Your cart is currently empty!
Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
Excerpted: Takedown by Ali Bryan
In her young adult novel Takedown (Cormorant Books / Dancing Cat) Ali Bryan’s fierce advocacy for women in sports is in full force with a story of a sixteen-year-old star wrestler who compromises her chances at a wrestling scholarship by participating in an illegal, but lucrative MMA fight to raise money for her father to…
Two Poems: The Goldberg Variations
The Goldberg Variations (New Star Books) melds pop culture, slang, jargon, the overheard and the political into the building blocks of new poems long and short, big and small. Read two poems from the collection, below.
Writer’s Block: Premee Mohamed
Today marks the launch of Premee Mohamed’s highly-anticipated followup to The Annual Migration of Clouds, We Speak Though the Mountain. In our interview, Premee tells us about the book she returns to again and again, where the inspiration for her characters comes from, and what a perfect writing day might look like.
First Fiction Friday: The Stones of Burren Bay
Blending ancient Celtic spiritualism with Manitoulin Island wilds, Emily De Angelis’s debut YA novel The Stones of Burren Bay (Latitude 46 Publishing) follows a girl left adrift after her beloved grandmother passes away, and a century-old spirit that helps her navigate through her tragedy. Read on to learn more about this compelling new book.
Excerpted: Play by Jess Taylor
In her new novel Play (Book*hug Press), Jess Taylor reveals a woman grappling with her by turns imaginative and painful childhood, and the loss of a beloved cousin who was right there with her. Read on for an excerpt from this psychologically riveting book.
Under the Cover: Fungal by Ariel Gordon
Poet and writer Ariel Gordon celebrates the diversity of fungi and the complexity of the urban forest in her new book Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest (Wolsak and Wynn). Today she shares an exclusive piece called “Foraging for Happiness” about the joys of walking in Winnipeg’s Assiniboine Forest, the ethics of foraging, and living…
Poetry in Motion: Michael Trussler + Realia
Three-time Saskatchewan-Book-Award winner Michael Trussler joins us to read two poems from his latest collection Realia (Radiant Press). Engaging in a variety of forms—lyric-documentary, autobiographical mini-essay, long poems, miniaturist poetry, surreal collage and photography—Realia asks big and small ethical questions (what does it mean to see? go internet surfing?) while maintaining an eye on our…
Excerpted: The Jellyfish by Boum
Quebec cartoonist Boum’s real-life experience with vision loss that left her blind in one eye is the basis for her graphic novel The Jellyfish (Pow Pow Press), translated by Robin Lang and Helge Dascher. In this tour-de-force of graphic storytelling, a hip twenty-something named Odette has a jellyfish in her eye—a blob that gets in…
Two Poems: Tomorrow is a Holiday
Head out into scenic wilds both rural and urban with these two poems by Hamish Ballantyne, from his latest collection Tomorrow is a Holiday (New Star Books).
Malled In by Jes Battis
“When I go to the mall, I usually want to leave right away. When I go to the mall, I feel like I’m on the tip of becoming myself.” —Kate Black, Big Mall: Shopping For Meaning It’s the eighties and I’m hunting a mechanical snail through Cottonwood Mall in Chilliwack. I saw the wind-up snail in Toys…
Poetry in Motion: Matthew Tierney + Lossless
In a series of tech-inspired sonnets and prose poems in his fifth collection Lossless (Coach House Books), Matthew Tierney catalogues all kinds of losses — of people, of childhood, of hope, of memory. In doing so, the poems capture an awareness that loss is the flipside of joy, that joy is in some ways losslessness.…
Excerpted: Counting Bones by Ellen Anderson Penno
At 24, right before she was due to start medical school, Ellen Anderson Penno embarked on a mountain climbing trip with her partner, only to lose him in a tragic accident. Counting Bones: Anatomy of a Love Lost and Found (NeWest Press) is her memoir of that time, chronicling her decision to press on with…
The Short of It: Danila Botha & Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness
In her third collection, Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness (Guernica Editions) critically acclaimed writer Danila Botha writes about the vast experiences of all kinds of people, including morally complex female characters. We chat about short fiction, and read a sample from “Always An Angel, Never a God” from her new collection.
The Short of It: M.V. Feehan & In the Shadow of Crows
M.V. Feehan’s In the Shadow of Crows (Baraka Books) is a collection of stories connected by a fictional town in Nova Scotia, each story taking its title from the children’s rhyme Counting Crows. We briefly chat with M.V. about her collection and what she loves about short stories, and share an excerpt from her book.
Writer’s Block: Robyn Braun
In Robyn Braun’s debut novella The Head (Great Plains Press), the protagonist awakens to find a disembodied – but living – infant head on her kitchen counter. In today’s interview, we chat with Robyn about the uncanny writers that serve as her other-worldly inspiration, the liberating qualities of writing, and what she’s working on next.
Got any book recommendations?