“It has broken me completely”: Omar El Akkad talks about disillusionment, the West, and finding space to grieve with his new work of nonfiction
"There's the one book I write, and then there are the million different books that people read."
New thoughts on the oldest profession: Lauren Kirshner examines recent film treatments of sex workers in her new study
Kirshner mounts a cogent and persuasive argument in favour of reevaluating the way society, and the popular culture that reflects it, considers sex work.
“Any truth has a paradox within it”: Sarah Selecky on creativity, deep noticing, and her new book about tapping into your full writing potential
"I'm just giving voice to the part I haven't read yet."
How do we get people to care about the arts? In The Audacity of Relevance, Alex Sarian has some ideas
It's not the idea of relevance itself that gives one pause, so much as where Sarian chooses to place the emphasis.
Walking the tightrope: Mélikah Abeldmoumen uses the friendship between James Baldwin and William Styron to comment on race, writing, and appropriation
The text is a valuable examination of certain points of dissension or disagreement ongoing in our culture.
Up in smoke: Ben Kaplan’s new book captures the chaotic and character-filled early days of legal weed in Canada
It's a wild, unconstrained tale that brings together, somewhat improbably, politicians and scofflaws, Bay Street business types and countercultural rebels, the Tragically Hip and Snoop Dogg.
The sounds of silencing: In a new polemic, Ira Wells argues that censors are active on both the left and right
Moral certitude makes for strange bedfellows.
The devil’s advocate: Toronto Star entertainment editor Doug Brod on the demonic appeal of Anton LaVey
"He was essentially a horror movie, comic book geek," Brod says.
High spirits: Food and travel writer Evan Rail examines the story of a counterfeiter who trafficked in fake bottles of one of the world’s most notorious tipples
What is most fascinating about Rail's story is not so much the forger, but everything surrounding him.
Hunger, anxiety, and pain are among the human drives horror addresses, according to Anna Bogutskaya in Feeding the Monster
At its best, horror has always skirted an anarchic or illicit sensibility.