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#Featured Reads3

Issue 170

Harold

Harold looks down at the floor. “Sorry. I’ve been trying to quit,” he sighs. “I didn’t think it was that noticeable.”
Roger wants to lecture him that smoking is nothing more than drawn-out suicide. That one day, his lungs will revolt and metastasize their anger. And long before he’s meant to reach his demise, he will lie in the dark of a bedroom, encasing him like a tomb and drown in his own fluids. “Promise me you’ll try harder to stop, Harold.” Read more.

Daryl Bruce in
Issue 170

My Father’s Shovel

Content to feed
squirrels and mice on the patio,
while I mix manure into new
beds, dig holes for fruit trees.
Lean on his shovel and thank
every yellow-throated crocus for
showing up.
Read more.

Bren Simmers in
Issue 170

I Break Myself Open

I’m silent on Palestine, at first. There’s no shortage of guilt or shame in that. Everyone who’s been involved in solidarity work knows that there are consequences for advocating publicly for the cause. People lose their jobs and get blacklisted. Others have doors slammed shut in their faces. That’s never stopped me before but, for […] Read more.

Irfan Ali in

#Online Exclusives3

The Writer’s Corner

May 9, 2024

Launched: Cocktail by Lisa Alward

Lisa Alward’s first book, Cocktail, was published by Biblioasis last fall. Alward’s stories have won The Fiddlehead Prize and the Peter Hinchcliffe Short Fiction Award and have appeared in Best Canadian Stories as well as The Journey Prize Stories. She grew up in Halifax and worked for several years in literary publishing in Toronto before moving with her young family to […]

Laura Rock Gaughan in
May 2, 2024

Carolyn Smart’s Writing Space

38 years ago when my husband and I bought this house in the middle of the woods we added on two rooms: a bedroom in the attic, and my writing space. It’s a large and airy room, filled with light, and has now become a sort of greenhouse for which I am especially grateful in […]

Carolyn Smart in
April 30, 2024

Mina Sharif’s Writing Space

I do love to write at the library, but I can only do that if the high school kids aren’t hanging out in the study section. Otherwise, I hear the sound of a considerate teenager next to me, trying to eat chips quietly, torturing my nervous system in the process. When I’m home, I sit […]

Mina Sharif in