Joanna's books can be ordered in all the usual places online or from your local bookshop.
Joanna Lilley's fifth book and third poetry collection, Endlings, was published in 2020 by Turnstone Press and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. All about extinct animals, Endlings takes us across continents and through the long expanse of aeons to give voice to the dead. In poems that are lyrical, exact, and deeply melancholic, Joanna Lilley demands audience for the final moments of animal extinction. From the zebra-horse quagga and chiding dodo, to the giant woolly mammoth and delicate Xerces Blue Butterfly, the haunting, urgent words of these “endlings” cut to the bone to expose the brutality of Nature and the devastating repercussions of human ignorance and intent, while giving hope that our humanity will help save what remains.
Joanna's debut novel, Worry Stones, was published by Ronsdale Press in 2018 and was longlisted for the Caledonia Novel Award in 2016. High in the Canadian Arctic British art history Jenny pursues her passions: Inuit art and an attractive geologist. But the sudden news that her mother has suffered a stroke reels Jenny back into her old life – the responsible youngest daughter of parents who gave up everything to join a religious commune. In Inverness, Jenny tries to put the jumble of pieces together, while turning to her collection of 'worry stones' for comfort. Amidst the turmoil, Jenny tries to break free of the childhood pressures that stifled her creative talents and emerge as an artist in her own right.
If There Were Roads, published by Turnstone Press in 2017, is Joanna's second poetry collection. Guided by the geography of land and mind, the familiar and the unknown converge in If There Were Roads by Joanna Lilley. Pulled like the tide between the sea and the shore, If There Were Roads
drives toward new vistas while reflecting on what has been lost in the
process of moving forward. Lilley's poems explore the paths we take from
here to there when there are no roads to guide us.
The Birthday Books, a collection of short stories with a strong northern theme, was published by Hagios Press in their Strike Fire New Authors Series in 2015. (Hagios Press is now owned by Radiant Press.) Governor General's Award for Poetry winner Arleen Paré says: 'Joanna Lilley's stories shoot for the Pole; they are in love with the north. They do just what short stories must do: introduce people we want to know, places we can hardly imagine, all in language as precise, as rich as poetry, clear as deep northern lakes. Lilley writes with great heart. Each story has a spirit. Each story stretches its arms to the broad northern sky.'
Joanna's first poetry collection, The Fleece Era, was published by Brick Books in 2014 and nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry. It's described as a 'a wry and eloquent testament to the intricacies of our various
relationships. From the shattered pieces of our environmental puzzles to
the labyrinth of family dynamics, Lilley makes these dilemmas come
alive. Chillingly sparse, attractively odd and refreshingly frank, The Fleece Era embraces the complexities of human life with an unsettling mix of the sardonic and the compassionate.'
Joanna Lilley's fifth book and third poetry collection, Endlings, was published in 2020 by Turnstone Press and won the Fred Kerner Book Award. All about extinct animals, Endlings takes us across continents and through the long expanse of aeons to give voice to the dead. In poems that are lyrical, exact, and deeply melancholic, Joanna Lilley demands audience for the final moments of animal extinction. From the zebra-horse quagga and chiding dodo, to the giant woolly mammoth and delicate Xerces Blue Butterfly, the haunting, urgent words of these “endlings” cut to the bone to expose the brutality of Nature and the devastating repercussions of human ignorance and intent, while giving hope that our humanity will help save what remains.
The Birthday Books, a collection of short stories with a strong northern theme, was published by Hagios Press in their Strike Fire New Authors Series in 2015. (Hagios Press is now owned by Radiant Press.) Governor General's Award for Poetry winner Arleen Paré says: 'Joanna Lilley's stories shoot for the Pole; they are in love with the north. They do just what short stories must do: introduce people we want to know, places we can hardly imagine, all in language as precise, as rich as poetry, clear as deep northern lakes. Lilley writes with great heart. Each story has a spirit. Each story stretches its arms to the broad northern sky.' 