ArticlesIssue 82, Spring/Summer 2023
-
Fiction
A powerful novel of ecological interconnectedness
In The Book of Rain, award-winning Edmonton-area author Thomas Wharton tells a riveting tale of the impact that human choices have on our world. -
Fiction
For Corinna Chong, short forms offer experimentation, space for ‘enigmatic child characters’
As the first full-length offering from Corinna Chong since her well-received debut novel Belinda’s Rings in 2013, The Whole Animal, her debut short story collection, has been a long time coming. -
Fiction
Complicated desire for family foregrounds tale set in early 1900s Mennonite town
The creative fodder for Winnipeg author Sarah Klassen’s second novel, The Russian Daughter, came from a story told by her mother about a childless couple who made two attempts at adoption, both ending sadly. -
Fiction
Cli-fi mystery questions our digital dependence, and survival amid decay
As humanity faces climate change, we’ll certainly need the resources of the information age to survive it. But what if those resources weren’t available? What if electronic records were as fragmented and incomprehensible to future generations as hieroglyphics? -
Poetry
With six takes on the apocalypse and meditations on anger, Knife on Snow is oddly hopeful
Alice Major’s new poetry collection, Knife on Snow, began with the mysterious appearance of a knife in the snow of her backyard. “Somehow this ordinary, inexplicable object on the untrodden white really spooked me. It also made me realize how much I feel this piece of property is ‘mine.’ -
Poetry
Remedies include returning to grief, and the love it grows from, for Winnipeg poet
Remedies for Chiron is a warm and powerful debut collection of poetry by m. patchwork monoceros, a Black, agender, and queer poet who is “Jamaican by blood, Canadian by birthplace,” and who lives in Treaty 1 Territory, in Winnipeg. -
Poetry
Amid upheaval, Lucas Crawford took to the page, reflecting on queer sex, love, and place
Maritime poet Lucas Crawford’s latest poetry collection, Muster Points, has its origins in the COVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, Crawford arrived at the Banff Centre for the Arts, ready to mentor writers at a retreat. -
Drama
Real-life pilgrimage to Burning Man amid grief, transformation comes to life in one-woman play
Mieko Ouchi’s one-woman play Burning Mom follows Dorothy, a character based on the playwright’s mother, as she uncovers the pain and grief of the past so that she can fully embrace the future. The title is a reference to Burning Man, the Nevada art festival to which Ouchi’s mother made a pilgrimage a year after her husband’s passing. -
Features
Graphic novel shows that kids with difficult lives can shift patterns, find breakthroughs
For Cree writer Wanda John-Kehewin, author of Visions of the Crow, the inspiration to write a graphic novel for young people was personal. -
Features
Travelling through genres, Garry Thomas Morse questions notion of stable identity
Tulpa Mea Culpa, the latest avant-garde novel by Garry Thomas Morse, tells the story of an unknowable poet, and two people—an academic chair and a police clerk—who seek to understand him.