A fusion of biography and history, art and politics, told through the lives branching off one family tree.

In Fear the Mirror, Cora Siré brings together thirteen stories of moments that have marked the dark intersections within her own history. A feminist mother who fled Estonia. A father who arrived in Canada with nothing but a violin. A Catalan boy whose parent is dying. A love triangle among novelists. Bodies stolen in the night and never found. Blending essay, memoir, and fiction, the Montréal author draws on her encounters in Latin America and elsewhere to compose loving and conflicted portraits – of family members, writers, filmmakers, and gravediggers – culminating in the persistent legacies and strange alchemies that haunt the person she sees in the mirror. In this masterful fifth book, Siré has written her most urgent, beguiling, and personal work to date. 

Published by Vehicule Press

Not in Vain You've Sent Me Light begins with a provocative, sometimes humorous exposé of two lovers and their collisions and triumphs, and evolves into a high-voltage portrait gallery, depicting heroes and artists, scientists and politicians, mothers and their conflicted daughters. Cora Siré draws on a multi-dimensional palette to deepen her exploration of identity, displacement and the cosmic powers of love and art.

Published by Guernica Editions
 

After twelve years in exile, Alma Alvarez is persuaded to return to Luscano. Flaco, her old friend, has invited her to give a lecture at his university on the tragic Uruguayan poet, Delmira Agustini, known for her erotic poetry and film noir demise.

Alma knows how dangerous poetry can be, having been arrested after the publication of a poem which offended the military regime. She soon discovers that life in Luscano is still rife with secrecy and duplicity – even Flaco has a hidden agenda. Agustini’s work once saved Alma; now she must rely on the power of her own words.

“Cora Siré brings her poet’s eye for detail and lyrical language to Behold Things Beautiful, a finely constructed novel.” – Prairie Books Now

Published by Signature Editions
Cover design by Doowah Design

Read the reviews at the Globe and Mail, the Montreal Review of Books and the Ottawa Review of Books.

The Other Oscar tells the story of a thirty-year-old Canadian musician who arrives in a Chilean coastal town to appear in a film about madness. That’s all Oscar knows about the film except that he’s been cast to play his cello on a raft in the Pacific, a terrifying prospect. Early on, he meets a gregarious actor who winds up befriending him and then the alluring Noemi whom he can’t forget. This labyrinth of a story follows Oscar’s misadventures as he parties with the film crew, experiences a harrowing day of filming and sets off on a search that takes him into a prison and alters the course of his self-discovery.

Published by Quattro Books
Cover design by Natasha Shaikh

"Signs of Subversive Innocents travels the depth of human experience from the celebratory to the delusional."

Read the Book Review.

This début collection by Cora Siré tells of characters and realms ranging from Argentina to Vietnam as well as her home city of Montréal. With vibrant intensity, humour and humanity, the poems confront the triumphs and fears of our age.

The poems speak of physical and metaphorical signs – omens, gestures, creations and other markings or traces of human existence – and the impulse to subvert destiny, the tension between actuality and desire that underlies beauty, terror, desperation and triumph.

Uniquely structured around a quartet set in an abandoned marble quarry, the poems resonate for their ingenuity and range while evoking the search for connection in a complex world.