HistoryTag

"Maximum Curiosity and Maximum Respect" Susan Glickman's Collected Essays are a Hymn to Thoughtful Literary Criticism

For those who worry that thoughtful, long-form literary criticism is becoming a thing of the past, Susan Glickman's Artful Flight (forthcoming from the Porcupine's Quill; available for pre-order now) ...

Read an Excerpt from Mark Frutkin's The Artist and the Assassin, A Retelling of Revolutionary Artist Caravaggio's Life and Death

Italian artist Caravaggio revolutionized painting in the 17th century with his dramatic use of light and shadow (a technique known as chiaroscuro). During his life though, his tumultuous personal affairs ...

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 ...

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 ...

Lorna Poplak on the Notorious History of The Don Jail & How It Failed Its Hopeful, Progressive Roots

An imposing but externally beautiful building on the east bank of the Don River, the Don Jail—invariably known simply as "The Don" to Torontonians—has a long and troubled history. From its opening ...

Trina Davies' Brilliant New Play, Silence, Brings an Overlooked Figure in History to Centre Stage

It would be hard to find anyone who doesn't know who Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, was. But Mabel Hubbard Bell isn't a name that pops up in many history classes. The untold story ...

Excerpt: Travel to a Disastrous Wedding Tradition in 1802 Toronto with Adam Bunch's The Toronto Book of Love

Toronto may be a young city on the world stage, but it's got plenty of fascinating history. No one knows that better than Adam Bunch, whose Toronto Book of the Dead explored the city's stories through ...

Excerpt: Josée Boileau Exposes Quebec's Dark Response to December 6 in Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre

Josée Boileau's Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre (Second Story Press, translated by Chantal Bilodeau) takes readers back to one of Canada's darkest days to memorialize the the fourteen ...

Vine Awards Announce $10,000 Winners, Including a Second Vine Award for Matti Friedman

Wednesday evening saw another literary organization creatively embracing the new digital landscape to celebrate outstanding writing as the annual Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature announced ...

Suzanne Evans Explores Food, Women, and War in Her New Biography

During the second World War, in Singapore's notorious Changi Prison, Ontario's Ethel Mulvany suffers and starves alongside hundreds of other women. To ward off their debilitating hunger pains, they use ...