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Grey Dog, Elliott Gish. ECW Press, 2024.

She, Kirby. knife | fork | book, 2024.

Relative to Wind: On Sailing, Craft, and Community, Phoebe Wang. Assembly Press, 2024.

At its heart, “Roses for Bodies” is a journey. Of Max, a painter who travels from Amsterdam to Florence to learn about art, and from Florence to Navata Mare to become transformed from a well-meaning but selfish and impatient man to one with greater compassion for humanity and a better understanding of his own work. Of the migrants who come from countries torn apart by conflict and poverty to what they hope will be a better life in Europe.

Our winter issue carries both reasons to celebrate and reasons for sadness. It’s in sadness that I share with you the passing of Dr. Robert “Bob” Gibbs, a writer and scholar who among his various contributions to literary life, was editor (1971–73) and poetry editor (1967–95) of The Fiddlehead. Dr. Roger Ploude, Bob’s colleague at the University of New Brunswick and another of our past editors, remembers Bob as “unfailingly kind to me and all others whose lives he touched.

One of the poetry collections that I keep coming back to is a book of ghazals by Agha Shahid Ali, Call Me Ishmael Tonight. The beloved Kashmiri-American poet has been an absolute favorite of mine ever since I discovered him in my early twenties. His poems pave a path towards a level of lyric expansiveness with their tri-cultural — Hindu, Muslim, and for the lack of a better word, the Western — juxtaposition, which very few South Asian poets have ventured out to do. 

We're excited to announce that Luanne Gauvreau is the winner of our 2024 Fiction Contest and $2000 prize! Her story "Roses for Bodies" will be featured in the upcoming Winter issue of The Fiddlehead (FH 302).

Luanne Gauvreau lives in Ottawa where she is a writer and editor, in body and spirit. “Roses for Bodies” is drawn from a novel in progress exploring the nature of work and art in a world so in need of real action. 

Early morning and Max had finished his first errand. He had two bars of the finest shaving soap in all of Florence in his jacket pocket. Smooth and rich, but not so soft that it disappeared in a frothy mess in your shaving cup; foam that kept its integrity with the soap. The way the foam of a good cappuccino remains a part of the coffee, he thought. Italians are good at foam.