“The only way in is around.”
—Fuse
This explosive debut collection pushes against the limitations of gender roles, race, bodies, and minds, and explores our insignificance and impotence in the universe. The concept of otherness afforded by a marginalized and neurodivergent perspective is brilliantly represented in this collection of poetry.
Rebellion Box is available wherever books are sold.
Buy from Radiant Press.
Buy from your local independent bookstore.
Buy anywhere books are sold.
“There’s a willingness to go anywhere and meet anything head-on throughout Hollay Ghadery’s Rebellion Box. Her extraverted poems seek out the very roughest edges of her subjects: parenthood, race, and history, and stay there steadfastly. Beginning in minutiae and building out, the world of the book feels massive; spectacular with sadness and towering with joy."—Jacob McArthur Mooney, Don’t Be Interesting
“Lush and caustic, velvet and thoughtful, multi-genre writer Hollay Ghadery’s debut poetry collection is a study in contrasts, from the most minute domestic dilations of time to the happenings of cosmic heavens. Punctuated by tender yet difficult teachable moments between mother and children, moments whose teachings extend to this grateful reader, Rebellion Box explores the themes of parenthood, identity, death and life cycles, isolation and anxiety, and society’s ongoing expectations of women. It’s an exuberant collection tinged with shadow that delights in sonic language.”
—Margo LaPierre, Washing Off the Racoon Eyes
“In Rebellion Box, Hollay Ghadery takes us on a captivating journey through womanhood, motherhood, a history that is ‘not in the past … taking up/space, everywhere.’ Hold tight to this book, turn its pages, and see the days anew.”
—Jennifer Hosein, A Map of Rain Days
Fantasies are places we briefly visit; we can’t live there. The stories in Widow Fantasies deftly explore the subjugation of women through the often subversive act of fantasizing. From a variety of perspectives, through a symphony of voices, Widow Fantasies immerses the reader in the domestic rural gothic, offering up unforgettable stories from the shadowed lives of girls and women.
Widow Fantasies was released in September 2024 by Gordon Hill Press and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Awards.
Order from Gordon Hill.
Preorder from your local independent bookstore. (Coming soon!)
Preorder wherever books are sold. (Coming soon!)
"At turns shocking, funny, and heartbreaking, the stories in Hollay Ghadery’s, Widow Fantasies serve up densely packed miniatures embracing the gothic dysfunctions of the nuclear family. Ghadery’s stories take an unflinching look at family life and explode the myths of a bucolic domestica. These sure-footed stories make for compelling reading."
—Nancy Jo Cullen, author of The Western Alienation Merit Badge and winner of the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Prize
“Sparking sudden moments of self-recognition, Hollay Ghadery’s Widow Fantasies is an elegiac collection that lays bare, in flashes of longing and desire, the personal and particular. Ghadery’s distinctive blend of wry humour, wit and sensuality sear the pages, filling them with evocative imagery, lyricism and tenderness. Widow Fantasies will take your breath away with its honesty and elegance.”
—Lucy E.M. Black, author The Brickworks
Drawing on her own experiences as a woman of Iranian and British Isle descent, writer Hollay Ghadery dives into conflicts and uncertainty surrounding the bi-racial female body and identity, especially as it butts up against the disparate expectations of each culture. Painfully and at times, reluctantly, Fuse probes and explores the documented prevalence of mental health issues in bi-racial women.
Fuse is the winner of the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir and is available wherever books are sold.
Buy from Guernica Editions.
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Buy from anywhere books are sold.
“I cannot find enough superlatives to describe the savage clarity, the gorgeous language, and the remarkable depth of insight contained in this courageous book. It took my breath away.”
—Diane Schoemperlen, Governor General Award winner and author of This is Not My Life: A Memoir of Love, Prison, and Other Complications
“I loved Fuse. Ghadery’s writing is raw and beautiful; the tiny details she includes in each story bring you closer to her, and she bravely allows you in. She offers a unique and much-needed perspective on multiraciality and her experience of a bi-cultural life, as well as mental health and addiction, motherhood, and personal growth. I highly recommend it.”
—Rachel Fernandes, The Miramichi Reader
“So, far from being a dispassionate investigation, the narrative became a series of windows into Ghadery’s own personal struggles with these conditions. The effect is informative and often moving. The lack of linearity in the narrative has the effect of immersing the reader more into what she is going through, without the sense that there will be inevitable improvement or change. One feels just the immediacy of the moment. This sometimes leads to a lack of chronological clarity, but in the main it intensifies the reader’s experience.”
—Ottawa Review of Books
Due out February 15, 2025.
Moving on is hard. Even harder when it's from a make-believe friend—someone, or in this instance, some thing—who’s been your strongest source of support. On what should be one of the happiest days ever, the day her granddaughter is born, Minoo is faced with a terrible choice: make a clean break from her constant companion, a sock puppet named Ecology Paul, or lose her daughter and granddaughter, and maybe all of the people she loves. On an emotional drive home from the hospital, Ecology Paul shares the story of how Minoo got to this point, recalling Minoo’s early teenage pregnancy in Iran, her exile to Canada, her questions about her sexuality, and how a ragtag sock puppet came to her when she desperately needed to be seen. Full of imagination, whimsy and heart, The Unravelling of Ou follows Minoo’s struggles to justify the puppet's existence and eventually, untangle herself from her dependence on it and reconnect with the people she loves.
Pre-order from your local independent bookstore.
Pre-order from anywhere books are sold.
“Wildly original and captivating. A phenomenal examination of female shame, sexuality, queerness, motherhood, and intimacy, Hollay Ghadery writes with sensitivity and resonating beauty through an unconventional narrator: a sock puppet, Ecology Paul, who delivers the emotional coming-of-age tale of young Minoo with whimsy and emotional depth. Minoo feels trapped in her body and guilt over its sensual pleasures, as she grapples with a complicated relationship with a traditional Iranian mother. In The Unravelling of Ou, the immigrant Canadian narrative is dismantled, and headstrong mothers and daughters clash with patriarchal structures that want to control their bodies, their vanity, and their desires. Vulnerable, brave, and heartbreaking, this powerful novel asks: how do women function in a world that is not designed to love them back? How do oppressed individuals understand and ultimately save themselves? Ghadery delivers answers in a lyrical and imaginative debut.”
—Lindsay Wong, Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies
“The Unraveling of Ou is wonderfully layered, with a compelling plot and deeply realized characters. Its bracingly effective central conceit—first person narration by the protagonist’s sock puppet—is fresh and satisfying and, ultimately, quite moving.”
—K.R. Wilson, author of Call Me Stan and An Idea About My Dead Uncle
