Online Exclusives
Ringing Changes: Steven Heighton on Sound and Sensibility
It was with great sadness that I heard of the pending death, from cancer, of Steve Heighton, one of TNQ’s initial “Wild Writers”, though I was grateful to have the opportunity to let him know how much I admired him, as a person and a writer. He responded with his usual good grace. A kind, […]
Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal’s Writing Space
How to Make a Desk Feel Like Home The writing desk I miss most is the one I sold for $50 when I moved to Tkaronto in 2017. I posted it on Craigslist and sold it to a German guy who had just moved to Commercial Drive. My Shavinder Auntie gave me that desk when […]
Finding the Form with Allan Serafino
Hare A white hare has been living in my back yard all winter in his home in the cave under the fir tree. He thumps the snow from his feet against the house Perhaps just to sound his hundred names. The imprint of those feet is white on white, small scrim and blush on the […]
Finding the Form with Alex Merrill
Yelling Fire was born of frustration and confusion and being fed up with my own writing. Unlike most of my work, this essay came out fast and in chunks, like an explosion at one of my dad’s mines. At the time, I was working on a book-length memoir about my dad and my childhood in an […]
Finding the Form with Brian Henderson
So, this poem, bent water light something: Does it ever happen to you that a feeling, seemingly out of nowhere, will sweep through you, an awareness of something but you’re not quite sure what it is? Standing at the kitchen window looking out into the sun-splattered cedars one spring morning while making coffee, that kind […]
Finding the Form with Emira Tufo
The Wisdom of Titles – and Onions Once I’ve got the title, I’ve got the story. Sometimes, the title comes from thin air because it knows the story that is ready to be told. This always intrigues me: that the title knows before I know, as if arising from the unconscious where some story, unbeknownst […]
Finding the Form with Rachel Laverdiere
Year after year, I told my students this modern-day ghost story that also happened to be true. Even the high schoolers, who feigned disinterest in pretty much everything, were rivetted to their seats—predicting the origins of the mysterious light, betting on whether there really had been a ghost or whether I’d missed a detail on […]
What’s Grace Lau Reading?
I just finished reading Angela Davis’ Freedom is a Constant Struggle, which was just an incredible read. To be honest, I picked it up because of the current white supremacist occupation in Ottawa and blatant complicity of the Canadian police forces. The book’s subject seemed timely. I’d read Mercedes Eng’s poetry collection, Prison Industrial Complex […]
Ken Victor’s Writing Space
My writing space is messy. It doubles as a home office, so work and writing are hopelessly intertwined. My ancestors watch all of this without commenting. Photographs of my parents, grandparents and great grandparents at different stages of their lives decorate the walls. A few quotes and poems taped to the wall talk to me: […]
Finding the Form with Suzanne Nussey
I’ve always wondered when it was that I first became aware of the passage of time. How do we recall something that wasn’t actually an event, was more of a transition? Does this awareness depend on our ability to describe it? Is this a classic, epistemological issue, or just a bee in my own tiny […]