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Issue 2, Volume 17 | February 2020

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Issue 209, Winter 2019

New Winter Issue

Featuring Constance Rooke CNF Prize contest winner "Bat Reign" by Jeanette Lynes, as well as poetry by Emeka Patrick Nome, Suphil Lee Park, Joel Robert Ferguson, Melanie Boyd, Franco Cortese, Sherry Johnson, Dominique Béchard, Carolyn Nakagawa, Kurt Marti translated by Jeff Kochan, Patricia Young, Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, Robert Hilles, Kulbir Saran, Tatiana Ornoño translated by Jesse Lee Kercheval, Julia Brush, and Hasan Alizadeh translated by Rebecca Ruth Gould and Kayvan Tahmasebian. Fiction by Conor Kerr, Bernadette White, Jon Gingerich, and Sehrish Ranjha. Creative nonfiction by Angélique Lalonde, Sherine Elbanhawy, Dawn Lo, and more!

Buy now from TMR's site.


Novella Prize Book Prize

Novella Prize 2020 Book Prize

In addition to the $1,750 prize, we're giving away a book prize to one lucky entrant! All you have to do is submit your work to the contest, and you'll be automatically entered to win. After the deadline, we'll pull one name from the list of submitters.

Carter V. Cooper Anthology Series—Book Eight various authors, selected by Gloria Vanderbilt
Exile Editions, 2019

The Towers of Babylon by Michelle Kaeser
Freehand Books, 2019

On the Edge by Lesley Strutt
Inanna Publications, 2019

All That Belongs by Dora Dueck
Turnstone Press, 2019

Read the contest guidelines.



CanLit for Your Reading List

New and Noteworthy


Review space may be limited in our quarterly magazine, but we’re delighted to share this list of new Canadian books. *Please note that inclusion on the list does not necessarily preclude a print review. 

Read the full list of new and noteworthy Canadian titles.

Deadline Tomorrow—Feb. 5!

Novella Prize 2020

Take the extra time to make your 10,000- to 20,000-word story shine. Submit for a chance to win the $1,750 prize! Previous winning entries have gone on to win the Journey Prize and a National Magazine Gold Award. All entrants will also automatically be entered to win a superb book prize.

Entry fee (comes with a one-year print subscription):
$35 CAD for Canadian entries
$40 USD for entries from the USA
$45 USD for entries from elsewhere

Additional entries cost $15 CAD from anywhere, no limit!

This year's judges are Samantha Jade Macpherson and Naben Ruthnum.

Full contest guidelines available on TMR's website.

 

Winter Issue Interview with Sehrish Ranjha on Fiction

Sehrish RanjhaMalahat Review editorial assistant Kyra Kristmanson talks with the Issue #209 contributor about identity, defiance, and trying to define dreams in her story, "Zubaida."

 

KK: There's a distinction between dreams—the realm of public and private, of male and female, of rich and poor—and the character of Gul mentions that rich men create their own dream worldwhile poor men carry [dreams] on their backs.However, there also seems to be an interconnectedness between them. Women marry men, and keep their dreams at home; rich mens dreams can be endangered by the masses. Am I sensing a significance here that weaves into the story throughout?

SR: You’re right! How Gul envisions and explains reality and dreams becomes the reason for Zubaida’s transformation. Gul’s ideas play a part in how the rest of the story unfolds. There’s a distinction—as you noted—in the dreams of various groups. Yet everyone feels they are at risk. No one is safe. There’s also a difference between Gul’s conception of dreams and the daydreaming for which Zubaida is censored by employers. Who is vulnerable and to what forces? Zubaida opens herself to new possibilities and ways of being. She makes choices that are opposed to the smooth running of the beauty parlor. Her body and freedom are threatened as a result. Political ideology and dreams go hand in hand. “I have a dream,” Martin Luther King said in perhaps the most famous speech of the last century. And while we try to define our dreams to others, to ourselves, and what they might mean for our children, someone is taking advantage of the longing they elicit—companies are selling them back to us as slogans.

Read the rest of Sehrish's interview on TMR's website.

 

Winter Issue Interview with Kulbir Saran on Poetry

Kulbir SaranMalahat Review volunteer and past work study student Stephen Leckie talks with the Issue #209 contributor about belonging, becoming, and blending time, reality, and fantasy in his poems, “bottle rocket” and “unsaid.”

 

SL: I am left with a fraught nostalgia for the time and place of these works. I wouldn't presume that the poems are completely biographical, but how do you relate to the poems' speakers? In what ways do you express your art as narrator, observer, and poet?

KS: I like the term “fraught nostalgia,” it makes me think of trauma and the resultant surrealism in associated memories. Like a vintage dream, or nightmare.

When I’m writing a piece I often find myself propositioned by a rabbit hole of selves from different times/perspectives, some are mine and some are others. I’m never quite sure entirely who’ll end up speaking in the end. As I was discovering speakers for “unsaid” and “bottle rocket,” I tried to focus on the moments, and let the course of working the words reveal speaker(s) organically.

Most of my poems are quite long before I find the right voices and contract them. Often a work produces layers of speakers who are a blend of times, real and fantasy selves. This was the case for both “unsaid” and “bottle rocket.”

Read the rest of Kulbir's interview on TMR's website.

 

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