“I’ve always been a book junkie. I love books,” said Elanor Eden, the owner of Characters, a second-hand bookstore and coffee bar on Granville Street in Vancouver.

In 1984, in the beginning of his career, budding magician Stephen Kaplan participated in a BC-wide talent contest. Like any young contestant, he aspired to the ultimate victory, but his mother advised him, “Don’t think about winning. Just go and have fun.” So he went on stage, had fun, and won.

Olivia’s friends gossiped that Harry killed his fiancée. Olivia’s window faces Harry’s window across a narrow alley. Of course, she has to spy on him. But when he glances up and spots her, she is so mortified she drops to all four and crawls away from the window. That is how her twin brother finds her. The siblings’ dialogue that follows is so hilarious I almost fell off my chair. What a delicious beginning of a romantic tangle!

The word architect derives from the ancient Greek arkhitekton, where arkhi means chief and tekton means builder. Sarah Chapin, a young Vancouver architect, is among the new generation of the North American ‘chief builders’. Recently, I spoke with Chapin about her career and her city’s architecture. Symbolically, the  meeting took place in one of the city’s architectural landmarks — the Vancouver Public Library.

The Canadian Writer’s Market (2007) states that there are only 152 book publishers in Canada today. Alexis Roumanis is one of them.