Category: Features

What is your Emergency?

The Waiting Hours, Shandi Mitchell. Viking, 2019. 

This very accomplished novel is by a Maritime writer I had never run into before, although she has written another, Under This Unbroken Sky, which I intend to read now.

The Waiting Hours is about emergency workers, and the “waiting hours” of the title, is the period during the depths of the night when, if anything happens, it is usually terrible.

Secret Signature: The Quiet Revolution of Berthe Morisot

One Madder Woman, Dede Crane. Freehand Books 2020

Boundaries

Gold Rush, Claire Caldwell. Invisible Publishing 2020

Making a Difference

Reaching Mithymna, Steven Heighton. Biblioasis, 2020. 

It is not the poem which closes

A Tent, A Lantern, An Empty Bowl and Keeping Count, M. Travis Lane. Gordon Hill Press, 2020

Let’s begin with rocks and mud.

The poem “May Rocks,” which appears nearly midway through Keeping Count, M. Travis Lane’s most recent collection, begins with a single-word sentence: “Spring.” This is followed by rocks that “butt and push” in a lawn “jagged with dragon’s teeth.” It continues:

The Fiddlehead's 2021 Creative Nonfiction contest is now open and we're excited to announce that Chelene Knight will be judging this year's submissions! 

Rose Maloukis

These Weeds

Spasms trouble a tired body, little flesh, no hunger. 
Leaves cycle, vanish, more and more empty sky.

Dishes fallen to the floor. A mouthful of beaten rice — I cannot swallow! 

A purple balloon buffeted by slow circulation, no direct draft.
Surface highlights, rotations wobble, roll then lull, they are imbalanced.
Are you alive if your breath — the balloon, under the blouse, senseless —
         vacant.

Ruben's Salmon by Elise Thorburn is the winning story from our 2020 Short Fiction Contest:

Excerpt

Fiction contest judge, Shashi Bhat's editorial on Elise Thorburn's winning story Rubens' Salmon:

We're excited to announce that Elise Thorburn is the winner of our 2020 Fiction Contest and $2000 prize! Her story Rubens' Salmon is featured in our Winter issue no. 286, which is available now! 

Elise Thorburn has a Ph.D. in media and technology studies. She has published in academic journals, and wrote, co-produced and hosted a podcast on the history of electronic monitoring. She is an avid reader, a medical student and a prison abolitionist. This is her first published work of fiction.

Thank you to all who entered the fiction contest and congratulations to the fourteen finalists. And thanks again to our judge Shashi Bhat!