Issues

No. 225 Winter 2023

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Cover · Contents · Book Reviews · Contributor Notes

Issue 225 cover art by Jaymie Campbell

Contents:

Winner:
2023
Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize

Poetry
  • Steve Noyes, "Habiba"
  • Emily Kedar, "Yellow Felt Stars" and "Sex Life"
  • Mallory Tater, "Cora's Painting of the Northern Lights Hangs beside My Television"
  • Em Dial, "Nostalgia, Ultra—Lovecrimes" and "Lincoln Middle School, Gym Class"
    Read an interview with Em Dial on their poems.
  • MICHAEL CHANG, "A Catholic Education" and "Twenty Thousand Leagues"
  • Lauren Kirshner, "NYC Stopover," "Pandemic 1917," "Chinatown, Los Angeles, 1924," "Studio Executives Meeting, 1925," and "Restroom, 1926"
  • Ken Victor, "Untested"
  • Marlene Cookshaw, "The Life Separate" and "Mid-Spring"
    Read an interview with Marlene Cookshaw on her poems.
  • Pete Bock, "Hawk" and "The Stranger's Lover"
  • Annick MacAskill, "Journal intime"
  • Beverley Bie Brahic, "Mythologies"
  • Aris Keshav, "Cherry Blossom Boyfriend"
  • Sue Sorensen, "Tangled Peace Birds" and "And One for Bob"
  • Dave Hickey, "Real Estate Sign"
  • Liselle Yorke, "caves" and "off the page"
    Read an interview with Liselle Yorke on her poems.
  • Cassandra Myers, "Squeal" and "Les Dents—One Set of Mouths for Every Man"
Fiction
Reviews
  • Poetry

  • Sasenarine Persaud, Mattress Makers
    (Toronto: Mawenzi House, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Donna Kane)

    Kate Cayley, Lent
    (Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Jami Macarty)

    Bronwyn Preece, knee deep in high water: riding the Muskwa-Kechika—expedition poems
    (Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Laura Gean Stephenson)

    Fiction

  • The Spirits Have Nothing to Do with Us: New Chinese Canadian Fiction, edited by Dan K. Woo
    (Hamilton: Wolsak and Wynn, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Carol Matthews)

  • Jason Heroux, Survivors of the Hive
    (Regina: Radiant Press, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Brennan O'Toole)

  • Brooke Lockyer, Burr
    (Gibsons, BC: Nightwood Editions, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Eliot Gilbert)

  • Nonfiction

  • Esmeralda Cabral, How to Clean a Fish and Ohter Adventures in Portugal
    (Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Susan Wasserman)

  • Maryanna Gabriel, Walking the Camino: On Earth As It Is
    (Lawrencetown Beach, NS: Pottersfield Press, 2023)
    (Reviewed by Stacey Engels)

  • Mentionables

  • Meghan Greeley, Hunger
    (St. John's: Breakwater, 2022)

    Maria Coffey, Instead: Navigating the Adventures of a Childfree Life
    (Calgary: Rocky Mountain Books, 2023)

    Michael Goodfellow, Naturalism: An Annotated Bibliography
    (Kentville: Gaspereau, 2022))

    Stephen Marche, On Writing and Failure
    (Windsor: Biblioasis, 2023)

    (All reviewed by Book Reviews Editor Jay Ruzesky)

Cover
  • Jaymie Campbell
    Dbaajmowin Florals, 2022
    Brain tanned smoked moosehide, vintage & antique micro beads, 24 kt gold-filled beads
    2.5 x 2.5"
    Collection of the artist; photo by the artist
    Model: Hannah McDonald
Contributor Notes
    PETE BOCK lives with his wife in eastern Ontario, close to the Quebec border, in the traditional territory of the Haudenosaunee Peoples, specifically the Kanien’keha:ka.

    BEVERLEY BIE BRAHIC is a Canadian poet and translator. Her collection White Sheets was a 2013 Forward Prize finalist; her Apollinaire translation, The Little Auto, won the 2013 Scott Moncrieff Translation Prize. Apple Thieves will be published in 2024.

    JAYMIE CAMPBELL, an Anishnaabe artist from Curve Lake First Nation, explores connection to land and culture through beadwork, writing, fashion, and visual arts. Her practice White Otter Design Co. incorporates traditional techniques with contemporary style, inspired by her Anishnaabe roots, the land, and her family. Instagram: @whiteotterdesignco

    MICHAEL CHANG’s many collections of poetry include Synthetic Jungle (2023) and Employees Must Wash Hands (forthcoming, 2024). They edit poetry at Fence. Twitter: @mchangpoet

    MARLENE COOKSHAW is the author of six collections of poems from Brick Books, most recently Lunar Drift (2005) and Mowing (2019). She lives in Sidney, BC.

    EM DIAL is a queer, Black, Taiwanese, Japanese, and White, chronically ill poet, grower, and educator born and raised in the Bay Area of California, currently living in Toronto. They are a Kundiman Fellow and recipient of the 2020 PEN Canada New Voices Award and the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award. Instagram: @em_dial Twitter: @em__dial

    STACEY ENGELS is a writer, teacher, and coach based in New York City. Her plays have been produced and staged as readings in Canada, the US, and Italy.

