Articles
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DramaPlay casts Everett Klippert as a resilient and unashamed Queer Elder
Everett Klippert was a beloved Calgary bus driver who, when confronted by police about his sexuality, refused to lie, and as a result became the last Canadian man imprisoned for being gay. In the play Legislating Love: The Everett Klippert Story, Klippert’s real-life story is interwoven with that of fictional present-day Maxine, who discovers him while researching social policy and navigating her own new relationship with Tonya, a Métis comedian. The result is a poignant examination of queer love through different generations. -
FeaturesPoetic fragments from non-fiction Namibian travel book grow into their own collection
Peter Midgley could be said to be a hybrid writer – he works in multiple genres, publishing non-fiction, children’s lit, plays, and poetry. “I do not consciously set out to write a children’s story, or a poem,” says the Edmonton-based author. “I write. Sometimes, the form emerges from within the words. Sometimes, it appears in multiple forms.” -
FeaturesTeen werewolf who couldn’t change deserved her own novel
The latest novel for young adults by Edmonton author Nicole Luiken, Feral, features a modern pack of werewolves in Pine Hollow. The Pack is being challenged not only by its proximity to humans, but also by other foreign creatures that are infiltrating the community. -
FeaturesNovel revisits missionaries’ mandates with more cross-cultural understanding
In Five Wives, Winnipeg-based novelist Joan Thomas takes a clear-eyed look at a true incident, Operation Auca. This was an attempt by American evangelical Christians to convert the Waorani, an isolated tribe in Ecuador’s Amazonian jungle. In 1956, after dropping gifts from their small plane, five men land and try to make contact. The men are massacred, and their wives are left to continue the mission. -
FeaturesBest-selling author traces history of her Saskatoon home back to 1920s
In 1990, Candace Savage entered her new home in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, with her then 11-year-old daughter, Diana, to begin a new life. The wood-framed house built circa 1928 was, as the author describes it in her latest book Strangers in the House: A Prairie Story of Bigotry and Belonging, “in need of care and attention.” -
Non-FictionObservations made while witnessing dementia progress forced Agnew to stay engaged
Marion Agnew weaves her mother’s childhood, her parent’s marriage, and her own childhood into the telling of her mother’s diagnosis and experience of Alzheimer’s disease. Agnew did not start her collection of essays, Reverberations, with a book in mind, but found herself writing notes upon notes, scenes, and short narratives for other purposes during the last years of her mother’s life. -
Non-FictionFarmers on the front lines of food sovereignty share their visions
The publication of Frontline Farmers: How the National Farmers Union Resists Agribusiness and Creates Our New Food Future, edited by Annette Aurélie Desmarais, will mark the National Farmers Union’s 50th-anniversary celebration in November 2019. Desmarais explains that the National Farmers Union (NFU) has been at the forefront of important issues affecting agriculture and food in Canada since its formation in 1969. -
Non-FictionOffering a path toward honouring the treaties and empowering First Nations people
In Let the People Speak: Oppression in a Time of Reconciliation, Winnipeg-based, award-winning journalist Sheilla Jones presents social inequities that affect Indigenous communities in disproportionate numbers as the symptoms of institutionalized powerlessness. -
Non-FictionLearning about the feminist movements, and their history, through an Edmonton magazine
Branching Out, Canada’s first national magazine of second-wave feminism, was published in Edmonton, and reached readers from coast to coast – more than any other Canadian second-wave feminist periodical. However, after it ceased publishing in 1980, Branching Out all but completely disappeared from the historical record. -
Non-FictionGroundbreaking work from symposium grows into anthology of Indigenous performance
Performing Turtle Island: Indigenous Theatre on the World Stage collects multidisciplinary and diverse perspectives that discuss performance as a tool for engagement, education, and resistance, and examines how communities can construct Indigenous identities through theatre.
