Curated by Robert Bose, Sarah L. Pratt & Jim Jackson
The Alberta Badlands. A region better known for what lies beneath – coal, fossils, and the geologic strata of deep time – than what lives above. Living itself is an act of rebellion in these scarred hills. Alongside the hardy sage, prickly pear, and circling crows, there are certain people drawn to the fragile beauty of this land, where Old Gods emerge from the sun-baked sediment, calling to lost souls. A broken-hearted grave digger discovers that nothing in the badlands can be buried, without unearthing something else. In the long shadow of the Hoodoos, night blooming flowers conceal a gateway to salvation, and immortality is on offer within the damp, black wounds carved deep into the earth. But always for a price. The price of bone, and blood. Desert Artemisia is a collection of fiction, poetry, illustrations, and music created and curated by artists deeply captivated by one of the most haunting places on Earth.
With art by Janice Blaine, Poems and Photography by Peter Story and Bob Canuel, music by Jim Jackson, and prose by Jim Jackson, Lareina Abbott, F.B. McRory, Sarah L. Pratt and Robert Bose
Blurbs
Maybe you love cozy landscapes with blue mountains or green hills or yellow fields. Maybe you love warm winds and birdsong and art that settles your nerves. But maybe—just maybe—you lust after something more vivid. Maybe you crave a little badlands on the side.
Desert Artemesia will scratch that itch. Here are rabid ‘coons and snakes and scorpions, ghost towns and lost mines and blackdamp vapours. Here are vanished oceans, boneyard forests, glacial scars and deep, deep time. Here are fresh graves and circling vultures, bleaching diners and next-door killers, and, somehow, dwarves and witches.
Check out these badland words and images. Cut these night-blooming flowers. You can deal with the consequences later. – Randy Nikkel Schroeder (Arctic Smoke)
Prairie Soul Press & The Seventh Terrace – Badlands Curio
Coming June 4th, 2025 in Trade Paperback and eBook