    ELIOT GILBERT reviews books.

    LIZ HARMER is the author of the novels The Amateurs (2018) and Strange Loops (2023). Instagram: @harmerliz Twitter: @lizharmer

    DAVE HICKEY, the author of two books of poetry, In Lights of a Midnight Plow (2006) and Open Air Bindery (2011), lives in Prince Edward Island.

    PAULINE HOLDSWORTH is a public radio producer who grew up in central Pennsylvania and now lives in Toronto. Her fiction has appeared in Pithead Chapel, Necessary Fiction, and elsewhere. Twitter: @holdswo

    DS JOHNSON works in a bowling alley in Atlantic Canada.

    DONNA KANE’s Orrery was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Asterisms is forthcoming in 2024. She lives in both Rolla, BC in Treaty 8 Territory and Halifax, NS, the ancestral and traditional lands of the Mi’kmaq.

    EMILY KEDAR is a poet and writer from Toronto. Her work has most recently appeared in Poetry Pause, Willows Wept Review, The Maynard, Living Hyphen, and The Avalon Review. She is currently a merit scholar pursuing an MFA at Pacific University.

    ARIS KESHAV is a poet and teacher in Tio’tia:ke (Montréal). His writing has appeared in New Quarterly, CV2, and Canadian Notes & Queries, among others, and in his chapbook Taunting August (2022). Instagram: @ambiance.queer

    LAUREN KIRSHNER’s novel Where We Have to Go (2009) was a finalist for the City of Toronto Book Award. Her writing has appeared in Hazlitt and PRISM International. She is Director of Sister Writes, a creative writing program for at‐risk women, and on the faculty in the Department of English at Toronto Metropolitan University.

    JAMI MACARTY teaches creative writing at Simon Fraser University. Jami is the author of The Minuses, winner of the 2020 New Mexico-Arizona Book Award—Poetry Arizona, and Mind of Spring, winner of the 2017 Vallum Chapbook Award.

    ANNICK MACASKILL’s poetry collections include Shadow Blight (2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award for Poetry. Her fourth book will be published in 2024. She lives in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), on the traditional and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. Twitter: @thisisannick

    CAROL MATTHEWS has published a collection of short stories and five works of literary nonfiction. She lives in Nanaimo.

    KAYE MILLER’s work can be found in Plenitude, Grain, The Ex-Puritan, Vagabond City Lit, and elsewhere. They are an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph. Instagram: @kaye.mllr Twitter: @kayemllr

    CASSANDRA MYERS (MY’Z) is a queer, trans, multi-disabled, South-Asian-Italian, counsellor and poet from Tkaronto, ON, and winner of the 2022 National Magazine Gold Award in the Poetry category. Instagram: @cass.myers.poetry

    STEVE NOYES’s long poem “The Conveyor” will appear soon from The Alfred Gustav Press. He is working on a novel about Marmaduke Pickthall and Yusuf Ali, translators of the Qur’an. He lives in Sheffield, South Yorkshire.

    BRENNAN O’TOOLE was born and raised in Ladysmith, BC. His poetry has appeared in Portal and Sea & Cedar. He lives in Vancouver.

    SIAVASH SAADLOU is a Pushcart Prize-nominated writer and winner of the 55th Cole Swensen Prize for Translation. His short stories and essays have appeared in Southeast Review, Plenitude, and Asymptote, and his poetry has been anthologized in Odes to Our Undoing (2022) and Essential Voices: Poetry of Iran and Its Diaspora (2021).

    SUE SORENSEN teaches at Canadian Mennonite University. Her forthcoming poetry collection is Acutely Life. Other books include The Collar: Reading Christian Ministry in Fiction, Television, and Film (2014) and the novel A Large Harmonium (2011). Instagram: @suesorensen_ca

    LAURA GEAN STEPHENSON is a Vancouver Island editor, poet, and independent researcher. Instagram: @lauragean

    MALLORY TATER is the author of the books This Will Be Good (2018) and The Birth Yard (2020). She lives in Vancouver, BC. Twitter: @malatonin

    KEN VICTOR’s collection We Were Like Everyone Else (2019) was a finalist for the Concordia First Book Prize. His poetry has been published in both the US and Canada. Originally from New England, he makes his home in Quebec’s Gatineau Hills.

    SUSAN WASSERMAN is a freelance editor living in Vancouver.

    LISELLE YORKE is a Trinidadian-Canadian artist, who uses poetry to express a desire to rid herself of assumptions and instead dig into people, society, and herself with an untethered sense of curiosity that does not seek neat conclusions. Instagram: @gracefuldegradation

    JANINE ALYSON YOUNG is a writer from the West Coast of BC. Her short story collection Hideout Hotel (2014) was shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Award. She is the Managing Editor for Nightwood Editions and holds an MFA from UBC.