Nobel Prize in Literature continues to court controversy
After a year in which it tried to put a series of controversies behind it, the Nobel committee for literature finds itself the subject of new protests.
Family matters: Ashleigh Young on seeing, place, and her debut essay collection
Ashleigh Young draws on her own confusion, family history, and an idiosyncratic sensibility in her book of essays.
A small derangement of consciousness: the challenging fiction of Jung Young Moon
Jung Young Moon’s novel eschews traditional notions of plot, character, and conflict in favour of a digressive dreamscape.
Gwen Benaway, Kai Cheng Thom, and Casey Plett on free speech, trans rights, and the Toronto Public Library
Three trans writers speak about TPL’s decision to allow a controversial speaker to appear at a local branch tonight – a decision they argue will have negative repercussions for the trans community.
Busting borders: the gut-punch fiction of Don Winslow
The American crime writer Don Winslow opened the 2019 Toronto International Festival of authors with an insightful conversation about writing, genre, and the U.S. war on drugs.
A portrait of the artist as a dead man: controversial proposal floated to repatriate the remains of James Joyce
Two Dublin city councillors have a plan to exhume the bones of the great modernist writer and return them to his birthplace.
Anatomy of melancholy: Kevin Barry’s Night Boat to Tangier
Kevin Barry’s third novel features two career criminals waiting at a seedy Spanish port for the arrival of the estranged daughter of one of them.
Harold Bloom, proponent of the literary sublime, dies at age 89
Harold Bloom antagonized academics and cultural theorists, but remained a staunch advocate of transcendence through literature.
On regarding the lives of others: Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag
Benjamin Moser’s biography of Susan Sontag presents its subject as a mass of contradictions.
Watch Your Head addresses climate crisis through poetry, art
Poet and editor Kathryn Mockler’s latest project is an online call to arms around the ongoing climate emergency.