of retired correctional officers and family members of those who had died, and even interviews with some of the surviving prisoners. 

The year 2021, when the book was published, marked the fiftieth anniversary of the riot, yet fifty years after prisoners demanded to be heard and treated humanely, she asks, “what have we learned? Our country still struggles with fundamental questions related to incarceration and basic human rights. Cruel injustices continue to happen in our prisons every day.” 

Fogarty’s book offers “a peak behind the curtain of a correctional system that is still deeply flawed in its philosophy and practices. The Russian writer Dostoyevsky once said: ‘The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.’ But how are we to judge” she asks, “if we are still not even allowed to see inside?” 

In the tradition of University of King’s College Professor Emeritus and award-winning historical true crime writer Dean Jobb, Murder on the Inside is a page-turning historical account that is unflinching in its honesty, compassionate in its motives, and yet another beautifully written book to emerge out of the Master of Fine Arts program at University of King’s College. Whether you are an afficionado of historical true-crime nonfiction or have never read a word of it, this is a truly worthwhile read. 

Other not-so-great moments in Canadian history:

Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, by Jessica McDiarmid.

Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, by Tyler LeBlanc.

Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys, by Jenn Thornhill Verma.

Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey Through Disaster, by Gina Leola Woolsey.