The British art critic Laura Cumming mesmerized me this summer with her recent book The Vanishing Velazquez, which is an elegantly written cultural history, a whodunit, a meditation on portraiture, and a hymn to two of her favorite painters — Velazquez and her own late father.
We're pleased to announce that Charlie Fiset's story "If I Ever See the Sun" has been longlisted for the 2016 Journey Prize! Her story appeared in last summer's Fiction issue (no. 264). Not only is this the second year in a row for Charlie, but along with Paige Cooper's "The Roar," this marks three consecutive years The Fiddlehead has two stories longlisted for the Journey Prize!
Lately I have been listening to John Cage's strangely delightful and thoughtful sonatas as performed by Boris Berman. They are very short, running between two to four minutes. There are sixteen sonatas and four interludes, so even after some twenty-five listens I still don’t feel like I can encompass the scope of the music.
We're pleased to announce that Paige Cooper's story "The Roar" has been longlisted for the 2016 Journey Prize! "The Roar" appeared in last summer's Fiction issue (no. 264).
I've had a great run of poetry reading this summer; having just begun a long-anticipated sabbatical, I'm finally getting to books that have been on my list for a long time: Claudia Rankine's Citizen, Renee Sarojini Saklikar's Children of Air India, Soraya Peerbaye's Tell. These books have heightened my growing feeling that the best contemporary poetry engages with larger issues, generally difficult ones. (That is, larger than the issue of how to write a good poem.
