From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New FictionEdited by Annabel TownsendPublished by Pete’s PressReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$21.99 ISBN 9781069000965 Annabel Townsend loved the “From the Ground Up” theme of Regina’s Cathedral Village Arts Festival (2024) so much, she used it as the theme for an anthology featuring ten Regina area fiction writers. Townsend—a writer, editor, publisher and former bookstore owner—held a “Battle of the Pitches” event at the festival: short story writers were given three minutes to “pitch” a story before a live audience and judges, with the prize being publication in the first-ever anthology by Pete’s Press, From the Ground Up: An Anthology of New Fiction. A few other writers also contributed stories. The stories include a futuristic story by well-known, multi-genre author Alison Lohans. The piece, “Crystal Sister,” is set on the planet Terruggia, which contains a “massive crystal lode” that’s being mined. The main character is young Lytha, whose “job was to form and impress images into waiting crystal, which had the capacity to amplify and transmit halfway across a galaxy.” Legend has it that the Terruggian waters are unsafe, so what’s any self-respecting teenager going to do? You can guess. The anthology opens with…

Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstoresby Annabel TownsendPublished by Pete’s Press, The Wandering SeriesReview by Shelley A. Leedahl$24.99 ISBN 9781069000996 It’s entirely wonderful to finish a book and immediately recognize that the author could be your new best friend. Annabel Townsend is a British-born, Regina, SK writer, and her nonfiction title Books and the City: Psychogeographical Wanderings Around Toronto’s Independent Bookstores contains all the elements I require for a wildly successful read: it’s well-written and structured; its author is passionate and clear about her mission; and it opened my mind while delivering a plethora of fun. Huge points also for the adventure of big-city, solo travel; staying in hostels; and using Toronto’s Bike Share program. And, naturally, I share her belief in the “magic” that bookstores (and books) contain. Books and the City details Townsend’s January 2024 pursuit to find a particular book, Stroll, by Torontonian Shawn Micallef, whom she heard present at the Toronto International Festival of Authors in 2022. Like Micallef, Townsend is a psychogeographer. Psychogeography, she explains, is “a marriage of psychology and geography but with a good dose of creativity and ethnography thrown in.” It’s “a lens through which we can view…