The other night, my mother sent my partner Jason a text message. It was an innocuous check-in—warm greetings, a few updates on quarantine life, and a request for some items from our next grocery run. But sandwiched between the mundane details of life and the odd joke was an itemized list of true crime documentaries. […] More »

Out of all the games made by queer designer Avery Alder, Dream Askew feels the most like 2021. Table-top roleplaying games like Dream Askew are a medium where game designers invent systems and worlds, and players inhabit them. Think of them like movies: Avery Alder creates the set, the costumes, and the basic outline of […] More »

Everybody eats, but not all experiences are reflected in food media. When Kyla Pascal and Kathryn Gwun-Yeen 君妍 Lennon started hanging out in 2018 they bonded over critiquing food magazines and television. As activists and organizers in their communities of Edmonton and Vancouver, and with long histories in the food industry, Pascal and Gwun-Yeen 君妍 […] More »

Growing up in a traditional first-generation Muslim-Canadian family, I constantly struggled to determine what career I wanted to pursue. For years, I faced the dilemma of whether to satisfy the vision my parents had created for me or to go out on a limb and pursue my own interests of joining the entertainment industry, ultimately […] More »

Pop singer Halsey begins her 2020 album, Manic, with a quote from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind: “I’m just a fucked up girl who’s looking for my own peace of mind.” It’s hard to imagine Katy Perry or even Lady Gaga starting a record the same way 10 years ago, but in today’s music […] More »

Body positivity can be a harrowing but joyful process. Shana Myara made it a life goal. “I gave myself a project where I could fully explore fat liberation with other queers,” says Myara, director of the documentary, Well Rounded. “Particularly from the lens of racialized queers who might also have a critique of how bodies […] More »

From an early age, Hanan Hazime remembers being immersed in the arts. As a young child, she loved painting, dressing up in costumes, and creating elaborate stories. Now, at the age of 30, Hazime is a multidisciplinary artist whose work ranges from politically charged paintings to nature poetry. As a Lebanese-Canadian, non-neurotypical, and invisibly disabled, […] More »

Simone Elizabeth Saunders’ work is remarkable. She uses tufting—a traditional rug-making technique—to bring fabric to life by mixing fibres, colour, and portraiture. The Calgary-based artist creates scaled-up artwork averaging 70 inches squared, equipped with what is called a tufting gun, which is an automatic hand-held device. “It is such a beautiful process to have this […] More »

In the opening letter of their debut poetry collection, knot body, Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch writes: “The days get brighter but somehow I don’t. A dilemma, right? I thought I was swayed by the light, moods lifting as the clouds lift, yet this pain is fingers deep.” El Bechelany-Lynch’s writing is at once an intimate […] More »

The energy that fills the room at a book launch surrounded by community is a feeling like no other. Walking into a reconfigured venue with familiar faces, soulful melodies, and warm hugs is one of those experiences I’m grateful to have been a part of before everything changed amid the pandemic. These are the kind […] More »

We were teaching ourselves something that we didn’t know,” says Kat Estacio, co-founder of Toronto’s Pantayo, a quintet blending traditional Filipino kulintang music with Western pop and rock styles. That’s partly why it took eight years between the ensemble’s first practice in 2012 and the release of their self-titled debut earlier this year. As with […] More »