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dispatches
essays
reviews
columns
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Drool-worthy

Kelsea O'Connor on many aspects of food, from culinary extinctions to kombucha microbiomes.

Lorna MacKinnon
Weekend with Dorian

Storm prep for a category 2.

Kathleen Murdock
Text That Breaks

Kathleen Murdock on the physical and meaningful structure of text.

Beth Rowntree
7 lbs. 6 oz.

I looked in her purse and found nothing but scraps of paper so covered in writing there was hardly any white left on the pages.

Alberto Manguel
Marilla

Prince Edward Island gothic.

JILL MANDRAKE
One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues

The question you have to ask yourself when you finish reading One Ring Circus: Extreme Wrestling in the Minor Leagues, by Brian Howell is this:do I want to become a minor league wrestler? The answer is yes.

Michał Kozłowski
Road Trip Supreme

Outlet Malls, Janis Joplin, The Godfather and Taco Bell—on the scent of Ameryka.

Jeff Shucard
Home Front

"My father began his shopping spree in the fashion department. He ordered jackets, sweaters, shirts, trousers and shoes. In his new wardrobe he looks like a mummy that has been dressed up for a big night of trick-or-treating."

Scott Andrew Christensen
n yer comin' wit me

"have ya been ev’ryweir?"

Hàn Fúsēn
Biking Around with Ondjaki

Just decide what happens and worry about the rest later.

Stephen Osborne
Wittgenstein Walks (Commercial Drive)

"8.21 Fur Bearers Defender"—the difficulty is to say no more than we know.

Daniel Francis
Politics Times Two

Reviews of Nixonland and True Patriot Love.

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

Anson Ching
Between Quips and Dreams

Anson Ching on a storyteller.

Geoff Inverarity
The Woman Who Talks to Her Dog at the Beach

The simple love of dogs.

Alberto Manguel
Hoping Against Hope

Kafka’s writing allows us intuitions and half-dreams but never total comprehension.

Stephen Osborne
Halloween Capital of America

This year for Halloween, we creep back into the archives and Stephen Osborne digs deep into his family's history at the Salem witch trials.

CHRISTOPHER GRABOWSKI
Parade of Lost Souls

The Halloween photography of Christopher Grabowski.

Joseph Weiss
King of the Post-Anthropocene

Kaiju are the heroes we deserve.

Kris Rothstein
Mall Moll

Kris Rothstein on a book written by a book nerd, for book nerds about a book nerd.

Nicola Winstanley
Wall Spirits

Nicola Winstanley's comic on hearing spirits in the walls at a foster when she was young.

Stephen Henighan
Left Nationalists

Progressives are far less likely to be nationalists than ever before.

Jocelyn Kuang
Under the Bell Curve

Jocelyn Kuang on what it is to be a normal person.

Kris Rothstein
Striking the Rich

Kris Rothstein on Fleishman Is in Trouble by Taffy Brodesser-Akner.

Andrea King
Great Historical Curiosity

The facts (and fictions) surrounding the tale of Quebec's most famous murderess, La Corriveau.

Joe Bongiorno
The Shī Fu

Joe Bongiorno goes in search of enlightenment and finds the Shī Fu.

Carmen Tiampo
What Survives

My great-grandfather exists now only in memory, unacknowledged even by his tombstone

KATHRYN MOCKLER
I Won’t Clean the Tub

He said he just wanted towels. There was no reason to be afraid.

Carolyne Montgomery
In the Pines

It is a Sunday in August. We drive from London, Ontario, to the Pinery Provincial Park in a new green 1964 Mercury Comet.

BILLEH NICKERSON
V4G 1N4

A poem about a postal code.

John Patterson
Devil’s Night

On Halloween in 1966, John Patterson's father burned down the Jones's house to give the neighbourhood kids a thrill.

GALE SMALLWOOD-JONES
Working Life for a Girl in the 1960s

We got paid once a week in cash - it made you feel special the first few times.

