Introduction: Mark Anthony Jarman
Fiction: Eden Robinson, Daniel Woodrell, Jowita Bydlowska, Steven Heighton, Cynthia Flood, Rabindranath Maharaj, David Huebert, Lisa Alward, Mehdi M. Kashani, Charlie Fiset, Andrew Tibbetts, Marcia Walker, Tamas Dobozy, Georgina Beaty, Joelle Tymchuk, and Raymond Fraser
Reviews: Catherine Greenwood, Richard Cumyn, Ian Colford, Susan Haley, Starlit Simon, and Steve Noyes
The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce the finalists of our 2019 Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Marcello Di Cintio! Thanks to all who entered and congratulations to the following writers:
Dominik Parisien recommends reading Roxanna Bennett's chapbook unseen garden (knife | fork | book). Dominik Parisien's work has appeared in The Fiddlehead No.277 (Autumn 2018) and in The Fiddlehead No.279 (Spring 2019). Look for poems by Roxanna Bennett in The Fiddlehead No.281, our upcoming Autumn 2019 issue!
by Megan Kuklis
A review of Melissa Barbeau's The Luminous Sea (Breakwater Books, 2018)
Please join us in celebrating The Fiddlehead's upcoming 75th anniversary by participating in a life writing workshop with writer and educator Anthazia Kadir at Pier 21 in Halifax!
This workshop is free and includes a catered lunch. It is designed for newcomers to Canada but is open to all. Participants are asked to bring a meaningful object that will inspire their writing. See poster for location details.
Marcia Walker recommends reading American novelist, playwright, and activist James Baldwin. Read Marcia's story "Mating Imperatives" in The Fiddlehead's upcoming Summer Fiction 2019 issue (No. 280)!
Jill M. Talbot recommends reading works by New Zealand writer Janet Frame. Jill M. Talbot's essay "Checkmate" appeared in The Fiddlehead No. 277 (Autumn 2018), our all creative nonfiction issue.
Megan Denton Ray's poem "As In Blackjack" appears in issue No. 279 (Spring 2019). Click "Read More" to access her music recommendation!
By Nancy Bauer
One recent June evening I attended a mesmerizing concert at the home of artist Stephen May, the first “house concert” I’d ever attended. Six other guests came, so with the host and four musicians, we were a gathering of twelve. The intimate group was surrounded by seven glorious May paintings and one pitiful palm tree. The musicians were plainly dressed: no theatrical tricks or garish makeup. . . .
By Ross Leckie
The sacred, the profane, and the glorious mundane shimmer through Kazim Ali’s poetry. The poems are visionary in the best sense of the word. They see both the translucence and the immanence of the world, a seeing that commingles vision, remembrance, and remembering, as he puts it in “Cover Me.” “Remembrance” is the odd word out here. Unlike vision and remembering, remembrance refers to something specific, a moment of history now commemorated. For Ali vision and remembering seem to step into a ceremony of memory that is elegiac, which can be as personal as a keepsake and as social as human slaughter: the museum, the monument, and the monumental. The visionary is given a body in these poems, through sex, embrace, travel, migration, and even something as simple as walking. . . .
