Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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First Fiction Friday: Landscape with the Fall of Icarus
This first fiction for author Zsolt Alapi is sure to spark the attention of anyone who loves art and literature. Landscape with the Fall of Icarus (DC Books) follows a first-person account of one mans obsession with the allegory of Pieter Bruegel’s painting of the same name and W.H. Auden’s interpretation of it in his…
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Cover Collage: Pride Month
We’re celebrating our true colours for Pride Month with a collage of bright covers for books that are all part of our current Pride Month promo! Grab these titles and more for 20% OFF when you use the code PRIDE at checkout throughout June + enjoy free shipping on orders within Canada!
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Where in Canada: Bears
In Matthew Mackenzie’s Bears (Playwrights Canada Press) an Indigenous Albertan man named Floyd heads into the B.C. wilderness on the run from the RCMP after he becomes a suspect in a workplace accident. In his journey through the Rockies, he begins to take on a ‘grizzly’ new form….Multi-award winning Métis playwright, Matthew Mackenzie joins us in…
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Interview with Brad Smith, author of The Goliath Run
With writing that rivals the great Elmore Leonard, author Brad Smith delivers his newest work The Goliath Run (At Bay Press), a poignant novel that sees a mother take fate into her own hands against the extremes of right wing politics after her daughter is killed in a mass shooting in a Pennsylvania schoolyard. Brad…
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In Review: The Week of June 1st
It’s been an important, albeit heartbreaking news week. We continue to learn from Black communities and stand together in solidarity against anti-Black racism. Here’s a list of books by Black writers on All Lit Up that we hope you check out.Read on for more happenings on the blog this week.
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Chappy Hour: Morning Star Cocktail + Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart
Our ALU resident drink maker is back with a refreshing summer treat and an adoring collection of poetry Beloved Revolutionary Sweetheart by Beatriz Hausner (Book*hug Press).
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On writing, race, and salmagundi: An interview with Jean Marc Ah-Sen
We electronically chatted with Jean Marc Ah-Sen—author of the highly praised novel The Grand Menteur—who is back with a literary mashup of varying prose styles in his new short story collection In the Beggarly Style of Imitation (Nightwood Editions). Filled with intriguing characters who do despicable things and vital takes on race and identity, In the Beggarly…
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Six Books for Pride
Librarian and Lambda Literary award winner (Little Blue Encyclopedia (for Vivian), Metonymy Press) Hazel Jane Plante shares six choice titles by queer and trans writers for Pride Month.
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Beautiful Books: OO: Typewriter Poems
Dani Spinosa’s newest collection of visual poetry OO: Typewriter Poems (Invisible Publishing) challenges the male-dominated legacy of avant-garde visual poetics. A collision of analog and digital traditions, OO: Typewriter Poems pays homage to the history of visual poetry while critiquing the progressivist and masculinist ideals that continue to inform the genre. Below, Dani tells us about the process…
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In Review: The Week of May 25th
This week we got cooking with the right ingredients for five short story books to make your quarantine more digestible, talked about community, writing, and Ma Anand Sheela, discovered a near-future dystopian debut, and more.
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First Fiction Friday: Watershed
A near-future dystopian debut novel set in Alberta in 2058, Watershed (Freehand Books) by Calgary storyteller and musician Doreen Vanderstoop considers what happens after the glaciers are gone and water has become our most previous natural resource.
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Cooking with Off/Kilter: 5 Books for Short Story Month
If you’ve been finding it hard to read with all of this uncertainty in the world, we recommend catching the tail-end of Short Story Month with our tasty list of short story reads, all with a swirly bent on the strange and surreal. Here in the Off/Kilter Kitchen, we give you the ingredients for 5…
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Writer’s Block: Brad Casey
We electronically chatted with poet and writer Brad Casey, author of the recently published short story collection The Handsome Man (Book*hug Press), about the most surprising thing about being a writer, why now’s the time to brush up on political solidarity, Ma Anand Sheela from Wild Wild Country, and more.
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In Review: The Week of May 18th
THIS WEEK: literary follow-ups to give your Netflix queue a break, author chats and inside scoops, tips to finding a book without its title, and more.
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Watch This, Read That: Netflix Edition
If you relate hard to those “Netflix are you still watching memes?” here are three literary follow-ups to your favourite shows to offset all the binge-watching.
Got any book recommendations?