Daniel Gawthrop’s Cutting Edge gets audiobook release as queer hockey book heads to Toronto
Cover of Daniel Gawthrop’s Cutting Edge: Hockey as Queer Culture, published in print by Arsenal Pulp Press. The audiobook edition is due Oct. 13 through ECW Press’s Bespeak Audio Editions.
Photo credit: Arsenal Pulp Press / Booksellers.ca
Daniel Gawthrop’s Cutting Edge: Hockey as Queer Culture gets a new release on Oct 13, 2026, when ECW Press’s Bespeak Audio Editions publishes an audiobook narrated by Ivan Lo. The same evening, Gawthrop is scheduled at Another Story Bookshop in Toronto for a launch event with Harrison Browne and Dennis Pilon.
The audiobook extends a launch cycle that began with Arsenal Pulp Press’s print edition. Gawthrop launched the book in Vancouver on Sep 10, 2026. The Oct. 13 release is the audiobook edition of an already-published Canadian nonfiction title.
Gawthrop was born in Nanaimo and is based in New Westminster, B.C., and his connection to queer recreational hockey reaches back more than three decades. The Cutting Edges’ own history says he organized a team for the 1990 Gay Games and later worked with Vancouver Sun reporter Kevin Griffin to build a team for the 1994 Gay Games. The organization now describes itself as Vancouver’s LGBTQ+ hockey association, while ECW identifies Gawthrop as one of its co-founders.
That history provides the book’s point of entry. In Gawthrop’s own writing about the project and in publisher material, Cutting Edge examines hockey through questions of masculinity, sexuality and gender, drawing on his experience in queer hockey as part of a broader argument about participation and culture in the sport. ECW’s audiobook description expands that framing to include queer and gender-diverse participation. Those assessments are Gawthrop’s and his publishers’ framing of the book’s argument about hockey culture.
ECW says Gawthrop has written six nonfiction books as well as the novel Double Karma. The Toronto event at Another Story Bookshop runs from 7 to 8:30 p.m., with Browne joining Gawthrop and Pilon hosting. The Bespeak audiobook is released the same day, giving Cutting Edge a second Canadian release moment a month after its Vancouver print launch.
