Jean Marc Ah-Sen’s new “novel”, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, is a novel for people who are bored by conventional A to B storytelling. Comprised of dozens of different forms of communication and fictive formats – from horny letters to academic essays – Beggarly Style is ultimately about the fractured ways in which we […] More »

“Terese has the best #booklooks and what a nice surprise to see this this morning,” tweeted author Casey Plett this spring when Terese Mason Pierre posted her #booklook based on Plett’s Little Fish. Later in the spring, Canthius, a feminist magazine of poetry and prose, tweeted that “the best thing on Twitter right now has […] More »

Shaya Ishaq’s work moves fluidly between mediums—words, ceramics, fibres, jewellery—while maintaining a central locus of honouring Black lineages and sparking light toward liberated Black futures. Tenacious and ever-evolving, Ishaq walked away from journalism school and signed up for a hand-building course at a pottery studio in her hometown of Ottawa. “I really fell in love […] More »

Dear Audre Lorde, My fingers ache. All I can do since this pandemic started locally is read and write. And not my assignments and essays; none of those thrill me. None get at what I really want to say; none encapsulate the expanse of human suffering we are seeing on our screens and streets. To […] More »

Wendy is far too high. She’s discussing her next steps in life with a semi-nude couple in a club in Berlin. If all goes well, she says, she’ll be attending an MFA program that fall. And she does end up attending the program—though in true Wendy form, she’s hungover and late for class on her […] More »

The smallest First Nations Public Library (FNPL) I’ve heard of consists of two shelves. Yes, two shelves, not stacks. Michipicoten First Nation has a FNPL and fewer than 75 on-reserve residents. The largest FNPL is the Six Nations Public Library, where I am the CEO and director of library services; it houses a collection of […] More »

For 15 years, a group of volunteers has been lugging tote bags of books from their library in the north end of Halifax to the women’s side of the Central Nova Scotia Correctional Facility, or Burnside Jail, in Dartmouth’s Burnside Industrial Park. The group is Books Beyond Bars, an anti-capitalist, non-hierarchical collective that runs a […] More »

When you are diagnosed with a terminal illness there is a lot of talk about leaving a legacy. Some people write letters to their children. Some record videos. I have a pretty active Instagram account and have blogged for decades and hope my daughters will enjoy looking back on that. Some things older women living […] More »

When Omar, a cook working for cash-in-hand at a Toronto restaurant, learns about the suicide of his ex-girlfriend Anna, he becomes caught in his grief and rage and is unwilling to accept what he’s been told: she didn’t leave him a note. He finds some respite from his woes when he meets an attractive and […] More »

Natalee Caple’s gorgeous, very raw new book of poems asks a plain question for complicated times: how do we love when all around us is hate? Love in the Chthulucene (Cthulhucene)–the title refers to the world-destroying, ancient god of rage depicted in H.P. Lovecraft’s horror fiction, an apt monster to resurrect–unfolds like a confessional mixed […] More »

At three-thirty, when local high schools let out, I regularly caught the Dufferin bus near my place in downtown Toronto and used the long ride northbound to Yorkdale Mall to snoop on teens’ conversations, Shazam songs they were playing too loudly on earbuds, and read flirty chat messages over their shoulders. While I kept a […] More »