The Fiddlehead is pleased to announce the finalists of our 2021 Fiction Contest, judged by Yasuko Thanh! The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced on March 23 2022 and the winning story will appear in the Spring 2022 issue (291). Thank you to all who entered and congratulations to the finalists!
Editorial Assistant Shauna Deathe's interview with Preeti Kaur Dhaliwal about her poem “On Survival and Exhalation” from the new BIPOC Solidarities Issue.
The Fiddlehead's 2022 Creative Nonfiction contest is now open and we're excited to announce that Lindsay Wong will be judging this year's submissions!
Prairie Fruit by Emily Riddle
Deathly Afraid by Melinda Burns
Excerpt
Editor's Introduction
Stories in the Language of the Fist by Anuja Varghese
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At the Starbucks across from the Four Seasons Centre, Farrah waited for her grande non-fat chai tea latte. Her phone buzzed in her bag and she pulled it out. A text from Melissa: u still there? grab me a flat white!
We're proud to say that the BIPOC Solidarities Special Issue will be the first Fiddlehead issue of 2022. It is available for pre-order now and will be in the mail by the end of January. Don't miss your chance to reserve your copy today!
Nagmeh Phelan is a first-generation Canadian. Her work has appeared in Room, Queen Mob’s Teahouse, Minola Review and was featured in the Autumn 2021 issue of The Fiddlehead. Find her @somesomersaults on Twitter
Remember the incapacitating “brain fog” that troubled so many of us during the COVD-19 lock-downs of 2020 and 2021?
(Maybe you don’t, because…well, brain fog. Or maybe you do, because we’re still in the midst of a global pandemic and you’re still very much fogged up.)
In her introduction to Best Canadian Stories 2021, editor Diane Schoemperlen describes her own experience of “brain fog” this way:
"Although my love of reading had helped me through many crises in my life, now I found it too had mostly deserted me. [...] My concentration and attention span had dwindled to the point where I no longer had the bandwidth to read more than ten or twenty pages at a stretch. [...] I finally realized short stories could be the perfect antidote to this problem."
