As Ottawa’s VERSeFest marks its sixteenth year, rob mclennan reflects on its importance
VERSeFest arose out of a push to get the city's various poetry reading series – be they slam, stage, or page focused – to collaborate on a single event.
Heated Rivalry’s Rachel Reid joins the fray in protesting the Nova Scotia provincial budget cuts to arts and culture
Increasing funding for the arts and culture would also have beneficial health and educational outcomes.
Backlash grows to arts cuts in Nova Scotia’s austerity budget, with protests planned for Wednesday
The budget slashed $130 million in grants as part of an attempt to reduce the $1.2 billion provincial deficit.
In her combined memoir and manifesto, Amanda Jones retails her experience being attacked online after standing up for the right to read
While her impassioned tone is absolutely understandable, it occasionally results in a lapse of her professed decorum.
Calgary student prevented from performing Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang poem at a local Poetry in Voice recitation competition
The choice of poem is "an act of protest" against the climate of misogynistic abuse that teens and adult women are subject to on a daily basis.
Sanctimonious certainty and bipartisan bullshit: Ray Robertson addresses the cleavages that separate us in The Right to Be Wrong
The biggest intellectual culprits in our current sociopolitical culture, Robertson suggests, are surety and self-righteousness.
Freedom to Read Week unfolds during period of increased challenges to books and reading
In 2026, the forces arrayed to curtail freedoms seem closer and more powerful than ever.
Calgary Legion venue pulls out of contract for TWUC/WGA Freedom to Read Week event due to “conflict with Legion policy”
The plan for the event included discussion of censorship in general and readings from banned books.
The lies have it: Two new debut novels showcase unreliable narrators
Whereas Novack lets her narrator's duplicity bleed through in the way the book is structured, Lucy, the woman at the centre of Taff's novel, tells us she's lying right up front.
No Arms in the Arts claims a win as Scotiabank divests entirely from Elbit Systems
The fund has been the target of ongoing protests since 2023.