After the War: Surviving PTSD and Changing Mental Health Culture

The body of the little girl lies bunched on the ground, her arms splayed forward. A few feet away is the bloated body of a man who could be her father or possibly her grandfather. ... Read More »

February 22, 2018 | Filed under: Health & Self-help

The Lost Girls of Camp Forevermore

By Kim Fu

When Kim Fu’s debut novel, For Today I Am a Boy, appeared in 2014, it was met with acclaim and awards, as much for its story – about a transgender Chinese-Canadian boy named Peter fighting ... Read More »

February 15, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Republic

By David Frum

David Frum is a conservative. He has been affiliated with both the right-wing U.K. think tank Policy Exchange and the American Enterprise Institute, and was a senior adviser to former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani ... Read More »

February 12, 2018 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

The Boat People

By Sharon Bala

“Exhaustion whenever he thought of the future; terror when he remembered the past.” That is the dark introduction to Mahindan, the protagonist of Sharon Bala’s debut novel. Along with nearly 500 other Sri Lankan refugees, ... Read More »

February 12, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Hysteria

By Elisabeth de Mariaffi

When approaching Elisabeth de Mariaffi’s taut and propulsive psychological thriller, it’s helpful to look at the controversial history of hysteria as a medical diagnosis, which has been used to degrade and control women for millennia. ... Read More »

January 26, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Dictionary of Animal Languages

By Heidi Sopinka

About a third of the way into Heidi Sopinka’s debut novel, the author describes a painting her protagonist, an artist named Ivory Frame, executes while still a student: There is a group of gluttonous grotesque ... Read More »

January 24, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

Edging Forward: Achieving Sustainable Community Development

By Ann Dale

With a constant stream of newsfeed images showing communities caught up in extreme weather events – catastrophic floods, droughts, and wildfires – juxtaposed against increasingly outrageous political stories and fake news, it’s often difficult to ... Read More »

January 24, 2018 | Filed under: Politics & Current Affairs

★ Zolitude

By Paige Cooper

Given how often the stories in Paige Cooper’s debut feature solitary characters flailing for connection, readers might be forgiven for assuming the title is just some kind of clever millennial distortion of the English word ... Read More »

January 24, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Short

★ This Is All a Lie

By Thomas Trofimuk

Readers will notice something amiss from the very opening of This Is All a Lie, the new novel from Edmonton writer Thomas Trofimuk. It might be that the first page is numbered 320, with the ... Read More »

January 22, 2018 | Filed under: Fiction: Novels

The Three Pleasures

By Terry Watada

The internment of more than 21,000 Japanese-Canadians, most of them in B.C., during the Second World War is a known but largely under-acknowledged black mark in Canada’s history. Justified by the War Measures Act and ... Read More »