Memoir & Biography

So-Called Normal: A Memoir of Family, Depression, and Resilience

At 12 years old, Mark Henick knew he had mental-health issues: anxiety, depression, insomnia, and suicidal thoughts. At 15, he tried to kill himself. For those familiar with Henick’s wildly popular 2013 TEDx Talk, the ... Read More »

February 25, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

White Coal City:  A Memoir of Place and Family

By Robert Boschman

A deeply considered life might be laid out as a map, or a series of markings meant to keep record; White Coal City is a memoir made up of many significant moments, historical details, and ... Read More »

February 18, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Who Was Doris Hedges?: The Search for Canada’s First Literary Agent

By Robert Lecker

Ask any historian of Canadian literature to name the country’s first literary agent and the response you’ll likely get is Matie Molinaro. Founder of the Canadian Speakers’ and Writers’ Service, the Toronto-based Molinaro was at ... Read More »

January 21, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

All That Glitters: A Climber’s Journey through Addiction and Depression

By Margo Talbot

As a child, Margot Talbot frequently got locked out of the house by her mother, ostensibly to “teach her to play outdoors.” This is far from the height of abuse and neglect the young girl ... Read More »

January 21, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Natural Killer

By Harriet Alida Lye

Somewhere deep and secret in the body, a cell divides, and then each copy divides again. The growth is exponential, each new generation doubling the one that came before; soon it will be more than ... Read More »

January 4, 2021 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Hammer and Nail: Notes of a Journeywoman

By Kate Braid

Years back, I remember listening to Kate Braid read poems from Turning Left to the Ladies and being awed by the way she lyrically broke open the male-dominated world of construction – a field in ... Read More »

November 23, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

Working in the Bathtub: Conversations with the Immortal Dany Laferrière

By Adam Leith Gollner

In the introduction to his collection of interviews with celebrated Haitian-Canadian author Dany Laferrière, Adam Leith Gollner writes that his subject’s “narrators are always a version of himself.” There is no line that divides Laferrière’s ... Read More »

November 12, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Because They Were Women: The Montreal Massacre

By Josée Boileau; Chantal Bilodeau (trans.)

Anyone who has ever attended a vigil on Dec. 6 knows that there’s a certain protocol to be followed when remembering the victims of the Montreal Massacre: speeches are made about gender-based violence, both in ... Read More »

November 9, 2020 | Filed under: History, Memoir & Biography

Blood in the Water: A True Story of Revenge in the Maritimes

By Silver Donald Cameron

Scofflaw Phillip Boudreau of Isle Madame, off the southeast coast of Cape Breton, was the kind of guy who would threaten to burn down your house if he had a grudge. He’d steal your lobsters, ... Read More »

November 2, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

★ Reaching Mithymna: Among the Volunteers and Refugees on Lesvos

By Steven Heighton

The word “disillusion,” Steven Heighton posits, is something of an anomaly in the English language: a double-negative construction that yields not a positive synthesis but a negative. It’s a “paradox,” Heighton explains, using mathematical principles ... Read More »

October 1, 2020 | Filed under: Memoir & Biography, Reviews

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