Skip to content Skip to navigation

Manahil Bandukwala: Love as a Driving Force. Rewview of A Dream Wants Waking by Lydia Kwa

Love as a Driving Force by Manahil Bandukwala

A Dream Wants Waking, Lydia Kwa. Wolsak & Wynn, 2023

Lydia Kwa’s A Dream Wants Waking promises a dreamlike narrative through its title and cover, and the short novel certainly delivers. The book opens with a list of characters from the past timeline in Tang China from 644-904 CE and the present timeline of Luoyang in 2219 CE. Told through short chapters that switch back and forth at a rapid pace, Kwa immediately immerses the reader into both timelines of the story.

Kirby: Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in G. Review of G by Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi

Nestle In Words Like An Animal: The Poetic G/Rasp of Tongue, Throat, and Mouth in by Kirby

G, Klara du Plessis & Khashayar “Kess” Mohammadi. Palimpsest Press, 2023.

First, let’s talk about the design/packaging of this book.

It’s exquisite. The colour palette, fonts, printed endpapers, on signature Coach House zephyr, readable text on the page. A book you want to pick up, hold, caress with the eyes and the touch. Congrats to in-house designer Ellie Hastings, editor Jim Johnstone, and publisher Aimee Parent Dunn. Finery.

An Interview with Shirley Harshenin

Editorial Assistant Rosie Leggot's Interview with Shirley Harshenin whose story "Readiness Quiz" was published in Issue 298 (Winter 2024)

Rosie Leggot: As a person who answered a majority of B answers and has a love-hate relationship with everything I write, I sincerely appreciated the honesty in this piece. I could not help but be reminded of the continual projects assigned as exposure therapy. 

Stop! Look! Listen! Blair Trewartha's Reading Recommendation

With the abundance of high caliber poetry books published each year in Canada, it’s extremely difficult to narrow down which specific poetry collections to recommend. The only criteria I can think of on which to base that recommendation is that feeling you get when you finish reading it. More than appreciation or admiration, it’s a deep sense of relief that you get and a genuine thankfulness that this book exists, and you were lucky enough to find it.  

An Interview with Melissa DaCosta Brown

Editorial Assistant Anastasios Mihalopoulos' Interview with 2023 Fiction Prize Winner Melissa DaCosta Brown whose story "Husbands" was published in Issue 298 (Winter 2024)

Anastasios Mihalopoulos: The opening of your story references Crystal Lake from Friday the 13th stating that this place was horrifying “but not in that way.” Do you see this story interacting with the horror genre or our general definition of ‘horror’ in a particular way?

Stop! Look! Listen! Misha Solomon’s Reading Recommendation

Ian Stephens’s lone book-length publication, Diary of a Trademark, feels like something of a lost classic, a rough (in all senses of the word) snapshot of early-nineties Montreal through the eyes of a gay man who died soon after the book was published. In Diary, Stephens knows he is succumbing to HIV/AIDS and, in the essay that opens the collection, “Weary State of Grace,” discusses a recent hospital stay in visceral detail.

Stop! Look! Listen! Audrey Gradzewicz's Reading Recommendation

I am a bit of a trash bird and love collecting odd things—a little taxidermied turtle I’ve named Tertullian, century-old birthday books filled with the soft cursive of strangers, quack medicine almanacs, a yellowed trade card where a burning Joan of Arc sells bouillon. One of my favorite things is a Morrell Pride calendar from 1938.

Pages

Subscribe to The Fiddlehead RSS