Ashley-Elizabeth Best The bench is moist from my sweat. I push my right knee down on its centre, left leg anchoring my body to the floor. My fingers grip the dumbbell as I methodically begin pulling the 50lbs up and down, my bicep flexes and tears, each pump tightening the slight curve of my inner...
Interview by L’Amour Lisik, associate prose editor In this interview with Plenitude prose editor L’Amour Lisik, Shani Mootoo talks about her participation in Room’s Growing Room Literary & Arts Festival (taking place March 11 to 15 in Vancouver) as well as her own writing and projects...
Leslie Joy Ahenda the nice ones all got shot. a woman knots her fists & disregards her joints—swelling means her blood is not yet on pavement. in sleep a woman majesticizes a man unshackled. wakes to a man praying only for his brothers. please. nigga fronts like the lust in his eyes is a yellow...
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...
James Collier cloud unsettling little winter, in April it is all local, grappling with small stakes and nothing real, Caeneus unknowable to the body I feel, glance down, glazed and terrible it is all so apathetic, the snow smothers what is not already home, and Caeneus, I am sorry, but the crush is...
Brian O’Neill Jud wasn’t agoraphobic when he moved in with me. We had been friends for years and he was one of the most social people I knew, which was why I was happy to invite him to live with me. (I mean, that and I could’ve used help with the rent.) The circumstances were rough—his ex’s...
Roxanna Bennett after “Bilingual Pathways” by Dominik Parisien In Paris the air tastes like pain, ancient, golden, Gauloises, Gitanes, paint the skin with guttersweat grease. I learn to limp through the Louvre, loving the Winged Victory of Samothrace...
Interview by Rob Bittner Here is the final of four interviews and story excerpts as part of our Youth Spotlight project. For details on this series, see our original post. “Sushi Tears” by Emma Bishop chronicles the process of coming out while also interrogating gender norms in the context of...
Want to know your best bet at getting published? Curious about our history and favourite pieces? Look no further! Patrick Grace, our managing editor, was recently interviewed by Lambda Literary about Plenitude’s history, our focus on queer and trans lit, what we’re looking for in submissions, and...
