The Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is essential reading. TRC, 2015 As a component of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the TRC's "mandate is to inform all Canadians about what happened in Indian Residential Schools (IRS)." The report is intended "to document
Many writers suggest that a motivation for telling stories is to set things in order, to make sense of what seems senseless. Little wonder that so many novels are preoccupied with loss and absence, abandonment and grief. In Melanie Mah's The Sweetest One, Chris (Chrysler) Wong thinks maybe she's cursed.
This month, I'm wholly enjoying the stories in the Short Story Advent Calendar (edited by Michael Hingston and designed by Natalie Olsen). The variety of the boxed set is fantastic, especially if you're looking for "new" short story writers to follow, but I generally read collections of works by a single
In which I discuss some of the skinny volumes which have kept me company while on the move, while heavier volumes (like Connie Willis' Crosstalk and Steven King's 11/22/1963) stayed home. Warsan Shire's chapbook is my skinniest book of the year. I finished reading it on a single commute, but
In the wake of my IFOA reading list and the literary prizelists of the season, my November reading felt relatively whimsical. Without duedates attached to the majority of my reading, it was a pleasure to slip into volumes which had sat untouched in recent weeks. Each of these three volumes covers,
