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#Featured Reads3

Issue 170

Never Again Means Never Again

My grandparents escaped rising antisemitism in pre-WWII Lithuania though most of the rest of their family were killed during the Holocaust. As a writer, I have thought about this a lot, wondering what this means for me, particularly as it took emigration to politically troubled South Africa and Northern Ireland and then finally to Canada […] Read more.

Gary Barwin in
Issue 170

The Calvin Dover Show

This is a chronicle of Calvin Dover but as you may be coming into this cold, and because my night with him sets in motion a number of adult-strength themes relating to romance, realization, and the problematics of involvement—all of which play out in upcoming installments—it might be helpful to know a little about the chronicler, that is to say, me, thirtysomething Aubrey McKee. It’s fifteen years since my last appearance, when I was a drunken man on a Halifax pier, and after fleeing that city, I became deeply entangled in Toronto with a woman from whom I have recently split. So I am, in a word, incomplete. I live in an extended remix of my own glumness and, to be honest, Calvin is one of the few people in the world I look forward to seeing. Read more.

Alex Pugsley in
Issue 169

You, On Your Thirty-Fifth Birthday

There is one thing, you say. Oh yeah? What’s that? His tone is hopeful, like you’ve finally snapped out of the fog. Like the two of you are getting somewhere. You roll the words over and over in in your mouth before speaking them, testing yourself. Asking yourself whether you’re the type of person who can actually say what she means. He waits, still watching sports, the baby squawking in the corner. I’d like to be alone for the day, you say. He looks at you. Read more.

Emma Williamson in

#Online Exclusives3

The Writer’s Corner

April 25, 2024

Finding the Form with Emma Williamson

“You, On Your Thirty-Fifth Birthday” is both deeply personal and yet not about me. To be honest, it also makes me uncomfortable to read again, and to write about, because while I vividly recall the singular moment that eventually inspired the piece, it now feels like it happened to someone else.  But first: the ending. Don’t they […]

Emma Williamson in
April 23, 2024

What’s Alex Pugsley Reading?

A BOOK I READ recently was The Mystery of the Emeralds, Trixie Belden Mystery #14, credited to Kathryn Kenny. Such pulpy offerings—series for young readers like The Bobbsey Twins, The Hardy Boys, Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, Enid Blyton’s Famous Five and Secret Seven, Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators, Cherry Ames Student Nurse—were everywhere when […]

Alex Pugsley in
April 9, 2024

Finding the Form with Lena Scholman

Halfway through the process of researching my WWII novel set in Holland, I was reading about Nazis requestioning animals, particularly horses, in the 1940’s, and found myself obsessed with the rescue efforts of Lipizzaner stallions from Vienna. (Yes, I had landed in another country and was seriously contemplating scrapping the whole thing and writing about […]

Lena Scholman in