Violet Browne talks about Newfoundland’s influence, fragmenting fiction, and the real-life origins of her debut novel March 20, 2023 “I think Quebec is Newfoundland writ large because we do have our own culture and that is so tied up in the language.”
In The Fake, Zoe Whittall takes a blisteringly funny look at con artists and the people they target March 16, 2023 Very much in the spirit of a good grift, the novel lures us in willingly before snatching all our assurances away from us.
Poetic form gets exploded and reshaped in two recent volumes from River Halen and Otoniya J. Okot Bitek March 2, 2023 The notion of making oneself “legible” to oneself and others is at the centre of Halen’s project.
“You got yourself into a Lindsay Wong story”: The author of Tell Me Pleasant Things about Immortality talks about ghosts, Chinese families, and her idiosyncratic approach to fiction February 28, 2023 “I’m interested in that idea: when we transform ourselves, are we transforming our pain?”
Queer fear: an anthology of fiction and poetry reimagines horror tropes from LGBTQ+ perspectives February 23, 2023 “These stories ask the question What is a monster? and complicate the definition of ‘monster’ along the way.”
Love and grief are the enduring forces in Violet Browne’s debut novel February 22, 2023 This Is the House That Luke Built is a strong first novel, clearly adept at marrying its form and content.
Fail better: Stephen Marche on the one constant in a writer’s life February 7, 2023 Failure is inevitable because perfection is unattainable.
DIY veteran Jim Munroe experiments with AI art for a short-run print edition of his latest novel, We Are Raccoons January 27, 2023 “That kind of direct connection with readers and creators is probably the majority of why I make art in the first place.”
In Lost in Canada, Lydia Perović reconsiders her adopted country’s status as a bastion of liberal democracy January 24, 2023 Perović’s ideal of Canadian nationalism based in universality and Enlightenment freedoms has always been chimerical.
Vancouver writer Jen Sookfong Lee’s new essay collection locates itself at the intersection of pop culture and identity January 18, 2023 Lee does not make value judgments about high or low culture: she is equally at home watching Wong-Kar Wai films without subtitles and watching twenty seasons’ worth of Keeping Up with the Kardashians.
The debut novel by Jessica Johns reclaims Indigenous horror tropes in a story about pervasive familial grief January 17, 2023 What is apparent throughout Bad Cree is Johns’s facility for dealing with the rocky and tumultuous terrain of familial memory.
Music, magic, madness, and murder combine in Matt Cahill’s sophomore novel, Radioland January 5, 2023 “I wanted to approach magic as a sort of organic, biological thing.”
With his new short story collection, Stuart Ross continues in the spirit of underground publishing December 8, 2022 Traces of writers as diverse as Daniil Kharms and Jorge Luis Borges are detectable in the collection.
Greek mythology, feminism, and body horror collide in Martine Desjardins’s intriguing Gothic fantasia November 29, 2022 By melding elements of Greek mythology, nature, and body horror, Desjardins has created something unique and enticing.
A quartet of novellas demonstrates the quirky versatility of the form November 18, 2022 Metafiction, speculative fiction, and fantasy are among the genres represented in these brief and intriguing works.
In her debut novel, Manaka Raman-Wilms tackles climate change and far-right radicalization November 16, 2022 Paced like a thriller and cast as a chase novel, The Rooftop Garden is a compulsive yet somewhat vexatious read.
In her first collection of short stories, Newfoundland’s Bridget Canning performs acts of radical empathy November 15, 2022 Canning’s fiction is as intriguing for what it leaves out as for what gets included.
Saeed Teebi helps put U of T’s School of Continuing Studies on the CanLit prize map November 8, 2022 “The more conscious you are, the more intentional you are about writing, the better you understand why your own stories work or don’t,” Teebi says.
Novelist and true crime author Rebecca Godfrey dead from complications due to cancer at age 54 November 7, 2022 Godfrey, who succumbed to complications from lung cancer, was “an extraordinary … writer whose voice was clean, crisp, and daring on every page.”
