Criticism & Essays

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

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

Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life after Sexual Assault

By Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee (eds.)

What does it mean to be a survivor of sexual assault? Faced with this question in a new collection of essays edited by Stacey May Fowles and Jen Sookfong Lee, 12 writers respond with equal ... Read More »

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

★ Voice: Adam Pottle on Writing with Deafness

By Adam Pottle

What does it mean to create? And how can one’s circumstances constrain or liberate creativity? Two Canadian academics and authors – Saskatoon’s Adam Pottle and Toronto’s Adrian McKerracher – sensitively and distinctively tackle these questions ... Read More »

February 11, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ What It Means to Write: Creativity and Metaphor

By Adrian McKerracher

February 11, 2019 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Raise You on the River: Essays and Encounters 1964–2018

By Barry Callaghan

Barry Callaghan holds a position in the Canadian literary firmament that is at once praiseworthy and unenviable. Callaghan wrested himself from the shadow of his father, CanLit icon Morley Callaghan, to create a varied career ... Read More »

December 10, 2018 | Filed under: Criticism & Essays, Reviews

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