Articles
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PoetrySkylar Kay pairs marginalized topics with form traditionally used for travel journals
Relating transitions in her life to the phases of the moon was the challenge trans poet Skylar Kay set herself in her debut poetry collection, the haibun journal Transcribing Moonlight. -
DramaPlay moves from traditional to surreal settings, drawing audience in to consider mortality
Winnipeg-based actor, director, and playwright Debbie Patterson’s play How It Ends explores end-of-life choices and the legalization of medical assistance in dying. “It’s the thing we all want to know but don’t want to know: the circumstances under which we will die,” she says. -
DramaTale follows 3 generations of Indigenous women’s art, activism, survival ‘through acts of love’
Produced by Prairie Theatre Exchange in the fall of 2021 and now being published as a book, Cree-Saulteaux theatre artist and playwright Darla Contois’s play The War Being Waged is a multidisciplinary, multi-generational work exploring the roles that art, activism, and family play in the lives of Indigenous women resisting ongoing colonialism in Canada today. -
Non-FictionColouring book paired with teachings can offer quiet time, healing, connection, and more
Readers may feel the need to adopt a guarded heart when picking up Jackie Traverse’s third colouring book, Resilience: Honouring the Children of Residential Schools. For anyone who knows, loves, or are themselves survivors of these schools, of day schools, of the Sixties Scoop, and of the child welfare system, the topic hits especially close to home. While the book deals with a difficult subject, Traverse hopes it can also be healing. -
FeaturesStrong-willed characters navigate multigenerational family dynamics, investigate disappearance
Where do writers find their ideas? In the case of dee Hobsbawn-Smith, a family story provided the inspiration for her absorbing debut novel, Danceland Diary. -
FeaturesDebut chapter book series highlights Vietnamese culture, complexity of kids’ experiences
The Nguyen Kids, a celebration of Vietnamese culture and the role of grandparents, is Linda Trinh’s debut series of chapter books. With universal themes and empowered characters, the series is aimed at early readers from six to nine years old. -
FeaturesArchival deep dive into Ukrainian family history considers settler narrative
A picture says a thousand words, but for Myrna Kostash, a photograph led to an entire memoir exploring mysteries about her family’s history. Ghosts in a Photograph: A Chronicle delves into the lives of the Edmonton-based writer’s grandparents. All of them moved from Galicia (present-day western Ukraine) to Alberta at the turn of the 20th century. Also included are the, often elusive, stories of a few assorted relatives left behind. -
FeaturesTime-travel adventure dives into ancestral history to explore migration, hardship
Prolific Saskatchewan author Judith Silverthorne’s latest book for middle years readers is The Treasure Box, a time-travel adventure set in Regina. Augustus (please call him Gus) is in Grade 5 and has very recently moved there from Calgary with his mom and his sister, Hannah. They will live, at least for now, with his widowed grandfather. -
Non-FictionEdmonton professor’s essays an introspective addition to pandemic time capsule
Reflecting on the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, University of Alberta sociology professor Amy Kaler never dreamed Canadians were on the verge of seismic social shifts. -
Non-FictionAnti-racist scholars, activists call for ‘dramatic reinvention’ of how we see ourselves, others
To shed light on how localized experiences relate to broader structural and systemic forms of racism, University of Lethbridge academics Caroline Hodes and Glenda Tibe Bonifacio have edited Racism in Southern Alberta and Anti-Racist Activism for Change, a collection of works by scholars and activists.
