We’re thrilled to have fellow creative misfit and community builder Amanda Earl join us today to talk about her incredible Small Machine Talks podcast, which celebrates and amplifies the voices of artists who have been traditionally excluded from conversations on creation and focuses on the joys and frustration of the creative process.

Welcome, Amanda!

Saeed Teebi’s collection of short stories, Her First Palestinian, was published by House of Anansi Press in 2022, and we were lucky enough to read an advance copy of it. We’d say that now more than ever it is important to amplify the underrepresented and silenced voices of Palestinian people, but the truth is it’s always been important.

We’re honoured Saeed Teebi joined us for this Power Q & A.

We love flash fiction, so we were stoked when poet and flash fiction pro, Kathyrn Mockler, said she’d be game to join us for a Power Q & A. Let’s dive in, and learn a little more about writing, and why to write, this short and sweet form of fiction.

This is a super exciting Power Q & A for us! Not only are we interviewing an extraordinary Canadian poet and spoken word artist, but we’re interviewing a tireless advocate of other Canadian artists: Valentino Assenza host and producer of HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. Every Tuesday night at 10 p.m. EST, Valentino welcomes emerging and established authors, poets, playwrights, and songwriters to the airwaves. We’ve heard many of our favourite artists on this show, and have learned about so many more who have become favourites, so we wanted to take this opportunity to spotlight the person behind this miraculous and indisputably vital celebration of art and artists.

In this Power Q & A, we’re delighted to talk with the incomparable Lynn Tait, whose debut poetry collection, You Break It You Buy It, was just released with Guernica Editions on September 1, 2023. Tait’s work offers an evocative and gutsy exploration of pain and resilience. From racism to the climate emergency, to the complicated nature of family, love, and loss, Tait defies a generation’s debilitating standard of silence and cracks open our personal and shared failings with unflinching tenderness, humour, and insight. 

The effect is absorbing and resounds with a sonic call to empathy. Now more than ever, we need this message.

Today we’re asking Lynn about “accessible poetry,” and her nuanced and thoughtful answer is everything we hoped it would be.

Lucy E. M. Black has the makings of a multigenerational saga in her rich and deep novel The Brickworks. Beginning in Scotland with narratives starting between 1879 and 1909, it tells the story of two men driven by ambition and their need to overcome the tragedies of their past in a new land just beginning to discover its potential. 

With just over a month until 18: Jewish Stories Translated from 18 Languages (edited by Dr. Nora Gold) is released, we are excited to be able to share an excerpt of a story from this beautifully curated anthology of Jewish literature. Keep reading!

Lucy E.M. Black is one of our favourite writers of historical fiction. Ever. Her upcoming (and fourth) book, The Brickworks, is due out with Now and Never Press in October 2023. Told in Black's signature luminous prose, The Brickworks tells the story of Alistair and Brodie, two ambitious Scottish immigrants to North America at the turn of the century. This is an unforgettable story of hardship and triumph from one of the most fiercely gifted writers of historical fiction in Canada. We are delighted Lucy agreed to join us for our latest Power Q & A. Here, she lifts the hood on her writing process and allows us to get a glimpse of the wonderfully intricate workings of her creative process.

Colleen Brown’s book, If you lie down in a field, she will find you (Radiant Press, October 2023), is an absorbing, eye-opening, and heart-wrenching memoir in fragments, conversations, and memories of her mother’s life and murder by a serial killer. It’s also about the impact violence has on memory and storytelling and how persistent contact with the justice system affects individual needs for a narrative that can make sense of a life. On this Power Q & A, we ask Colleen about the perhaps not-so-obvious challenges of writing this story.

When the war in Ukraine erupted, Russian-Canadian author Marina Sonkina dropped everything and flew to the Russian-Ukrainian border. Having come to Canada as a refugee with two young sons, she knew she had to help. Today, we ask her about how her experiences at the border became her new book, Ukrainian Portraits: Diairies from the Border (Guernica Editions, September 2023).

We’re delighted to be interviewing author and lyricist Steven Mayoff, whose most recent novel, The Island Gospel of Samson Grief, is coming out this fall with Radiant Press. Masterfully disrupting the idyllic picture often painted of Prince Edward Island, The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief is a darkly funny and thrilling story of spiritual dissonance and cultural satire in Canada's most wholesome province.

Canadian author and actor Melia McClure joins us for this Power Q & A to talk about her exceptional new novel, All the World’s a Wonder, and her masterful use of voice to create unforgettable, vibrant characters. You’re not going to want to miss this!

We’re tickled to be joined by the incomparable Jason Heroux for this Power Q&A to talk a little about the impulse to get surreal and his latest book, a collection of short stories, Survivors of the Hive (Radiant Press, 2023).

We invited Jerrod Edson, Canadian author of six books, for a quick chat with us about his wild and wonderful latest work of speculative fiction, The Boulevard (Galleon, 2023). We’re delighted he joined us!

One of my professor’s frequently says that the publishing industry exists at a rather contentious intersection between art and commerce. But I want to tweak his metaphor a little. I say that the publishing industry is less of an intersection and more of a grown person with one foot on either end of a child’s seesaw. With one foot on art, and the other on commerce the person wobbles around vicariously in the middle. 

Time is a Mother, Ocean Vuong’s latest poetry collection, is a timely piece of writing in more ways than one. The work grapples with the immediacy of our ever-fleeting lives, reflecting on his mother’s death, while stubbornly refusing to submit entirely to grief. Vuong’s earlier poetry collections as well as his debut novel: On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, earned acclaim for their intimate depictions of raw emotion. Vuong’s newest work is no exception.

When I was the managing editor of a national infertility blog, the Executive Director gave me free rein to highlight voices as I saw fit. I created the schedule, coordinated the topics, and nurtured the writers using editorial experience, empathy, and compassion.

She left me with one stipulation, however. “We don’t publish anything that discusses politics or religion.”

I was crushed. Not simply for the writers but for myself.