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.
September 6, 2026
A wonderful review of The Art of Looking Back at Richard Pickard’s blog today:https://
https://boughtbooks.blogspot.com/2026/09/theresa-kishkan-art-of-looking-back.html
(I love the conclusion: “Just read the book, okay? You won’t regret it!”
August 26, 2026
I just read this review of The Art of Looking Back on the Netgalley site. There’s only a first name and initial given: Deborah T. (I think it might be Deborah Torkko, a Canadian Literature scholar and professor at Vancouver Island University.) Such an intelligent and nuanced reading of my book. So grateful.
In her memoir, The Art of Looking Back: A Painter, An Obsession, and Reclaiming the Gaze, Theresa Kishkan paints herself as the object of her female gaze. In fifty vignettes ranging in length from a paragraph to a several pages, the longest ten pages, we read an honest, heartfelt, vulnerable, and deeply inquiring conversation the author has with her younger self. On one level, Kishkan’s memoir offers a retrospective on the long, complicated friendship she had with Canadian artist Jack Wilkinson, a man almost three decades her senior, old enough to be her father. On another level, Kishkan offers a glimpse into the cultural context of what it is to come of age in the 1970-1980s in Victoria, British Columbia. And on still another level, we gain insight for how to look back on youthful folly, unwieldly power dynamics, and personal agency from the vantage point of an older, compassionate, and wiser self.
Kishkan is twenty-three when she first befriends Wilkinson and sits, sometimes nude, as model and muse, while he sketches and paints, and he remains a family friend long after she marries and has children. Kishkan writes beautifully and honestly and allows herself to be vulnerable in this very personal memoir; despite the personal focus, however, the memoir isn’t solipsistic. Rather it prompts readers to consider how the personal intersects with the more broadly political, the cultural codes for women coming of age in the 1970-1980s, and the network of connections that inform the understory of the publishing world at that time. Throughout, Kishkan aspires to be true to who she is despite the prevailing familial and societal expectations.
Readers familiar with Canadian culture of that time will recognize several prominent people: poet Robin Skelton and wife Sylvia Skelton; painter John Wilkinson and wife Marie Wilkinson; film-maker Atom Egoyan; Kishkan’s publisher, Dick Morriss; and an unnamed Scottish poet with a beautiful wife. To understand the cultural milieu and her younger self, Kishkan draws from theories of art, psychoanalytic theories, literary histories, correspondences from John Wilkinson, and a Catalogue Raissoné, a compendium of Wilkinson’s sketches and paintings and other visual pieces well placed throughout the book. The visual art suggests great richness and complements Kishkan’s written text; both work together to condense emotion to an essence as Kishkan questions her past behaviour, decisions, friendships, and relationships. With lyrical, poetic prose and an open heart and mind, Kishkan achieves a graceful acceptance of the mysteries of her younger self. The Art of Looking Back succeeds on many fronts: as an honest memoir; as an inquiry into the effects of complicated shame, guilt, and remorse; as a reconciliation of public and shadow selves; as a sketch of the local arts and publishing scene of the time; and, above all, as a kind of freedom that is available when the shadow we carry is released with a veil of words that tellingly reclaim – in art and in life – Kishkan’s female gaze.
August 20, 2026
So lovely to read this on a blog I follow most mornings:
https://stubblejumperscafe.wpcomstaging.com
August 2, 2026
Another nice review!
Kishkan’s book is a thought-provoking book about how other people see us, with many applications for anyone inside or outside the art world. Even for those who have never work as artists’ models, the questions raised in The Art of Looking Back can apply to other areas of life, making this book potentially relevant to many while also being a compelling account of a former artist’s model trying to sort out her feelings and experiences.
July 29, 2026
Two months ago today, The Art of Looking Back was published. And this morning, a starred review in the Quill and Quire! Denise Ryan has given my book a beautifully nuanced reading.
Kishkan’s beautifully rendered story explores power dynamics, personal responsibility, the relationship between artist and model, bodily autonomy, betrayal, and redemption. This story is many things: a reclaiming of identity, the setting straight of a historical record, a handbook for girls becoming women, a grace note – but most of all, it is a provocative and thoughtful work of art.
July 14, 2026
In the Tyee again this morning as one of eight local books to upgrade your summer reading list!
