Book Review: Black Water

Black Water by David A. Robertson Review by Nicola Bentley David A Robertson is well known for crafting award-winning young adult literature and graphic novels and for his work as an Indigenous educator and podcast host. Black Water, Robertson’s first memoir, is a departure from his previous works but vividly brings to life his own […]

Blog by Laesa Faith Kim: em-brace

em-brace /əmˈbrās/ by Laesa Faith Kim hold (someone) closely in one’s arms, especially as a sign of affection. accept or support (a belief, theory, or change) willingly and enthusiastically The day before the world shut down I embraced with great delight, all those dearest to me for the launch of my first book, Can’t Breathe. […]

Blog by: Jennifer Rouse Barbeau

Can you hear me in the darkness? When did you last listen to the radio? I listened last night, as I drove from southern Ontario to northern Ontario. Four hours in the dark, alone. I lost my father recently, and could feel him all around his things being transported now in the car with me. […]

Poetry Reviews: Prose Poetry in the Time of Hekla

By Mary MacDonald Anyone who lives in the mountains knows we are known for otherworldly beauty and inhospitable weather. Hekla is one of Iceland’s most prominent and active volcanoes. The word also means ‘a small hooded cloak.’ The mist that hides the summit. Poetry can be this search for solid land through the obscure and […]

Blog by Genni Gunn: Erasures

By Genni Gunn A couple of years ago, I went to visit friends in Fossombrone in Le Marche, Italy, to chase down a story about an old man and his museum of crystal ammonites. I had been there years before, and had never forgotten the fluorescent stones in the basement of his house, situated on […]

Book Review: Magdalena

Wade Davis shines a light on our power to heal A curious blend of travel memoir, history, ethnobotany text book and environmentalist’s primer, Wade Davis’s Magdalena offers up cures for despair that will inspire even the most disheartened among us who strive to foster peace and healing. Davis’s evocative storytelling blends the rich and complicated […]

Rosemary Keevil blog: The mentorship connection

by Rosemary Keevil Connecting with other writers through mentoring: When the teacher is ready the student will appear. I have been a journalist for decades and it took what seems like forever to write my memoir: The Art of Losing It: A Memoir of Grief and Addiction. It will be published this October by She Writes […]

Janie Brown blog: My pandemic book birthday

Note to Self:  Don’t launch a book amidst a global pandemic by Janie Brown March 5, 2020 was UK Publication Day (Canongate). We drank champagne and ate cake that my sister Kate had designed for the occasion. The chocolate sponge book was decorated with the bird images from my cover and the words Radical Acts […]

Book Review: The Difference

The Difference by Marina Endicott Review by Farha Guerrero One of the many pleasures of reading is that it allows us to journey to unknown places; and nothing could hold truer than the present moment where we face the uncertainties of global travel amidst a despairing pandemic. Reading is discovering, or as Honoré Balzac put […]

Jenn Ashton on Connection

I have known I was a writer since I was six or seven years old. It has been my other language. If I seemed like a shy nose-in-a-book kid, I was, until you read my writing; and then I was a big, loudmouth, fast-talking, vibrant and vibrating, opinionated little being. One side of my life […]