Porcupine's QuillTag

Excerpt Month: "I Feel Hungry Ghosts Behind My Back" Read an Excerpt Karl Jirgens' The Razor's Edge

Karl Jirgens' collection of linked stories, The Razor's Edge (Porcupine's Quill) asks questions about the past and future, how loss and violence live in the land and our genes, and how the mysteries ...

Excerpt Month: Witty, Tough, Flirty, and Wise - Don't Miss a Glimpse of Leon Rooke's Rank Songbirds

As we continue with our February spotlight on excerpts, we would be remiss if we forgot our poetry lovers. Today's excerpt, from CanLit icon Leon Rooke's Rank Songbirds (Porcupine's Quill), will give ...

"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 ...

"Characters are Complicated, Just Like People" Bruce McDougall on How to Build Authentic Characters

Bruce McDougall's writing career has spanned more than three decades and generated more than twenty books of nonfiction, covering biographies, sports, and more. But in 2014, he turned his talents to fiction, ...

Ross Breithaupt on Weaving Together Music, Mourning, and the Gritty Reality of Tree Planting in His Moving First Novel

Anyone who's ever tried their hand at tree-planting in Canada knows it's an intense undertaking. For 20-year old Rory Fleck, the intensity is just what he's looking for—a place to forget himself and ...

Mark Huebner Takes Us Into the World of Let Go, His Wordless Novel About Memory & the Weight of the Past

Writer and artist Mark Huebner set himself a unique challenge in his new book Let Go (Porcupine's Quill): storytelling without using a single word. Let Go is an entirely wordless novel, told in Huebner's ...

If You've Ever Been in Love, Don't Miss This Excerpt from Charlene Elsby's Affect

Our most intense relationships are sometimes the ones that make the least sense from the outside. But what happens when you try to understand and explain of one of those irrational, intense connections ...

Keep It Short: Frances Boyle on Rewrites, Taking Chances, and the Authors That Inspired Her

A haunted mother is terrorized by spectral visions of twins. A young academic reminisces on the past, and a long-lost film, as she watches her apartment building burn. A carefree woman tears through Toronto ...

Daniel Bryant on Writing Short Fiction, Research as Procrastination & Sharing a Day Job with Bukowski

In Daniel Bryant's debut short fiction collection, Rerouted (forthcoming from Porcupine's Quill), nothing is quite as it seems. A new route for a postal worker turns out to be cursed, musicians on a ...