In The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Vancouver-based writer Gord Hill blends his visual and literary talents to tell the story of aboriginal life since the arrival of Europeans in the Western Hemisphere in 1492. If the book’s title isn’t enough to tell you what perspective Hill, a member of the Kwakwaka’wakw nation, is […] More »
The March-April 2010 issue of This Magazine will be landing in subscribers’ mailboxes this week and is now on most newsstands coast to coast. (If you haven’t subscribed yet, this is a great time to do it, locking in a great price before the HST comes along. Just sayin’!) As always, the stories will all […] More »
In today’s edition of Listen to This, Marisa Iacobucci talks with Liz Worth, author of Treat Me Like Dirt: An Oral History of Punk in Toronto and Beyond. The book chronicles the punk scene throughout the turbulent years from 1977 to 1981, in the words of the bands and tastemakers who made it happen. Through […] More »
When Mike Holmes passed through Toronto on his reading tour last fall, he warned the audience, “I’m a cartoonist, not an author.” Holmes is, in fact, both. His latest work, This American Drive, is not just a novel with pretty pictures. Weaving traditional storytelling and elements of the graphic novel with unexpected ease, the book […] More »
Among the many responses to a prorogued parliament, we’re tickled by this project from a Toronto small press publisher, Mansfield Press — one that co-stars our own Fiction & Poetry editor, Stuart Ross. He, along with Ottawa’s Stephen Brockwell and Mansfield publisher Denis De Klerck, put out a lightning-fast call for poetry about the proroguement […] More »
The local indie bookstore is an endangered species, and the blue meanie, Indigo, is their predator On a warm night in early September, several hundred people gathered at Toronto’s Gladstone Hotel to hold a wake for a bookstore. For 30 years, until its closing at the end of August, Pages Books, located in the heart […] More »
Alison Lee’s November-December 2008 This Magazine cover story, “The New Face of Porn” was chosen as one of 14 pieces to be published in Tightrope Books’ The Best Canadian Essays 2009. There are some great pieces of writing in there, and we’re thrilled that an essay that started in the pages of This is getting […] More »
Several of my previous blog posts have mentioned Kwani?, the Nairobi literary journal/publishing network dedicated to building contemporary African literature. My interest in the publication was first aroused by the contrasting literary scenes in Uganda and Kenya. While FEMRITE, based in Kampala, Uganda, is a strong local writers’ organization, I never found a literary magazine […] 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 November-December 2009 issue of This Magazine is now snaking its way through the postal system, and subscribers should find it in their mailboxes any day now. We expect it to be available on newsstands next week, probably. (Remember, subscribers always get the magazine early, and you can too.) We’ll start posting articles from the […] More »
The Prescription Errors, Charles Demers’ debut novel from Insomniac Press, is a profoundly entertaining, thoughtful and well-written story about a Vancouver-based character named Daniel who struggles to come to terms with his obsessive-compulsive disorder. I would highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the rich, dark and contradictory nature of human relationships and politics. […] More »