Columnists

An Interview with Ashley Obscura

“What place does the slow-moving technology of love have in our world?” Plainspoken but never simplistic, the writing of Ashley Obscura and her press, Metatron, is emblematic of many of the young ...

When All Your Faves Are Problematic

 Recently, at a dinner with several writer friends, I learned that a writer I’ve long admired has been known to behave rather smarmily around young women. This writer is now on the list of names that ...

On Burnout

I’ve finished my first book. I’ve done the writing, the rewriting, the editing, more rewriting, the copy editing, the fact checking… I think you get the point. It was a lot of work. But now I’m ...

Writing Black Futures: I see you creating strong bonds

In February of 2018 I had curated an event at the Vancouver Public Library called “Where are you really from?” which I hoped would create a safe space for dialogue around what it means to identify ...

Who I Think About When I Write … It’s Probably You: A List of Questions to Ask Yourself About Audience as You Write

I find it really challenging to write a picture book without imagining its audience. In whose hands will the finished book end up? What will make them pick it up? Will they find my story satisfying? To ...

My Reading Year: What I Learned from Reading 275 Books in 365 Days

The other day I told a friend that I'd read 275 books in 2018 and he responded by laughing and declaring emphatically, "That's a reading year!"I think that's an excellent way to describe my past year. ...

“Psychically, process was a funnel . . .” an Interview with Caroline Szpak

Teasing language until it threatens to go ballistic, Slinky Naive, Caroline Szpak’s debut collection, is sheer sonic joy; a sensual, linguistic hodgepodge worthy of Gertrude Stein and Sylvia Legris ...

On Re-Fusing CanLit--Or Why We Need Integrity, Community, and Roses

In a lot of the trauma memoirs I’ve been reading lately, I see the same metaphor used to describe the process of healing. You’ve likely heard it too. It compares healing from trauma to the Japanese ...

Beyond the Possible: On World Building

Sometimes, I think about what would have happened to Frodo and Sam if, during their journey across the land to Mordor, Frodo had fallen down a jagged slope of rocks and broken his leg.Would Frodo, delirious ...

“I want my poem to embody this poem-like feeling.” - An Interview with Mark Truscott

For years Mark Truscott has digging out his own unique niche in Canadian poetry, one with intense focuses on language, minimalism, and abstract inquiry. Branches, his latest collection, is something of ...