Get smart: John Lorinc and Josh O’Kane examine the limits of smart city technology and Sidewalk Labs’s disastrous Toronto experiment November 5, 2022 Taken together, Dream States and Sideways comprise a particularly incisive look at the theory and practice of smart cities.
In White Resin, Quebec author Audrée Wilhelmy subverts and reimagines classic CanLit tropes November 4, 2022 White Resin restores a vision of the Canadian wilderness more in line with Indigenous ideas of a mutually dependent relationship between humanity and the natural environment.
Annie Gibson tells PW about the ongoing success of Playwrights Canada Press, making it through the pandemic, and the importance of drama publishing October 31, 2022 One of the innovations made by the publisher during the Covid-19 pandemic is the establishment of an editorial committee to seek out new work.
Harold R. Johnson and Tomson Highway invoke Indigenous knowledge and the Trickster figure in books that seek to recapture connection to the land and ourselves October 27, 2022 The two Indigenous authors offer different ways of thinking about the stories we tell ourselves and providing suggestions for how to rewrite those stories to our benefit.
Faith and family are central to Wayne Johnston’s new memoir of growing up sickly in rural Newfoundland October 20, 2022 The twin poles of scientific reason and religious faith animate this vibrant and surprisingly funny memoir.
Montreal-based writer Cassandra Khaw combines lyricism and brevity in short works of horror and dark fantasy October 13, 2022 When Khaw is at their best, their writing has teeth – blackened, razor sharp, and ready to rend flesh.
Canadian award juries prioritize small presses, diverse authors on this year’s shortlists October 12, 2022 Small presses and debut authors account for the bulk of the fifteen titles that appear on this year’s shortlists.
Peter Robinson, bestselling author of the Inspector Banks mystery series, dead at age 72 October 8, 2022 The multiple award winning author was best known for his novels featuring English detective Alan Banks.
Kate Beaton recalls her time working in Alberta’s oil sands in her first graphic memoir, Ducks October 4, 2022 Ducks deserves a place alongside Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and Art Spiegelman’s Maus as one of the finest examples of its genre.
In Nightmare Fuel, Canadian author Nina Nesseth investigates the neuroscience underpinning why people love being scared at the movies October 4, 2022 As a primer to the ways cinematic horror works on audiences’ psyches and the specific neurological responses these techniques can elicit, Nightmare Fuel is a breezy and fluent read.
“I eat those words like they is food”: The prismatic poetry of Pamela Mordecai September 29, 2022 It would be salutary to see critics inside and outside of the academy pick up this book and engage with it thoroughly and thoughtfully.
Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson fiction shortlist comprises entirely books from independent Canadian presses September 14, 2022 Two collections of short fiction and two works in translation are represented on a list that spans the country from PEI to Alberta.
Return of Globe’s Arts & Books section features one book review – of a book by a Globe columnist September 12, 2022 The single book review was of a book by technology columnist Josh O’Kane.
The Great War provides the backdrop for a story about death and resurrection on an industrial scale August 31, 2022 The Talosite exists at the confluence of sci-fi and body horror, with the actual horrors of the First World War a constant shadow in the background.
“Peeking behind the curtain of Oz”: Joshua Whitehead talks about his new book of essays, the limitations of genre, and the rigidity of the English language August 25, 2022 “If I could go back, I might tell younger me, ‘Don’t do this.’ “
Montreal author Kevin Lambert channels Jean Genet in a scalding novel about sex and class warfare August 24, 2022 Lambert uses the structure of a classical Greek tragedy to tell the story of a strike at a sawmill and the amoral, charismatic figure caught up in it.
Is publishing in Canada broken? No, but dismissing an entire segment of the ecosystem certainly doesn’t help August 23, 2022 Rather than farm teams, it’s preferable to think of smaller publishers as craft breweries or artisinal vineyards.
