Mixed Tape: Rea Tarvydas’s How To Pick Up A Maid In Statue Square

This week, writer Rea Tarvydas shares the songs that power her brand new short story collection. Read and give a listen!  Music is a big deal for me as a writer. I use it in different ways. Sometimes it’s to condition me into a piece of writing and, in that instance, I listen before I […]

Firelight Interview Series: Donna Besel

I first encountered Donna Besel in Flin Flon, Manitoba. She was up north with a couple other writers giving readings, and I remember how she spoke of her growing understanding of her work being rooted in the boreal forest landscape. Since I’d started writing my way back into the Canadian Shield – my own formative […]

Firelight Interview Series: Julie Paul

This month’s Firelight Interview is with author Julie Paul. Her second collection of short stories, The Pull of the Moon, was chosen by the Globe and Mail as one of the best 100 books of 2014. “This is writing of emotional veracity with an edge, of humour alongside gravity, of darkness tempered with blithe optimism,” wrote Rover […]

Character Study

These days, I’ve been working on my new novel, narrated by a young woman called Melonie Barnett (unless, of course, I decide to change her name). The story grew out of three linked short stories – Empty Nest, which you can read in the latest issue of The New Quarterly; Rhubarb, which will be in Oberon Press‘s 15: […]

Writing (Reading) with Soul

At the beginning of this year, I had a transcendent experience. Dark night, reading into it, I finished The Lowland by Jhumpa Lahiri and rolled over in bed, my arm around the book, holding it close. It’s been a long time since I’ve felt such a strong connection to a novel, this feeling like I […]