In the introduction to her Selected Stories, Mary Lavin wrote in 1981 of the process she used to choose the stories to be included. One from each of her eleven short story collections, she explains. Hoping that "readers would not be presented with a bookful of stories with which they
"You don't know how to life your life anymore and you start drowning in it." House of Anansi, 2012 That's the thing about depression, Lynn Crosbie explains in an interview with Shelagh Rogers on CBC Radio. She describes what happens when you really start looking at the world, with
Some readers will be unsettled by the title alone. (I had early exposure as a young reader to Don Marquis' archy and mehitabel, so it didn't work that way for me.) Most readers will be unsettled by the story. (As activist and artist Banksy has said: “Art should comfort
Raami is "just a spit past seven" in 1975, when the year of the Tiger shifts to the year of the Rabbit. It is the Khmer New Year, and Raami's parents disagree about whether it is appropriate to celebrate when there is so much misery and fighting. Raami is pleased
The epigraph to Ru is the reader's first clue that this novel embraces complexity. The reader learns that the word, in French, means a small stream, literally (and, figuratively, a flow -- of tears, blood or memory). Whereas, in Vietnamese, 'ru' means a lullaby, drawn from what is
