A young Canadian man visits family in Pakistan to settle a generational feud.
CONNIE KUHNS
Signs of Life
Does a house that has been home to four generations of one family still hold their electricity?
Daniel Francis
The Artist as Coureur de Bois
Tom Thomson, godfather of the Group of Seven, drowned in an Ontario lake under mysterious circumstances, and ever since, his reputation has been the stuff of legend.
Norbert Ruebsaat
Caleb and Opa on Holiday
Opa, you know that sometimes people say things, well, indirectly? They don’t say everything that they mean?
Patty Osborne
A Little Distillery in Nowgong
A review of A Little Distillery in Nowgong by Ashok Mathur.
Alberto Manguel
Role Models and Readers
Ruskin's readers have the power to know that there is indeed room for Alice at the Mad Hatter's table.
Alberto Manguel
Imaginary Islands
In order to discharge ourselves of certain problems, why not simply erase from our maps the sites of such nuisance?
Florence Grandview
Lights Out at the Jubilee
At the Jubilee Cinema, the manager carries an imitation pistol in the John Dillinger style.
David Wisdom
UJ3RK5
A Vancouver rock band made up of musicians, photographers and at one time, a prominent sci-fi writer.
Alberto Manguel
Face in the Mirror
What does it mean to "be" yourself? The face reflected in the mirror is unrecognizable.
Stephen Henighan
The Market and the Mall
In the farmer’s market, a quintessentially Canadian setting, much of Canada is not visible.
Daniel Francis
Sex, Drugs, Rock ’n’ Roll and the National Identity
In this essay, Daniel Francis discusses how Gerda Munsinger—a woman with ties to the criminal underworld—shaped Canadian politics in the 1960s.
Alberto Manguel
Cri de Coeur
Compared to today's vile heros, Ned Kelly-the Australian outlaw who wrote the angry, articulate Jerilderie letter in 1879-seems as innocent as an ogre-slaughtering hero of fairy tales.
Alberto Manguel
The Other Side of the Ice
Atanarjuat: The Fast Runner is a film about community and the north.
EVELYN LAU
Love Song to America
Reflections on John Updike's death.
Alberto Manguel
Geist’s Literary Precursors
The Geist map has a venerable ancestor that goes back four centuries and halfway around the world.
Michelle Fost
Long Distance
Shared family memories of burnt baked goods.
Sheila Heti
American Soul
Slot machines sing their astral music. The tape recorder turns off. “Do you talk to friends about sex?” he asks.
Annabel Lyon
Irony-Free Reality TV
There may be more to reality TV than meets the eye.
Edith Iglauer
Mad About Harry
A new pet kitten becomes part of the family.
Jill Boettger
City Under Water
The Calgary floods left behind a stew of knee-deep mud, and waterlogged piles of couches, fridges, books, toys, artworks, chairs, carpet, drywall...
Stephen Osborne
The Coincidence Problem
That dreamlike quality causes rational minds to dismiss the moment as “only a coincidence.”
Alberto Manguel
Cooking by the Book
I'm always looking for the moment in which a character must stop to eat because, for me, the very mention of food humanizes a story.
Stephen Osborne
Scandal Season
Headlines featuring crack-smoking mayors and election fraudsters.
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Ivan Coyote
Shouldn’t I Feel Pretty?
Somewhere in the sweat and ache and muscle I carved a new shape for myself that made more sense.
David L. Chapman
Postcolonial Bodies
Mastery of the self
CONNIE KUHNS
There is a Wind that Never Dies
"If you are still alive, you must have had the experience of surrendering."
Sarah Leavitt
Small Dogs
Emily’s mother had unusually large eyes that bulged slightly and often turned red, and she stared at people in restaurants and stores. Sometimes Emily’s mother commented on these people’s conversations, or laughed at their jokes, as if she were part
Ola Szczecinska
Symbiosis in Warsaw
Ola Szczecinska returns to Warsaw to visit her grandmother, and to keep from losing her memories.
