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A note to US-based customers: All Lit Up is pausing print orders to the USA until further notice. Read more

Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.

  • Jules’ Tools for Social Change: Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez

    Jules’ Tools for Social Change: Scarborough by Catherine Hernandez

    This edition of Jules’ Tools talks Scarborough (the city) andย Scarborough (the novel) with debut novelist and award-winning playwright Catherine Hernandez.

  • Field Trip: Growing Room Festival 2018

    Field Trip: Growing Room Festival 2018

    In 2017, Canadaโ€™s oldest feminist literary journal, Roomย magazine launched the literary festival Growing Room as a space to celebrate diverse Canadian writers and artists run entirely as a labour of love. And this year is no exception. Running from March 1 – 4 in Mount Pleasant, Vancouver, the festival is set to feature 18 panels…

  • In Review: The Week of February 12th

    In Review: The Week of February 12th

    Catch up on our love fest this week and our top reads.

  • Top 10: Literary Couples

    Top 10: Literary Couples

    From romantic love to canine-human friendship, we’re celebrating all kinds of love this week with our roundup of Top 10 literary couples.

  • Love Week: Notes on Marriage from the Contributors of Love Me True

    Love Week: Notes on Marriage from the Contributors of Love Me True

    It’s the day after Valentine’s Day, and we’re ready for some Love Week REAL TALK: namely, a frank discussion about marriage from the contributors of Caitlin Press’ย Love Me True: Writers Reflect on the Ins, Outs, Ups & Downs of Marriage. Check out the choice contributor lines editors Fiona Tinwei Lam and Jane Silcott picked for…

  • Love in the Time of Reckoning

    Love in the Time of Reckoning

    A few months ago, an older male friend of mine texted unexpectedly with a recommendation, or maybe more accurately, a request: I should make sure to include somewhere in the book I was writing that romance is a lie. I wish someone had told me that years ago, he wrote. The remark wasnโ€™t totally out…

  • Love Week: Reality Romance with Suzannah Showler’s Most Dramatic Ever

    Love Week: Reality Romance with Suzannah Showler’s Most Dramatic Ever

    Love Week continues with an interview with Suzannah Showler, the latest ECW Press pop classics author ofย Most Dramatic Ever, about the mostย romanticย show ever,ย The Bachelor.ย We ask her about her limo exit stylings โ€“ among other things โ€“ before reading an excerpt from the book.

  • Love Week: Love, Home, and Work, and The Videofag Book

    Love Week: Love, Home, and Work, and The Videofag Book

    Welcome to LOVE WEEK, a celebration of love in all of its forms. We’re kicking off the week with a bittersweet excerpt from Jordan Tannahill and William Ellis’ย The Videofag Book, which chronicles the four years of the then-couple’s art space/party venue/home. We also talk to the book’s publisher Book*hug, whose own couple- and house-run business…

  • In Review: The Week of February 5th

    In Review: The Week of February 5th

    The month of blah rages on, but there’s nothing blah about this week on the blog.

  • First Fiction Friday: Dying Behaviour of Cats

    First Fiction Friday: Dying Behaviour of Cats

    Winner of the 2017 Ken Klonsky Novella Award, Marc Labriola’s debutย Dying Behaviour of Cats (Quattro Books) opens on a reclusive man โ€“ Theo Galli โ€“ about to end his life, when a hurricane hits. After finding himself with a furry (and potentially bitey) roofmate โ€“ AKA a stranded leopard who escaped from the zoo โ€“…

  • If You Liked x, Read y: Parenting Your Parents Edition

    If You Liked x, Read y: Parenting Your Parents Edition

    What changed between the publications of Clem and Olivier Martini’s celebratedย Bitter Medicine in 2010 andย The Unravellingย (both Freehand Books) in 2017? Their mother’s health: while she and Olivier managed to help each other’s respective mobility issues and schizophrenia in the past, Catherine Martini’s slip into dementia rocked the family’s precarious stability. Publisher of Freehand Kelsey Attard…

  • Solace and affirmation: talking about rape with other women

    Solace and affirmation: talking about rape with other women

    When I walk into a jewelry store on a sunny spring morning in 2017, Iโ€™m curious and then excited. The store is new in my neighbourhood, and to my delight the owner is South African. I begin a conversation about her pieces, pleased to see that she has a workshop in the back where she…

  • Chappy Hour: A Salty Raccoon + Cries from the Ark

    Chappy Hour: A Salty Raccoon + Cries from the Ark

    A wide and wild cast of characters appear in Dan MacIsaacโ€™s new collection, Cries from the Ark (Brick Books). In the poems Iโ€™ve selected, youโ€™ll meet a bull moose, a fox, and several bears, including the Wiley Garbage Bear, aka the Trash Panda. In his honour, Iโ€™ve paired this chap with The Salty Raccoon, which…

  • Where in Canada: Inspector Luc Vanier’s Montreal

    Where in Canada: Inspector Luc Vanier’s Montreal

    While we associate city winters with things like holiday window displays and everyone forgetting how to drive at once, there’s a hidden network of crime and vulnerable people that still moves in the winter โ€“ one that’s cracked open for all to see in Peter Kirby’sย The Dead of Winterย (Linda Leith Publishing). Read on to find…

  • In Review: The Week of January 29th

    In Review: The Week of January 29th

    Start your February off right by staying out of the cold and in with our top reads of the week.

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