Ami Sands Brodoff Fact or Myth In fertile cervical liquid, sperm can live up to five days Natalie and Rachel huddled together doing their happy dance, splashing strangers as they sang “Ring Around the Rosy,” as if they were kids, while I leaned against the edge of the rooftop heated...
Georgina Beaty [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]E[/mks_dropcap]veryone was in the middle of a game when Yvonne walked in, an hour late to her own baby shower. The living room was crowded with Lindy’s...
Glen Huser [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]W[/mks_dropcap]hen the Laundromat that anchored the west corner of his high rise was transformed into a coffee shop, Adam celebrated by inviting his two...
Alex Leslie We All Need to Eat (Book*hug, 2018) is a collection of linked stories from award-winning author Alex Leslie that revolves around Soma, a young queer woman in Vancouver. Through thoughtful and probing narratives, each story chronicles a sea change in Soma’s life. Lyrical, gritty...
Ben Rawluk [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]P[/mks_dropcap]lague Boy shows up to the walk-in clinic on Davie fifteen minutes before it opens and there’s already a line all the way to the entrance of...
Rachel Lallouz Falling in love with women taught me how to read poetry [properly]. I was trying to explain to a questioning friend what making love with a woman was like. She had inquired. I was also trying to convince her to sleep with me. “I could show you beautiful things,” I said. I...
Ron Schafrick [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap]t’s June again, which means another Pride, only this year it’s raining, and I’m glad. I’m with my friend Glace and we’re sitting in a...
Casey Plett [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]he night Wendy’s Oma died, she had sex dreams. Only sometimes did she have sex dreams—usually Wendy had nightmares and usually she was...
Jasper Sanchez You’re in an art store, halfway down the paint aisle. You’re thumbing tubes of acrylic, the aluminum casing cold against your skin. You’ve got iridescent gold in one fist, and you’re debating the merits of five shades of blue with your free hand. What’s the difference, you...
Li Charmaine Anne [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]he movers had long left the new neighbours’ house, and for the last few days, silence had rushed into the space they’d carved out...
Nikki Donadio [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap]t was a girl who collapsed on the soccer field. Girl, I kept calling her, with her pink headband and red soccer uniform. Dead at thirty...
Nick Comilla [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]his is what it’s like: I never know what day of the week it is. I get so down I drift through and feel up. We get so high we forget it...
Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt The Gardener Below, leaves rustle and swish. The sound reminds me of an ocean, makes me crave a body of water that’s not a city pool packed with bobbing children. It takes looking at a map to realize Montréal is an island. Pinning my phone to my shoulder, I grip...
Penelope Evans [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]S[/mks_dropcap]ome kid thinks he saw poison hemlock up the trail, a good twenty-minute hike from the cabins. So I’m up there looking, even though...
Reece Cochrane [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]D[/mks_dropcap]ad hauled the family from Chandler to Baie Comeau the day after Duplessis finally died. Good riddance, Dad had said, reading the...
Andréa Raymond [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]W[/mks_dropcap]ith studied slowness, Danny pulls our beat-up white van into the parking lot of Cullards’s Diner, another dubious stop on the Folk Music...
Sarah Thankam Mathews [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]V[/mks_dropcap]ic wants to make brownies but first needs a smoke. You stare up at the bright cliffs of books lining her walls. The ones she’s...
Suzette Mayr This story is an excerpt from “Five Floors of Basement” (working title), a quasi-haunted-house novel that centres on a university professor named Edith who works at the fictional University of Inivea. Her office is in Crawley Hall, a building that produces “sick...
Ambika Thompson [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]I[/mks_dropcap] was making an egg salad sandwich when Charlie called over. I told him, before he could get a word in edgewise, that I had lost a tooth...
Brett Josef Grubisic Please note: The following excerpts do not appear consecutively in the novel. Déviation: Aptitude [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]W[/mks_dropcap] ith the exception of...
Christine Higdon [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]T[/mks_dropcap]omorrow, I’ll be the same age he was when he died. He was ten days short of seeing the first man on the moon. We six were...
Andy Sinclair [mks_dropcap style=”letter” size=”52″ bg_color=”#ffffff” txt_color=”#000000″]S[/mks_dropcap]orry for the impersonal nature of this message but I wanted to let you all know that I am making a clean start! Dave and I have decided to...
Meaghan Loraas [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]B[/mks_dropcap]rian is irritated that the television isn’t working. I tell him not to do it but he’s sixteen and he does what he wants. He grabs my broom. He...
He's got one hand on the wheel and the other on her thigh, and Mae can't quite remember but she's pretty sure this is what love feels like.
One ex-wife was looking sexy in a retro green bikini with a built-in, conish bra. She seemed taller than she had the summer before, her legs longer, her toenails redder.
Rachel Charlene Lewis [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]I[/mks_dropcap] keep losing my colouring; I am a blob of human. I should probably see a therapist, but for now I’ll stick to drinking a lot of...
Taylor Basso [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]T[/mks_dropcap]he cab was long gone but they were still standing in the same spot where they got out. Mario had handed the driver a twenty, didn’t even...
Davey Davis [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]T[/mks_dropcap]he Falcon is caged into its lot by prickly pears and a queue of stunted palms. Beyond it sprawl the fallow rice fields, and beyond those the...
Jim Nason Here, above/ cracks in the buildings are filled with battered moonlight. —Elizabeth Bishop [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]K[/mks_dropcap]ent had snuck the tent and two sleeping bags...
Calvin Gimpelevich [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]I[/mks_dropcap] met Gina sobbing on the bike racks behind my work. She paused to hiccup and check her cell-phone display before heaving into another...
