features

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."

Dan O’Brien is a poet and playwright. His poetry collections include Our Cancers, War Reporter, New Life, and Scarsdale. O’Brien is the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in Drama and two PEN America Awards for playwriting. His work has been published in several issue of The Fiddlehead, most recently in issue 283 (Spring 2020). He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

Pauline Peters lives in Toronto. She has been published in anthologies and in journals such as Canadian Literature and The Antigonish Review. Her poem "Hamilton, Ontario, 1975" is featured in the new Autumn issue of The Fiddlehead. She was short-listed for the Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition and her chapbook The Salted Woman is being published by the British publisher Hedgespoken Press.  

A playlist of cozy poems for fall by editorial assistants Meghan Kemp-Gee and Rosemary Henbest.

Editorial Assistant Rose Henbest's interview with Richard-Yves Sitoski about his poem “Things that Don’t Show up in Photos” from the new Autumn issue.
 

Rose Henbest: I always appreciate art inspired by ignored moments, as you point to in your title. Can you talk about your inspiration for this poem, for wanting to capture such a moment?