Apples on a Windowsill is a series of meditations on still life, photography, beauty, and marriage. Full of personal reflections, charming anecdotes, and the history behind the art of still lifes, this lyrical memoir takes us from Edmonton to Rome to museums all over North America as Lemay discusses the craft of writing, the ups and downs of being married to a painter, and her focus on living a life in art and in beauty. A must read for fans of The Flower Can Always Be Changing, Everything Affects Everyone, and Rumi and the Red Handbag.
Available to order through the publisher, Palimpsest Press, your local indie bookstore, and the following:
Audreys Books — Edmonton
Glass Bookshop — Edmonton
Indigo — online
McNally Robinson — Saskatoon and Winnipeg
Another Story Bookshop – Toronto
Munro’s Books — Victoria
Upstart and Crow — Vancouver
Barnes & Noble
Amazon.ca
Amazon.com
Amazon UK
EXCERPTS FROM REVIEWS
“Apples on a Windowsill is a meditation on being human, and on staying human (soft and porous) in a world that makes this difficult. These are essays about marriage, and being an artist, and being the wife of an artist, working at a library, and about finding inspiration in the ordinary. As I begin a new year, I also find these essays are a helpful guide for how to be, and how to see, and I underlined all kinds of passages: “The magic trick of art, and perhaps particularly still life, is to remind us above all that there is beauty at the same time as evil. Evil is a given, but beauty persists. The magic trick of still life is that it reminds us that we’re not alone. The magic trick of still life is that it’s really not a trick at all.”
“There’s a kind of magic in this wondering, this sending of good wishes to other poets and writers and artists at work in other rooms, other spaces. This connection with others who are drawn to create. This curiosity about what they, and we, will create next. This belief in possibility, and in the value of dreaming “new possibilities,” even though we have “no idea if the ending is a happy one.”
“Shawna Lemay’s engrossing collection of essays, Apples on a Windowsill, should be required reading for anyone with an interest in creating art and being human in challenging times.”
“From the first page, Shawna Lemay’s voice is candid and thoughtful, charmingly self-deprecating and alive with wonder at the splendour to be found right before our eyes, even in the most unpromising circumstances. The book entertains and informs, but most of all it inspires. Apples on a Windowsill is an intimate act of sharing for which we can and should be grateful.”
“A book from 2024 that I know will stay with me is Shawna Lemay’s Apples on a Windowsill. Meditative without being precious, reflective and yet still occasionally, refreshingly, acerbic, Lemay’s essays invite us to recognize the beauty in the everyday, to find everything – not just flowers or vistas but even our own “wrinkled selves” – worth looking at. As she says, “we exist right now at this exact moment and one day we won’t.” Surely we should make as much of that moment as we can.”
INTERVIEWS & ARTICLES
Conversation with Grant Stovel on CKUA Radio’s Alberta Morning:
Bookspo Episode Three with Kerry Clare:
“Shawna Lemay Uses the Still Life Form to Explore Marriage, Beauty, and Time in Her New Essays”
“Shawna Lemay Reflects on Still Life, Marriage and Death”