Last year I read 11 of the longlisted titles for The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and with the recent announcement of the 2024 longlist I was prompted to reflect on 2023’s selections. Three of the short story collections I’ve already written about—Talia Laksmni Kolluri’s What We Fed to
This morning, the 23rd edition of Canada Reads program launches. I’ve missed the voice of a career writer in the program in recent years and now, with Heather O’Neill’s inclusion (whose Lullaby for Little Criminals was a previous Canada Reads winner) as a champion, my affection for the program’s
GauZ’ is a short-form of his tribal name, Gauzorro, bestowed on him by his grandmother. She’s the person who got him thinking: “thinking about Africanness, thinking about the stories we tell and how we tell them, and thinking about [his] relationship with language and through language with the people
In a short story by Carol Shields, the narrator receives too many social invitations for the same weekend evening and decides to stay home and read Jane Austen instead. I make decisions like this, too, which is why I read 201 books (54,498 pages) in 2023. In terms of
Kaggsy and Lizzy are hosting this event for the fourth January February (thanks, Reese!) here’s a snapshot of the independently published books I’m reading right now. The first two I ordered from ig Publishing back in December, but there were issues with shipping (coming across the border from the United
