VandeZande’s stories show us many troubling sights: a favourite coffee shop replaced by a slick new modern one; a house built for spite that blocks the sun; a special needs child who fails to respond to a teacher’s best effort; a recovering druggie who needs a meeting; a couple of robbers and a man trying and failing to save a dog on fire- and these are just a few examples.
A review of All Poetry by Paulo Leminski
Ultimately, this collection brings a great new poet to light from a country that often gets overlooked in English writing. Even more though, the variety of the work shows us that Leminiski is a poet who lived through poetry. He thought, breathed, and dreamed poetically, and the reader can delve into that life by experiencing the stages of it in this collection.
An Interview with David Sklar
The author of Moonstone Hero talks about His own experience climbing Mount Kilimanjaro and the effect that experience had on him, how, as a medical doctor, he incorporated his expertise into Moonstone Hero, the various philosophical and moral questions that the novel dives into, how he blended aspects of several genres (adventure, romance, literary fiction) into one cohesive story, on the nature of heroism, how Moonstone Hero is a tribute to the doctors who have risked their lives for others during the Covid-19 crisis, and lots more.
A review of How Beautiful People Are by Ayaz Pirani
A preternatural intelligence is required to understand the complexity of beauty and to hold beauty with reverence and respect for objectivity. Pirani gives depth to these contemplations as well as to the practice of observation. The poem investigates a balance between what is and what is observed. The reflection and mergence between the viewer and the viewed arrives at the crossroad of what may quickly be lost.
A review of The Rabbit Hutch by Tess Gunty
A review of American Seoul by Helena Rho
A language constitutes a world; that idea is significant in Rho’s memoir. She goes into a Korean shop for lunch with her daughter, and a woman working there encourages her to speak Korean, as does a woman, a minister’s wife, with whom Rho talks on the phone about lessons in Korean for her daughter and son. Growing up, she didn’t speak Korean with her parents.
A review of Lyon Street by Marc Zegans
For our poet, each of the women who appear in this collection are more than characters. Each one is also an encounter to be reckoned with, an archetype, someone to be understood at a deeper level. The poem concludes with the poet wondering if this “carnival life” was “…a perfect faith that this was forever..” until he and company then “…ambled across Broadway down Columbus…climbed the secret stairs to Apple and Eve,// saw the dancing girl with the welts on her thighs,/ and realized, all this was not just play.”
A review of Women Winning Office by Peggy Nash
Should a woman run as an independent, or as a candidate for a recognized party? In Canadian municipal politics, everyone is an independent in theory. At the provincial and federal levels, most successful candidates have a party affiliation. Nash acknowledges that independent candidates are free of strong central control and vetting; adherence to policy and discipline, and the nomination process that a party requires
An interview with Jeff Seitzer
The author of The Fun Master talks about his new book, about being a stay-at-home dad, how his own neurological experience both helped and hindered him in managing his son Ethan’s special needs, the best (and worst) parenting advice he received, what changed for him as a stay-at-home dad after Ethan passed away, how he came to write the book, and lots more.
A review of Enclave by Claire G Coleman
The book opens like a cracked mirror to our modern society, but it’s not quite a dystopia. The key twist in the book is so good I will resist the urge to signal it, but there are many twists in the book, moving across a terrain which takes on any number of possible futures displayed simultaneously, with humour, precision, and a poetic grace so smooth it’s easy to glide over its surface on a first reading.