Patty Osborne reviews Air Carnation, a story by Guadalupe Muro that combines the author's personal memoirs with poetry, songwriting and fiction.
Jennesia Pedri
Crossings
Jennesia Pedri reviews Crossings by Betty Lambert.
Stephen Osborne
Praise Song for the Day
"Plain, non-pretentious, utterly mundane: It’snot clear what else an inaugural poem can be." Stephen Osborne reviews Elizabeth Alexander’s poem for Barack Obama’s inauguration.
Michael Hayward
From A to X
Michael Hayward reviews John Berger’s From A to X, a tale of anger, displacement and resistance.
Leah Rae
The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland
Leah Rae reviews The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland: "Finally, a comprehensive collection of fair-to-middlin’ verse for the multilingual."
Michael Hayward
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III
Michael Hayward reviews The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III, a collection of discussions with the leading dramatists, poets and novelists of the past fifty years.
Michael Hayward
Wildwood
Roger Deakin's Wildwood is a heady romp through the world’s forests and their entangled histories. Reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Michael Hayward
Pie Tree Press: Memories from the Composing Room Floor
Michael Hayward reviews the autobiography of Jim Rimmer, a “high priest” of type design and private-press printing.
Stephen Osborne
An American Story: The Speeches of Barack Obama
Stephen Osborne reviews a collection of Barack Obama's speeches that was surprisingly popular overseas.
Kris Rothstein
Anna’s Shadow
Kris Rothstein reviews Anna's Shadow by David Manicom, "much more than just another post-Cold War thriller."
Stephen Osborne
Kahn & Engelmann
Stephen Osborne reviews Kahn & Engelmann, a German novel by Hans Eichner hailed as a masterpiece in Europe.
Michael Hayward
The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs
Even the healthiest reader can uncover the fatal illness within thanks to The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Leah Rae
The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab
This edge-of-your-seat film follows a Spanish chef on his quest to win the prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D’Or. Review by Leah Rae.
Michael Hayward
The Discovery of France
Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.
Michał Kozłowski
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
“Adopt a reading pseudonym” is but one piece of advice offered in The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Carrie Villeneuve
When You Leave Town
Carrie Villeneuve reviews a new album from an East Vancouver band that appeals to music fans of all ages.
Thad McIlroy
Slumdog Millionaire
Thad McIlroy reviews Slumdog Millionaire, a 2009 film by Danny Boyle.
Michael Hayward
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
A peek inside Roger Deakin’s living, breathing farmhouse in the waning years of his life in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Lily Gontard
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell uses statistical analyses to prove that location and timing are everything in Outliers: The Story of Success, reviewed by Lily Gontard.
Thad McIlroy
Failed Experiments in the Future of Publishing
Thad McIlroy reviews The Reaper by Steven Dunne.
Eve Corbel
Ebb and Flow
Eve Corbel reviews The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble, a novel that takes place on land but is all about the sea.
Michael Hayward
Edward Lear in Albania
Michael Hayward reviews Edward Lear in Albania, an account of the author's travels through the Balkans beginning in 1848.
Michael Hayward
Saudade
Michael Hayward reviews Anik See’s Saudade, a collection of essays to plunge you deep into the meanings of travel and place.
Thad McIlroy
The Celebrated Crad
Thad McIlroy reads Kilodney Does Shakespeare and Other Stories by Lorette Luzajic, the only book that discusses Crad Kilodney’s life and writing.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Alberto Manguel
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
It was the big sort of rhmmm-rhmmm you hear at demolition derbies and ball-busting monster truck rallies. It was loud. Who could be sitting in their car, revving the engine?
Stephen Osborne
Panic Defence
barbara findlay describes herself as a lawyer, and therefore a member of a privileged group, who did not herself have the same civil and human rights as everyone else: a paradox that became central to her life and her “lawyering.”
Thad McIlroy
Check-Out
"At the back of the line a woman with no teeth was trying to hold an eighteen-pack of budget toilet paper with one hand."
