Mallinson Launch at Pacific Festival of the Book

A.J. Mallinson launches her new book Terra Infirma - A Life Unbalanced at the Pacific Festival of the Book in Victoria B.C. on Saturday, March 24th.

A moment from Terra Infirma- A Life Unbalanced shared by author A.J. Mallinson.

This heartwarming and universal account of what it is like to live with disability, is both literary and humorous.

A.J. Mallinson, author of Terra Infirma - A Life Unbalanced and Sandra Janssen of Windshift Press discussing her reading at the Festival.

Pacific Festival of The Book

Crowds of passionate book lovers and writers stopped to chat over the course of the Festival.

The chance to talk about books and publishing for hours at a time is just too tempting~!!



Now that wouldn't be a bit of publishing gossip would it?


We had hoped to take lots of pictures of the Festival and our booth but in the end we were so busy talking to readers and writers that it was over before we knew it.



There is nothing quite as intense and satisfying as two book lovers deep in conversation. Sandra Janssen of Windshift Press and Lynne Van Luven, editor of Nobody's Mother [Touch Wood Editions] sharing ideas.

Looking like a breath of Spring, A.J. Mallinson poses for a photo following her reading from Terra Infirma - A Life Unbalanced.

Author of Take The Wings of A Morning, Kathy Wilson drops by our booth on Saturday afternoon.

World Poetry Day - March 21st

To mark this year’s World Poetry Day, UNESCO will pay tribute to Chilean poet and Nobel Literacy Prize winner, Pablo Neruda (1904-1973), the centenary of whose birth is also being celebrated.

My favourite Neruda poem is Tonight I Can Write. This poem was at the heart of the film Il Postino depicting an apocryphal incident in Neruda's life. In this poem he describes the pleasures and torments of erotic love with a sensual precision that is not often found in the works other modern poets.


An excerpt from Tonight I Can Write

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.

Write, for example, 'The night is shattered
and the blue stars shiver in the distance.'

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings.

Tonight I can write the saddest lines.
I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too.

Through nights like this one I held her in my arms.
I kissed her again and again under the endless sky.


- Pablo Neruda -

A.J. Mallinson Reads at The Festival

Terra Infirma – A Life Unbalanced – Anna Jean Mallinson

The Windshift Press Group is thrilled to have Anna Jean Mallinson do a reading at The Pacific Festival of the Book in Victoria, BC on Saturday, March 23rd at 4:00 in Studio 3. If you are attending the Festival drop by our booth to get your signed copy of Terra Infirma as well as copies of any other Windshift Press titles you may have missed.

Terra Infirma - A Life Unbalanced tells the story of a summer that became a season of change through a toxic response to gentamicin and the author’s struggle to reclaim a life in a body disabled by this modern elixir.



Jean Mallinson is the author of a book of short stories, I Will Bring You Berries, a book of poems, Between Cup and Lip, and, with four other writers, a book of poems, Quintet: Themes & Variations. She is also the author of essays and articles, most recently in Vocabula Review.

She lives in West Vancouver, B.C., Canada.

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“Jean Mallinson, in her wrenching, compelling account of her own disability, reminds us that we, all of us -- wherever our station, whatever our circumstances -- live an uncertain, a wobbly life. A lovely mix of personal thought and literary quotation, A Life Unbalanced is full of honest feeling and whirling reflection.“
Robert Hartwell Fiske, Editor, Vocabula Review. Vocabula Review