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We became aware of American poet Alex Gurtis through his work as a literary critic and then further familiarized ourselves with his work in the literary community—specifically, his work uplifting Canadian authors. Then, we learned more about his poetry, and our interest was doubly piqued. We picked up his chapbook, When the Ocean Comes to Me (Bottlecap Press, 2024), and were blown away.
On this Power Q & A, we are tickled to be joined by poet and podcast host, Andrew French. Andrew is the host of the popular Page Fright poetry show, where they interview established and emerging authors about breaking through as writers and finding their literary style.
In this interview, we ask Andrew to share with us about why they started the podcast.
We are delighted to have Tim Welsh join us today to speak about history in his extraordinary debut novel, Ley Lines (May 1, 2025, Guernica Editions).
Set in the waning days of the Klondike Gold Rush, Ley Lines begins in the mythical boom town of Sawdust City, Yukon Territory. Luckless prospector Steve Ladle has accepted an unusual job offer: accompany a local con artist to the unconquered top of a nearby mountain. There, the duo finds a seven-foot human ear, floating in a halo of light. This mysterious discovery briefly upends Sawdust City's fading fortunes, attracting a crowd of gawkers and acolytes, while inadvertently setting in motion a series of events that brings about the town's ruin.
The last time I attended a writing workshop was in 2014. It was the Tone + Text opera workshop in Vadstena, Sweden at the Vadstena Akademien, a school for opera artists. I was there as a librettist. This was part two of the workshop, which lasted four days, culminating in a showcase of scenes written by librettists who had been paired with composers at part one, also a 4-day affair that took place the previous year.
After her divorce my mother flew to Tanzania. The particular kind of evangelical Christianity that she embraced used foot washing as a form of baptism and she criss-crossed the country, washing the feet of men and women and children, many surprised but most eventually willing to be taken up by the ministrations of this tall, devoted woman.
He went to the library after class and thought about her sudden disappearance. Undergrads preparing for mid-term exams and equally ambitious postgraduates doing early research for their theses littered every section of the circular, three-story library. Murad found a lone table and made an effort to do some research for his class on internal migration. When he finished working in the early evening, he felt focused and lucid, his mind free of the clouded haze that often weighed it down. He went outside and sat on the same concrete slab where he had first met Sofi. The sky’s leaden greyness was darkening, and Murad found himself surrounded by small, atomized groups of students huddled together. He thought about the email she’d sent him. He had no reason to call her. He had nothing that he needed to say, no wound that needed to be tended. There was only an absence felt, a persistent emptiness without her presence.
Suzy Krause’s I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024) is unlike any apocalypse novel I’ve ever read; it’s a refreshing perspective on humanity at the end of the world. The people in this novel do not become the worst versions of themselves; instead, Krause’s vibrant characters remain generous and kind and community oriented. No one takes more than they need at the grocery store, pilots—after systems have gone down—fly planes so that others can get back to their families, and others decorate whole cities with paper chains and snowflakes just to bring small joys in an unfathomable time. In fact, small joys and creativity are at the forefront of what’s meaningful to the book and its characters. These joys offer hope, even if we know the end.
Barbara Tran’s entrancing poetry collection, Precedented Parrotting (Palimpsest Press, 2024), was a finalist for the Governor General Literary Award for Poetry. This beautiful book stands as an expansive debut that plumbs personal archives and traverses the natural world.
We are honoured to have Barbara join us for our Power Q & A series to speak with us about the visual impact of her work, which uses the whole stage of the page.
Your Devotee in Rags truly is a voracious visage of passionate construction. Exotic soundstages tumble unfettered around thunderous drum breaks and wholly convincing vocal performances. The narrative is female - is woman. Churning laments championed by steaming percussion drive us through moments, memories, patriarchy. The narrator is hungry. The voice is visceral, snarling.
Close your eyes and open your ears, friends, ‘cause cultural icons, Anne Waldman (The Iovis Trilogy: Colors in the Mechanism of Concealment) and Andrew Whiteman (Broken Social Scene) have collaborated to create Your Devotee in Rags—a metamorphic sonic poetry LP being released with Siren Recordings.
Your Devotee in Rags is a missive to this age of patriarchal power, its songs and poems are designed to specifically confront that power and hold it to account. Taking such activist inspiration from musicians like Lido Pimienta and Tanya Tagaaq, musically YDIR blends acoustic and electronic genres, waltzes, laments, and Pauls Boutique-era Beastie Boys mash-ups all with the intent of creating a new artistic headspace: sonic poetry. The cultural direction is forward, the earbuds open up the stereo field, listening to YDIR is, in a word, empowering.
