Taylor Basso [mks_dropcap style=”square” size=”35″ bg_color=”#505556″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]T[/mks_dropcap]he cab was long gone but they were still standing in the same spot where they got out. Mario had handed the driver a twenty, didn’t even...
Latest Stories
Hunting for Otters: a Review of Ben Ladouceur’s Latest Collection of Poems
By Shannon Webb-Campbell Poetry is inherently queer. At the core of a poet’s craft is an ability to toy with language in a way a prose or fiction writer can’t. There are no rules in poetry, only desires. A poet can write three lines and call it a poem, whereas a novelist must adhere to an arc of a...
Because We’re Going to Camp Mockingee
Shannon Webb-Campbell in the truck, on the way up, we talk around the meaning of marriage, we find an uncharted knowing driving down dirt roads, passing sheep, old barns, soon-to-be-made memories, alpacas by the time we make it to the highway, we conclude, love is truce, a pact to honour and...
Jane Byers
Jane Byers (Nelson, BC) “Many years ago in Toronto, I had the pleasure of seeing Ann-Marie MacDonald and her mother on stage at Five Feminist Minutes. Her mother read tea leaves and Ms. MacDonald provided comic relief. Somewhere in the thick middle of Adult Onset, the lesbian protagonist...
Amber Dawn on How We Write Each Other
Interview by Matthew Walsh Writer, filmmaker, and performance artist Amber Dawn has released a new collection of poems this year, titled Where the Words End and My Body Begins. Her previous works, Sub Rosa and How Poetry Saved My Life: A Hustler’s Memoir, have garnered wide acclaim and...
Catching Fire (Or Waiting For You)
Lynx Sainte-Marie I stand by the window. The night endures, and shadows are suffered by streetlamps. They mourn for the darkened lull of True Winter: that stillness where light is starved, begging for penance. For a while I had sat by my desk, looking busy. My eyes moved silently along the...
When Nothing Looks Familiar: a Review of Shawn Syms’s New Collection of Short Stories
BY TREVOR CORKUM “We all had our own reasons for what we were about to do,” says the eleventh-grade narrator in Shawn Syms’s story “Get Brenda Foxworthy,” one of the standout stories in his stellar debut collection, Nothing Looks Familiar. In a collection that skillfully mines the inner lives of...
Underworld
Aaron Chan I don’t know why I’m here. Before I left home, I told myself it was because I didn’t want to listen to my mom’s grating voice anymore while she yelled on the phone. On the SkyTrain, I convinced myself that my soul aches, that after years of searching and countless failed attempts at...
Christopher DiRaddo
Christopher DiRaddo (Montreal) “I first read Andrew Holleran at gay camp. This was back in the early naughts when about twenty queer friends and I would get together every Labour Day for a weekend of camping, revelry, and relaxation. Looking back, it still feels magical. It was on one of...