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Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • In Review: The Week of July 23rd

    In Review: The Week of July 23rd

    From do-lit-yourself tote bags to follow-up reads to the Great Gif vs. Jif Debate, our weekly roundup has it all and more!

  • Travel-Inspiring Summer Reads

    Travel-Inspiring Summer Reads

    If your summer has mostly included trips to your local library and pitstops for iced coffee but you’re itching to explore further afield, why not check out our list of travel-inspiring books?

  • Chappy Hour: Purple Haze + Smaller Hours

    Chappy Hour: Purple Haze + Smaller Hours

    Cool off on a hot summer day with our Purple Haze cocktail inspired by the sweet stylings of “To One a Century Hence” from Kevin Shaw’s poetry collection, Smaller Hours (Goose Lane Editions), named Best Book of 2017 by Maisonneuve.

  • All Lit Up Book Club: Further Reading after Zolitude

    All Lit Up Book Club: Further Reading after Zolitude

    Can you believe it’s already week four of July’s book club activities? After meeting our pick Zolitude by Paige Cooper and seeing what the Biblioasis staff had to say, we had our own book club meeting, and interviewed Cooper herself. If you’re also not quite ready to say goodbye to this spectacular collection of short stories,…

  • Just the Best: The Contributors to Best Kind Interview Each Other

    Just the Best: The Contributors to Best Kind Interview Each Other

    Today, we’ll introduce you to Best Kind (Breakwater Books): a book of twelve outstanding essays from Newfoundland writers and a term meaning “excellent” – just a bit of reading into this collection and the title will make sense, fast. Rather than ask the contributors questions, they’ve asked them of each other – we just get to…

  • Do-Lit-Yourself: Conquer Fabric Waste with No-Sew T-Shirt Totes

    Do-Lit-Yourself: Conquer Fabric Waste with No-Sew T-Shirt Totes

    If your summer, like our summer, means frequent trips to the library, you’re going to need a lot of tote bags. This no-sew craft turns a growing source of waste – old t-shirts – into a bag you can use for books, groceries, and everything in between.

  • In Review: The Week of July 16th

    In Review: The Week of July 16th

    Our weekly roundup includes gender-swapped scenes from literary classics, interviews with rad authors, reading and writing in prison, and some of the spookiest books out there.

  • Writer’s Block: Sharon Butala

    Writer’s Block: Sharon Butala

    We chat with the hilarious Sharon Butala, author of the recently published Zara’s Dead (Coteau Books) about the glamorous life of a writer (at least in wishful thinking), the haunting influence of Karl Ove Knausgaard (even in your dreams), the monotony of irony, and more. 

  • Field Trip: Literal Change in Ontario’s detention centres

    Field Trip: Literal Change in Ontario’s detention centres

    Just a few short years ago, literacy teachers Robyn Keystone and Martha Jodhan founded Canadian not-for-profit Literal Change to bring literacy support to inmates in two of Ontario’s maximum security detention centres. Today we chat with Robyn Keystone about the role of Literal Change in these marginalized groups, community response, and the greater social impact of their…

  • ALU Book Club: Interview with Paige Cooper

    ALU Book Club: Interview with Paige Cooper

    Week three of ALU Book Club still has us clubbing to the literary stylings of Paige Cooper’s short story collection Zolitude (Biblioasis). Today we chat with Paige about empathy and ego in art, writing, voluntary loneliness, and a “utopian fortress at the end of the world.”

  • Flipping the Script: 3 Gender-Swapped Classics

    Flipping the Script: 3 Gender-Swapped Classics

    When I first saw Jacqueline Valencia perform “Taxi Driver Tracy” at a reading, I fell in love with the piece, and the premise. Inspired by that poem from Valencia’s debut work, There Is No Escape Out of Time (Insomniac Press), we present to you three gender-swapped scenes from literary classics.

  • Where in Canada: Outport living in McCallum, NL

    Where in Canada: Outport living in McCallum, NL

    Part memoir, part nature writing, part love story, David Ward’s Bay of , published by ECW Press this past April, is an occasionally comical, often adversarial, and always emotional story about the five years the author spent living in an isolated Newfoundland community. The following is an excerpt from Bay of Hope: Five Years in…

  • In Review: The Week of July 9th

    In Review: The Week of July 9th

    We’ve got a lot to review this week: from staff discussions and goodbyes to biographical fiction and video games to ill-advised literary wine campaigns…it’s all here in our weekly roundup!

  • First Fiction Friday: Sludge Utopia

    First Fiction Friday: Sludge Utopia

    Things we know in 2018:Misogyny is everywhereCapitalism is dyingThe thing to help: our #FridayReads pick Sludge Utopia, by Catherine Fatima (Book*hug). Her auto-fictional novel about a woman trying to fulfill her sexual desires amid these raw truths is eye-opening (and has Sheila Heti as a fan!). 

  • Jules’ Tools for Social Change: A Farewell Fave Five

    Jules’ Tools for Social Change: A Farewell Fave Five

    With many Capital-F Feelings, I must announce that this will be my last column, as I’m leaving Team All Lit Up this month for a new opportunity. To celebrate and say goodbye, this last column is a list of five books that have particularly impacted me in my time here. Let’s call it Jules’ Fave…

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