“The characters get to talk back all the time”: An Interview with Michael Blouin
His latest novel Legend appears with TalonBooks this fall, and a subsequent novel, Skin House, appears with Anvil Press in Spring of 2018.
Canadian literature
“These poems are extroverts”: An Interview with Emily Izsak
Emily Izsak is one of the sharpest young poets I’ve seen in some time. She is currently in her second year of U of Toronto’s MA in English and Creative Writing program. Her work has been published in Arc Poetry Magazine, The Puritan, House Organ, Cough, The Steel Chisel, The Doris, and The Hart House Review.
Netflix’s ANNE Bridges the Divide Between Us and Our Childhood Dreams
The ways in which Anne, the mercurial, earnest girl at the center of the story lived, learned, grew, and blundered her way through life resonated with me, a perennial outsider and dreamer, wounded by things that, like Anne’s cruel treatment at the hands of the Hammonds and the orphanage asylum, lurked in the corners of things—never forgotten, but making the joys of a safe refuge all the more poignant, warm, and vital.
A Parliament of Poems: An Interview with Parliamentary Poet Laureate, George Elliott Clarke
Given that Toronto poet, editor, critic, novelist and librettist George Elliott Clarke is Canada’s seventh official Parliamentary Poet Laureate (2016-17), I thought it would be interesting to explore some of his experiences now that he’s a bit more than halfway through his two-year term.
The Funniest Writer You’ve Never Read
The funniest writer you’ve never read is a deceased Canadian named Mordecai Richler. The author of ten novels, a short story collection, and several books of essays, Richler was—and is—hugely famous in Canada. That he is not well known in this country is possibly a product of our curious parochialism as American readers. I’ll begin…