Erin Anderson 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...
Latest Stories
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...
no births this calendar year
Griffin Epstein my advice to future parents is be careful when you turn the bed notice who hears the argument...
Leo
Fraser Calderwood One time I broke Leo’s nose. He let the basketball bounce away and thwack the door of a parked truck and he pinned me on the driveway and sprayed blood on me from his nose. Specks of blood dried on the cement like my head was a stencil. I can say for certain we were twelve and it...
Skin Teeth
Alix Wood For months, we’ve planned to visit the New England Aquarium, where a new shark exhibit has opened. An open tank allows me to stick my hand in cold water and let it float, waiting for sharks the length of thigh bone to emerge from faux coral and swim. You watch me as a thin body crowds my...
Life Beyond the Binary: A Review of Joshua M. Ferguson’s Me, Myself, They
Reviewed by Jeremiah Bartram When I opened Me, Myself, They, I knew nothing about Joshua M. Ferguson. I didn’t know that as a political activist they had pioneered policy changes in Ontario and B.C. that now permit non-binary gender identification on birth certificates and driver’s licenses...
Adult Novelty
Alice Gauntley Iris figured she was pretty calm about the concept of sex shops, and like most feelings uncommon to teenagers, this was a nerve-wracking position for a teenager to be in. The first thing you should know about Iris is that at the time this story takes place, her defining purpose in...
