Memory, for good and bad, is crystalline: fragile, delicate, and with a tendency to distort. But in Subject to Change, it is like a crystal held at just the right angle, revealing some startling moments of clarity and beauty. Surveying a life of writing, motherhood, and activism, Renee Rodin’s prose is both understated and unflinching. […] More »

Wayson Choy’s second memoir, Not Yet, is bookended by two brushes with the undiscovered country via ticker trouble. The first, an asthma attack and a handful of “cardiac events,” leave him in an induced coma. The second attack is recognized by doctors quickly enough to be reduced to an epilogue and concludes with a writer […] More »

Anne Perdue’s characters face a tough, unforgiving world in her first collection of short fiction, I’m a registered nurse not a whore. Writing from a litany of perspectives—an overworked suburban dad, a frustrated couple renovating their first home, and an alcoholic grandmother—Perdue builds gritty characters who are pathetically funny, keenly aware of their own flaws, […] More »

Pop quiz: which major Canadian city elected a progressive, Muslim, Harvard-educated mayor last year? The answer is Calgary, and if you find this at all surprising, you may have some assumptions to explore with Geo Takach. The Quebec born author, who moved to Alberta as a teen, has long been fascinated with the mythologies unique […] More »

Meet shambolic, directionless Mason Dubisee, an author-manqué who has just turned 30 and can’t seem to finish his big novel. Decimated by his cocaine and gambling addictions, he agrees to ghostwrite a love letter for an odd, lovesick man named Warren. When Warren is found dead, the missive becomes a poignant suicide note—and Mason decides […] More »

Sure, it’s easy to be disenchanted with society: its corporate lies, political impotence, and information overload. The hunt for authenticity “has become the spiritual quest of our time,” Andrew Potter, famed co-author of The Rebel Sell, writes in his new book, The Authenticity Hoax. A way to escape all we believe to be fake and […] More »

[Editor’s note: Heat has been out for some time, but given it’s Earth Day, and also given the recent shutdown of so much air traffic after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption, we thought it wasn’t a bad time to revisit it here.] Few issues require as much research as climate change science. You have to know […] More »

Chances are Henrietta Lacks has been a part of your life. Without actually seeing her, Lacks could have helped you recover from surgery or a rare medical treatment. And while you might not know who she is, you may have heard of her alter ego: HeLa. Henrietta Lacks lived only to the age of 31, […] More »

The unprecedented election for president of an African American south of the border probably looked to many like the culmination of a grand process of inclusion. African Americans, the story goes, can now see their efforts for civil rights and participation in the American Dream as embodied in Barack Obama. The struggle is over and […] More »

The legalization of gay marriage in Canada has coincided with an era that might be dubbed the first “queer baby boom.” As such, this generation of queer parents and their children have been forced to adopt the ambivalent role of pioneers in a social space in which the model of the “traditional” nuclear family does […] More »

Until 1999, Nigeria was a land of military rule, repression, and instability. Helon Habila’s novel, Waiting for an Angel, evokes the mental and social climate of the country during the military’s last few years of power in the late 90s. Matching the chaos that rapid changes of power — mainly by military coups — must […] More »