“I used pop culture…as a kind of glue to hold me together when I was hurtling through disaster…jamming a piece of pop culture into an absence in my life, no matter how poorly matched, seemed fine. It seemed like the only, no, the best thing to do,” (Sookfong Lee 4). Author Jen Sookfong Lee has always …
“What follows are some of the most dangerous stories of my life: the ones I have avoided, the ones I haven’t told, the ones that have kept me awake on countless nights. These are the stories that have haunted and directed me, unwittingly, down circuitous paths,” (Polley 3). Screenwriter, director, and actor Sarah Polley encounters …
A very exciting and hard to believe update, but my short story “A Guided Meditation for the End” has made the gritLIT 2023 Writing Contest Shortlist! Thank you so much gritLIT for this amazing honour!
Sometimes, you have prior knowledge about weird saints (especially canine ones), other times strange saints come to you. Such is the case of Saint Margaret who I learned about from my sister’s teenage not-Catholic co-worker. This one’s for you!
“Witches were never capitalists. We were the thing that stood in the way of capitalism, which is just the engine of the patriarchy, after all. Witches were not all killed by fire. We are the fire,” (Dimaline 133). Lucky St. James is not so lucky. Her beloved Metis mother Arnya died when she was young, she’s …
I received this book from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange for an honest review. Caroline is the daughter of The Prophet and excited for her Divine Birthday, when the Angels will come and impregnate her. She knows her boyfriend Ian will make a great father; he’s promised her he read all the materials and is fully ready …
Sometimes I wish it was enough to just say that I was feeling sad, but there’s always been a taboo against that. I’m not the only person who’s felt obligated to say that they were fine when they were anything but, to stitch a smile on my face and pretend to be happy.
“One step forward, two steps back. You think this house is going to be a real windfall and then – boom – it’s haunted,” (Hendrix 153). When Louise Joyner learns her parents have died in a car accident, she’s understandably heartbroken, but she doesn’t want to go back home. She doesn’t want to leave her five-year-old …
“Guilt casts a spell like the one cast by despair. The spells of love and hope don’t linger like the others,” (Johnston). When fourteen-year-old Ned Vatcher comes home from school after the first snowstorm of the season he finds his house locked, the family car missing, and his parents gone. Word spreads across Newfoundland about the …
“I don’t want to talk about the rain or the trees or the…guilt I feel every single minute of every single day. And if I write it all down, I want to do it in pencil so I can rub it straight back out again, erasing that whole part of my life so it smudges …
Sarah O'Connor 