Ship of fools: Will Aitken skewers late-capitalism and upper-class pretension in The Swells
With not one but two pirate incursions, a mutiny, and other onboard shenanigans, the novel offers a fast, noisy narrative.
Where I’m calling from: Dimitri Nasrallah mines the immigrant experience for his new novel, Hotline
Set in Montreal during the 1980s, the novel outlines the full range of the immigrant experience, from heartache to hope.
Debut novel from Camilla Grudova sold to Atlantic
Grudova’s previous collection of short fiction was delightfully strange; the new novel appears to continue in this vein.
The death, rebirth, and afterlife of the author in Naben Ruthnum’s A Hero of Our Time
In his debut literary novel under his own name, Ruthnum provides a slippery, serpentine narrative that calls into question notions of identity and narrative stability.
Home and away: the dislocations of place and self in Hoa Nguyen’s A Thousand Times You Lose Your Treasure
The Toronto poet recalls her mother, a former stunt motorcycle rider, and her former home in Vietnam.
“This was, and is, a kind of genius”: colleagues, publishers, and admirers recall the importance of Marie-Claire Blais, one of the finest writers Canada has ever produced
Timid is not a word anyone would reach for to describe Blais’s fiction, and especially her early work, which remains as shocking and defiant today as when it first appeared.
The subtle art of selling out: Adam Hammond investigates DIY gaming culture in his new book The Far Shore
Hammond has written a text that is frankly unclassifiable: part biography, part critical exegesis, part hipster manifesto.
“I think everyone in some way is an outsider”: Kate Cayley on short stories, literary tradition, and why she would be hesitant to read a novel she had written
“Art is a way of remembering what it is like to be alive when you may have forgotten,” says Cayley.
The things we carry: Michelle Berry examines the confluence of personal and geopolitical trauma in Everything Turns Away
The risk in writing a domestic thriller with 9/11 as backdrop is that the geopolitical material comes off as a gimmick rather than an integral story element.
“I want to be able to go in and out of hell with grace”: Shawn Hitchins on death, queer transformation, and the astonishing bass line in Boney M’s “Rasputin”
In his new memoir, the author contemplates his life and community in the wake of two significant figures dying within five months of each other.