Alannah Johnson and Whitney French know the world needs more Black literature. That’s why the Toronto-based writers have launched Hush Harbour, a literary press dedicated to imagining Black feminisms and uplifting works of short fiction. “There are so many Black writers and storytellers to uphold and affirm,” says French. “Among the many nuanced stories within […] 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 »

The fashion industry still has a lot of work to do when it comes to inclusivity. Often, when we discuss the lack of diversity—race, gender, body size, or disability—we think that the work of inclusivity has to start on the runways, in the boardrooms, or in editorial spreads. While it’s true that those changes need […] More »

She dives for shells With her nautical nuns And thoughts you thought You’d never tell – “Pandora’s Aquarium,” Tori Amos I carried Tori Amos’s From the Choirgirl Hotel with me everywhere in eighth grade even though I didn’t have a Discman. I’d stick the album into the CD-ROM of my desktop during computer lab and […] More »

Lately, all of my labour—domestic, creative, and income-earning—has shrunk to the space of a studio apartment. My office now doubles as my kitchen table, my gym, and my sick bed. It is a home which felt small even when I had access to third spaces for work, leisure, and exercise (such as cafes, parks, libraries […] More »

I am tired of the narrative of the Empowered Muslim Woman™. I find it exhausting. As a visibly Muslim woman, a large portion of my daily life involves attending to a strange kind of image management. I’m aware of the stereotypes that might fill the air when I walk into a room, so I take […] More »

  My first restaurant job was also my last. It was a three-month stint that passed by in a blur of cutlery roll ups, tedious small-talk, and barely-there tips. Like many jobs in the food service sector, my shifts were long and ran late, and my hourly pay was well below minimum wage. Breaks were […] More »

With bare midriffs, tattoos, and mermaid tails—or no clothes at all—Mollie Cronin’s unapologetic characters ride alligators, eat pizza, swim, lounge on cheese, and raise their middle fingers. The Halifax cartoonist distills millennial dating woes, the perils and joys of East Coast living, and the complexities of gender and body politics in her honest and funny […] More »

  Monday evenings at FreshCo always carry an air of anxiety, but one particular evening was accented by a white couple with Apple watches. They were behind my mother and I in the checkout line, leaning against the conveyor belt and communicating through grimaces. Every time the woman sighed, my stomach tensed. The tension was […] More »

In 2015 Canadians broke a record: 88 women were elected to the Canadian House of Commons. Fifty women were among the 184 Liberal MPs elected. Trudeau went on to appoint his cabinet with gender parity. Because it was 2015. But a male appointing an equal cabinet with representation based on the binary does not a […] 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 »