The New Quarterly

Thirty-eight years of Canadian writers and writing — now becoming available digitally for the first time. Get access to our growing back catalogue from all your devices. Free of charge.

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#Featured Reads3

Issue 153

Two Poems

When you aren’t here, I look at the gnawed apple bark or the chewed cedar posts. I know what you love: new leaves of ash in May and the fresh grass of summer.
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Susan Vernon in
Issue 152

Two Poems

right claw over a sinister and smaller left limb.
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gillian harding-russell in
Issue 153

He of the Holy Birth

He looks. The demon is still there, squinting at him from behind her eyes. It didn’t work. He starts to cry. She tries to lift him, but she can’t. He’s too big now. Read more.

Jennifer Batler in

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The Writer’s Corner

March 26, 2020

What is gillian harding-russell Reading?

“That ice island has melted away, a reminder that our world is changing under our feet, and in ways that began with us supposedly in control.” Since my father worked in British Intelligence during World War II, I have been intrigued by the underground workings of that war. In that area, I have read Michael […]

gillian harding-russell in
March 25, 2020

A Good Cross-draft: The Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest

Originally published in full in Issue 148 of The New Quarterly. TNQ has long been a haven for the well-wrought personal essay. Even so, it is a contest that comes with a distinctive set of challenges. To wit: we ask for essays in which personal experience is framed by thoughtful, bracing, or lively engagement with […]

In
March 24, 2020

What is John Steffler Reading?

My home is shaped partly by the books it houses.  There are bookshelves in most rooms and books piled beside reading chairs and the bed.  A chunk of my past life is contained in the books I’ve accumulated, and so, in a sense, is my future – possible futures, things yet to explore.  And books […]

John Steffler in