31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 4: “The Kitchen Boy” by Alaa Al Aswany; Humphrey Davies, trans.
This story from the noted Egyptian author interrogates toxic power dynamics within institutions.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 3: “The People Across the Canyon” by Margaret Millar
Millar’s story, ostensibly a psychological drama, is in fact a trenchant satire on the pernicious attractions of a particular kind of American dream.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 2: “Little Green Men” by Elaine McCluskey
Set in a tiny fishing village on Canada’s east coast, the story limns the distance between fact and supposition.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 1: “The Dead Are More Visible” by Steven Heighton
One of the author’s best, this story interrogates the notion of societal visibility through the prism of a middle-aged-woman working as a labourer flooding ice rinks in the middle of the night.
31 Days of Stories 2022: Introduction
If the novel is a regal lion king, the short story is a cackling hyena.
“Egotism at one remove”: Aldous Huxley on the partisan impulse
“Partisan loyalty is socially disastrous; but for individuals it can be richly rewarding.”
Putting the verse in metaverse: George Murray gets social with a private online network for poets
The new members-only social-media site aims to replicate the café or salon in a virtual environment.
Sympathy for the devils: John Darnielle’s latest novel examines the ethical quagmire of true crime in the context of a taut thriller
Focusing on a writer investigating a double murder with Satanic overtones, the novel asks uncomfortable questions about how and why we consume such gruesome material.
“We were on this wonderful ride”: Friends and colleagues recall Malcolm Lester, a publisher whose career surpassed his public acclaim
“For his generation, he was a pillar of Canadian Jewish literature publishing.”
Us vs. the volcano: In their sophomore novel, John Elizabeth Stintzi offers a phantasmagoria of interconnecting stories about climate change and human fallibility
Stintzi’s novel traverses space, time, and a sprawling cast of characters in its attempt to allegorize our most profound challenges in the present.