Category Archives: Guest

A letter to the reader of Listening in Many Publics, by Jay Ritchie

Dear Reader, People often ask me: Why do you write poetry? I don’t think I have ever given a satisfying answer. To me, it’s like asking, Why do you watch the rain when it falls? Why do you listen to the wind when it blows through the trees? Why do you like marzipan? I write […]

A letter to the reader of NORMA, by Sarah Mintz

Dear Reader, I’d like to contextualize my book NORMA a little bit. NORMA came out of handwringers, a book of flash fiction published with Radiant Press in 2021. handwringers was, at least in part, a research project about my Ashkenazi ancestry, and the little I knew about it met with popular instantiations of that culture […]

Q & A: Erica McKeen, Winner of the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize (Literary Fiction)

“Tear is a bold, unflinching bildungsroman that moves, chimera-like, between the real and the imagined; among the confusions and traumas of youth; from the humane to the monstrous. And therein author Erica McKeen accomplishes the truly remarkable. While walking in the steps of such gothic icons as Mary Shelley and Shirley Jackson, McKeen manages to forge […]

Q & A: Jennifer Falkner (Above Discovery)

“Falkner’s stories are dark, transportive, and intimately detailed character studies. Her expansive interest in history is apparent, ingrained in the minutiae of each fiction [wherein] looking backward, the constraints of the past are unexpectedly and undeniably revealed as intertwined with those of the present. …[An] exciting debut.” —Quill & Quire, Starred Review This spring, we […]

Reading Guide: Jennifer Falkner’s Above Discovery

Our books are great conversation starters, and who better to start those conversations than the authors themselves! You can find all of our available reading guides here. Rarely do I want to write stories about the lives of kings or generals. That ground feels well covered by now. In Above Discovery, I wanted instead to […]

Reading Guide: Kate Siklosi’s Selvage

Our books are great conversation starters, and who better to start those conversations than the authors themselves! You can find all of our available reading guides here. Selvage, as the title suggests, reckons with the unfinished seams of our existence and how those messy ends are also new beginnings. But perhaps above all else, this […]

Reading Guide: ryan fitzpatrick’s Sunny Ways

Our books are great conversation starters, and who better to start those conversations than the authors themselves! You can find all of our available reading guides here. What do people have to forget, deny, and ignore to keep things moving forward in the way they have been? Or, to put it more optimistically, how do […]

Take this deepest dive into sparkling water with Francine Cunningham

Blog, featured image. Text reads, Waterfalls That Punch You in the Throat, by Francine Cunningham

Waterfalls That Punch You in the Throat: The Elusive Beverage Sparkling water. Some love it. Others hate it. And some, like me, are obsessed. I don’t drink alcoholic or caffeinated beverages, and I am not a huge fan of sodas and juices—I’ve gotta really be craving it to coat my mouth in that much sugar. […]

Things I Didn’t Know About Publishing a First Book Until I Published My First Book  

Samantha Garner’s debut novel The Quiet is Loud has been shortlisted for the 8th Annual Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Literary Fiction! To celebrate, we asked Sam to look back on her first year of publication. Here, she shares that journey, a lifelong dream that “actually happened“. It’s been a year since my debut novel […]

October in the Soo

Shelly (Tal) Bressette portrait

October in the Soo       Poetry and photography by Shelly (Tal) Bressette Staring out the hotel window at choppy river water rippling fast below, cold as Algoma Steel. Tom Thomson shades of muted rust and gold rim distant shorelines and unseen winds billow beneath playful gulls’ wings. Stacks of spongy clouds climb above […]