BY METTE BACH When are we going to start believing women who are brave enough to come forward to share their stories? When are we going to trust that survivors know their own bodies and experiences? These questions haunted me while I read Leah Horlick’s latest collection of poems, For Your Own Good...
By Shannon Webb-Campbell Poetry is inherently queer. At the core of a poet’s craft is an ability to toy with language in a way a prose or fiction writer can’t. There are no rules in poetry, only desires. A poet can write three lines and call it a poem, whereas a novelist must adhere to an arc of a...
BY TREVOR CORKUM “We all had our own reasons for what we were about to do,” says the eleventh-grade narrator in Shawn Syms’s story “Get Brenda Foxworthy,” one of the standout stories in his stellar debut collection, Nothing Looks Familiar. In a collection that skillfully mines the inner lives of...
BY RACHNA CONTRACTOR Last year Arsenal Pulp Press published Vivek Shraya’s first novel, She of the Mountains, which elegantly juxtaposes two love stories, one based in Hindu mythology and one loosely based on Shraya’s life. With only two main characters and a handful of secondary...
BY LISA TIMPF Since I enjoyed many of Brown’s earlier works, including Sudden Death, I decided to check out one of her more recent offerings, a mystery entitled Let Sleeping Dogs Lie. Released in November 2014, this book is the ninth in a series that revolves around silver-haired...
Congratulations to the sixteen Canadian authors who are finalists for Lambda Literary Awards this year! Some Plenitude friends are on the list, too! This year’s Emerging Writer Mentorship Award mentor, Shani Mootoo, is a finalist in the transgender fiction category for Moving Forward Sideways...
by Derek Bedry In Cyrille Martinez’s “surreal parable” The Sleepworker, a strange fictionalized telling of Andy Warhol and John Giorgio’s creation of the film Sleep, the narrator seems to float detached above the action, an alien observer. This foreigner watches the neighbourhoods of “New York New...
Plenitude Magazine is now entirely online and accessible to everyone, but don’t miss out on the fantastic work that appeared in Issue 4 and Issue 5! New stories from Shawn Syms, Leah Horlick, Ashley Little, Mette Bach, Lukas Bhandar, Shannon Webb-Campbell and more! From medieval same-sex...
Congratulations to Sasha Boczkowski! Shani Mootoo read the stories from finalists Sasha Bczkowski, Lukas Bhandar and Llew Forestell. “This is one of those hard decisions,” she said. “Three very, very good works.” She finally selected “Birds,” by Sasha Boczkowski...
Thank you to everyone who submitted to the Emerging Writer Mentorship Award. We received many fantastic stories. The judge for this shortlist was Alex Leslie, and the winning piece will be selected by Shani Mootoo and announced next week. Congratulations to these three finalists! Lukas...
by Evelyn Deshane In October 2014, transgender novelist Elliott DeLine released his third work, Show Trans: A Nonfiction Novel. DeLine’s book is both confessional booth and road novel, both romance and tragedy, and both true and entirely made up. Interspersed with screenshots of his phone...
by Brett Josef Grubisic Howdy Barbara, greetings from the left coast, Such an outpouring of outraged sentiment today in your diatribe against the recognition of Raziel Reid’s so-called “values-void” novel. Most of your words struck me as angry and muddled in equal parts. I can’t help but reply...
by Andrea Routley “Descant has an enormous community. It is an international magazine with a strong focus on Canada and on emerging artists. We have trained dozens of interns, hundreds of editors have worked with us over the years, and thousands of writers and visual artists and musicians and...
Of the fifteen longlisted books for 2015 Canada Reads, at least four of them are queer-authored–definitely overrepresented among the barrier-breakers. Perhaps this is unsurprising. After all, we encounter a lot of barriers! Not all of them are the same, of course. For example, Kamal Al...
The International IMPAC Dublin Award is the world’s richest literary award — the winner takes home €100,000! But that is beside the point (right?). Libraries from all over the world nominate books for their literary merit, and this year Ashley Little’s novel Anatomy of a Girl...
Hot off the press! For digital editions, subscribe here. You can also subscribe to receive Issue 4 & Issue 5 as digital editions. Medieval same-sex weddings, chaperoned dates with Dad, poems to confront domestic abuse in queer relationships, and why Jeanette Winterson is dangerous! Includes...
by Casey the Canadian Lesbrarian In a unprecedented display of awesomeness last week, the Canada Council for the Arts announced this year’s winners for the Governor General’s Literary Awards and they included not one, not two, but three books penned by queer authors. First, we take over...
Another great evening with some of Vancouver’s Favourite Queer Writers, coming up on November 29th!
Plenitude Magazine invites emerging Canadian queer writers to enter the Emerging Writer Mentorship Award. This winter, the award is for fiction. Eligible writers have yet to publish their work in book form. One mentorship with an established queer writer will be awarded. The mentorship will take...
by Vivek Shraya Even though I edit a lot during the writing process (a practice I strongly advise against when I am facilitating writing workshops #hypocrite), there are often chunks of a book draft that get chucked. This is because I am obsessed with efficiency in writing, where the math is always...
Recommend by Trevor Corkum A few years back, a friend sent me a call for something called the Loud & Queer Cabaret, then part of Edmonton’s Exposure Festival of the Arts. Loud & Queer is part of the longest-running queer arts showcase of its kind in Western Canada, a celebration of queer...