M.A.C. Farrant
Stories from a West Coast Town

Very quietly, very slowly, happiness can take over a person's life

Jennesia Pedri
T-Bay Notes

Leaving Thunder Bay isn't one of the things that gets easier with practice

Jocelyn Kuang
Candy Cap Magic

Forgotten cutlery, missing mushrooms and lingering doubt: a recipe for bewilderment.

Erin Soros
Carbon

"A folder full of awards proves to the psychiatrist I wasn't always this way."

Jocelyn Kuang
27,000 Cups of Tea

Battenbergs and Victoria sponge at Buckingham Palace.

Leanne Betasamosake Simpson
Treaties

A young Indigenous woman deals with hippy-artist-pothead boyfriends and car troubles.

Randy Fred
Borderless

Randy Fred reports on migrant workers, then and now.

Michał Kozłowski
Corpse Reviver

The restaurant had white concrete walls and chrome lights dangling from the ceiling that gave the place an operating theatre vibe.

Christine Novosel
Hived Off

Christine Novosel reports from Glasgow on art school, apiary management, Brexit and being a junkyard dog.

Robert Everett-Green
Wholesome Reading

Evelyn Everett-Green wrote novels for young people, of a morally improving nature. Her books were also meant to entertain, with tales of wholesome adventure and romance, often set in heroic times or picturesque locations.

Barbara Zatyko
Stumped

Despite attempts to reattach my pinkie, I woke up with nine fingers.

Julie Vandervoort
Sewing Cabinet: Short Film

A short film featuring "Sewing Cabinet" by Julie Vandervoort, originally published in Geist 74.

David Koulack
A Different Sort of Synagogue

David Koulack spends Yom Kippur in a packed gymnasium in Paris among a beehive of activity and a cacophony of sound.

Eve Corbel
Some Lesser-Known Emoji

Eve Corbel draws emoji you can use when Mercury is in retrograde, when you've eaten too much hot sauce and during other specific times of need.

Angela Wheelock
Something Like Armenian

Angela Wheelock meets a stranger at a bus stop and discusses Rumi, Hafiz and other great poets who were terrible leaders.

EVELYN LAU
24 Sussex

Picture Harper lounging among pastel cushions, his stiff grey hair tight as a helmet on his head.

M.A.C. Farrant
Selected Days

On Dorothy Parker Day we wear wool suits and little hats, smoke with cigarette holders and have a liver-coloured dachshund on a lead.

Christine Lai
Fact
Now Must Say Goodbye

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.

Michael Hayward
Fact
The peripatetic poet

Review of "Iron Curtain Journals," "South American Journals" and "Fall of America Journals" by Allen Ginsberg.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
Haunted House guest

Review of "A Guest in the House" by Emily Carroll.

Michael Hayward
Fact
Beyond the event horizon

Review of "Antkind" by Charlie Kaufman.

Anson Ching
Fact
Sailing the roaring forties

Review of "The Last Grain Race" by Eric Newby.

Michael Hayward
Fact
BELLE ÉPOQUE GOSSIP

Review of "The Man in the Red Coat" by Julian Barnes.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
More precious than rubies

Review of "Rubymusic" by Connie Kuhns.

Debby Reis
Fact
A not-totally-accurate introduction to the azores

Review of the Netflix series "Rabo de Peixe" (2023) created by Augusto de Fraga.

Michael Hayward
Fact
A Russian Brother and his sister

Review of "A Russian Sister" by Caroline Adderson.

Kris Rothstein
Fact
The messy back of history

Review of "My Grandfather’s Knife: Hidden Stories from the Second World War" by Joseph Pearson

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Have Mercy

Review of "Mercy Gene" by JD Derbyshire.

Michael Hayward
Fact
subterranean mysteries

Review of "Underland" by Robert Macfarlane.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
Championing Trees

Review of "Tracking Giants: Big Trees, Tiny Triumphs, and Misadventures in the Forest" by Amanda Lewis.

