Product details
- ISBN 9781837262052
- Dimensions: 141 x 220mm
- Publication Date: 13 Aug 2026
- Publisher: Canongate Books
- Publication City/Country: GB
- Product Form: Hardback
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WINNER OF THE NAN SHEPHERD PRIZE
A BOOKSELLER SPOTLIGHT PICK
'A truly original take on migration, family and faith' NOREEN MASUD
As a young Muslim woman, Alycia Pirmohamed grew up with her body as racialised and her faith as seemingly dangerous. Her affinity to the natural world - the mountains, elk and pines of her childhood - conflicted with feelings that she was unwelcome in these landscapes. By contrast, the stories of her parents' homeland - the monsoon winds, red clay roads and abundant korosho trees - felt painfully distant.
Across interrelated pieces that travel from Midwestern Canada to East Africa, the Pacific Northwest to the British Isles, the award-winning poet traces the legacies of migration and memory on her life, examining the idea of homeland and the mythmaking it demands. She creatively resists the expectations of nature writing and memoir, at times choosing to withhold as much as she reveals.
Shorelines moves from lavender skies to lighthouses, from surefooted ideas to liminal spaces. It asks what it means to carry hidden histories across borders and generations - and how losing family can mean losing the place they are from too. Above all, it explores how place and identity intertwine, and how our choices, our actions and the ways we build community shape us into who we become.
Alycia Pirmohamed is a Canadian-born poet based in Scotland. She is the author of the pamphlets Hinge and Faces that Fled the Wind, as well as the collaborative pamphlets Second Memory, co-authored by Pratyusha and this too is a glistening with Jessica J. Lee, Nina Mingya Powles and Pratyusha. Her debut poetry collection, Another Way to Split Water, was published by Polygon (UK) and YesYes Books (US), and has been shortlisted for Scottish Poetry Book of the Year by the Saltire Society. She is the recipient of several awards, including the Nan Shepherd Prize, a Pushcart Prize, the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2020 Edwin Morgan Poetry Award.
alycia-pirmohamed.com | @a_pirmohamed | @alyciap_
