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Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
Gift Guide Week: Erica McKeen’s Picks
Erica McKeen, the mind behind one of our fave reads from 2022 (the feminist horror/Bildungsroman Tear, Invisible Publishing), is here to give us her picks for holiday gifts that speak to the chaos of the season: “four books packed with perfectly offensive laughter, horrible tears, and a healthy dash of the absurd” (her words).
Gift Guide Week: Samantha Garner’s Picks
To kick off our Gift Guide Week is Samantha Garner, author of the character-driven literary speculative fiction The Quiet Is Loud (Invisible Publishing), which was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize in 2022. Samantha’s five recommendations reflect a variety of richly imaginative and emotionally resonant stories to gift a loved one (or yourself!).
Two Poems: Precedented Parroting
A finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry, Barbara Tran’s debut collection Precedented Parroting (Palimpsest Press) looks inward and outward; to the depths of the self and the world of birds. Read two poems from this stunning work below.
“I don’t want to reduce people to victims or villains”: An Interview with Julie Salverson
In her memoir A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Scriptwriter’s Daughter (Wolsak & Wynn) Julie Salverson confronts the notebooks of her late father—beloved scriptwriter and CBC’s first TV drama editor George Salverson and his 1963 around the world trip to document world hunger—to consider family legacies and how the past shapes the present. We talk…
Excerpted: Living Disability
In the new anthology Living Disability: Building Accessible Futures for Everybody (Coach House Books), 35 disabled writers lend their perspectives on how cities could be made more accessible and equitable for all to live in. Today, we share an excerpt from Corey Bialek’s “Minding the City”; read on.
Poetry in Motion: Craig Francis Power + Total Party Kill
Craig Francis Power’s Total Party Kill (Breakwater Books) is a collection of prose poems about recovery, addiction, and poverty through the vernacular of the popular role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons. Read on for more about Total Party Kill and hear Craig reads two poems from the book.
Reading Roundup: Dystopian and Sci-fi Picks from Don Miasek
TDotSpec editor, pillar of the Toronto sci-fi community, and writer of the space operatic Pale Grey Dot (Turnstone Press) Don Miasek lends his dystopian and sci-fi expertise to this list of five must-read, homegrown picks.
Under the Cover: How a squiddy obsession became J.R. McConvey’s False Bodies
Touted as “Come from Away meets Alien”, J.R. McConvey’s new horror novel False Bodies (Breakwater Books) follows a monster hunter in search of a tentacled sea-beast near an offshore oil rig. In today’s Under the Cover, McConvey tells (and shows) us about how an obsession with cephalopods led to this book.
Poetry in Motion: Renée M. Sgroi + In a Tension of Leaves and Binding
Renée M. Sgroi’s newest collection In a Tension of Leaves and Binding (Guernica Editions) is a poetic journey that delves into our relationship to the natural world told from both human and animal viewpoints. The collection challenges traditional ideas of poetry by incorporating conceptual and visual elements that disrupt our typical understandings of language and…
Writer’s Block: Rod Moody-Corbett
In our rapid-fire Q&A, Rod Moody-Corbett shares how his characters are shaped by the quirks and cadences of everyday speech and his openness to the fluid boundary between reality and imagination. Read on for our interview with Rod and more about his new novel Hides (Breakwater Books), a story of family and politics. Photo of…
Two Poems: echolalia echolalia
In her highly-lauded debut collection echolalia echolalia (Brick Books), B.C.-based poet Jane Shi considers queer, disabled, and diasporic experiences. Exploring various forms, Shi crafts an inventive debut that critiques ongoing inequities, dehumanizing ideologies, and the body politic. Read two poems from the collection, below.
Excerpted: Keefer Street
In Keefer Street (Ronsdale Press), David Spaner’s coming-of-age novel of youthful passion, a young man’s life is shaped by the Spanish Civil War and the quieter conflicts that unfold within families. Read an excerpt from the first chapter of the novel in which, Jake, a young Jewish man from Vancouver, spends a summer with relatives…
Writer’s Block: Nathanael Jones
Informed by early inspiration drawn from underground hip-hop and his preference for poetic prose, Nathanael Jones explores the intersection of language, rhythm, and structure in his work. In his collection of prose poetryAqueous (The Porcupine’s Quill), Nathanael weaves a complex tapestry of prose poems exploring fractured identity, history, and community within the Afro-Caribbean Canadian diaspora.…
“We are too often disciplined into certain kinds of writing” – An Interview with Chase Joynt
In Chase Joynt’s new book Vantage Points (Arsenal Pulp Press), now a finalist for the 2024 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, he probes the notion of memoir itself through a trans lens, while examining a previously-unknown familial connection to famed Canadian media philosopher Marshall McLuhan. We talk with Chase (and Vantage Points designer…
A Very Off/Kilter Hallowe’en
Hunker down with a snuggly blanket, 10-20 miniature chocolate bars, and one (or all) of these delightfully different spooky reads this Hallowe’en.
Got any book recommendations?