Posted on March 22, 2023
Who hasn’t wanted to be the fly on the wall of a therapist’s office? To hear the secrets people pay others to know? Jill Frayne’s Why I’m Here is a novel set in Whitehorse, Yukon, in 1995 and tells the story of Helen Cotillard, a counsellor who works at the only counselling agency in the Territory. Out of necessity, Helen “took all comers” in her practice. Her new client, Gale, is a scrappy and unhappy adolescent from Cobalt, Ontario, who is brought to therapy by her stepmother.
Posted on March 22, 2023
More than a decade ago, Alexander MacLeod showed unusual patience with his debut short story collection, Light Lifting. Patience in his delivery, care in his craft. Not a word out of place, some would say. The collection itself was the result of more than a decade of story writing and publishing one at a time in literary journals. Great short stories take time to master, and the bevy of jury recognitions his debut garnered was more indication MacLeod had put in the work.
Posted on March 22, 2023
What is the source of joy we find in poetry? That thing that caused the prickle of A.E. Housman’s beard, that transfixed Anne of Green Gables in her desk when the teacher read Tennyson’s line, “The horns of Elfland faintly blowing.” It is what comes not from going about the woodland to see the cherry hung with snow, but evoking it in those very words, and with the delicate metaphor implied.
Posted on January 11, 2023
A Psalmist with Second Thoughts: The Poetry of Steven Heighton
Selected Poems 1983-2020, Steven Heighton. Anansi, 2021.
Posted on January 4, 2023
At least you’ll leave a shoe print . . .
Postscripts from a City Burning, Sam Cheuk. Palimpsest Press, 2021.
Posted on January 4, 2023
The Energy of Questions
I Am The Big Heart, Sarah Venart. Brick Books, 2020.
Posted on January 4, 2023
Surrealestate: The Quandary of Home in New Stories by Meghan Bell and Kate Cayley
Erase and Rewind, Meghan Bell. Book*hug, 2021.
Householders, Kate Cayley. Biblioasis, 2021.
Posted on December 9, 2022
The forthcoming Winter 2023 issue of The Fiddlehead is now available for pre-order!
The issue will feature the winning story from The Fiddlehead's 2022 Fiction Contest, as well as work from talented writers such as Alice Zorn, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Kate Cayley, Brian Bartlett and many more.
Pre-orders will be in the mail by the end of January. To order your copy click the appropriate link below:
Canadian Addresses
Posted on October 24, 2022
John Barton: Gay Canlit Icon
We Are Not Avatars, John Barton. Palimpsest Press, 2019.
When I told a friend I was about to write a review of We Are Not Avatars (Palimpsest Press, 2019), a collection of John Barton’s essays, memoirs, and manifestos, they looked at me quizzically and suggested I’d set myself on an unrealistic challenge, for how can anyone critique an icon? My friend gave me pause because I never considered John Barton to be one.
Posted on October 11, 2022
Poets as Observers of Space and Absence
Quiet Night Think, Gillian Sze. ECW Press, 2022.
I first came to Gillian Sze’s work through her chapbook, Fricatives. Fricatives has lingered in the back of my mind for years, and Sze’s latest collection of poems and essays, Quiet Night Think, will no doubt do the same. Comprised of six personal essays interspersed with poems, Quiet Night Think meditates on poetry and motherhood. Where do these intersect, and where do they diverge?
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