Nothing Will Save Your Life
Nothing Will Save Your Life is an explosion of pop culture, femininity, sex, religion and motherhood held together with humour and lightened with fragments of joy. In this book Nancy Jo Cullen has created a collection that is deeply rooted in the messy day-to-day of life but takes on serious issues such as body image, aging, climate change, capitalism and even death – containing it all within traditional poetic forms. From kitten videos to confirmation bias to cucumber diets to vintage Vivienne Westwood, these poems are a whirlwind of constrained energy. Sometimes neurotic, sometimes bawdy, sometimes tender – they are always irresistible to the reader, drawing us deep into Cullen’s world where she pulls apart society to show us just what it is to be alive in this moment.
The Western Alienation Merit Badge
Set in Calgary in 1982, during the recession that arrived on the heels of Canada’s National Energy Program, The Western Alienation Merit Badgefollows the Murray family as they struggle with grief and find themselves on the brink of financial ruin. After the death of her stepmother, Frances “Frankie” Murray returns to Calgary to help her father, Jimmy, and her sister, Bernadette, pay the mortgage on the family home. When Robyn, a long-lost friend, becomes their house guest old tensions are reignited and Jimmy, Bernadette and Frances find themselves increasingly alienated from one another.
Part family drama, part queer coming-of-age story, The Western Alienation Merit Badge explores the complex dynamics of a small family falling apart.
Nancy Jo Cullen’s poetry and fiction have appeared in Ex-Puritan, The Humber Literary Review, Event Magazine, Grain, filling Station, Plenitude, Prairie Fire, Arc, This Magazine, The Journey Prize, Best Canadian Fiction 2012, Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2024. She is the 2010 recipient for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers. Her most recent collection of poetry, Nothing Will Save Your Life, was published by Wolsak & Wynn in 2022. She’s published three collections of poetry with Frontenac House and a collection of short stories, Canary, with Biblioasis. Her first novel, The Western Alienation Merit Badge, was short-listed for the 2020 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Her second novel, Dish, is forthcoming from Wolsak & Wynn. She is finishing a fifth collection of poetry and in the early stages of a new novel.
