What does it mean to love a band? A friend? A nation?
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
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.
JILL MANDRAKE
Fact
A Backward Glance or Two
Review of "Let the World Have You" by Mikko Harvey.
Michael Hayward
Fact
ADVENT (AND OTHERS) IN A BOX
Review of "Short Story Advent Calendar" by Hingston & Olsen Publishing.
Michael Hayward
Wanda x 3
Review of "Wanda" written and directed by Barbara Loden, "Suite for Barbara Loden" by Nathalie Léger, translated by Natasha Lehrer and Cécile Menon and "Wanda" by Barbara Lambert.
Patty Osborne
Teenaged Boys, Close Up
Review of "Sleeping Giant" directed by Andrew Cividino and written by Cividino, Blain Watters and Aaron Yeger.
Debby Reis
Dreaming of Androids
Review of "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? " by Philip K. Dick.
Anson Ching
Further Years of Solitude
Review of "Black Sugar" by Miguel Bonnefoy.
Jonathan Heggen
A Thoughtful Possession
Review of "The Penguin Book of Japanese Short Stories" edited and translated by Jay Rubin.
Michael Hayward
Sitting Ducks
Review of "Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands" by Kate Beaton.
Peggy Thompson
What It Means To Be Human
Review of "All the Broken Things" by Geoff Inverarity.
Daniel Francis
Future Imperfect
Review of "The Premonitions Bureau " by Sam Knight.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Rocks in a Hard Place
Review of "A Field Guide to Gold, Gemstone & Mineral Sites of British Columbia, Volume Two: Sites within a Day’s Drive of Vancouver" by Rick Hudson.
April Thompson
Prayer and Declaration
Review of "Monument" by Manahil Bandukwala.
Anson Ching
Archipelago
Review of "A Dream in Polar Fog" by Yuri Rytkheu, and "A Mind at Peace" by Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar.
Michael Hayward
Vanishing Career Paths
Review of "The Last Bookseller: A Life in the Rare Book Trade" by Gary Goodman, and "A Factotum in the Book Trade" by Marius Kociejowski.
JILL MANDRAKE
Part of the Crowd
Review of "Crowded Mirror" by Sheila Delany.
JILL MANDRAKE
The Doors of Perception Had to Close
Review of "The Acid Room: The Psychedelic Trials and Tribulations of Hollywood Hospital" by Jesse Donaldson and Erika Dyck.
Michael Hayward
No Regrets
Review of "Stories I Might Regret Telling You" by Martha Wainwright.
Daniel Francis
Known It All
Review of "Know It All: Finding the Impossible Country" by James H. Marsh.
April Thompson
Call Yourself a Writer
Review of "Resonance: Essays on the Craft and Life of Writing" edited by Andrew Chesham and Laura Farina.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Coming Unravelled
Review of "Unravelling Canada: A Knitting Odyssey" by Sylvia Olsen.
Thad McIlroy
Articulating the Inarticulate Speech of the Heart
Review of "The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression" by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.
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.
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
TROY JOLLIMORE
Tom Thomson in Transit
His wallet’s stuffed with currency from allmanner of countries not in business now;his camera aches for discontinued film.
KATIE DAUBS
To Be Read by My Children in the Event of My Demise
In Katie Daubs' short fiction, a father writes a deathbed letter to his children, explaining the surprising way he really met their mother.
CRAIG SAVEL
Traversing Leonard
"He had white hair at every angle, a paunch, and he didn’t bathe much. Colleagues joked about the Leonard Condensate, one whiff of which reduced matter into muck."
MARY MEIGS
Tripwire
They felt comfortable in their resemblances, too comfortable to note that the resemblances contained differences like tripwires cunningly laid and hidden.
ERIC DUPONT
Trouble at the Henhouse
"I now know that every omelette, every angel cake, every soufflé, and every bucket of Colonel Sanders’ fried chicken brings us closer to a better, more intelligent world, where cruelty and pettiness do not exist."
CARY FAGAN
My Father's Picasso
"You know what I think it's worth?" Goldie said. "Fifteen bucks for the frame."
CARY FAGAN
My Father's Picasso
"You know what I think it's worth?" Goldie said. "Fifteen bucks for the frame."
Rhonda Waterfall
Night Kitchen
The phone rings at 11:30 at night and as soon as you hear your father’s voice you know something bad has happened.
No One Explains Things To Dogs
No one explains things to dogs. The voice that’s missing has left its aroma everywhere,along with the faint stale smells of those who used to be here:
ANTONINE MAILLET
Not Really French
So how can we be Québécois if we don’t live in Québec? Well, for the love of all that’s holy, where the hell do we live, then?
GORAN SIMIC
Old People and Snow
My beautiful old ones are disappearing slowly. They simply leave, without rules, without a farewell.
Veronica Gaylie
Old Timer Talkin’
Uncle Tom lies in St. Paul’s Emergency pacemaker jumping like a sockeye salmon while he teaches two nurses four verses of Danny Boy.
Pacific Meats & Frozen Foods, Inc.
Paul Martin & Companies: Sixty Theses on the Alegal Nature of Tax Havens
Peops: Portraits & Stories of People
Phenotypes & Flag-Wavers
Jill Boettger
Poem For the Barn
Here is your rickety wooden poem. Here is your red, peeling paint poem, your weather-beaten and abused poem. Here is your hands-full-of-slivers poem, knuckle-broken and arthritic.
SUE GOYETTE
Fidelity
Three poems by Sue Goyette, excerpted from her book Penelope.
VIVEK SHRAYA
First Pluck
A young boy gets his first pair of tweezers after overhearing locker room conversations about body hair in this excerpt from God Loves Hair by Vivek Shraya.
Steven Heighton
Fireman's Carry
In this excerpt from Steven Heighton's new book, The Dead Are More Visible, a firefighter must decide what lives are worth saving in the heat of a four-alarm fire. The official line is that firefighters save people—but what about reptiles?
Five Stories, Nine Selves
That’s what matters to me, these stories, you kick them up in the dust and they get inside you.
Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Tom Walmsley
Kid Stuff
Moth fought his last fight in the basement of a church forty miles out of town. The crowd was polite and applauded after every round, but made hardly a sound while the punches were being thrown. None of the overhead lights were extinguished and there