I am very excited to create a page to feature my forthcoming book, The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze, to be publishing by Thornapple Press in May, 2026. And here’s the book’s page at the press website.
I will add to this page as things progress. Please don’t hesitate to reach out if you are interested in having me talk to your book club, give a reading, participate in literary festivals and other events. In the moment in which we are living, which we all know didn’t begin yesterday and won’t end tomorrow, stories of power imbalances, older men and young women (who don’t necessarily know they have agency), the veiled and open threats that accompany sexual aggression and resistance, there are good reasons for us to keep talking.
May 7, 2026
A livestream on May 28 at 5pm with my publisher Eve Rickert.
May 5, 2026
If you are thinking about attending the Sechelt Library launch for The Art of Looking Back (and I’d love to see you there!), here’s some information:
The Sechelt Library has a special place in my heart. I visit almost every week to check out 4 or 5 books, my weekly requirement! Two of my books were introduced there, Inishbream way back in 2001, and Euclid’s Orchard in 2017. Talewind Books sold copies at both events.
May 3, 2026
A lovely consideration in our local Coast Reporter.
And if you are in Vancouver on June 12, please join us at Upstart and Crow, details here.
April 28, 2026
My books arrived! The courier left a note on our neighbour’s gate yesterday to say they would try again today. Much back and forth to convince them they’d gone to the wrong place. But today a van made its slow way up our driveway and deposited two boxes of books at my door.
March 30, 2026
A Kirkus Review! https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/theresa-kishkan/the-art-of-looking-back/
March 29, 2026
A generous and intelligent consideration of The Art of Looking Back at Shawna Lemay’s gorgeous site:
https://transactionswithbeauty.com/home/threebooks
March 23, 2026
I want to say how gratified I am to have been invited to read and/or sign copies of my forthcoming book, The Art of Looking Back, at bookstores. I have always thought of bookstores and writers existing in a kind of symbiosis (with publishers and readers too). When I was an undergraduate, Ivy’s Books in Oak Bay used to host readings on a regular basis. Chairs were placed wherever there was a little scrap of space and late-comers leaned against the laden bookshelves while Ivy and her sister passed around tea-cups filled with wine. Who did I hear read there? Gary Geddes, I remember. A whole group of writers who had work included in an anthology called Whale Sound. I never read there myself. I was too young, hadn’t yet published a book. But the welcome was warm none-the-less and set a very high standard. I know things have changed. Many bookstores charge a fee to host readings. But a few don’t — and I’m very grateful to have events at Munro’s, Volume One, Upstart and Crow, and Indigo (Rideau) to look forward to. If you’re able to come to any of those, please do. If I know you, great. If I don’t, please introduce yourself. I’ll have lovely letterpress keepsakes to give to you if you purchase a book. In a world increasingly approaching peak capitalism, the idea of a bookstore opening its doors to writers, to host events that may or not break even (I’ll be buying books at each place I’m invited, just to express my thanks), is so reassuring.
March 20, 2026
I’ll be signing books at Indigo (Rideau) in Ottawa on May 16th from 1 pm until 4.
March 18, 2026
You can read Sonja Pinto’s full review in BC BookWorld:
March 8, 2026
March 6, 2026
I’ll be reading at Upstart and Crow on Granville Island (Vancouver) on June 12. Will note the time once I have the details.
I’ll be visiting Volume One Bookstore in Duncan on June 6, from 11-1 p.m.
March 5, 2026
Heidi Tiedemann Darroch posted this generous review at Netgalley and Goodreads (and you can post reviews there too if so inclined; much appreciated):
Theresa Kishkan has written a deeply compassionate analysis of her own younger self and the troubling attachment that a painter, who was both older and married, developed for her when she was in her early 20s. As a budding poet with an adventurous spirit, the young Kishkan was keen to launch herself into the world, but she was susceptible to the demands men made on her, which in this case involved wanting to sketch and paint her, including in the nude; more troublingly, however, he also wanted to stake a claim on the young woman, complaining about her cold departure, and begging for her attention and affection.