Casey Plett will be everywhere in fall 2022 and spring 2023 August 9, 2022 Plett’s own debut collection of short fiction, A Safe Girl to Love, is being reissued by her current publisher, Vancouver’s Arsenal Pulp Press.
Controversial journalist and confessed “sex radical” Gerald Hannon’s memoir provides an overview of LGBTQ+ history over the past four decades August 3, 2022 One need not agree with everything the author writes or believes in order to recognize the importance of his memoir as a document of the LGBTQ+ community’s development in Canada.
Fawn Parker deconstructs male ego and the image of the great man in literature and academia in two angry, unflinching novels July 20, 2022 Despite some missteps and shots at easy targets, Parker’s novels combine to form a provocative riposte to a culture that valorizes a certain kind of profane masculinity.
Sex and death collide in Like Animals, the debut novel from Eve Lemieux July 13, 2022 Like Animals has a modernist sheen, providing a chaotic surface reflective of its protagonist’s conflicted and disaffected psychology.
Cultural reporter Elamin Abdelmahmoud talks about his memoir, Son of Elsewhere, his love of The O.C, and what the banjo has in common with the oud July 6, 2022 “Even though I’ve been living in this country for twenty-two years and this is for all intents and purposes my home – it’s where I intend to live the rest of my life – elsewhere is this notion that one or two pieces are missing,” says Abdelmahmoud.
A tale of 2,058 timelines: Terri Favro tackles tropes from SF and comic books in her exuberant sequel, The Sisters Sputnik June 22, 2022 In her imaginative sequel to Sputnik’s Children, Favro comments on the nature and responsibility of storytelling.
What the body remembers: Naben Ruthnum examines corporeality and identity in his novella Helpmeet June 17, 2022 Ruthnum’s brief work of fin-de-siècle body horror reads like a mash-up of David Cronenberg and Henry James.
Come together: Conflicting notions of home and country are at the fore in Anita Anand’s novel A Convergence of Solitudes June 16, 2022 The novel, which is structured to resemble a double album of interconnected tracks, follows a cast of characters searching for a sense of belonging.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 30: “The Alps” by Colin Barrett May 30, 2022 Canadian-Irish writer Colin Barrett is a wizard with language that sings with the rhythms and cadences of the working class.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 28: “Hotel Tango” by Cora Siré May 28, 2022 In this story about a man’s assignation with a married woman, the chaos and culture of Buenos Aires serve as metaphors for the couple’s incompatibility.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 26: “The Fate of the Son of the Man on the Horse” by Rawi Hage May 26, 2022 Hage’s story of a doomed, ineffectual man is a layered consideration of religion, history, and the nature of celebrity.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 25: “Ordinary Love Song” by Alex Pugsley May 25, 2022 Pugsley resurrects a seldom-used literary form – the epistolary story – and repurposes it for the internet age.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 24: “June Bugs” by Kim Fu May 24, 2022 Fu’s three-part story fuses realism with fabulist elements.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 20: “Glory” by Janice Lynn Mather May 20, 2022 This story, about a teenage girl sent to live with her grandmother during the final months of her pregnancy, is about a struggle between conflicting notions contained in the title.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 17: “Once Removed” by Alexander MacLeod May 17, 2022 Like Alice Munro, MacLeod has the ability to build whole lives in a compressed space and to subtly shift a story’s focus and meaning without apparent effort.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 14: “Devotion” by Sharon English May 14, 2022 English’s story excavates the chasm that exists between two halves of a couple, a gulf that is exposed by the death of the pair’s dog.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 12: “The Stunt” by Michael LaPointe May 12, 2022 In this chilly story, three men do battle for the soul of a fifteen-year-old film star.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 11: “Come and Get Your Ice Cream, Motherfuckers” by Francine Cunningham May 11, 2022 An ice cream truck driver faces mental anguish resulting from his inability to escape the incessant jingle of his vehicle’s music.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 9: “An Orchid, Blooming” by Kathy Friedman May 9, 2022 In Friedman’s story, family secrets, like orchids, flourish in darkness.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 8: “A Survey of Recent American Happenings Told Through Six Commercials for the Tennyson Clearjet Premium Touchless Bidet” by Omar El Akkad May 8, 2022 In a brief and barbed satire, Giller winner Omar El Akkad links our current geopolitical malaise with the capitalist impulse to sell stuff.
