Ontario book news, interviews and more

"Creative Exploration, Risk-Taking, and Fun" Alix Ohlin on Her Lifelong Love Affair with the Short Story

Alix Ohlin's hotly anticipated new collection of stories, We Want What We Want (House of Anansi), shows the Giller Prize nominated writer in fantastic form, with strange, beautiful, sharp stories filling ...

Read an Excerpt from Irish Author Doireann Ní Ghríofa's Haunting, Beautiful, and Genre Defying Book, A Ghost in the Throat

Part autofiction, part literary study, and part keen-eyed examination of domestic labour, Doireann Ní Ghríofa's strange, intense, and beautifully written A Ghost in the Throat (Biblioasis) is impossible ...

A Literary Drum Kit: J.J. Dupuis Takes Us Into His Writing Space & "Musical" Writing Method

If there's still an X-Files shaped hole in your life, you need to be reading J.J. Dupuis, whose delightfully creepy Creature X mystery series follows cryptozoologist Laura Reagan's search for monsters ...

Read an Excerpt from Rob Benvie's Darkly Brilliant New Novel, Bleeding Light

Writer and musician Rob Benvie's newest book, Bleeding Light (Invisible Publishing) defies easy description. It follows four people, seemingly unconnected to one another, through wild journeys both physical ...

Contest: Blast Off with a Space-Themed Prize Pack of Great Reads in Fiction, Poetry, & Nonfiction from ECW Press

Who doesn't want to escape it all sometimes? Give yourself a chance to float above the fray by entering ECW Press's outer space-themed giveaway, which offers a prize pack of spectacular books that each ...

James A. Onusko on the Complex Legacy of the Baby Boomers' Suburban Youths

Both urban and rural settings abound in literature, but the manufactured homogeneity of suburban areas is less frequently deemed worthy of literary exploration. Academic James A. Onusko challenges that ...

Read an Excerpt from Finnish Sensation Cristina Sandu's The Union of Synchronized Swimmers

Cristina Sandu's The Union of Synchronized Swimmers (Book*hug Press) follows six young women as they train for and journey to the Olympics. But unlike most of their fellow athletes, they're not just ...

Kobo & The West End Phoenix Release Powerful Story & Music Feature on the Experience of Living Toronto as an Indigenous Person

Last spring, Toronto's beloved indie newspaper The West End Phoenix collaborated with Rakuten Kobo to release their first City Edit series of eBooks, called Telegrams from Home.They've partnered again ...

The Listener in the Work: How a Sense of Address Can Transform Your Writing

Who is the “speaker” in your poems talking to? Is there a listener within your story? Who is the narrator’s confidante? I’ve been thinking a lot about a sense of address and I’ve come to believe ...

The Word on the Street Offers Up Weekly Streaming Literary Events for an At-Home "WOTS" Experience

The pandemic has created a very different landscape for literary events, and a lot of organizations have responded by evolving in creative ways, finding methods of bringing the buzz and connection of ...