“I’d like to talk about Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice (1912), a novella that continues to haunt and inform me almost twenty years since I first read it. For those unfamiliar with it, here’s a brief synopsis. The main character, Aschenbach, is an aging, accomplished man of letters sojourning...
“I love and am inspired by the work of Suzette Mayr, who received much well-deserved attention for her fourth novel, Monoceros, but each of Mayr’s novels is a funny, topical, and fearless exploration of the subject at hand. The Widows, Mayr’s second novel, is populated by old ladies who are...
by Matt R. Loney Like a conscientious hiker, Deborah Ellis treads skilfully through the historical terrain of her thirtieth work, Moon at Nine. The revolutionary tumult of 1980s post-shah Iran might not seem like fertile territory for a YA novel with queer and feminist themes, yet Ellis’s superbly...
“Like many other readers I discovered Rebecca Brown’s voice through the unnamed caregiver in Gifts of the Body, her book of remarkably plain-spoken meditations that came from the AIDS crisis. I don’t know anyone else who writes like her, who takes the kind of chances she does. In The Terrible...
Joelle Barron All summer I’m growing: sugar snaps, raspberries, fat tomatoes streaked red and green. Plants are easy to love. My dog stretched out on the spruce-shade lawn is easy to love. Flutter in my belly might be you, might be gas. Too early to tell, but every night I drip milk. I...
“GB Jones—Toronto-based artist, filmmaker, musician and ‘zine editor—is probably best known for her pencil drawings, many of which satirize Tom of Finland’s work with a sexy lesbo twist. Jones’ drawings depict the macho-dyke ghosts of queer punk fantasy—girl gang potential realized, complete...
by Trevor Corkum There are books that come along once in a blue moon that split you open. Not simply because of the subject matter, although Michael V. Smith’s My Body Is Yours covers ground I am familiar with—struggles with masculinity; growing up queer in a small, secretive town; feeling...
Congratulations to the sole Canadian Lammy winner, Casey Plett! Her debut short fiction collection, A Safe Girl to Love, won in the category transgender fiction. She was in excellent company — other books shortlisted included For Today I Am a Boy, by Kim Fu, and Moving Forward Sideways Like a...
The incredible thing about Local Heroes, the series of short films made by local artists at the Toronto Inside Out Film Festival, is when you start to see the influence artists, actors, and organizations have on each other’s work. New Zealand–born drag queen and certifiable local hero Judy Virago...
