For more details or to schedule an interview, email Ashley Fortier or call 438-338-4591
Listen to Hazel Jane Plante read a brief excerpt of her debut novel
Download a two-page PDF press kit or see below
About the Author
Hazel Jane Plante is a queer trans librarian, cat photographer, and writer. In a previous life, she co-founded a micro-press, co-edited a little literary journal, co-hosted a podcast, and released lo-fi albums under the name Sparse. Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is her first novel.
She currently lives in Vancouver on the unceded ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and sə̓lílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.
About the Book
Winner of the 2020 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Fiction and the Expozine Award for English Literature; Finalist for the 2020 Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-variant Literature and the 2019-20 Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes (BC Book Prizes).
The playful and poignant novel Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) sifts through a queer trans woman’s unrequited love for her straight trans friend who died. A queer love letter steeped in desire, grief, and delight, the story is interspersed with encyclopedia entries about a fictional TV show set on an isolated island. The experimental form functions at once as a manual for how pop culture can help soothe and mend us and as an exploration of oft-overlooked sources of pleasure, including karaoke, birding, and butt toys. Ultimately, Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) reveals with glorious detail and emotional nuance the woman the narrator loved, why she loved her, and the depths of what she has lost.
In the Press
Specs
Title: Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian)
Author: Hazel Jane Plante
Trim size: 5.25′ x 8′
Format: Paperback
Season: Fall 2019
Pub date: October 7, 2019
Price: $18.95
ISBN: 978-0-9940471-9-9 (paperback)
Category: Fiction
Target Audience: LGBTQ readers, lovers of experimental fiction, pop culture enthusiasts
Market
Keywords: First fiction, LGBTQ, contemporary fiction, grief
Quotable quotes:
“If you spend hundreds of hours with someone, you have a catalogue of tiny memories. As you live your life, those tiny memories snap and crackle your synapses. It can be overwhelming, like the world is already overlaid with experience.”
“Beside me on the desk, I had a to-do list on a sticky note. I added an item to the list: ‘Turn pain into beauty.’ It seemed as elusive as turning lead into gold, but somehow Viv had done it. And I suppose that on some level I’ve been trying to perform a similar emotional alchemy by turning the pain of losing Viv into a weepy and witty alphabetical elegy. Ranjit Jha was right when she said about her absent husband Captain Alphonse that ‘we love the dog we love, dirt and all.’ Sometimes we realize too late that we didn’t appreciate the dirt and the darkness.”
See for comparison:
Important Artifacts and Personal Property from the Collection of Lenore Doolan and Harold Morris, Including Books, Street Fashion, and Jewelry by Leanne Shapton (ISBN: 978-0-3741753-0-6)
A Safe Girl to Love by Casey Plett (ISBN: 978-1-6-272900-5-0)
Critical praise
“An exquisite, kaleidoscopic novel bursting with ache and delight.” –Zoey Leigh Peterson, author of Next Year, For Sure
“Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian) is gorgeously whimsical, inspired, odd and anguished. Reminiscent of early Jeanette Winterson, but also utterly innovative, this is a love letter to heart break and to art as its only, imperfect salve.” —Trish Salah, author of Wanting in Arabic and Lyric Sexology Vol. 1
“Hazel Jane Plante’s debut is fabulously fanciful, all the while telling us that a life recalled can be both encyclopaedic and enigmatic. This gloriously genre-fucking book is an ode and a compendium to this fact of life, this state of knowing.” –Tom Cho, author of Look Who’s Morphing
Press images
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- Cover by LOKI Design; illustrations by Onjana Yawnghwe
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- Photo by Agatha K.
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- Photo by Agatha K.