A hilarious and refreshing debut. Teed captures the anxiety and irritation of everyday life with wit and talent. Her cast of characters are equal parts unbelievable and so very real. Set against the quirky and quaint backdrop of Wells, an arts community in rural BC, British Columbiana is a moving portrait of alienation and identity.
Fawn Parker, author of What We Both Know
By turns deadpan and wryly candid, Teed has a keen observational eye and a talent for characterization. An excellent debut.
André Forget, author of In the City of Pigs
British Columbiana is a book about out-of-placeness: a town out of place both in time and altitude, young people out of place in their own skin, transient friendships of circumstance, dishes in the sink and mismatched romances. It’s here that Josie Teed makes her funny, unique debut, interpreting her recent past the way she and the people of Barkerville interpret Victorian history. Like learning the obscure German word that pins an elusive feeling down, Teed is able to capture, with sneaky humour and emotional clarity, what it means to still be coming-of-age past the point that others mythologize it. No one else has a voice like this.
Rebecca Alter, writer at Vulture
Hilarious, bold, and unabashedly intimate, British Columbiana turns our eyes away from the predictability of literary memoir truth-telling and guides us towards the difficult and necessary work of truth-questioning; truth-searching; truth-deconstructing. Josie Teed asks the questions that we are all afraid to ask — confesses the unique-yet-universal doubts and desires that plague early adulthood and creates space for us to take what we need and leave the rest. A bright light of a book from an author with an immense amount of laughter, insight, and hard-won wisdom to offer the world.
Sydney Hegele, author of The Pump
Teed’s memoir is an exploration of her journey to discover what she wants from life, and how to assert herself, acknowledge agency, and take up space.
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