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Author: ALU Editor
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First Fiction Friday: Music from a Strange Planet
This genre-bending first collection of stories from author Barbara Black takes readers from the ravaged streets of dystopian cities to the inner battlefields of its characters. Mix the perception-blurring fables of Maria Mutch with a touch of Kafkaesque absurdity and a dash of Paige Cooper’s poetics and you’ll get Music From a Strange Planet (Caitlin Press)—the perfect off…
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Off/Kilter: Q&A with Keith Cadieux, author of Signal Decay
Does the past have the power to haunt us? Keith Cadieux’s novella Signal Decay (At Bay Press) introduces us to Lori, newly widowed after the death of her husband, who becomes determined to find him through the study of his past recordings. In this Off/Kilter interview with Keith, we dig further into the philosophy of…
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Where in Canada: The Lover, The Lake
Referred to as “the first erotic novel written by an Indigenous woman in French”, Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s The Lover, the Lake (Freehand Books) celebrates the intimacy and love between two people, but also their interconnectedness with the natural world. In this edition of Where in Canada, the novel’s setting on the shores of Lake Abitibi is…
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Interview with Shauntay Grant, author of The Bridge
Former poet laureate of Halifax Shauntay Grant sits down with All Lit Up for a discussion on her play The Bridge (Playwrights Canada Press). Growing up in a Baptist Church community, Grant says music was bound to have an influence on her writing—one that can be seen clearly in her latest with parallels between the…
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First Fiction Friday: The Good Son
Carolyn Huizinga Mills’s debut The Good Son (Cormorant Books) is a psychological thriller that checks all the right boxes for a page-turning read: secrets, complicated family dynamics, and murder. A powerful, unputdownable novel that takes us into the life of Zoe Emmerson as her past and present collide and threaten to destroy her, The Good Son has…
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A Cemetery for Bees: An Interview with Alina Dumitrescu
In her autobiographical novel A Cemetery for Bees, Montreal-based author Alina Dumitrescu traces the journey of a woman from her youth in Socialist Eastern Europe to her transplanted life in Montreal, Canada. She is a precocious, thoughtful child, whose early life in Romania is marked by the scarcities of the time and the political games…
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Reflections from the contributors of Us, Now
Recently published by Newfoundland-based publisher Breakwater Books and edited by Lisa Moore, Us, Now collects funny, tender, and heart-wrenching stories by racialized Newfoundlanders that confront racism and celebrate resilience. In these pages are stories about families, about language, about facing down the horrors of homophobia, about the joy of love, about lifelong relationships and the…
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Poetry in Motion: Caroline Wong
In a collection of narrative poems Primal Sketches (Signature Editions), poet Caroline Wong considers how our actions profoundly effect the lives of fellow humans and the natural world around us. Below, Caroline tells about how her book—inspired by stories of harm to animals and violence suffered by women—”came almost out of their own accord, as though…
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First Fiction Friday: Monster Child
Rahela Nayebzadah’s Monster Child (Wolsak & Wynn) is not your typical immigrant story. Through the eyes of three Afghan children, an uncaring world, filled with racism, family secrets and magic unfolds. Readers must squint to see clearly through shape-shifting forms of evil to determine who truly is the Monster Child.
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Under the Cover: Writing Scotland During the Golden Age of the Bicycle
The second in Catherine Macdonald’s 3-book Charles Lauchlan mystery series, So Many Windings (At Bay Press) leaves the Canadian Prairies behind for a bicycle tour set in the 1900’s highlands of Scotland, where a grisly murder awaits…Catherine takes us further under the cover to share more about her father’s fascination with Scotland and the family roots…
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Graphic Novelists at TCAF: Rick Trembles
In his recently published collection of autobiographical work Represented Immobilized (Conundrum Press), Montreal punk legend and alternative cartoonist Rick Trembles brings together schoolyard scuffles, seedy matinees, and run-ins with inept riot cops for an unflinching look at his early years in Montreal. The book collects 40 years of autobio work from Trembles, including strips that were originally published in…
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Graphic Novelists at TCAF: Zoe Maeve
Today’s featured artist is award-winning, Montreal-based comics artist Zoe Maeve whose book The Gift (Conundrum Press) has been described as The Shining meets Sophia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. The Gift tells the story of Anastasia, the last princess of Imperial Russia, who after mysteriously receiving a camera for her fifteenth birthday, begins to document her world not knowing what’s…
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Graphic Novelists at TCAF: Sami Alwani
Today’s feature graphic novelist is award-winning cartoonist Sami Alwani whose newest The Pleasure of the Text (Conundrum Press) is a collection of 20-slice-of-life comic stories that are equal parts comedy and tragedy. Alwani weaves together themes of queer intergenerational polyamory, racial capitalism, and esoteric mystical experiences into stories that question society and individual identity. The Pleasure of the Text…
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Graphic Novelists at TCAF: Cole Pauls
Today’s featured graphic novelist is award-winning Cole Pauls whose quirky graphic novel Pizza Punks (Conundrum Press) is a punk-rock celebration of pizza that explores just how far an extremely dedicated punk might go to attain the cheesiest of pies. The graphic novel collects Pizza Punks 1-4 plus a new issue, exclusive to this collection. Below, Cole…
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Graphic Novelists at TCAF: An Interview with Veronica Post
During the week of the Toronto Comic Arts Festival we’re spotlighting a different graphic novelist every day. Today we chat with Halifax-based artist Veronica Post whose semi-autobiographical debut Langosh and Peppi, Fugitive Days (Conundrum Press) tells the story of the 2015 European “migrant crisis” in Budapest, Hungary through the perspective of Langosh and Peppi, a vagabond and…