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Whenever I listen to music, I’m searching for emotional devastation. 

Before I hunker down to write, early in the morning, while the world is still dark, I will often go on long drives, blasting music that incites these feelings; those that break down my walls and allow me to reach a place of raw vulnerability. Particularly if I’m writing poetry. 

Kaleidoscope: Shifting borders of dream, reality, fictions and memories

A Year of Last Things, Michael Ondaatje. McClelland and Stewart, 2024.

We were saddened to learn about the recent passing of Elisabeth Harvor on October 8. Though she lived in Ottawa for a long time, she was born in New Brunswick, growing up on the Kingston Peninsula. Her parents were the renowned Deichmann potters (ceramic tiles made by them can be found in front of a fireplace in The Fiddlehead office). Over the years, we have published her work numerous times: by our count, 5 stories and 7 poems (see list below). In addition to her many contributions to The Fiddlehead, she was also published in numerous other places such as The New Yorker.

As an avid reader, and because reading is such a personal thing, it’s difficult for me to recommend one book to people I’ve never met. But in keeping with the theme of my story, Children of the Gentle People, which centres around food and friendship during times of unease, I’d like to suggest one beloved book: Lolo Houbein’s One Magic Square. 

Words in search of a body: Matthew Walsh’s sophomore turn in Terrarium.

Terrarium, Matthew Walsh. Goose Lane Editions, 2024.

Growing up with a family that’s half Cuban, I’ve always been drawn to literature that explores the Caribbean experience: the legacies of colonialism, the textures of island life, the complicated inheritance of culture and family. When How to Say Babylon appeared on my MFA reading list, I was eager to dive in. The memoir won the National Book Critics Circle Award in Autobiography and was named one of Barack Obama’s Favorite Books of 2023, but beyond the accolades, I wanted to engage with Caribbean voices as part of my own development as a writer.

We're excited to announce that the winner of our 2024 Creative Nonfiction Contest and $2000 prize is Nancy Huggett! Her essay "I am a good mother. I am a bad mother. I am no mother at all" is featured in the upcoming autumn issue of The Fiddlehead (no.301).

I realize that, if the purpose of this column is to surface works its readers haven’t immediately heard of, picking the most recent Booker Prize winner misses the mark. That said, Paul Lynch’s Prophet Song is just that good. More critically, it’s an important artifact pointing up the exhaustion of the threadbare neoliberal consensus that dominates much of “developed” democracy. 

thom vernon invites readers to meet sex and death

I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley, thom vernon. Guernica Editions, 2024.

Wildly audacious. Hilarious yet devastating. Punchy and raw. I’ve never read a novel like thom vernon’s I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley. As a novelist, vernon breaks all the rules because he knows them. It’s why the story leaps off the page. This novel begs to be a film, and I shouldn’t be surprised considering vernon’s backstory of being an actor-turned-writer.

As a writer, I’ve always held a particular fascination for children’s books. In my opinion, there’s much to be admired in their simplicity. I feel that anyone can fit meaning into hundreds of thousands of words, but when you’re limited to 30-60k, the lines written must be shaved down to their bitterest and most potent form.