Thad McIlroy
Notes on the Cosmos
Three generations of the Crosby family live and die, but all you really need to know about Tinkers by Paul Harding is the writer’s exceptional use of language.
Patty Osborne
Aiming for Roses
First there was the Canadian daredevil Ken Carter who, for five years (starting in 1976), made repeated attempts to jump the St. Lawrence River in a rocket-propelled car.
Michał Kozłowski
In the Flesh
From Jean Talon to Lenin’s Tomb
Arthur Manuel
Occupy Indian Affairs
Arthur Manuel recounts the time he and over 300 other activists took over the Department of Indian Affairs in 1973.
Patty Osborne
What's Going On?
"Unsettling Canada: A National Wake-Up Call by Arthur Manuel is a helluva good read, in which smart people find ingenious ways to fight for change against a Canadian government that has been intractable, no matter which party is in power."
Evel Economakis
Leningrad Redact
“If we paid protection money to the KGB, there’d be nothing left for salaries. And we call it the FSB now.”
Christine Novosel
Stuck on the Grid
Christine Novosel talks life in Scotland: "What Glasgow lacks in beauty and brains, it makes up for with wit and resilience."
Michael Hayward
Cycling Innocently Into the Arctic
I Cycled into the Arctic Circle: A Peregrination by James Duthie and Matt Hulse (Saltire Society) is a “newly revived and revised edition of deaf Scotsman James Duthie’s rare journal.”
Stephen Osborne
The Orwell Effect
Stephen Osborne on the origins of the International 3-Day Novel Contest, the time-honoured writing contest that flies in the face of the notion that novels take years of angst to produce.
JILL MANDRAKE
Clouds of Intrigue, Rays of Hope
"Like most people who have seen the stand-up comedy and other stage-work of Charles Demers, I sure couldn’t pass up a book of his personal essays."
S. K. Page
Adventures in Africa
Gianni Celati’s new book Adventures in Africa (University of Chicago Press), is a wonderful anti-travel book by one of the great anti-literary writers of the day.
Sheila Heti
Law of Small Numbers
Forty percent of people believe that if they practice enough, they can predict the outcome of a flipped coin. Would my current love end the way my past ones had?
roni-simunovic
Buds Kissing Buds
Roni Simunovic reviews several short stories by Chuck Tingle, including Slammed in the Butthole by my Concept of Linear Time and I’m Gay for My Living Billionaire Jet Plane.
Michael Hayward
The Winter Vault
Anne Michaels’s second novel, The Winter Vault, was published thirteen years after her debut, Fugitive Pieces. Was it worth the wait?
Peter Desbarats
La Pluie Montrealaise
Montreal responds magnificently to rain. It is a quality not shared by any other Canadian city except Halifax which, of course, is a city designed in the rain by drenched architects poring over soggy blueprints.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Perchance to Dream
A Pillow Book by Suzanne Buffam contemplates the pillow, an ordinary object, as the buffer between internal and external life.
Margaret Nowaczyk
Ad Infinitum
"I stared in awe at the pink-petalled flowers of human tissue blossoming in the mass of a collapsed grey-brown lung as it was reinflated during a thoracotomy."
Lethbridge 2034
Holographic animals, water parks and mind-reading helmets: young Lethbridgians speculate about what Lethbridge might be like in twenty years.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
Mars TV
"Christy Foley is going to live on Mars. Or at least, that’s what she’s hoping."
Samantha Warwick
Running
Running (Brindle & Glass), the first of a projected quartet of novels, unfolds between 1958 and 1960 in the fictional steel town of Raysburg, West Virginia, the setting of most of Maillard’s novels.
Patty Osborne
Come, Thou Tortoise
The hilarious story of Audrey Flowers’s mysterious upbringing in Newfoundland, narrated in part by her pet tortoise, is equally enjoyable on the second read.
Marisa Chandler
Overqualified
Overqualified by Joey Comeau (ECW Press) is a collection of satiric cover letters handcrafted to make any HR worker cringe and every job seeker smile.