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An Interview with Margaret Watson

Editorial Assistant Miriam Richer Interviews Margaret Watson whose story "The Returning Wife" appeared in Issue 301 (Autumn 2024)

Miriam Richer: “The Returning Wife” is such a psychologically complex story. I can’t imagine the narrative without a character like Rosemary at its centre, and yet the plot is—at least according to your taxi driver—all too common. Which came to you first: the protagonist, or the scenario?

Shannon Webb-Campbell Reviews I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Thom Meuley by thom vernon

thom vernon invites readers to meet sex and death

I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley, thom vernon. Guernica Editions, 2024.

Wildly audacious. Hilarious yet devastating. Punchy and raw. I’ve never read a novel like thom vernon’s I Met Death & Sex Through My Friend, Tom Meuley. As a novelist, vernon breaks all the rules because he knows them. It’s why the story leaps off the page. This novel begs to be a film, and I shouldn’t be surprised considering vernon’s backstory of being an actor-turned-writer.

Excerpt from "Absent Fathers" by Francis Chang

Excerpt from Issue 301 (Autumn 2024)
"Absent Fathers" by Francis Chang

It was when she turned 24. She finally stopped being an asshole and reached out to me.” As Scott’s saying this, swirling his scotch around in the tumbler, Danny looks out towards the view beyond the double-height, plate glass windows — the 270 degree expanse of Tokyo at sunset, with the pale, pink and white silhouette of Mount Fuji looming in the background.

Excerpt of "How to spend the nth day in bed" by Samantha Jones

Excerpt from Issue 301 (Autumn 2024)
"How to spend the nth day in bed" by Samantha Jones
Content note: chronic illness and pain

Choose the bed by the window,
stack at least four pillows,
prop my head up to achieve the view:
A tree full of sparrows,
magpies hop across blacktop,
haggle over toast.
Each spindly foot a clasp
set around its treasure.
Brisk black squirrels run
between utility poles,
the post carrier unloads a grey crate,

Janet Pollock Millar Reviews Your Body Was Made For This by Debbie Bateman

Reckoning and Reclaiming

Your Body Was Made For This, Debbie Bateman, Ronsdale Press, 2023.

Vancouver Island writer Debbie Bateman’s first collection of short stories, Your Body Was Made for This, follows in the tradition of Margaret Laurence’s unforgettable Hagar Shipley and Sharon Butala’s older women protagonists. Midlife presents an opportunity for the characters to reckon with and reclaim their lives, and Bateman’s collection of linked short stories explores older women’s experiences of their own bodies and their relationships.

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