Online Exclusives
Emma Hooper’s Writing Space
Some people don’t like a window where they work; they point their desks away from them. If I don’t have a window it’s kind of like not being able to breath. I point myself straight at mine and keep tabs on the birds. Sometimes I see groups of young teenagers too. We’re on some kind […]
The 2023 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest Longlist
Thank you to all of our 2023 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest entrants. After thorough consideration, we are excited to announce this year’s longlisted writers and their phenomenal poetry. The longlisted poets and their poems are as follows: Susan Atkinson, “Kiss Me Again Like The Second Time “ Lisa Borkovich, “The Love Song of Grindstone Marsh” […]
Finding the Form with Janeen Werner-King
“Migrations” was inspired after I witnessed a field full of trumpeter swans covered in snow beside the Courtney River in British Columbia. After returning to Calgary, I didn’t write about my experience for several months, and then, in a Wordsworth-like moment of tranquility, I recalled my excitement and amazement of seeing so many swans all […]
What is Kayal Vizhi Reading?
What initially led you to pick up the book, and what kept you hooked? I’m reading Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. I picked it up a few years ago and I put it away without finishing it. But the writer and poet Ocean Vuong talks about Moby Dick as one of the books he needed to […]
Joe Davies’ Writing Space
My writing space is a disaster – a happy disaster. My desk is home to all sorts of things. There are assorted piles of paper and various notes scribbled on envelopes. There are a couple of Hot Wheels and toy soldiers and a few small gifts people have given me, which include a ceramic nose […]
Book Review: A knife so sharp its edge cannot be seen by Erin Noteboom
It’s been a while since Erin Noteboom’s last book of poetry, eighteen years in fact. It’s not as if she and the muse of poetry were not on speaking terms as in the interim her poems have appeared in the anthologies Best Canadian Poetry (2018, 2020) and journals like Fiddlehead, Grain, The Malahat Review and, […]
Finding the Form with Jamaluddin Aram
I grab coffee with a writer friend whenever she is in town. The conversation is always about writing; that it is hard, that finding an agent is hard, that a book contract would be great. Then we envy authors whose agents brag about them and their six-figure deals, authors who attend galas and go on […]
Michelle Barker’s Writing Space
I’m fortunate to have a second bedroom in my apartment that I recently turned into an office space. I write in many different genres, but I’m a novelist at heart. For years, I dreamed of having a wall that looked like Michael Scofield’s wall in the TV series Prison Break—covered in sticky notes and photographs […]
What is John Vardon Reading?
When it comes to the reading of new books, and and I’m happy to say that the opportunity comes for me much more frequently in retirement, my choice ( mostly literary) is governed by the love of specific authors, curiosity aroused by reading and conversations with friends, a certain degree of serendipity, or a combination […]
What is Matthew Hollett Reading?
I first encountered the work of Irish writer and artist Sara Baume through a friend who recommended her novel A Line Made By Walking. The title immediately intrigued me – it’s plucked from an artwork by British artist Richard Long, who in 1967 walked back and forth across a field until his path was well-trod […]
