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Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Read the Provinces: Clea Roberts
Written during the decade when she became a mother and lost a mother, Auguries (Brick Books) reflects Yukon poet Clea Roberts’ evolving understanding of life and death and the tensions that exist therein. We sit down with Clea to talk more about how the ancient practice of auguries similarly reflects our poetic frameworks and the power…
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Read the Provinces: Terry Milos
Terry Milos’ autobiographical story North of Familiar(Caitlin Press) gives a first-hand account of her departure from city life and her struggle to build a life and family in the Yukon. We chat with Terry in this Read the Provinces interview to hear more about how living off the grid has made her more courageous and allowed…
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Read the Provinces: Laurie Sarkadi
When Laurie Sarkadi moved to the wildnerness outside of Yellowknife, she found lessons, magic, and solace in the natural world. Her memoir Voice in the Wild (Caitlin Press) captures her physical and spiritual journey into the wild spaces of northern Canada beginning with the changing socio-political lives of Dene and Inuit in the late ’80s. We chat…
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Read the Provinces: Catherine Lafferty
Northern Indigenous author Catherine Lafferty talks to us about her connection to place, the barriers to entry for Indigenous writers in the Northwest Territories where she lives, and her memoir Northern Wildflower (Roseway Publishing). Scroll on for our chat with Catherine and read an excerpt from her novel.
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Read the Provinces: Jaime Lee Mann
Having spent her entire life living on Prince Edward Island, author Jaime Lee Mann has salt water in her veins. Some of her earliest memories include spending time in outdoor settings that have come to influence many of her works, including Ancient Fall (Blue Moon Publishers), the story of a vengeful Mother Earth fighting back against…
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Read the Provinces: Chris Bailey
If the first thing that comes to mind when you think about PEI are L.M. Montgomery’s idyllic island visions, Chris Bailey’s debut poetry collection What Your Hands Have Done (Nightwood Editions) will offer fresh perspectives. We sit down with Chris in this ALU Read the Provinces interview to find out more about how his personal experience as…
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Read the Provinces: Heather Nolan
The main character in St. John’s-based author, musician, and CBC Poetry Prize longlister Heather Nolan’s debut novella This is Agatha Falling (Pedlar Press) is a product of her environment and her past, calling up the notion of our connection to physical place. Below, Heather talks to us about her book, how Montreal served as the…
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Read the Provinces: Leslie Vryenhoek
Leslie Vryenhoek’s gritty, page-turning novel We All Will Be Received (Breakwater Books) grew from a stay at an odd roadside motel in Newfoundland’s Northern Peninsula and the idea of being off-grid. Leslie tells us more about how her novel came to be, displacement, and emotional landscapes.
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In Review: The Week of January 13th
This week ALU Read the Provinces rolled on with eight more authors and books to discover. Cozy up this weekend with our interviews and picks!
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Read the Provinces: Chris Eaton
Chris Eaton’s Symphony No. 3 (Book*hug Press) began as a ‘fake’ book, but what it became was a decadent elegy for a prodigious composer’s lost love. Chris joins us in this ALU Reads the Provinces interview to share more about how the book developed out of a conspiracy theory and the underlying sense of ‘New Brunswickness’ that…
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Read the Provinces: Sarah Xerar Murphy
The first line of Sarah Xerar Murphy’s Itzel I (Guernica Editions) has remained unchanged over the 40 years of the books development: “Itzel was an Auschwitz survivor.” Sarah joins us in this ALU Reads the Province’s interview, sharing more about her hybrid work of fiction/non-fiction set in Mexico, and how she learned to find beauty and significance in…
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Read the Provinces: John Wall Barger
Despite growing up in small-town Nova Scotia, John Wall Barger has always been drawn to big cities—that’s where his poems happen: “We act as if cities are natural and healthy but I don’t think they are. People suffer in cities. But suffering is what the poetry I like is about.” Below John tells us more about…
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Read the Provinces: Hannah Moscovitch
Playwright Hannah Moscovitch—the first playwright ever to win a Trillium Book Award for a play—joins us to share how a garage sale book led to writing her newly published What a Young Wife Ought to Know (Playwrights Canada Press), a play about love, sex, and fertility inspired by real stories of mothers during the Canadian…
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Read the Provinces: Bindu Suresh
Author Bindu Suresh gives us the poetry of line expanded in her novel 26 Knots (Invisible Publishing), about the tangled stories of four Montrealers and their success and failure at finding love. In this ALU Read the Provinces feature, Bindu shares more about the book and explains that while she might have grown up in Saskatchewan and…
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Read the Provinces: Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau
The characters in Virginia Pesemapeo Bordeleau’s debut novel Blue Bear Woman, translated by Susan Ouriou and Christelle Morelli (Inanna Publications), came naturally out of her own family history and her grief at the loss of her father. Virginia joins us in this #alureadtheprovinces interview to share more about the book – which tells the story of a young…
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