The major achievement of RuFF (Latitude 46 Publishing, 2024) is the artful way in which author Rod Carley weaves the slender threads of historical fact into a broader fictional tapestry to create a raucously pun-driven tale of Elizabethan politics, theatre, magic, and mayhem. The novel features a relatively familiar cast of characters from the theatrical scene in that era, including William Shakespeare, Thomas Middleton, Kit Marlowe, Richard Burbage, and Will Kempe. Women are given equal time in the form of Anne Hathaway, daughter Judith, and Magdalene Marbecke, known here as Maggie. Rounding out the motley crew are an assortment of allies, enemies, soldiers, peasants, peers, and political toadies – but most importantly, animals – specifically Shakespeare’s three-legged beagle, Biscuit; Judith’s cat, Gray-Malkin; and a crow named Cawdor.
Call me “Incested.”
I earned that name. I struggled long and hard to be able to say those words.
I cannot speak for husbands, children, sisters, brothers, cousins, wives, ancestors, friends,
or any of the hundreds involved; I speak only for myself. I tell this from my vantage point, my version of vision, my fractured reality.
After two thousand years, the historical truth of the two sisters, Trưng Trắc and Trưng Nhị, has evaporated into the winds of time, carried along by gusts of myth throughout the centuries. In the most traditional account of events, the one most widely reported by historians, the Trưng sisters were born into a noble family, their father part of the Lạc lords living in the Red River Delta valley, in Giao Chỉ province.
I headed to the bathhouse nearest to my home, hoping to find some good company. In case I couldn’t, I brought a book, though once I took my place in the empty sauna, it sat unopened in my lap. I leaned back and felt sweat develop on my forehead. It was late in the autumn, which in Montreal meant that the air outside was always cold, even on days of bright sun. The heat of the sauna was novel and welcome.
It matters which origin stories we tell and retell as we try to place ourselves in the land. I was taught the story of martyrs and savages in my high school class in Canadian history. I had never heard the stream of stories about linking arms until I moved to Hamilton, Ontario in my thirties. It takes an adjustment of mind to begin to hear stories that differ from the ones to which we are accustomed. As I’ll discuss later in this book when I introduce myself more directly, it took armed conflict in my neighbourhood and at the university where I work for me to begin to listen to the stories of how Indigenous people made peace in the northeast part of this continent.
There is a school of thought that says we should live every day like it is our last. The impracticality of doing that should be obvious enough, although the spirit of that ideal carries a certain allure. Suzy Krause manages to capture something of both the impracticality and the allure, not to mention the sheer nightmarish absurdity of the world’s impending doom in her novel I Think We’ve Been Here Before (Radiant Press, 2024). Love, both romantic and familial, are put through the wringer in this story of human foibles juxtaposed against global doom. It is a kind of sci-fi tragi-rom-com, if you will.
Laine Halpern Zisman’s latest book Conceivable: A Guide to Making 2SLGBTQ+ Family (Fernwood, 2024) is the first book of its kind in Canada.
Laine Halpern Zisman is an adjunct professor at the School of Public Health and Social Policy at the University of Victoria. She is founder and project lead on Family Building Canada (familybuildingcanada.com) and a Certified Fertility Support Practitioner with Birth Mark in Toronto. Her research traverses the intersections of 2SLGBTQ+ equity, culture, and reproductive care.
For this Power Q & A we are joined by internationally acclaimed author Ayelet Tsabari to talk about her gorgeous debut novel, Songs for the Broken Hearted (Harper Collins, September 10, 2024).
Many of you may know of Ayelet from her widely-acclaimed memoir in essays The Art of Leaving, winner of the Canadian Jewish Literary Awards, a finalist for the Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, and The Vine Awards for Canadian Jewish Literature, and an Apple Books and Kirkus Review Best Book of 2019.
After finishing A Simple Carpenter (Radiant Press, 2024) by Saskatchewan-based poet and novelist Dave Margoshes, the opening sentence from David Copperfield came to mind: “Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
This not-so-simple story of a ship’s carpenter, who has no memory of who he is or where he came from and goes by various names but finally settles on Yusef, chronicles his search for identity, his past and his place in the world in the modern-day Middle East.
