Index Cards

A collection of 14 essays, many of them extensions of pieces that originally involved other media, along with several reproductions of photographs, Index Cards is a frequently fascinating, if ultimately exhausting, survey of Toronto-born, New ... Read More »

June 8, 2020 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes from the End of the World

By Kai Cheng Thom

Kai Cheng Thom is a force within social-justice communities. A quick-witted, sharp-tongued, staggeringly prolific trans woman of colour, Thom is known primarily for her insightful and critical writing – including a fairy-tale novel, a book ... Read More »

November 4, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

★ Murder and Other Essays

By David Adams Richards

“Murder,” David Adams Richards writes in his new work of non-fiction, “is always the same crime. It is always done in fear and rage. It always tries to hide itself and run away, and when ... Read More »

October 21, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature and Being

By Johanna Skibsrud

In her 2001 memoir, A Map to the Door of No Return, Dionne Brand recalls that her grandfather told her “he knew what people we came from.” Despite the 13-year-old Brand’s prodding, which included rhyming ... Read More »

October 7, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field

By Billy-Ray Belcourt

Billy-Ray Belcourt has become one of Canada’s poetry sweethearts since the release of his 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize winner, This Wound Is a World. His sophomore collection – a masterful blend of the personal and ... Read More »

September 5, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

Coventry: Essays

By Rachel Cusk

One of the great pleasures of a well-executed essay is not its structure, the clarity of its argument, or the distillation of its ideas, but the opportunity to see a great mind in action. In ... Read More »

July 25, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being

By Amy Fung

In her new book, art critic Amy Fung does what a lot of BIPOC thinkers, especially Indigenous ones, ask us to do: deliberately situate ourselves in our narratives, clearly positioning ourselves vis-à-vis colonialism and the ... Read More »

May 27, 2019 | Filed under: Art, Music & Pop Culture, Criticism & Essays

Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous Healing

By Suzanne Methot

A book that explores the destructive effects of colonialism on Indigenous peoples and the process of healing from hundreds of years of abuse does not make for light reading. In Legacy: Trauma, Story, and Indigenous ... Read More »

March 11, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

How a Poem Moves: A Field Guide for Readers of Poetry

By Adam Sol

Adam Sol’s new book comprises 35 short essays about poetry that originated as blog posts. The audience imagined here comprises readers who might be intimidated by poetry, although, as Sol acknowledges in his introduction, “insiders” ... Read More »

March 7, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

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