From Ian Williams, author of Reproduction, winner of the Giller Prize and a June 2020 Indie Next Great Read Frustrated by how tough the issues of our time are to solve - racial inequality, our pernicious depression, the troubled relationships we have with other people - Ian Williams revisits the seemingly simple questions of grade school for inspiration: if Billy has five nickels and Jane has three dimes, how many Black men will be murdered by police? He finds no satisfaction, realizing that maybe there are no easy answers to ineffable questions. Williams uses his characteristic inventiveness to find not just new answers but new questions, reconsidering what poetry can be, using math and grammar lessons to shape poems that invite us to participate. Two long poems cut through the text like vibrating basenotes, curiosities circle endlessly, and microaggressions spin into lyric. And all done with a light touch and a joyful sense of humour.

Excerpts to be placed it notable literary journals and blogs. Online and in person readings with the author and translator. Interviews with the author for literary media and on the Coach House website. Co-op available. Print and digital galleys available. Galleys available at Winter Institute and ALA Midwinter Meeting. Online/social media campaign. eBook available at same time as print publication. eBook ISBN will be included on all press materials, author and publisher websites, and whenever print ISBN is listed.

About the Author
Ian Williams is the author of the Giller Prize-winning novel Reproduction. His last poetry collection Personals was shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award. His short story collection, Not Anyone's Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first collection of short fiction in Canada. His first book, You Know Who You Are, was a finalist for the ReLit Poetry Prize. Williams holds a Ph.D. in English at the University of Toronto and is currently an assistant professor of poetry in the Creative Writing program at the University of British Columbia. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence for the University of Calgary's Distinguished Writers Program. Ian Williams currently resides in Vancouver, BC.

Reviews
"Going in circles is structural ... in Ian Williams's Word Problems, a challenge in this case not of nature but of white supremacist culture and its enforcement. -Event Magazine "His word play is always in the service of a deadly seriousness, and recognizing the issues is critical to an improvement in relations among human beings." -The Ormsby Review


Awards
Winner of RAYMOND SOUSTER AWARD LONGLIST 2021.



Book Information
ISBN 9781552454145
Author Ian Williams
Format Paperback
Page Count 112
Imprint Coach House Books
Publisher Coach House Books