Ron Schafrick If it was supposedly commonplace in the mythic suburban dream of the sixties and seventies for fathers to teach their sons how to throw a ball or how to make a fist to defend themselves, my father not only didn’t know it but he also would have regarded such things as useless and petty...
The Embassy
Matthew Walsh Still feel the nerve in my neck snap back at me, injury from when I fell down the stairs of the Embassy, stairs now vibrant with exes orange and aquarium light. If I was floating in the galaxy with fresh new stars when they put me in the tube shoot me to the moon my brain will appear...
Times I’ve Been Asked When I’m Due
Erin Stainsby 1 The first time it happened, I was at my first real job, Curves Fitness, a women’s circuit gym. I was 16. She was 71. She looked relieved when I wasn’t angry, but she grew uncomfortable when I began talking about the unflattering cut of my jacket. She needed me to forget her...
Queer As Fuck: A Video Interview
Interview filmed by Ulla Laidlaw, with videography by David Mesiha C. E. Gatchalian and Tanya Marquardt are two queer-as-fuck authors and theatre-makers. Settlers in Turtle Island, they were both raised on the traditional Indigenous territories of the West Coast (BC). Both were artistically reared...
Brief Dramas: A Review of Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous
Reviewed by Asam Ahmad Ocean Vuong, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous (Penguin Random House, 2019), 368 pp., $28.00. In his first novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, the poet Ocean Vuong creates scenes of magisterial beauty through a heartfelt and earnest exploration of grief, desire, pain, and...
The Unstable, Fluid Identity: An Interview with John Elizabeth Stintzi
Interview by Patrick Grace, managing editor John Elizabeth Stintzi is a non-binary writer and visual artist who was raised on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. A selection of their work is featured or forthcoming in Black Warrior Review, The Malahat Review, Ploughshares, and in their poetry...