"The past presses so hard on the present, the present is badly bruised, blood brims under the skin." These lines from Brenda Shaughnessy's poem “Nachträglichkeit”* fit beautifully with Darren Greer's new novel, Advocate: Not only because much of Advocate is preoccupied with memory, with what the characters carry with them
At the "Modern Families" roundtable at this year's IFOA, Rowan Hisayo Buchanan explained that it only felt natural to build her characters with the seemingly endless details that comprise their lives, their selves. Identity is clearly at the heart of her much-lauded debut, Harmless Like You, and a good part of
This is the award's 42nd anniversary and the prize is announced on the evening of October 11, 2016 at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon in the Toronto Reference Library. This year's finalists for the 2016 Toronto Book Awards are Howard Akler's Men of Action (a memoir), Ann Y.K. Choi's Kay’s Lucky Coin Variety (a novel), The
"My Stella, girls get attacked everywhere." Stella's Kookom -- her grandmother -- states her truth blnntly. She has lived it, is living it, has survived it and is surviving it. Although, as Lou says: "We have all been broken in one way or another." House of Anansi, 2016 The Break is
"I was never sure exactly what I wanted. I guess I wanted to be popular, and beautiful, and smart, and in love," Charlotte observes. Groundwood Books, 2016 She comes from Kibi, Eastern Region, Ghana, where some believe the women to be beautiful but cantankerous. Now Charlotte is eighteen years old,