31 Days of Stories 2022, Day 3: “The People Across the Canyon” by Margaret Millar May 3, 2022 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 May 2, 2022 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 May 1, 2022 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 April 30, 2022 If the novel is a regal lion king, the short story is a cackling hyena.
Putting the verse in metaverse: George Murray gets social with a private online network for poets April 20, 2022 The new members-only social-media site aims to replicate the café or salon in a virtual environment.
Us vs. the volcano: In their sophomore novel, John Elizabeth Stintzi offers a phantasmagoria of interconnecting stories about climate change and human fallibility April 1, 2022 Stintzi’s novel traverses space, time, and a sprawling cast of characters in its attempt to allegorize our most profound challenges in the present.
Rosemary Sullivan defends conclusions in controversial Anne Frank book; HarperCollins to keep the title on sale March 25, 2022 The author says in a statement that she has “full confidence” in the work that went into the book.
Dutch publisher Ambo Anthos retracts publication of a controversial book about Anne Frank after a report by historians refutes the volume’s conclusions March 23, 2022 The move comes after criticism of the cold-case team’s methods and assumptions by experts on the Holocaust and the Franks.
“You have to sign the same deal if you want to be good” March 16, 2022 Alexander MacLeod’s new collection is out in April.
“There are probably people getting away with such things right now”: Sarah Weinman discusses her new book, about a con artist who convinced a right-wing pundit to save him from death row March 4, 2022 Edgar Smith, the convicted murderer of a fifteen-year-old girl, found some powerful advocates in conservative writer William F. Buckley, Jr., and Alfred A. Knopf editor Sophie Wilkins.
Flight paths: Susan Glickman’s selected essays address poetry, criticism, and taking up art study in her sixties March 3, 2022 Glickman’s focus on technique on a granular level reveals her to be a deeply knowledgeable and highly erudite reader of a wide range of poets.
AI, AI, oh: In their second novel, Victoria Hetherington examines ontological questions about subjectivity and personhood February 17, 2022 The novel, about a sentient AI that develops a relationship with a university therapist, examines ontological questions about what it is that makes us human.
June bugs and haunted dolls: the strange and fantastical world of Kim Fu’s Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century February 10, 2022 These twelve stories interrogate individual human consciousness and the dangers of technology in our postmodern world.
HarperCollins Germany to review controversial book about the betrayal of Anne Frank in light of questions about claims in it February 3, 2022 The new book, which proposes a Jewish notary as the person responsible for giving up the Franks’ hiding place, has come under fire by historians who question its assertions.
Ship of fools: Will Aitken skewers late-capitalism and upper-class pretension in The Swells January 26, 2022 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 January 21, 2022 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 January 19, 2022 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 January 12, 2022 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 December 14, 2021 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 December 8, 2021 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 December 3, 2021 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 December 1, 2021 “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 November 29, 2021 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” November 24, 2021 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.
Nic Brewer’s debut novel uses body horror as a means of interrogating the artistic process November 12, 2021 The book uses Grand Guignol techniques to literalize the process of tearing oneself open in the act of artistic creation.
A.C. Wise channels unease and melancholy in her story collection The Ghost Sequences November 3, 2021 In this suite of sixteen uncanny tales, memory and loss are manifest in the spectres that haunt various characters.
“White folks get to erase or occlude parts of their history”: Ian Williams on race, language, and his new essay collection, Disorientation November 2, 2021 For the author, the titular condition involves those moments when one is just trying to live one’s life and is suddenly reminded of one’s race.
