Online Exclusives
What’s Bernadette Rule Reading?
Recently I have read several books that I can heartily recommend. The first is Foster (faber & faber, 2010) by Irish writer Claire Keegan. Her work is extremely spare, resulting in very short books which are all but short stories produced as novels. I cannot recommend all of her work, as some of it is […]
Alanna Marie Scott’s Writing Space
I write nomadically, and I write by hand. I carry at least one notebook and at least three pens with me and I write wherever I’m taken by the impulse: – Hunched like a gargoyle in bed – Lying on the couch – Around my food at the dining table – Sitting on the floor […]
Finding the Form with Kelsey Andrews
I know flowers can seem overdone and easy to write about, but to me they mean sex and death, and nothing much is easy about that. Sex when they’re bright with pollen and attracting insects, then death when they, you know, die. The first stanza of my poem “Peony” came from a moment in the […]
What’s Bobbie Jean Huff Reading?
I find it risky to read when I’m writing intensely. When I do read, I sometimes find that my writing sounds like Molly McClosky for a few pages, then Sally Rooney for another few before, maybe, Ian McEwan takes over until the end of the chapter. You get the picture. But often books just sneak […]
What’s Andrew Westoll Reading?
I just finished reading The Peregrine, by J.A. Baker, that 1967 classic of nature writing that I had somehow overlooked until now. A friend who had taken a film course from Werner Herzog two decades ago had told me that the great German filmmaker had loved The Peregrine and had quoted from it by memory in class, and that was all […]
Finding the Form with Nayani Jensen
Sometimes I’ll tinker with a poem for ages, and sometimes it arrives nearly whole, which was the case for Woodland Ghost. It was written at the height of the pandemic—I was living in the UK, and attending a virtual writing workshop set in the local woodland, which had been closed for lockdown. I wanted to […]
The 2023 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest Results
After thorough consideration, The New Quarterly is pleased to announce the results of the 2023 Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest. First Place “Not nothing, but everything” by Monica Kidd Second Place “The Words of Strangers” by Judith MacKay Honourable Mentions “Black Hammers Falling” by Christopher Banks “Cantonese Lessons for a Foreign Daughter-in-Law” by Danica Longair Congratulation […]
What’s Kim June Johnson Reading?
This is a terrible thing to admit – just awful—but my favourite books are ones I stole from the library. Which is to say: they became my favourites as I was reading them, and then, because I loved them so much, I couldn’t bear to take them back, so I just . . . kept […]
Nancy Huggett’s Writing Space
As a full-time caregiver, my most constant office is my clipboard—something I can carry around with me. Upstairs supervising a shower, downstairs problem-solving technology, on the road as uber-mum, in the car waiting, in the doctor’s office waiting. Waiting. Little bits of waiting. Which is probably why I also write poetry. I have the poet […]
Finding the Form with Natasha Sanders-Kay
“Daffodils” is not the kind of poem I’m used to writing. I joke that it’s my “white-guy-friendly” poem because it’s not particularly political or feminist, as most of my work is. Structurally, it was unusual for me too. The childhood memories have been with me for decades, but the writing process began on the second […]