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John gazed down at his bloody, raw hands. Curlicues of peeling skin had frozen and snapped off, falling into a crimson mound of snow and wood shards, all that was left of the fence post. The car’s windows and doors, even its hood and trunk, scratched and dented but otherwise intact, had all been subjected to a brutal beating.
May is National Short Story Month and we’re kicking it off with a brief and salient interview with award-winning multi-genre writer Sharon Berg, author of many books, including the short fiction collection, Naming the Shadows (Porcupine’s Quill 2019). Never one to shy away from tough conversations, we ask Sharon about writing difficult subjects as a necessary part of the responsibility we bear for one another.
Chapbooks are short collections of poetry that can range from just under 10 pages to just under 50 pages—and we love them! Chapbooks can be a perfect one-sitting poetry immersion.
We are delighted to have Montreal poet Carolyne Van Der Meer join us for an appropriately brief but powerful interview on chapbooks.
I wrote a story for you in a journal and it vanished. Yes, van- ished. The journal itself disappeared. Where do such missing things go?
In the story I laid down all the things I wanted you to understand. I wanted to write it because, in the years since we lay in the yellow grass, I have come to some knowledge. I cannot recall the contents of the story in full. Because of its loss, I sobbed and felt like the victim of a cruel and unusual fate.
Callista Markotich’s beautiful debut collection of poetry enchants on many levels—even before you open the book. The cover of Wrap in a Big White Towel (Frontenac House Press, 2024) conjures feelings of cozy introspection and curiosity. We are pleased to have Callista join us today to talk about how the cover of her collections mirrors the themes explored within.
Speech Dries Here on the Tongue (edited by Hollay Ghadery, Rasiqra Revulva, and Amanda Shankland) is an anthology of poetry by Canadian authors, published by The Porcupine’s Quill, exploring the relationship between environmental collapse and mental health.
It’s been listed as a book to read by Quill & Quire and CBC Books, and we’re honoured to have one of the editors, Amanda Shankland, join us for this Power Q & A to talk about where this anthology started for her.
Saad Omar Khan’s gorgeous novel, Drinking the Ocean (Wolsak & Wynn, May 6, 2024) is a tender and absorbing story of love, family, and the complexities facing Muslims in the West. It has been named one of the 49th Shelf’s most anticipated fiction books of the year and is also one of the most anticipated books within our community.
Moving between Lahore, London, and Toronto, Drinking the Ocean is a story of connections lost and found and of the many kinds of love that shape a life, whether familial, romantic or spiritual.
The move itself was frigid. Men in boots tracking snow and salt through two houses. Half of our plants died in cold moving trucks. My big orange tabby shat in his cat carrier riding next to me in the car from Hamilton to Paris. An omen? Those first weeks in Paris, I saw omens everywhere. Worst was what I found in the attic. Kneeling and feeling for drafts by a small window, I saw bones lying on the floor next to me. They comprised a full skeleton. It was as though the skeleton had been picked clean and preserved for a science class. Not a bone missing or chipped. No rotting flesh or feathers attached. A bird? Squirrel? Baby raccoon? An offering to dark gods left by previous owners? I couldn’t tell.
I recently read Robert Penner’s The Dark King Swallows the World, a novel set in Cornwall during World War II. I liked it a lot, and was surprised to learn that a few (of the otherwise uniformly positive) reviews had called it out for a lack of historical accuracy.
My initial response was: who cares? Complaining about historical accuracy in a work of fiction seems, to me, like bragging about being the best at doing homework. Missing the point, a little obnoxious.
We became aware of American poet Alex Gurtis through his work as a literary critic and then further familiarized ourselves with his work in the literary community—specifically, his work uplifting Canadian authors. Then, we learned more about his poetry, and our interest was doubly piqued. We picked up his chapbook, When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and were blown away.
On this Power Q & A, we are tickled to be joined by poet and podcast host, Andrew French. Andrew is the host of the popular Page Fright poetry show, where they interview established and emerging authors about breaking through as writers and finding their literary style.
In this interview, we ask Andrew to share with us about why they started the podcast.
We are delighted to have Tim Welsh join us today to speak about history in his extraordinary debut novel, Ley Lines (May 1, 2025, Guernica Editions).