The annual anthology series Best Canadian Stories celebrates fifty years of showcasing Canada’s proficiency and variety in the literary form November 1, 2021 “The function of it was the pleasure of the work for readers, and the value to writers was to show them how good they had to get,” says longtime series editor John Metcalf.
Adam Pottle on how the CanLit establishment’s preference for literary realism downplays the value of horror writing October 27, 2021 Horror doesn’t gel with those who’ve propped up CanLit respectability – that is, chiefly cishet, nondisabled white people, Pottle writes.
Horror is as horror does: Susie Moloney on the genre’s ability to ease real-life pain October 15, 2021 “Horror movies really, really distracted me from the most painful time of my life. Alone in the theatre for a couple of hours, being manipulated into screaming, swearing, and tossing my popcorn, I was transported.”
“I was always a morbid kid”: James Grainger on respectability, experimenting on pig hearts, and the movie that got him interested in horror October 14, 2021 “If you just look at your own nightmares, you know that there are no rules.”
David Demchuk on queerness, supernatural horror, and the intersection of fictional and real-life monsters October 9, 2021 “A lot of it reminds me of just how much I have come through. And how much the people I know have come through. And what it was like to lose people.”
“It encourages madness of a certain kind”: David Cronenberg on the horror genre October 6, 2021 “The very things that nurture you in the horror genre are also the things that can suppress an understanding of what you’re trying to do.”
“I didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be”: Lisa de Nikolits on a turn to science fiction in her latest novel, The Rage Room October 1, 2021 “I think I see life in very, very noir terms,” says the author, who considered quitting after finishing work on her latest novel.
“You just clench your teeth and keep on going”: Linden MacIntyre on masculinity, moral ambiguity, and why he hates golf September 29, 2021 “I didn’t have much of a relationship with masculinity growing up,” MacIntyre says. “I grew up among women.”
Aimee Wall’s debut novel recalls a 1960s underground movement in a story told through precise, exuberant language September 16, 2021 The brief novel’s propulsion and effect result from its author’s key understanding of just how far to push her technique to achieve maximum effect.
Shashi Bhat blurs the line between novels and short fiction in her new book, The Most Precious Substance on Earth September 15, 2021 Though Bhat’s new book is described as her second novel, the individual pieces comprise all the attributes of linked stories.
A book of blood: David Demchuk’s queer horror novel addresses real-life terrors September 9, 2021 The Toronto author’s story provides a metaphorical response to a very real history of trauma and violence.
“There is something about the body that I find monstrous”: Mona Awad on Shakespeare, comedy, and her new novel, All’s Well August 21, 2021 Awad’s latest novel uses allusions to the Bard to tell the story of a woman whose chronic pain is miraculously alleviated.
Control tactics: Sarah Berman discusses writing about Keith Raniere, NXIVM, and a self-empowerment scheme that masked the wanton abuse of countless women August 4, 2021 The Vancouver journalist’s book chronicles a four-year plunge into the depths of the NXIVM miasma.
When you’re a stranger: Omar El Akkad follows up his bestselling debut with a novel that represents a stark departure in form and subject July 20, 2021 “Any story, any work of literature, any storytelling endeavour has to be both lighthouse and storm,” El Akkad says.
Not what they seem: P.J. Vernon and Carrie Jenkins deliver queer thrillers with very different tones and approaches July 12, 2021 A breezy, plot-driven book and an abstruse, philosophically dense ontological mystery provide different pleasures for readers.
“I wanted to stimulate people”: Canadian playwright Brad Fraser on provocation, the theatrical establishment, and his new memoir June 24, 2021 “I realized the adult world was every bit as fucked up as anything else.”
“They don’t see it until they see it”: Cheryl Thompson on Harriet Beecher Stowe, Kevin Hart, and the legacy of a complicated literary figure June 15, 2021 The through-line in Thompson’s book involves a historical inability on the part of Western culture to see Black people as fully human.