PreviewsIssue 85, Fall/Winter 2024-25
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ALTAR and Urn
Two Plays by Santiago Guzman
Santiago Guzman
Set in Newfoundland and Labrador (although adaptable to other small towns), these two plays deal with similar themes of cultural and sexual identity and family relationships. In ALTAR, Eugenio draws upon Mexican tradition to summon his boyfriend who has ghosted him, and in Urn, two siblings, Mariana and Esteban, who have taken different approaches to living as Mexican immigrants in Canada, reconnect after their mother’s death.
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An Astonishment of Stars
Stories
Kirti Bhadresa
Fourteen stories explore the lives of racialized women, from childhood camps and teenage rebellion to their domestic and professional lives as adults, looking at the often ill-fitting roles they try to take on and the emotions they feel the need to hide.
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An Open-Ended Run
A Memoir
Layne Coleman
In this thoroughly engaging memoir, Coleman looks back with a sense of wonder on his happy childhood on a Saskatchewan farm, his religious upbringing, his start in theatre in Winnipeg, his long career as an actor, playwright, and artistic director in Toronto, and his great love for his wife, who died much too young.
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As Is
Ben Robinson
Moving from his personal life and home neighbourhood – and the effects of city planning and regulations, naming and commemorative practices, demolition and development – to the historical and broader boundary of the regional treaty, these poems critically examine the city of Hamilton, Ontario, showing how the past is affecting the present, and exploring what it means to connect to place as a settler.
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Ashme’s Song
Brad C. Anderson
This science fiction adventure follows Ashme, a “Meso” or New Mesopotamian, who is also an indigo child with DNA modified by sentient AI, which enables her to control computer systems. She dreams of using her power to fight the Ostarrichi ruling her country, but her twin brother has a neurological disorder and needs her to care for him.
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Bad Houses
John Elizabeth Stintzi
These surreal and darkly humorous short stories explore alienation, guilt, and instability through a fabulist lens. Each character – including a doctor discovering a double-edged cure, a college student losing body parts, and Midas’s hairdresser, to name a few – lives their own haunted life.
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Bad Land
Corinna Chong
Amid the dinosaur bones and hills of the Alberta badlands, Regina tells how her quiet life is upended when her brother comes home after seven years away with his six-year-old daughter, Jez. Secrets are unearthed, in this story about guilt, memory, and truth.
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Beast
A Novel
Richard Van Camp
This gripping YA/adult crossover novel begins with the breakdown of the Treaty between the Dogrib and Chipewyan nations of the Northwest Territories, and explores, through realism and horror, the power of tradition versus the pull of a vengeful past. Lawson must try to keep the peace (without the help of adults) when Silver Crane, fresh out of jail and in the service of a ghoulish servant, is doing everything in his power to destroy it.
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Beast
A Novel
Richard Van Camp
This gripping YA/adult crossover novel begins with the breakdown of the Treaty between the Dogrib and Chipewyan nations of the Northwest Territories, and explores, through realism and horror, the power of tradition versus the pull of a vengeful past. Lawson must try to keep the peace (without the help of adults) when Silver Crane, fresh out of jail and in the service of a ghoulish servant, is doing everything in his power to destroy it.
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Because Somebody Asked Me To
Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene
Guy Vanderhaeghe
A selection of previously uncollected reviews, lectures, introductions, essays, and so on, from the 40-plus-year career of the award-winning Saskatchewan author displays his insight, humour, intelligence, and Prairie sensibility to great effect.