Ivan E. Coyote and Rae Spoon, Gender Failure (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2014.) Paperback, 256 pp., $17.95 Reviewed by Rachna Contractor Based on their live multimedia show which toured across Canada, the US and UK, Gender Failure is a collection of work about rejecting the gender binary and retiring...
Casey Plett, A Safe Girl to Love (Topside Press, 2014.) Paperback, 216 pp., $16.95. Reviewed by Amber Dawn Let’s hear it for being at the right place at the right time. In early June, I found myself at the right place, which was Blue Stockings Books—Manhattan’s Lower Eastside stronghold indie...
Thank you to everyone who came out to The Steady Cafe on Thursday, June 12th! It was a great night, lots of fun, and such an appreciative audience. We’d also like to thank The Steady Cafe for hosting the event, and Scott Dagostino at Glad Day Bookshop for his support. Thank you also to Vici...
We have teamed up with The Steady Cafe, Glad Day Bookshop and these fantastic queer writers for another sure-be-be excellent reading. Hear the latest from these exciting authors — and preview their forthcoming work! Thursday, June 12 | 9 pm The Steady Cafe 1051 Bloor Street, Toronto Join the...
Lydia Kwa, sinuous (Turnstone Press, 2013.) Paperback, 107 pp., $19.95 Reviewed by Chris Fox and Arleen Paré As avid readers of Lydia Kwa’s fiction (This Place Called Absence, The Walking Boy, shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and Pulse), we were excited to find her second book of...
Jane Eaton Hamilton is the author of seven books of fiction and poetry. Her writing has appeared on the Guardian’s Best of the Year list and on the Sunday Times bestseller list. Her short work has appeared in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, Numero Cinq, among other places. She has been...
West Coast … Rachel Rose has won awards for her poetry, her fiction, and her non-fiction, including a recent Pushcart Prize. She has published poems, short stories and essays in Canada, the US, New Zealand and Japan. Her most recent book, Song and Spectacle won the 2013 Audre Lorde Poetry...
Picture it: 1990. Vancouver. The Gay Games. Shawn Syms takes us on young Erik’s quest to interview Vladimir, a famous AIDS activist. But Erik is hoping for more: “He wasn’t afraid to fuck a person with AIDS.” With characteristic gritty humour and refreshing candour, Shawn...
“Even now, after years of wanting this, I am too shy to look for more than a fleeting moment.” Who can’t remember a ride home you wished would never end? The utterly transformative moment of that first kiss? Caitlin Crawshaw is a freelance journalist and MFA (creative writing)...
With tenderness and straightforward honesty, Lukas Bhandar shares a life-altering moment, not to mention a moving tribute to writer, filmmaker and musician Vivek Shraya. I Love My Hair, I Hate My Hair takes on the inherent racism of gay beauty standards from the perspective of a boy just coming of...
By Dorothy June Fraser Bitter Lamentations from Adam Wojtowicz on Vimeo. Adam Wojtowicz is a Vancouver-based artist who works in a variety of media. Over the past decade, he has been involved in the Vancouver film scene, as well as the larger Canadian entertainment industry. In his creative...
How about at a licensed restaurant on Commercial Drive, Vancouver, where you can pay $10 and not only get a digital subscription to Plenitude, but also hear some of Vancouver’s favourite queer writers read from their latest — or upcoming — books? If you’re thinking...
We are so excited to announce that print subscriptions to Plenitude are now available within Canada. Stay tuned for International rates! A print subscription includes both print and digital. Digital issues are of course far more economical to create and distribute, and enable us to distribute the...
Congratulations to the winner of our first Emerging Writer Mentorship Award, Nat Marshik! Thank to everyone who submitted to the award. It was not an easy decision! Managing editor Andrea Routley compiled the shortlist and this year’s mentor Arleen Paré selected the winner. Here’s what...
Trevor Corkum is a Canadian writer of fiction, essays, and creative non-fiction who has been published widely in Canada. He’s lived across Canada and in Norway, Spain and Germany and has travelled widely. Currently he is based in Toronto. Trevor took his first writing workshops through Trent...
Shawn Syms, Editor, Friend. Follow. Text. (Enfield & Wizenty, 2013). Paperback, 296 pp., $19.95 Reviewed by Andrea Routley In Friend. Follow. Text., editor Shawn Syms offers a comprehensive exploration of all things online. Through 27 short stories, ranging from new writers to award winners...
Minal Hajratwala, Editor, Out! Stories from the New Queer India (Queer Ink, 2012). 447 pp. Reviewed by Rachna Contractor During my last visit to India in 2010 I noticed an overt shift: queer was everywhere–in mainstream news, family conversation, Bollywood nuance. It’s not that queer had been...
By Joy Fisher I never knew Candis Graham. She died in Victoria, BC, in 2005, two years before I moved there. In 1994, when she was still living in Ottawa, she told an interviewer, “I write for lesbians.” She wrote for me, but I didn’t know that, either—not until 2012 when I was chosen to receive...
Press Release from Leaf Press Surge Narrows By Emilia Nielsen “Surge Narrows is gorgeously sensual and sharply precise—if we could taste it, this book would be salmonberry. It would be salt. To read these poems is to stand under a waterfall, letting the words rush like cold, clean water over the...