Over the course of her sometimes painfully honest self-reflection and her complex reconstruction of the past, Kishkan considers the the figure of the artist’s muse (usually gendered as female). She reclaims a crucial voice for an often silent and talked-about subject, the object of the typically male painter’s possessive and defining gaze.
While the passages describing Kishkan’s adventurous travel in Greece and Ireland are among the most pleasurable to read, her account of the painter’s confession of his obsession with his own teenage daughter, who physically resembles Kishkan, is excruciating.
Kishkan also includes in the text some of the painter’s works, haunting images that suggest an unhealthy fixation that extends well beyond admiration.
But the broader project of the book is an ambitious one: to pick through memories and documents of the past in search of a less fragmentary truth than Kishkan experienced about the experience at the time is was occurring. With her hard-won wisdom, she is able to turn back on the painter some of his claims on her attention, her time, and her care, pointing to the fundamentally selfish nature of his obsession.
The author writes beautifully about art and selfhood, about the timorous spirit of young women during an era that was repressive of their sexuality even while it held them accountable for men’s desires and actions.
For British Columbia readers, this is also a fascinating portrait of Victoria during the era of the significant Limners Society, a group of artists and writers that included (as well as Kishkan’s portraitist), crucial figures like Myfanwy Pavelic and poet-critic Robin Skelton.
March 3, 2026
A wonderful consideration of The Art of Looking Back at BCBookWorld online. (Print issue due out now-ish as well. If you scroll through the online version, I’m on page 8-9.)
February 28, 2026
Heidi Tiedemann Darroch discusses my book in the context of artists, writers, and potential power imbalances in this piece at her website, The Landscape of Canadian Women’s Crime Fiction.
I also have a couple of events to tell you about.
–May 27: I’ll be reading at the Gibsons Public Library to celebrate the publication of The Art of Looking Back, from 6:30 pm until 7:30. Books will be available for sale.
–May 29: I’ll be reading at the Sechelt Public Library on the actual publication day of The Art of Looking Back from 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm. Books will be available for sale and there might be cake.
–June 3: I’ll be reading with Keiko Honda at Munro’s Books. Here are the details!
I’ll be reading at Upstart and Crow on Granville Island on the evening of June 12.
February 16, 2026
The Art of Looking Back has its first review, over at the Seaboard Review of Books, by the excellent Michael Greenstein. So many things to appreciate but here’s a sample:
Kishkan is a lid lifter, bearer of ceilings, and stair dweller who scatters thoughts and emotions with keen insight, Homeric hymns, and the Limners of Victoria’s artistic scene. Her portrait with dark hair, strewn flowers, blue vest, and lateral gaze haunts the pages of her memoir. Her story involves an understanding of boundaries, not just between men and women, but between art and society, and the nature of frames and framing.
February 14, 2026
This past week I attended the Western Book Reps Association Book Fair to introduce The Art of Looking Back to reps and book sellers. It was a lunch event and each table had as its centre-piece ARCs of the 5 authors who’d been invited that day: Kim Spencer, Jesse Winter, Melanie Watt, Bill Gaston, and me. Before the event, I met my publisher, Eve Rickert, for the first time (though we’ve had phone conversations and emails). I was so surprised and thrilled when she gave me one of the two copies of my book she’d had rushed from the printer, the actual book, in all its hardbound beauty. And yes, it’s beautiful. The cover has a texture that reminds me of canvas, a nod to the detail of the portrait that is featured on the cover.
I wanted you to see what we’ve done with the opening endpapers, Eve said. And honestly I was blown away. The designer Jeff Werner and Eve came up with this beautiful arrangement of elements of the book–letters, photographs (the one that inspired the cover portrait), sketches, including the drawing sent to me a few days after I met the painter Jack Wilkinson at a Limners group show in Victoria in 1978 and if I’d had better sense, I’d have run in the opposite direction instead of agreeing to let him paint me:
John will be printing some keepsakes to go with my book, a limited number of them set and printed letterpress on our late 19th c platen press, and if you preorder or let me know you’ve bought my book, I will happily put one in the mail for you.
November 19, 2025
I love seeing the endorsements appearing on my book’s page at Thornapple Press. People are so generous.
