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Chris Benjamin: A Richly Layered Study of Poverty and Trauma, Review of The Raw Light of Morning by Shelly Kawaja

The Raw Light of Morning, Shelly Kawaja’s debut novel and winner of the $12,500 BMO Winterset Award in 2022 for outstanding literary work by a Newfoundlander or Labradorian, is at the same time a compelling story of domestic violence, poverty, and trauma, and a 1990s western Newfoundland coming-of-age character study of a young woman of remarkable resilience. This is Laurel’s story, and she is 14 in the opening scene, and forced to intervene to protect her mother from life-threatening violence.

Carol Bruneau: Writing Bareback Review of World Naked Bike Ride by Lisa Fishman

Who can resist the title of this debut short fiction collection? Like cyclists in the eponymous event — a protest against fossil fuel consumption, among other things — Lisa Fishman’s 40 pieces, a collage of micro, flash fiction and narratives of greater length, flout convention. Vanity of vanities, the Pushcart Prize-nominated poet seems to say of the standard short story and its clothing/trappings.

Clarissa Hurley: Squinting Through the Smoke, Review of Cocktail by Lisa Alward

The epigraph to Lisa Alward’s new story collection, Cocktail, is an epiphanic moment from Virginia Woolf ‘s To the Lighthouse, in which the artist Lily Briscoe strives to resurrect and memorialize her dead friend through painting her portrait. Moved to uncharacteristic emotion by a sudden realization of the brevity of life, Lily laments, “Was there no safety? No learning by heart of the ways of the world?

Stop! Look! Listen! Paul Luckhart's Listening Recommendation

As winter approaches, we should start to consider what music will accompany the gloom. Like central heating, stews, and mulled wine, Toronto musician Luka Kuplowsky’s, Capturing the Evening Song, is an essential comfort to get us through the cold. Released in the guts of winter 2022, Capturing the Evening Song is a meditation collection reminiscent of work by Beverly-Glenn Copeland and Hiroshi Yoshimura. It is a dreamy, synthy contemplation on simple, daily scenes.

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