Ezra’s Ghosts
NeWest Press (2022)
• Finalist, Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, 2022
• Finalist, Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction, 2023
• Winner, Trade Fiction Book of the Year at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards, 2023
• Winner, Douglas Barbour Award for Speculative Fiction, 2023
• Shortlisted for Best Book Design at the Alberta Book Publishing Awards, 2023
• Shortlisted for Short Story category Relit Awards, 2023
• Silver Medal, Independent Publisher Book Awards for Short Story Fiction, 2023
• CBC Books Best Canadian Fiction of 2022
• CBC Books Writers to Watch: 30 Canadian writers making their mark in 2023
A collection of fantastical stories linked by a complex mingling of language and culture, as well as a deep understanding of grief and what it makes of us. Within these pages a scholar writes home from the Ryukyu islands, not knowing that his hometown will soon face a deadly calamity of its own. Another seeker of truth … more.
“…a wondrous talent arising through Canadian prairie soil to let us see ourselves more clearly, more fully and deeply through our unique histories—in her case, through the singular warmth and healing light of Okinawa. If any place on earth is magical, it is there.”
- Joy Kogawa, author of Obasan
“ Ezra’s Ghosts, reads at times like a cross between Noh theatre, Canadian literature, and Garcia Marquez on a good day…Canadian-style magic realism at its best.”
- Robert Runté, The Ottawa Book Review full review
"[a]n immersive and intelligent page turner .... this is a treasure."
- Publishers Weekly full review
“…Ezra’s Ghosts is something more remarkable: a fabric of stories that frays to reveal the poetry beneath and between, and finally the ephemeral shimmer that is deeper than words.”
~ Randy Nikkel Schroeder, author of Arctic Smoke
“…a luminously magical exploration of raw human anguish. This collection will stick with you; we should all be haunting Ezra.”
~ C.J. Lavigne, author of In Veritas
”[t]ouching and hard to categorize ... [a] wonderfully conceived figure on par with the novelist Alessandro Baricco's best characters is the willing reader's prize."
~ Literary Review of Canada
“Darcy Tamayose’s latest book may not be arriving with the same fanfare as the 9/11-influenced works by DeLillo, Messud or Auster, but like those authors she successfully captures the intimate, felt experience of a world-changing event."
~ Yutaka Dirks, Alberta Views
Odori
Cormorant Books (2007)
• Winner, Canada-Japan Literary Award, 2008
• Finalist, Georges Bugnet Award for Novel, 2008
In the spring of 1999, Mai Yoshimoto-Lanier falls into a coma after her husband drives into the Belly River—and into the world of her great-grandmother on the island of Hamahiga … more.
“Tamayose offers the first novelistic telling of the Okinawan diaspora in Canada. In the tradition of the Japanese Canadian prairie gothic articulated by Joy Kogawa and Hiromi Goto, Tamayose interweaves Okinawan myth, storytelling and dance …” full reference
- jury, Canada-Japan Literary Awards
Katie Be Quiet
Coteau Books (2008)
• Finalist, Foreword Indies Juvenile Fiction, 2008
Still reeling from the sudden death of her composer father, thirteen-year-old Katie faces bullies at school, her mother's weird new friends, and a mystery that must be solved before it's too late … more.
“Tamayose’s book stands out for its complex mystery, its intermingling of youth and adult characters – and for an ending this reader did not see coming.” full review
- SaskBook Reviews