Set in the waning days of the Klondike Gold Rush, Ley Lines begins in the mythical boom town of Sawdust City, Yukon Territory. Luckless prospector Steve Ladle has accepted an unusual job offer: accompany a local con artist to the unconquered top of a nearby mountain. There, the duo finds a seven-foot human ear, floating in a halo of light. This mysterious discovery briefly upends Sawdust City's fading fortunes, attracting a crowd of gawkers and acolytes, while inadvertently setting in motion a series of events that brings about the town's ruin.
The last time I attended a writing workshop was in 2014. It was the Tone + Text opera workshop in Vadstena, Sweden at the Vadstena Akademien, a school for opera artists. I was there as a librettist. This was part two of the workshop, which lasted four days, culminating in a showcase of scenes written by librettists who had been paired with composers at part one, also a 4-day affair that took place the previous year.
He went to the library after class and thought about her sudden disappearance. Undergrads preparing for mid-term exams and equally ambitious postgraduates doing early research for their theses littered every section of the circular, three-story library. Murad found a lone table and made an effort to do some research for his class on internal migration. When he finished working in the early evening, he felt focused and lucid, his mind free of the clouded haze that often weighed it down. He went outside and sat on the same concrete slab where he had first met Sofi. The sky’s leaden greyness was darkening, and Murad found himself surrounded by small, atomized groups of students huddled together. He thought about the email she’d sent him. He had no reason to call her. He had nothing that he needed to say, no wound that needed to be tended. There was only an absence felt, a persistent emptiness without her presence.
Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024) is unlike any apocalypse novel I’ve ever read; it’s a refreshing perspective on humanity at the end of the world. The people in this novel do not become the worst versions of themselves; instead, Krause’s vibrant characters remain generous and kind and community oriented. No one takes more than they need at the grocery store, pilots—after systems have gone down—fly planes so that others can get back to their families, and others decorate whole cities with paper chains and snowflakes just to bring small joys in an unfathomable time. In fact, small joys and creativity are at the forefront of what’s meaningful to the book and its characters. These joys offer hope, even if we know the end.
Barbara Tran’s entrancing poetry collection, Precedented Parrotting (Palimpsest Press, 2024), was a finalist for the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. This beautiful book stands as an expansive debut that plumbs personal archives and traverses the natural world.
We are honoured to have Barbara join us for our Power Q & A series to speak with us about the visual impact of her work, which uses the whole stage of the page.
Your Devotee in Rags truly is a voracious visage of passionate construction. Exotic soundstages tumble unfettered around thunderous drum breaks and wholly convincing vocal performances. The narrative is female - is woman. Churning laments championed by steaming percussion drive us through moments, memories, patriarchy. The narrator is hungry. The voice is visceral, snarling.
Close your eyes and open your ears, friends, ‘cause cultural icons, Anne Waldman (The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment) and Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene) have collaborated to create Your Devotee in Rags—a metamorphic sonic poetry LP being released with Siren Recordings.
Your Devotee in Rags is a missive to this age of patriarchal power, its songs and poems are designed to specifically confront that power and hold it to account. Taking such activist inspiration from musicians like Lido Pimienta and Tanya Tagaaq, musically YDIR blends acoustic and electronic genres, waltzes, laments, and Pauls Boutique-era Beastie Boys mash-ups all with the intent of creating a new artistic headspace: sonic poetry. The cultural direction is forward, the earbuds open up the stereo field, listening to YDIR is, in a word, empowering.
The major achievement of RuFF (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024) is the artful way in which author Rod Carley weaves the slender threads of historical fact into a broader fictional tapestry to create a raucously pun-driven tale of Elizabethan politics, theatre, magic, and mayhem. The novel features a relatively familiar cast of characters from the theatrical scene in that era, including William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Kit Marlowe, Richard Burbage, and Will Kempe. Women are given equal time in the form of Anne Hathaway, daughter Judith, and Magdalene Marbecke, known here as Maggie. Rounding out the motley crew are an assortment of allies, enemies, soldiers, peasants, peers, and political toadies – but most importantly, animals – specifically Shakespeare’s three-legged beagle, Biscuit; Judith’s cat, Gray-Malkin; and a crow named Cawdor.
