Category: Features

By Zachary Alapi 

A Review of J.R. Helton’s Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions

J.R. Helton’s Bad Jobs and Poor Decisions (Liverlight 2018) accomplishes a unique feat: the weaving of social universality and cultural specificity. For Helton, that means a raw exploration of class, the most pressing and relevant issue we face, couched in the sounds and sights of 1980s Austin — the music, the drugs, the hustlers, and the grandiosity and pomp that only a state like Texas, in all its carnivalesque glory, can render both thrilling and morbid. As readers follow Jake Stewart, a burgeoning artist bent as much on self-destruction as producing great writing or visual art, as he navigates the bloated landscape of Ronald Reagan’s America. An undertone of paranoia and stasis infuses this wry and dark book with urgency and energy that even readers disconnected from the setting and era can feel. 

Welcome to the first in an ongoing column by Nancy Bauer, "State of the Art."

By Sarah Howden

Kate Osana Simonian has won The Fiddlehead’s 27th annual Short Fiction Prize for her story “The Press.” The following interview was conducted via email with Editorial Assistant Sarah Howden in March 2018.

By Corinne Shriver Wasilewski

Kate Finegan's story "Blues Too Bright" won the fiction prize as part of The Fiddlehead's 26th annual literary contest. You can read an interview with her here.

Blues Too Bright

"Have you noticed the birds are shitting more lately?” Mother calls to ask. I wait for my eyes to focus and see that it’s six a.m. on the dot. I imagine she’s been sitting by the window since four, waiting for a reasonable hour to call. 

Dominique Bernier-Cormier's poem "Fabric" won the Ralph Gustafson Prize for Best Poem as part of The Fiddlehead's 26 annual literary contest. You can read an interview with Bernier-Cormier here. 

Fabric
October 31st, 2016

By Jenna Albert

Dominique Bernier-Cormier's poems have recently appeared in The Malahat Review, The Puritan, and Poetry is Dead, and won honourable mentions in CV2's Young Buck Poetry Prize in 2015 and 2016. His first chapbook, Englishing, will be published this spring by Frog Hollow Press. 

Editorial Assistant Jenna Albert conducted this interview by email in mid-March.

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This past weekend, Fiddlehead contributor Doyali Islam was on CBC's Sunday Morning talkiing with Michael Enright about "her childhood, the role of poetry in political resistance, and why she became a practitioner of parkour." As part of the discussion, she read "poem for your pocket," which we published last Autumn (The Fiddlehead, no. 269)! 

You can listen to the interview here!

By Andrew Ramos.

Kate Finegan has won The Fiddlehead’s 26th annual Short Fiction Prize for her story “Blues Too Bright.” The following interview was conducted via email with Editorial Assistant Andrew Ramos in March 2017.

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By Grace Annear

Sheila McClarty’s "Flag Girl" appears in The Fiddlehead No. 269 (Autumn 2016). The explosive story depicts a woman processing the ravages of cancer. With a straightforward voice, it uses stunning sensory details to focalize a rich and paradoxical point of view.