News & Extras
Best Canadian Poetry 2019
Mar 29, 2021
How do you choose the best in language and say this is the finest? In Best Canadian Poetry 2019 editors, Anita Lahey, Amanda Jernigan and guest editor, Rob Taylor, would have searched through thousands of submissions to discover why a certain poem would be enjoyable and thought-provoking. The poem would have to be vibrant and […]
Read More
The Outer Wards by Sadiqa de Meijer
Mar 17, 2021
M(other): “I’m foreign, and she is home” In de Meijer’s sophomore collection, motherhood is defined as a “submerged world” into which former modes of being are subsumed or filtered through (24). These lyrical poems have a quiet, expansive grace, allowing for judicious ambiguity where certainty would oversimplify. The speaker navigates her new parental role and […]
Read More
Reverberations: A Daughter’s Meditations on Alzheimer’s by Marion Agnew
Feb 18, 2021
Marion Agnew didn’t want to write about her brilliant, often formidable, mother. Instead, she wanted to save her. But as it became clear that was impossible, she began to write, searching for ways to understand and accept her mother even as the person she’d once been began to disappear. This is the crux of Marion […]
Read More
Double Play Review! Bang Bang & Mustard by Kat Sandler
Feb 5, 2021
Toronto playwright Kat Sandler explores the liminal space between the real and the fictional in two recently published plays Bang Bang and Mustard. In the former, she presents the story of a young playwright whose latest work of gritty social drama inspired by true events is about to be adapted into a Hollywood movie. In the latter, she […]
Read More
The Transaction By Guglielmo D’Izzia
Jan 22, 2021
The Transaction, Guglielmo D’Izzia’s debut novel, cements his place as a master of prose. It won the 2016 Marina Nemat Award and was named a 2020 International Book Awards Finalist. The novel follows a man named De Angelis as he travels to a small Italian town called Figallia to make a simple business transaction. But, […]
Read More
The Diamond House by Dianne Warren
Jan 12, 2021
Dianne Warren’s most recent novel The Diamond House is quietly addictive. Her portrayal of an entrepreneurial, working-class family in Saskatchewan is deliciously compelling and uncannily realistic, particularly if you’re from the prairie province. Reading The Diamond House is like flipping through an old photo album. Warren captures the dynamics between fathers and daughters, sisters and […]
Read More