Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic Marcus McCann, Park Cruising: What Happens When We Wander Off the Path (House of Anansi, 2023), 352pp., $21.99. For the literal and figurative connotations alone, Marcus McCann chose a subtitle with broad appeal for Park Cruising, his book of eleven essays (and “In...
Reviewed by Anuja Varghese Steacy Easton, Daddy Lessons (Coach House Books, 2023), 160pp., $21.95. Content warning for childhood sexual abuse Steacy Easton’s memoir in “lessons” opens with a prologue that pulls no punches. Referring to the book, they state bluntly: “This is pornography in the sense...
Reviewed by Madelaine Caritas Longman T. Liem, Slows: Twice (Coach House Books, 2023), 96pp., $23.95. “[I]f you think an apocalypse // will eliminate the wealth gap, let us hold together the / premonition it will not,” reads a phrase from the poem “In Response to Feeling Alone; Or, Before and...
Reviewed by James K. Moran Daniel Allen Cox, I Felt the End Before It Came: Memoirs of a Queer Ex-Jehovah’s Witness (Penguin Random House Canada, 2023), 240pp., $32.95. Daniel Allen Cox’s memoir I Felt the End Before It Came is an inditement of the Watchtower Society and the Governing Body of the...
Reviewed by Cara Kauhane Andrew Kushnir & Khari Wendell McClelland, Moving the Centre (Talonbooks, 2022), 160 pp., $19.95. Moving the Centre consists of two documentary plays, “Small Axe” by Andrew Kushnir and “Freedom Singer” by Khari Wendell McClelland, as well as accompanying essays. Relying...
Reviewed by David Ly Meghan Kemp-Gee, The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), 80 pp., $23,95. As a poet who is always interested in incorporating animals into my poetry—as they lend themselves particularly well to vivid imagery and nuanced metaphors—my curiosity was instantly piqued when...
Reviewed by Manahil Bandukwala Jhani Randhawa, Time Regime (Gaudy Boy LLC, 2022), 144 pp., $16 US. Jhani Randhawa’s debut poetry collection Time Regime is, as the title hints, a slow meander through time. This is evident from the very first poem of the collection, “Primavera,” in which Randhawa...
Reviewed by Micah Killjoy Carellin Brooks, Learned (Book*hug Press, 2022), 120 pp., $20. “Don’t you ever want to disappear?” asks Carellin Brooks’ Learned, a collection of bildungsroman poems that explores the world of a girl-turned-woman living as a Rhodes Scholar in mid-90’s Oxford. Learned’s...
Reviewed by Shannon Page Lor Gislason, Inside Out (Darklit Press, 2022), 112 pp., $19. Inspired by classic horror movies like Chuck Russell’s 1988 remake of The Blob, Lor Gislason’s debut novella Inside Out is gross and visceral. The story opens in a remote mining camp in British Columbia, as a...
Reviewed by seeley quest Trynne Delaney, the half-drowned (Metatron Press, 2022), 144 pp., $18. Near the end of Trynne Delaney’s first book, the half-drowned, comes a thematic question: What reality might hit after the end of belonging? The speculative fiction novella is set in a liminal future...
Reviewed by Melinda Roy Brian Francis, Missed Connections: A Memoir in Letters Never Sent (McClelland & Stewart, 2021), 240 pp., $24.95. I am a late bloomer. I came out as queer at 32 and was diagnosed with ADHD two years later. There were signs of both, which I can see when I look back; my...
Reviewed by Namitha Rathinappillai Manahil Bandukwala, Monument (Brick Books, 2022), 96 pp., $22.95. In her debut poetry collection Monument, Manahil Bandukwala immortalizes the historical Mumtaz Mahal, empress consort of the Mughal Empire, who is most often known as the woman for whose burial...
Reviewed by Vange Holtz Schramek Hannah McGregor, A Sentimental Education (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2022), 176 pp., $24.99. The full-scale uptake of social media since the rise of mega platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have led to many critiques of Millennials and Generation...
