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Author: ALU Editor

  • Test Kitchen: Scrambled Eggs with Spring Onions

    Test Kitchen: Scrambled Eggs with Spring Onions

    Breakfast is the most important meal of the day, and that’s why we’re bringing you today a unique egg recipe from the author ofValley of the Rats (Cormorant Books) – Mahtab Narsimhan.  Are you ready to eat scrambled eggs that go great with fried mushrooms, a slice of whole wheat toast and a hash brown?

  • Under the Cover: Playing it Right on Wall Street

    Under the Cover: Playing it Right on Wall Street

    How did Kamal Gupta beat the odds at blackjack tables in Vegas and keep his calm – and his assets – amid the fervent “dancing” that led to the 2008 financial collapse on Wall Street? It all comes down to a different definition of success, as he tells us in this expanded excerpt from his…

  • First Fiction Friday: Only If We’re Caught

    First Fiction Friday: Only If We’re Caught

    Theressa Slind’s debut short story collection Only If We’re Caught (Thistledown Press) looks for the bizarre and extraordinary in the everyday. Humorous, playful, and especially versed in the human heart, Slind’s collection has been called “perceptive, thoughtful, smart, funny and beautiful” (Alice Kuipers).

  • Case Files: Ava Flagg, Copperhead Road

    Case Files: Ava Flagg, Copperhead Road

    In this Case Files, we look at things from the criminal’s side of the fence: Ava Flagg, a bootlegger in North Carolina during the Great Depression. Will her and her crew outsmart their rivals-in-booze in Brad Smith’s Copperhead Road (At Bay Press)?

  • Literary Awards 2022: A Coast-to-Coast Roundup

    Literary Awards 2022: A Coast-to-Coast Roundup

    Looking to add a little Province-based pedigree to your TBR, or just read more from your own backyard? We’ve rounded up the independently-published winners and nominees from literary awards all across Canada to make it easier than ever.

  • Poetry in Motion: Genni Gunn + Accidents

    Poetry in Motion: Genni Gunn + Accidents

    Genni Gunn’s third poetry collection Accidents(Signature Editions), takes us on a roller coaster ride through past and present in different continents, to explore the various upheavals that alter our lives. In this week’s Poetry in Motion feature, Gunn shares how she is interested in playing with forms of poetry, and how her third collection revolves around upheavals that cause…

  • If You Liked x, Read y: Forest Bathing Edition

    If You Liked x, Read y: Forest Bathing Edition

    If you found yourself itching to get into the woods after reading Peter Wohlleben and Jane Billinghurst’s Forest Walking: Discovering the Trees and Woodlands of North America, discover Worth More Standing: Poets and Activists Pay Homage to Trees (Caitlin Press). Edited by Christine Lowther, the book is “a celebratory awakening to all Earth Citizens to see trees…

  • First Fiction Fridays: The Burden of Memories

    First Fiction Fridays: The Burden of Memories

    Fans of Clara Callan by Richard B. Wright or Possession a Romance by A.S. Byatt will enjoy this new debut novel by Janet Calcaterra. The Burden of Memories (Latitude 46 Publishing) will take you on a journey of two sisters unraveling a long-held family secret about their father’s past. 

  • Short and Sweet: Dayle Furlong + Lake Effect

    Short and Sweet: Dayle Furlong + Lake Effect

    Lakes are meditative, and the characters in Dayle Furlong’s Lake Effect (Cormorant Books) find themselves contemplating their existences as they live and work Great Lake-side. We talk to Dayle about the ingenuity of the short story form and read part of “Adamantine” from her collection.

  • Short and Sweet: Brent van Staalduinen + Cut Road

    Short and Sweet: Brent van Staalduinen + Cut Road

    The throughline in Brent van Staalduinen’s latest short story collection Cut Road (Guernica Editions) is characters touched and shaped by conflict. In our mini-interview, Brent talks about the “waste-no-words” instinct that feeds into short story writing, and we read from “Skinks,” a story in the collection.

  • Home is the place that breaks your heart (Tales told on pirated VHS tape, assorted soundtrack)

    Home is the place that breaks your heart (Tales told on pirated VHS tape, assorted soundtrack)

    Academic, translator, and the founder of the Tamil Studies Symposium Nedra Rodrigo writes of the conflict in Sri Lanka, border crossings, and how to cope, through a series of vignettes on “tape” through the decades. Rodrigo, whose published translations include His Sacred Army and A Time of Questions (Mawenzi House), takes us back in time and shares her memories of where…

  • Weekend Reads: Journey to the Upside Down

    Weekend Reads: Journey to the Upside Down

    With the long-awaited season 4 of Stranger Things being released on Netflix today, we wonder what other supernatural mysteries we can read this weekend (after binging all 7 episodes tonight). 

  • Writers’ Block: Gurjinder Basran

    Writers’ Block: Gurjinder Basran

    Award-winning novelist Gurjinder Basran – whose most recent novel Help! I’m Alive – talks to us about the vulnerability intrinsic to being a writer and the immense gratification of writing under- or unrepresented characters out into the world (and we get to meet her adorable dog, too).

  • Short and Sweet: Elizabeth Allua Vaah + Maame

    Short and Sweet: Elizabeth Allua Vaah + Maame

    A celebration of womanhood and inside look at Nzema culture, Elizabeth Allua Vaah’s collection Maame (Mawenzi House) follows three generations of Ghanian women in linked stories. In our interview, Elizabeth shares her appreciation for the form as well as an excerpt from “Aso: Mother of Angels.”

  • Short and Sweet: Phoebe Tsang + Setting Fire to Water

    Short and Sweet: Phoebe Tsang + Setting Fire to Water

    Phoebe Tsang discusses the myriad influences – from Chekov to Sharon Butala – that went into her debut short story collection Setting Fire to Water (Thistledown Press). We learn how the short story can be like a “perfectly seasoned hors d’oeuvre” and read an excerpt from “Model Shown Is Actual Size.”