Blood Letters

by Ariel Gordon, GMB Chomichuk (Illustrator)

Genres: Science Fiction

258 pages, Paperback

Published January 6, 2026

About the author

Ariel Gordon (she/her) is a Winnipeg/Treaty 1 territory-based writer, editor, and enthusiast. She is the ringleader of Writes of Spring, a National Poetry Month project with Plume Winnipeg that appears in the Winnipeg Free Press. She is the author of seven books, the most recent of which are the essay collection Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak & Wynn, 2024) and the epistolary spec-fic novel Blood Letters, co-authored with graphic novelist GMB Chomichuk (Great Plains Press, 2025). Her work appeared in Best Canadian Essays 2025, edited by Emily Urquhart, and will be in Best Canadian Poetry 2026, edited by Mary Dalton.

Reviews

[Michael]

My conversation with Chomichuk discussing the book here:
https://umfm.com/programming/broadcas...

[Ariel Gordon · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is my latest book! It will be out in mid-October!

In lieu of a review, here are the blurbs we've accumulated:

With Blood Letters, Gordon and Chomichuk present a tense recounting of a war at once foreign and all too familiar—a powerful epistolary trek through the personal loves and losses of a single family forced to contend with the manipulation, dehumanization, and disruption that comes to define their lives. — AGA Wilmot, author of Withered and The Death Scene Artist

Blood Letters is an artifact from the future, a jumbled archive of robots, soldiers, dot-matrix print-outs, ID cards, propaganda posters, photos and maps: Human detritus offering hints that something has gone horribly wrong. Letters fly back and forth as siblings strive to stay in contact in a world at war. This cascade of communication, chaotic attempts at human connection, may ultimately be doing more harm than good. Family letters improve morale, which in turn leads to increased lethality. Love hurt —or in this case, kills.

Throughout Blood Letters, poems sustain our heroes. Art, then, shows us a possible way through. Wars end, lessons aren’t learned, wars begin again… but even among the destruction, Humanity marches on. — A.G. Pasquella, author of Welcome to the Weird America, co-editor of Devouring Tomorrow

[Engel Dreizehn · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oh yes that very gritty (the cyber-bio punk illustration style really drove the mood through!!) and good. Very much would to place in YA but also at the same time, this can easily fit in adult sci-fi based on the very intense themes of "War is hell for all involved!!!" The poetry is interesting and emption as...obviously the poet is or will experience PTSD!