Reviewed by Leah Bobet Isaac Fellman, Dead Collections (Penguin Random House, 2022), 256 pp., $17 US. If Dead Collections was a space, it would be an archive, or perhaps a human heart: rich, moody, and funny, built with infinite care. This literary supernatural novel takes on the carefully...
Reviewed by Michaela Stephen Natalie Wee, Beast at Every Threshold (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), 104 pp., $17.95. In her sophomore poetry collection Beast at Every Threshold (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022), Natalie Wee offers an exploration of desire, grief, and history with evocative, sensual, and...
Reviewed by Anuja Varghese Helen Chau Bradley, Personal Attention Roleplay (Metonymy Press, 2021), 216 pp., $18.95. Helen Chau Bradley’s fiction debut Personal Attention Roleplay opens with the line, “I first fell in love with a girl to the theme song of Top Gun.” The story, titled “Maverick,” is...
Reviewed by James K. Moran Adam McOmber, The Ghost Finders (JournalStone, 2021), 238 pp., $20.95 US. Adam McOmber’s third novel, The Ghost Finders, is entertaining, spooky gothic fare steeped in gas-lit (in the traditional sense) Edwardian London with a queer, character-driven story arc. His...
Reviewed by Manahil Bandukwala Isabella Wang, Pebble Swing (Harbour Publishing, 2021), 112 pp., $18.95. In her debut collection Pebble Swing, Isabella Wang writes with remarkable and lyrical skill that echoes the influences of literary forebearers such as Li Bai and Phyllis Webb. The poems span...
Reviewed by Khashayar Mohammadi Anahita Jamali Rad, still (Talonbooks, 2021), 112 pp., $16.95. “It is true, poetry still cannot stop tanks,” Ma Yan writes in I Name Him Me, “but that poetry attempts to stop tanks is its reach.” It is perhaps pessimistic to begin at the limits of poetry; it may seem...
Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic Kate Cayley, Householders (Biblioasis, 2021), 235 pp., $22.95. An exceptional volume of stories, Householders warrants applause—and readers, of course. Following How You Were Born (2014), Toronto’s Kate Cayley showcases virtuosic writing and captivating settings...
Reviewed by Lucian Childs William di Canzio, Alec (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021), 352 pp., $27.00 US. I’m a sucker for gay love stories. They’re a sensuous, sugary hit of pure emotion. William di Canzio’s Alec is not without problems—like its source material, E. M. Forster’s posthumously...
Reviewed by Namitha Rathinappillai Nisha Patel, Coconut (NeWest Press, 2021), 108 pp., $19.95. Nisha Patel’s poetry debut, Coconut, reflects on the multifaceted experiences of queerness, race, womanhood, fatphobia, and familial relationships. The collection contains moments of both introspection...
Reviewed by Annick MacAskill Arleen Paré, Earle Street (Talon Books, 2020), 96 pp., $16.95. Arleen Paré’s recent poetry collection, Earle Street, offers an affectionate yet unsentimental portrait of a neighbourhood in all its minute complexities. Surprisingly expansive in its consideration of...
Reviewed by Namitha Rathinappillai jaye simpson, it was never going to be okay (Nightwood Editions, 2020), 112 pp., $18.95. Shortlisted for the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, and the Indigenous Voices Award (2021). In jaye simpson’s debut book, it was never going to be...
Reviewed by Kegan McFadden Billeh Nickerson, Duct-Taped Roses (Book*hug Press, 2021), 96 pp., $20.00. Billeh Nickerson’s new poetry collection Duct-Taped Roses begins with the lines: “When we wrap our legs / around one another’s / I’m not sure.” This first poem, “Mermen,” is situated just...
Reviewed by Amy LeBlanc Jillian Christmas, The Gospel of Breaking (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 80 pp., $14.95. The opening line of Jillian Christmas’ new collection The Gospel of Breaking reads: “tell me what is a body.” This line can be read a few ways—I read it as a question or a plea. The next...
Reviewed by Noah Cain Annick MacAskill, Murmurations (Gaspereau Press, 2020), 96 pp., $21.95. Annick MacAskill’s second poetry collection, Murmurations, explores what it means to live inside a body. Driven by hunger, thirst and love, MacAskill captures powerfully instinctual feelings of longing and...