Patty Osborne
Fact
Crossing Borders

Review of "Solito: A Memoir" by Javier Zamora

Michael Hayward
Fact
The Two Roberts

Review of "Turn Every Page" directed by Lizzie Gottlieb

Peggy Thompson
Fact
A moment with holden

Review of "Holden After & Before: Love Letter for a Son Lost to Overdose" by Tara McGuire.

JILL MANDRAKE
Fact
POINTS OF INFLECTION

Review of "Some of the Puzzles" by M.A.C. Farrant.

Michael Hayward
Fact
A HOLIDAY IN THE MOUNTAINS (WITH PIE)

Review of "Holiday, 1909" by Charles Chapman.

Anson Ching
Fact
THE BELL KEEPS TOLLING

Review of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Ernest Hemingway.

Kris Rothstein
Fact
DEFINED BY DUMPLINGS

Review of "What We Talk About When We Talk About Dumplings" edited by John Lorinc.

Jonathan Heggen
Fact
The Common Shaman

Review of "Shaman" by Kim Stanley Robinson.

Peggy Thompson
Fact
Walk Another Path

Review of "Landlines" by Raynor Winn.

Kris Rothstein
Fact
Dogs and the Writing Life

Review of "And a Dog Called Fig: Solitude, Connection, the Writing Life" by Helen Humphreys.

Patty Osborne
Fact
A Secret Well Kept

Review of "The Betrayal of Anne Frank: A Cold Case Investigation" by Rosemary Sullivan.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Fact
The Human Side of Art Forgery

Review of "The Great Canadian Art Fraud Case: The Group of Seven and Tom Thomson Forgeries" by Jon S. Dellandrea.

Stephen Henighan
In Search of a Phrase

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.

Kathleen Murdock
Juice Worth the Squeeze

Review of "Shadow of Doubt: The Trials of Dennis Oland, Revised and Expanded Edition" by Bobbi-Jean MacKinnon.

Kris Rothstein
Decolonizing Canada

Review of "Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being" Amy Fung.

Kathleen Murdock
Doing It Special

Review of "nedi nezu (Good Medicine)" by Tenille K. Campbell.

Anson Ching
Recipe for a Harlequin Romance

Review of "Ring" by André Alexis.

CONNIE KUHNS
Rise Up

Review of "Rise Up: Songs of the Women's Movement" Co-Produced by Jim Brown, Heather A. Smith, and Donna Korones.

Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions

Coming to harbour in a new world.

Patty Osborne
Middle Sister

Review of "Milkman" by Anna Burns.

Finn Wylie
Shelter in Place

"I never went looking for them."

Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters

Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.

Tara McGuire
Short Term

Tell me again how long the trip is?

SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm

Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.

Jill Boettger
Do You Remotely Care?

Fill the room with a flock of moths.

Stephen Smith
The Acknowledgements

Any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely vindictive.

Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers

It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.

Michael Hayward
Purveyors of Electric Fans

Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.

Michael Hayward
Tree Lit

Review of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.

Anson Ching
Voyeur Galore

Review of "Captains of the Sands" by Jorge Amado.

Patty Osborne
Why White People Are Funny

Review of "Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny" Zebedee Nungak and Mark Sandiford.

Jonathan Heggen
Korean Supper

Review of "Crying in H Mart: A Memoir " by Michelle Zauner.

Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture

Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.

CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero

In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.

KELSEA O'CONNOR
Eaten to Extinction

Review of "Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food" by Lenore Newman.

Michael Hayward
A Longing to Be Far Away

Review of "Fernweh" by Teju Cole.

Robyn Ludwig
Black Velvet, If You Please

The secret is in the velvet.

Shyla Seller
Postal Lit

Review of "Long Live the Post Horn!" by Vigdis Hjorth.