Four Weeks Until Deadline!
Autumn Issue Interview with Ashley Hynd on Poetry
 Malahat Review volunteer Julia Aguiar talks with the Issue #208 contributor about erasure, emotional labour, and writing in a cultural diaspora
JA: The first stanza of “The Process of Growth” begins, “they say identity is about who claims you.” Can you tell me more about how you understand the process of [...] reclaiming?
AH: [...] I feel like reclamation is ongoing and fluent, constantly existing in close relationship to moments of being claimed or claiming. Perhaps this is also because many who are doing the act of claiming are in their own process of reclaiming and being claimed. Canada was a well conquered country, many cultures have been lost, stolen, and removed by its history. There is little left that has not been passed through a settler-colonial lens and the scars of that wound have been infected, preventing many from beginning the process of reclaiming sooner. I am sure much has also been lost in the waiting for younger generations to heal and come searching.
Read the rest of Ashley Hynd's interview on our website.
Autumn Issue Interview with D.A. Lockhart on CNF
 Malahat Review volunteer Will Johnson talks with the Issue #208 contributor about the people of Detroit, the danger of nationalism, and the deep dive from poetry into essays.
WJ: I love how over the course of the piece, Detroit becomes a symbol of colonization and "progress," how you capture both its beauty and its menace, then mourn the civilization it destroyed. As you were conjuring it on the page, what were the crucial themes you were trying to express?
DAL: Over the years so much of the work I’ve done tends to push against the notion of borders and look towards the overarching sense of connection. They are arbitrary in the best sense and cruel in the worst. Basically, I look at borders as the lies that settler governments put on places to control those that fortunately or unfortunately come to live in their regions. As a Jay Treaty person, there is no border for me in some sense in North America. And it feels absurd that there is one running right through my community.
Read the rest of D.A. Lockhart's interview on our website.
Interview with the 2019 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction Winner Jason Jobin
 Malahat Review Publicity Manager L'Amour Lisik talks with the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction winner about revision, writing stories within stories, and the risk and reward of setting a story during a well-known holiday. Jason's story is set to appear in Issue #208.
LL: “Triage” contains so many stories within stories. Is this a technique you consciously brought in, or did it happen on its own?
JJ: It’s kind of like punching a hole into another world. Once you’ve established the base-story, and you need to do this well for the technique to really work, any subtle reference to another story within those characters’ lives—a past event, a fantasy, a rumour— will somehow keep all the weight of the base-story with almost none of the bulk. If a reader believes in a character, they will believe their stories. The danger is if you haven’t earned it, like with anything in writing. If the reader isn’t buying in to the main layer of story, any offshoot stories will only draw attention to themselves, and not the good kind. You need to be diligent.
Read the rest of Jason Jobin's interview on our website.
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