In Review: The Week of February 18th

On the Blog

~ Scott Fotheringham told us about his retreat into backwoods Nova Scotia, a place that informs his novel The Rest Is Silence (Goose Lane Editions): “It comforts me that the mountain is still there, minding its own business, offering a sanctuary to whatever chooses to call it home.”~ For World Day of Social Justice, we shared an excerpt from  For Want of a Fir Tree: Ukraine Undone by Frédérick Lavoie, translated by Donald Winkler (Linda Leith Publishing), a novel inspired by the Russian dismantling of the Crimean Peninsula. ~ We rounded up four great analog alternatives to your podcast rotation for all the yuksters, horror buffs, storytelling enthusiasts, and true crime sleuths.~ The Manitoba book publishing scene booms with presses like At Bay, ARP Books, Signature Editions, and Turnstone Press. At Bay Press Publisher Matt Joudrey highlighted some of the notable books coming out of the province. 

Around the Web

~ Giving an ear about the Oxford Comma isn’t just for editors anymore. Spoiler: Tinder users have strong opinions on punctuation too. 

via GIPHY

~ A scientist in the UK is testing DNA found in old books that reveal new aspects of historical production and trade, proving knowledge is literally in the pages of books.~ Now in metafiction: The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and now it’s being published. 

What Else We’re Reading

Staffer Leila’s pick this week is Gwen Benaway’s collection of poetry Holy Wild (Book*hug Press):”Let me just say that if you want to pick up a book of new poems, at all, read Holy Wild. In short, intimately felt lines full of wonder, trauma, loss, and vitality, Gwen Benaway draws out the strangeness in sexuality and gender, Indigenous land and colonizing cultures, and the problem of living through ongoing violence without being reduced to one’s struggle. Benaway is also a prominent nonfiction writer whose work in magazines and online has all too often been in response to reductive ‘mainstream’ representations of her identities as a woman, an Indigenous person, and trans. Holy Wild starts at those contested boundaries and moves inward to a centre that, in her skillful telling, feels both unknowable and like home.”