Michael Hayward reviews the sweater that Sarah Lund wears in every episode of Season 1 of The Killing, a serial crime drama.
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.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Steampunk Crimefighters
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua asks the question: what would the world be like if mathematician Ada Lovelace and inventor Charles Babbage had succeeded in creating the first Victorian computer?
JILL MANDRAKE
Scary Stocking Stuffers
Jill Mandrake a new series called Christmas Ghost Stories (Biblioasis), selected and illustrated by Seth.
Patty Osborne
Keep On Truckin'
This fast-paced, quirky, heart warming and hilarious novel captures the fast and loose crossovers of language and culture that make southeast New Brunswick unique.
Geist Staff
Path of the Jaguar
This past December longtime Geist columnist Stephen Henighan did a promotional tour of western Canada for his latest novel, Path of the Jaguar.
EVELYN LAU
24 Sussex
Picture Harper lounging among pastel cushions, his stiff grey hair tight as a helmet on his head.
Stephen Osborne
The Great Game
The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.
Michael Hayward
Rain Falls in Norway
Michael Hayward reviews Some Rain Must Fall, part of the six volume memoir by Karl Ove Knausgaard.
CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne
Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.
CARY FAGAN
What I Learned in Florida
There were always things to see at the pond—tadpoles, leopard frogs, dragonflies—but that day we saw two boys, with a rifle.
Patty Osborne
The Other Side of the Mountain
"The Orange Grove is dry and sparse and heartbreaking, much like the unnamed country in which it takes place."
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.
Eve Corbel
Greeting Cards for Tiny Occasions
Eve Corbel creates a set of greeting cards to celebrate life's best and worst mundane moments.
Stephen Osborne
Thomas Bernhard: The Gnarly Work
When faced with the gnarly writing of Thomas Bernhard readers experience again and again the difficulty of summarizing what they are reading, of thematizing what they have read.
Kris Rothstein
A Cup of Pyms
Pym’s loving but sly take on the world is reminiscent of Jane Austen, but I find Pym funnier and somehow more shrewd and gentle in her satire.
CONNIE KUHNS
Strange Women
Connie Kuhns' major profile of punk, politics and feminism in 1970s Canada: the Moral Lepers, the Dishrags and other revolutionary bands.
Dakota McFadzean
Duck Thoughts
The odd duck out.
Shelley Kozlowski
Revving
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.
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.
Michal Kozlowski reviews Andy Brown's debut novel The Mole Chronicles, which charts a sibling relationship involving moles, comic books, swimming pools, kidnapping, culture jamming and more.
Patty Osborne
Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers
Patty Osborne reviews Women of the World: Women Travelers and Explorers by Rebecca Stefoff, a book—complete with maps, drawings and photographs—that describes the travels of nine women.
Stephen Osborne
Shoot!
Despite high hopes, Stephen Osborne calls Shoot! by George Bowering his biggest disappointment.
Luanne Armstrong
Simple Recipes
Luanne Armstrong reviews "three of the better books of short stories to come out in 2001"—Kingdom of Monkeys, Simple Recipes and Sputnik Diner.
Michał Kozłowski
Stickboy: A Novel in Verse
In Stickboy, Shane Koyczan asks: what happens when the bullied begins to bully back? Reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Kris Rothstein
Souvenir of Canada
Kris Rothstein reviews Souvenir of Canada, which appeared at the 2005 Vancouver International Film Festival, and Douglas Coupland's role in it and appearance at the festival.
Neil MacDonald
Streeters
Neil MacDonald reviews Streeters, a compilation of Rick Mercer's solo rants and raves from 22 Minutes, covering everything from Mike Harris in a Speedo to "Canuba," a sovereignty association between Canada and Cuba.
Carra Noelle Simpson
Teacher Man
Carra Noelle Simpson reviews Teacher Man and Half Nelson, two works on life in the inner-city high schools of New York.
Michael Hayward
The Bottom of the Harbor
"Old New Yorker writers never die, they just keep being republished in shiny new editions." Michael Hayward reviews collections of New Yorker pieces.
Sewid-Smith Daisy
The Onion
Melissa Edwards finds three references to Sisyphus in three different publications—all in the same day.
Holly Doyle
Thirty-three Teeth
Holly Doyle reviews Colin Cotterill’s novel Thirty-three Teeth, featuring Dr. Siri Paiboun, the seventy-two-year-old coroner of Laos.
Patty Osborne
Through Black Spruce
Joseph Boyden shows a darker side of First Nations life—darker, but not dark enough to stop one from reading it. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Truth is Stranger
Kelsea O'Connor reviews Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson, a lighthearted look at the embarrassing moments in the author's life.
GILLIAN JEROME
What to Expect When You’re Expecting
As a mother-to-be, Gillian Jerome cynically reviewed eight books on child care to glean what it means to be a mother in the twenty-first century.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
White Lung
Hal Niedzviecki says White Lung by Grant Buday is the comic novel that should have been given to delegates at the WTO in Seattle.
Rhonda Waterfall
Pharmacist's Mate
Rhonda Waterfall reviews The Pharmacist's Mate by Amy Fusselman, just under 100 pages of minimalist prose called "a brief miracle of a book."