Reviewed by Jane Shi Kimiko Tobimatsu, illustrated by Keet Geniza, Kimiko Does Cancer (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 96 pp., $19.95. Kimiko Does Cancer, a graphic medicine memoir written by Kimiko Tobimatsu and illustrated by Keet Geniza, is a tender offering that critiques mainstream breast cancer...
Reviewed by James K. Moran Adam McOmber, Jesus and John: A Novel (Lethe Press, 2020), 236 pp., $15 USD. Adam McOmber’s novel Jesus and John is a rare matryoshka doll of a horror novel. It is a queer love story inside a historical recreation of Jesus fraternizing with the Apostle John inside a...
Reviewed by Eve Morton Amber Dawn, My Art Is Killing Me and Other Poems (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020), 128 pp., $17.95. My Art Is Killing Me is a poetry collection that feels like a wound. Amber Dawn’s latest collection of mostly free verse poetry from Arsenal Pulp Press weaves her lines with issues...
Reviewed by Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch Tommy Pico, Feed (Tin House Books, 2019), 88pp., $15.95 “Me and Leo yakkity yak yak’d / about writer’s / block / and the starchy long stroke of quote unquote God on the Meadow Walk and he didn’t know I was fully head over banana peels I mean in Kiehl’s I...
Reviewed by Eve Morton Amber Dawn & Justin Ducharme, ed., Hustling Verse: An Anthology of Sex Workers’ Poetry (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), 192 pp., $19.95. The poetry collection Hustling Verse, edited by Amber Dawn and Justin Ducharme, is a book I want to judge by its cover. The artwork is...
Reviewed by Jane Shi Kai Cheng Thom, I Hope We Choose Love (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019), 144 pp., $17.95. My dear trans kindred—weird sisters, brothers grim and gay, siblings-in arms: What kind of world do you want to live in? –Kai Cheng Thom, “How Neoliberalism Is Stealing Trans Liberation” Kai...
Reviewed by Emilia Nielsen Bahar Orang, Where Things Touch: A Meditation on Beauty (Book*hug Press, 2020), 114 pp., $20. I was first introduced to Bahar Orang’s work at Creating Space IX, the Canadian Association for Health Humanities annual conference last year in Hamilton, Ontario. Such a...
Reviewed by Amy LeBlanc Tess Liem, Obits. (Coach House Books, 2018), 88 pp., $19.95. Winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 2019 Obit: the announcement of a death. “It sinks like a stone, this attention to the lives of others.” Obits. opens with the above epigraph from American poet Wendy...
Reviewed by Julia Peterson Barrie Jean Borich, Apocalypse, Darling (Mad Creek Books / The Ohio State University Press, 2018), 120 pp., $18.95. Nominated for a 2018 Lambda Literary Award (Lesbian Memoir/Biography category) I remember learning, a few years ago, that Sappho’s poetry wasn’t written...
Reviewed by Katherine Connell Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House (Strange Light, 2019), 264 pp., $24.95. Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House is a hybrid memoir that combines the author’s personal experience of queer domestic abuse with reflections on genre, literature, film, and...
Reviewed by Ben Rawluk Matthew Walsh, These are not the potatoes of my youth (Goose Lane, 2019), 92 pp., $19.95. I don’t want to have to use the word liminal, but all the spaces in Matthew Walsh’s debut poetry collection These are not the potatoes of my youth are absolutely liminal. Walsh is a Nova...
Reviewed by Emilia Nielsen Lucas Crawford, The High Line Scavenger Hunt (University of Calgary Press, 2018), 144 pp., $18.99. Lucas Crawford’s second collection of poetry, The High Line Scavenger Hunt, undertakes to both chronicle and engage with New York City’s High Line, a reclaimed elevated...
Reviewed by Tanya Marquardt Larissa Lai, The Tiger Flu (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2018), 334 pp., $19.95. Winner of the 2019 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction, Larissa Lai’s novel The Tiger Flu invites us into a lyrical world that melds seamlessly with her rendering of place, telling a much...