July 2, 2026
About book clubs: I am very happy to attend local book clubs to talk about my book and I am also willing to attend via Zoom or to engage in email correspondence. Lately most writers I know are contacted frequently (for me, it’s at least twice a day) by scams posing as book strategists or book club members or agents or even publishers. The idea is that they will convince you they are interested in promoting your book, featuring it in all kinds of ways, and I gather once you’ve begun to engage with them, they begin to ask for money. I haven’t engaged. I block them. It’s easy to recognize them because they provide long descriptions of my book(s) and they are sort of artless: they use AI and there’s something off about the emails. But having said that, I’d hate to think of a legitimate request going into my spam folder. I don’t know what to recommend if you are truly interested in contacting me. I keep my contact information online for that purpose and until the past few months, there’s never been a reason to regret it. Maybe email me without a long description of my book if you are asking for a book club visit or something like that. (Update: the scam emails were overtaking any kind of legitimate mail — 3 or 4 a day, as well as some in the spam folder — so I’ve had to remove my email address from the contact page. You can leave a comment on a post if you need to contact me. I’ll do my best to follow up.)
June 26, 2026
I’m a long-time daily reader of the Tyee so I’m really chuffed to see The Art of Looking Back on their summer reads list!
June 24, 2026
So many wonderful letters about The Art of Looking Back! It seems that every morning I open my email to find another. I am so grateful for the careful reading, the reflection, and the intriguing observations that people bring to this book. A few have wondered why the big newspapers and radio shows haven’t picked up on it and I can only say that it’s not because people haven’t tried to attract their attention. On the other hand, I’ll be visiting two book clubs in July and am willing to visit yours, either in person (if you’re on the Coast) or via Zoom or as an email exchange with readers.
Reading back, reading entries on my blog, I see that I began this book in October, 2022. I see that I was circling around a lot of stories, materials, and wondering how to put them together in a way that was mine, that acknowledged the other stories that overlapped mine, trying not to trespass on them, and I also realize that I didn’t intend to publish this long essay that became a book. In retrospect, I’m glad that I felt that way because it allowed me to be honest, to pay attention, and to take the advice Julia Kristeva offers in her beautiful “Stabat Mater”, in the passage that serves as the epigraph to my book:
“Let a body venture at last out of its shelter, take a chance with meaning under a veil of words.”
June 18, 2026
Several readers have written letters to me about The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze in which they mention another recently published book, Katia Van Schaik’s Women Among Monuments: Solitude, Permission, and the Pursuit of Female Genius so it was marvellous to read Kerry Clare’s consideration of both books in conversation with one another. Books exist because of other books, even if they don’t know one another yet!
June 12, 2026
This evening, a reading at Upstart & Crow on Granville Island in Vancouver. I’d love to see you there!
May 30, 2026
Such a great week, with two library readings, the first in Gibsons on Wednesday evening (the 27th), and the second yesterday afternoon, at the Sechelt Library on my book’s actual publication day. The room was full, my friend June brought flowers, Jane Davidson from Talewind Books sold books, people asked good questions after my introductory reading, and then we all had cake.
Looking forward to reading with Keiko Honda at Munro’s in Victoria on Wednesday, June 3, at 7pm and then visiting Volume One in Duncan to sign books on Saturday, June 6th, from 11am until 1pm.
May 28, 2026
Late afternoon today, 5:00pm, I’ll be in conversation with my publisher, Eve Rickert. Here’s the link:
May 19, 2026
A couple of recent reviews and a podcast conversation to post.
https://reviewcanada.substack.com/p/bookworm-no-148
https://thecommentary.ca/ontheline/2396-theresa-kishkan/ (I loved talking to Joe Planta.)
https://syrens.wordpress.com/2026/05/18/book-review-the-art-of-looking-back-by-theresa-kishkan/
https://karissareadsbooks.com/2026/05/06/book-review-the-art-of-looking-back-by-theresa-kishkan/
May 11, 2026
A thoughtful and nuanced review by Catherine Owen at River Street Writing:
https://www.riverstreetwriting.com/blog/2026/5/1/the-art-of-looking-back-review-catherine-owen
Kishkan is a movingly precise raconteur and the reader is held by her careful details: the “dark hair strewn with flowers” of one of Wilkinson’s early paintings of her; the empathic picnic they once shared of a “baguette and soft cheese, slices of apple…wine out of small tumblers”; the Grecian path in Iraklion fringed by “wild oats, henbane, the desiccated leaves of coreopsis”; or Ireland where she fled his incessance to a place of “dark bricks of turf cut from the bogs” to a “weather-beaten whitewashed cottage surrounded by grey-green leaves.” Woven within, allusions to Homer, Berger, Freud, Kristeva, as Kishkan interrogates the confusing past from an array of angles: her own shame or maybe her innocence, the painter’s wife, her possible perceptions in the wake of their divorce, the judgement of outsiders, and her own husband’s acceptance even as Jack’s erotically-tinged sketches persist despite her marriage and children.
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.
