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July 28, 2022"We Make Our Own Meaning" Gurjinder Basran on Her Novel of Loss, Community, and Navigating the Unknown
A brief video nearly tears a small community outside Vancouver apart in award-winning author Gurjinder Basran's new novel, Help! I'm Alive (ECW Press). After footage of teenager Jay's death is posted ...
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June 20, 2022Erika Rummel on Her Austen-Inspired New Time Slip Novel That Moves from London to LA
To say that there are a lot of time travel stories is an understatement, but one thing is often starkly missing from those tech- and adventure-focused tales: the social and emotional experience of what ...
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June 16, 2022"Everyday Dystopian Reality" Robert McGill on His Captivating and Madcap New Speculative Novel
A Suitable Companion for the End of Your Life (Coach House Books), is not what you might expect. For one thing, he wrote it before COVID-19, finishing just as the real world began to eerily mirror ...
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June 02, 2022Janet Calcaterra on Crafting a Powerfully Intimate Novel Exploring the Legacy of War and Secrets
The myths and silences that grow up around family secrets can be like knots – tightening, fraying, and tangling over time until they seem impossible to unravel. In Janet Calcaterra's riveting family ...
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May 12, 2022"Maybe Writing is Outside of Time" Lisa Moore on What She Learns from Every Book She Writes
Despite the input of well meaning people (and sometimes even ourselves), we cannot always choose who we love. The nature of love, whether you consider it a feeling, an act, an experience, or otherwise, ...
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May 10, 2022"No Novel is Perfect" Anita Anand on Learning & Loving the Novel Form
In Anita Anand's A Convergence of Solitudes, the experience of separation, partition, and the longing that divisions can create spirals through multiple generations of a single family and the people ...
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May 03, 2022Both Art and Relationships are "Liminal, Ever Evolving, & Expose Our Vulnerabilities": Melanie Mitzner on Her 90s-Set Debut Novel
The 90s may (somehow) be thirty years ago now, but in Melanie Mitzner's Slow Reveal (Inanna Publications), where are whisked back to the final decade of the 20th century for an intense family portrait ...
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April 21, 2022"If You Have a Deep Longing to Write, You Must" Indra Ramayan on Her Debut Novel Set in Edmonton's Dark Underbelly
In Indra Ramayan's Mud Lilies (Cormorant Books), we meet Chanie Nyrider who, at just 18, has already survived four years in the darkest corners of Edmonton. After escaping her abusive parents and with ...
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April 13, 2022Don LePan on Exploring the Thin Divide Between Human & Non-Human in His Thought Provoking New Novel
The line between humans and other primates can seem, from an evolutionary standpoint, paper thin. Don LePan, in his new novel Lucy and Bonbon (Guernica Editions), goes beyond simply looking at genetic ...
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February 21, 2022
*Well, excuuuse me, Princess
Welcome back, Open Book reader. Lovely to see you again, hope you’re doing well. As promised, I’m going to give some insight into what fuels all this nerdiness I’m brimming with. The relatively ...