Patty Osborne
Pioneer Justice
In The Lynching of Louie Sam, two teenage boys watched as another—an Aboriginal named Louie Sam—was hanged by a group of men who rode on horseback. Reviewed by Patty Osborne.
Lara Jenny
Please Don't Kill the Freshman
During a trip to Portland, Lara Jenny picks a few must-have zines and chapbooks from the city's huge collection of independent presses.
Daniel Francis
Killer Angels
Daniel Francis reviews the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Killer Angels by Michael Shaara, a minute-by-minute reimagining of the Battle of Gettysburg.
Michael Hayward
Magpie Memoir
Jim Christy muses on 121 items accumulated over 40 years of travel in Sweet Assorted: 121 Takes From a Tin Box, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Kris Rothstein
Miss Smithers
Susan Juby's teen novel Miss Smithers—the story of an eccentric but charming girl entering a beauty pageant in a small BC town—is reviewed by Kris Rothstein.
Vicki Jensen
Blood Sports
Vicki Jensen says Eden Robinson’s novel Blood Sports forces readers to confront exactly what we’d prefer to avoid—the raw world of junkies, crazies and twisted souls.
Joelle Hann
Breasting the Waves: On Writing and Healing
Joanne Arnott "writes with great effort, feeling her way toward expression and sense without giving her life away as if it were in the "miscellaneous" box at a garage sale." Review by Joelle Hann.
Allison Lawlor
Bread and Salt
Allison Lawlor reviews an author reading of Bread and Salt by Renee Rodin.
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.
You are clearly preoccupied with love. See the way you siftthrough the lint from your purse, searching for the backing ofan earring. See the runway of broken leaves and bread crumbscollecting under the emergency brake in your car. Messy, messy.
Gillian Wigmore
Crematorium
She lives in Prince George. in plastic bags on tuesday nights we load frozen corpses from industrial-sized freezers into the back of the suzuki.
HAL NIEDZVIECKI
Darker Country
I have never been a success at anything in particular.
JONNY DIAMOND
Dave Is Dead
For a man who’d once picked a shard of glass from his cheek while laughing, Dave sure could write a pretty melody.
JOEY COMEAU
Dear Neopost
"The chance to put my Credit and Collections Management experience to work for your company is something I am willing to die for."
JACOB SCHEIER
Dear Office of Homeland Security
I began to run across 42nd Street, a trail of beer nuts behind me, making my way to TimesSquare, because I thought I should see The Lion King or smoke crack before I die, but could afford neither.
CHRIS GILPIN
Dear Sasquatch
You're the kind of creature who comes to events like these and sits in the corner writing confessional poetry.
BENJAMIN WOOD
Deleted Scene from a Lasting Relationship
Runner-up in the 2nd Annual Geist Literal Literary Postcard Story Contest.
Rhonda Waterfall
Director, Saviour, Surgeon
In his hotel room the director took a mouthful of Scotch, swallowed a Viagra and then headed off to the gala.
BILLEH NICKERSON
Dorothy Stratten’s Tent Trailer
When I overhear my parents talkabout the death of Dorothy Stratten,the Playboy playmate first discoveredin a Vancouver Dairy Queen,I somehow confuse her with the womanwho sold my family our tent trailer.
GALE SMALLWOOD-JONES
Down East
My old pal Chuck asked me and my sister Stella to drive down east with him. We weren’t doing anything else at the time and so we jumped at the chance.
Drawn & Quarterly Volume 5
Drawn & Quarterly
KEGAN MCFADDEN
Easy
it’s easy: you pour a mug of beer & then a shot of bourbon. you light a match
CHRIS CASUCCIO
Elephant
sat behind the trailers with julie eatingthe peanut butter sandwiches peter’swife made that morning by the park sink
Enchantment & Other Demons
RAWI HAGE
Empty City
Ten thousand bombs had fallen and I was waiting for death to come and scoop its daily share from a bowl of limbs and blood. I walked down the street under the falling bombs. The streets were empty. I walked above humans hid
MICHELLE ELRICK
Ethelbert: Ten Days in May
Excerpt from Michelle Elrick's Then/Again.
Drunk Family Dog Trip
Leonard Cohen, a troupe of French-Canadian clowns, a person with an antiquated profession, an unusually tall municipal bureaucrat, Gordie Howe and others coalesce in these randomly generated CanLit premises.
MITIARJUK NAPPAALUK
Examinations
“Sanaaq! Qumaq’s blood is too weak and the same is true for Aanikallak’s. They’ll both have to go to hospital!” From Sanaaq by Mitiarjuk Nappaaluk, the first ever Inuit novel.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
99¢ Bin
A list of things you can get for 99¢.
JACOB WREN
A Kind of Dream Therapy
"And my theory about professional artists was as follows: Artists are not necessarily the most creative or inspired individuals in any given community."
Always Waking Up in Montreal
"I follow my penis around town for a while, wandering aimlessly through all the women—why do I ever leave this city?"
ADAM GILDERS
Another Ventriloquist
In this excerpt from Adam Gilders' Another Ventriloquist, a father builds his daughter a swan's nest, a ventriloquist revises his act, and a beaver terrorizes a neighbourhood.
Michał Kozłowski
Antonia
Was it fever or was it the heat that made Antonia perspire so heavily?