NEW

“Sea Change” available now in Prairie Fire!

The penultimate story from Toward Another Shore appears in this summer’s issue of the distinguished Canadian literary journal, Prairie Fire.

TOWARD ANOTHER SHORE

A NOVEL-IN-STORIES BY ALEX TURNER AND LUCIAN CHILDS
Coming Fall 2026 from Arsenal Pulp Press

“[a] powerful novel—simply and directly told, with a great narrative engine and a fully realized emotional arc.”—Trevor Corkum, The World After Us

In 1956, fifteen-year-old Ted—a lonely boy drawn to the water and woods surrounding his small town of Harrison Hot Spring, BC—is overwhelmed by his feelings when he meets the bad boy Wade. Over the next decade, the story tracks Ted’s blossoming into a young man and his unrequited love for his mercurial friend.

We learn of their rapturous early years ranging over the area’s mountains, their falling out after high school over Ted’s sexuality. Their separation, during which Ted experiences love and loss in a surprisingly wild pre-Stonewall gay Vancouver—house parties, dance clubs, saunas. The final story delves further into Ted and Wade’s shared past, bringing the cycle of their friendship forward another revolution.

In addition to being a poignant story of personal development, the work contributes to our understanding of a little described moment in contemporary queer Canadian history—the decade prior to the 1969 Stonewall riots, the event which sparked the modern gay rights movement.

As illustrated in the novel’s second part, in Vancouver gay sexuality was sidelined in the broader push for sexual liberation. And its queer community—far from benefitting from the era’s drive for civil rights—continued to suffer discrimination and police harassment. Even so, the city was a mecca for a new generation of queer people, whose social networks and gathering places—albeit largely out of sight—became the foundation for the thriving queer culture that would blossom post-Stonewall.

Harrison Hot Springs and Agassiz, though largely at the periphery of this cultural moment, were powerfully affected by it, nonetheless. New artistic influences and social practices—the books and generation-defining music of the day, the exuberant sexuality—all made their way to the Upper Fraser Valley, brought largely by its returning sons and daughters. Alex, among them.

Alex Turner draws on his sixty-year history with this magical place to create a work of great intimacy and depth. The area’s mountains, its waterways, the mores of its small towns drive the novel’s lyricism—deep evocations of time and place revealed through language that is both poetic, humorous and exuberantly down to earth.

Toward Another Shore is a collaboration with Alex’s husband and Toronto writer, Lucian Childs. For more about the co-writing process, please click here.