Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain's Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism against Indigenous Children in Canada jolts the reader from complacency page after page, detail after detail, pushing us beyond individual incidents to an understanding of a bigger picture.
With Represented Immobilized, a graphic memoir, Rick Trembles takes us through a series of autobiographical strips, each describing a different moment in the artist’s life.
Why a collection of selected poems now? My first question to Carmine Starnino about his new book Dirty Words is perhaps a little unfair. But I’m curious as to what has motivated a retrospective of five collections at this point in his career. A collection of selected poems always has the feel of an interval. A pause, a reflection. A summary, even.
Kama La Mackerel’s debut poetry collection, ZOM-FAM, is kaleidoscopic – literally, it is beautiful in its form and scope. As a way of looking, the kaleidoscope lets us view and appreciate La Mackerel’s moving, imaginative poetry through multiple frameworks.
Eva Crocker’s debut novel, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize, originated as a script for a playwriting class. All I Ask is a carefully crafted, observant novel, whose dialogue and scene composition retain an intimacy and immediacy that hint at its theatrical origins.
When I ask Avasilichioaei whether the performance piece or the print versions of this work came first, she explains that the creation of different renditions of the same work often happens simultaneously, and these versions mutually impact one another so that it is ultimately irrelevant which one originated the process.
I must be honest: I was apprehensive about reading Songs for the End of the World. I worried about it being more coronavirus realness than I could handle. Instead, this New Normal we’re living in worked to reduce the tension in the novel.
Forty-five-year-old Margot, who’s “never risked anything greater than a found dollar on a lottery ticket,” has ditched her long-held career as an antique firearms dealer in an attempt to sidestep a midlife crisis.
Wendy’s back, bitches. You know Wendy, right? She’s like an artist? White girl, long hair, always wears black. She used to write that Montreal scene report blog?
Sherwin Tjia’s latest, the graphic novel Plummet, is the surreal story of a woman who wakes up to find herself, along with assorted other people and objects, in a state of continuous freefall.
Addie Tsai’s journey towards publishing Dear Twin, her first book, has been circuitous – with many side roads, some dead ends, and plenty of footnotes, not unlike the novel itself.
Kaie Kellough can be serious. His general demeanour is that of considered statements and well-placed pauses. He speaks like a poet. The thing is, spending too much time enjoying the way he puts sentences together, both on the page and in person, means that the accompanying sly humour can be missed.
