Reviewed by Jeffrey Canton Lee Lai, Cannon (Drawn & Quarterly, 2025), 300 pp., $39.95. As a freelance reviewer and compulsive reader for nearly four decades, I can say honestly that Lee Lai’s Cannon is not only one of the best graphic novels I’ve read, but one of the best books, full stop. I’ve...
Gallery
A New Formalist Poet and a Filthy Whore: An Interview with Amber Dawn
Interview by James K. Moran I do not position my writing as a literary landscape for readers to find themselves in. I don’t think artists should be hitched with the responsibility of being representational — Amber Dawn Multifarious queer Vancouver author Amber Dawn defies easy categorization. An...
grammar of the river
I press my face to the bank. ….the mud smears my cheek with vowels. the water does not say my name, ….but it chews the syllables. stones shift like vertebrae, ….a spine grinding under weight. the current drags nails, hair, feathers— ….nothing it takes comes back intact. a...
Strata
Jake moved his knight. “How long are you going to drag this out?” The angular black horse had a white scar in place of its left ear. This was the same set where one of the white pawns had vanished around the time Jake’s sister was born, and then been replaced with a wooden one on a slightly smaller...
the salmon dream of dissonance
in the summer i swallow the sun …………and i cry when my bare feet touch the dirt in the costco i watch …………someone’s parents begin to separately plan their divorce in my dreams interdimensional …………parking lots are all the rage...
Queering Bay Mal Verde: A Review of Vigil by Susie Taylor
Reviewed by Eva Crocker Susie Taylor, Vigil (Breakwater Books, 2025), 248 pp., $22.95. Susie Taylor’s award-winning collection of linked short stories, Vigil, is groundbreaking in its subtle queering of rural Newfoundland. The collection opens with a piece from the perspective of the fictional...
