Melanie Bell holds an MA in Creative Writing from Concordia University. Her work has appeared in Cicada, Contrary Magazine, Huffington Post and other publications. She is the co-author of a nonfiction book, The Modern Enneagram, and her short story collection Dream Signs is forthcoming from Lost Fox Publishing. Her story A Limit to Growth was featured in the Summer Fiction issue of The Fiddlehead.
As we receieve submissions for the upcoming BIPOC Solidarities special issue, we'll be featuring our wonderful team of editors who are working to bring the issue together.
This special issue is meant as an opening, extending the invitation to BIPOC writers to transform the content and spirit of The Fiddlehead far beyond a single issue; this issue is a commitment to transformation and accountability.
Mother by Jowita Bydlowska
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As we receieve submissions for the upcoming BIPOC Solidarities special issue, we'll be featuring our wonderful team of editors who are working to bring the issue together.
This special issue is meant as an opening, extending the invitation to BIPOC writers to transform the content and spirit of The Fiddlehead far beyond a single issue; this issue is a commitment to transformation and accountability.
Submissions are now open for our BIPOC Solidarities Special Issue! What conversations would you have in a room filled with fellow BIPOC writers? What stories would you write for one another that you have held back from publishing in a pervasively white literary industry? The Fiddlehead invites submissions of poetry, fiction, creative-nonfiction, and cross-genre innovations by racialized writers residing in the area known as Canada (citizenship not required). This includes writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of colour, and racialized writers who wish to push back against the BIPOC acronym.
Mouth Full by Paige Lindsay
Excerpt
How many mouths have been wrapped around your forks, your spoons, and, on rare and daring occasions, your knives? Whose lips have decorated your glasses with foggy, occasionally scarlet, kisses? We have all eaten from this bowl, this simple wooden vessel. A mother, her daughter, her son and his wife, her granddaughter. It has been across the country twice and it is older than you.
Ruben's Salmon by Elise Thorburn is the winning story from our 2020 Short Fiction Contest:
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Editorial Assistant Taidgh Lynch recently spoke to Naoko Kumagai about her short-fiction piece Karafuto, which was published in The Fiddlehead No. 285 (Autumn 2020). Kumagai has been published in Room magazine, Ricepaper magazine, and Event, and was also longlisted for the CBC non-fiction prize. She lives in Toronto
The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce that Morgan Charles is the winner of our 2020 Creative Nonfiction Contest and $2000 prize! Morgan's story Plagued will be featured in our upcoming Fall issue no. 285.
Thank you to all who entered the creative nonfiction contest and congratulations to the fourteen finalists. And thanks again to our judge Ariel Gordon!
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.
