Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror: Author Spotlight – Maureen Moynagh
August 20, 2020
Maureen Moynagh is Professor in the Department of English at St. Francis 
Xavier University, in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. She teaches postcolonial literature and theory, and she has published in the areas of African and African Diaspora literatures, transnational feminist collaborations, anti-imperialist travel writing, and child-soldier narratives. She received the Joe Weixlmann prize of 2019 for a recent essay about Nalo Hopkinson’s speculative fiction, published in the African American Review.
Her editorial can be read on our website at link https://canlit.ca/article/introduction-decolonial-revisions-of-science-fiction-fantasy-and-horror/
Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.
Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror Author Spotlight – Lou Cornum
August 13, 2020
Lou Cornum is a Diné writer born in Arizona and living now in Brooklyn, New York. They received their Masters Degree in English literature from the University of British Columbia and are currently an English literature PhD candidate at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Their dissertation is titled Skin Worlds: Science Fiction Theorizing in Black and Indigenous Science Fiction since the 1970s.
Their editorial can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/introduction-decolonial-revisions-of-science-fiction-fantasy-and-horror/
Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Adrian De Leon
April 21, 2020
Adrian De Leon is an Abagatan (Southern) Ilokano writer and teacher from Manila by way of Scarborough. He is the author of Rouge (2018) and barangay (forthcoming 2021), and co-editor of FEEL WAYS: A Scarborough Anthology (2020). After receiving a BA in English (2014) and PhD in History (2019) at the University of Toronto, Adrian is now an Assistant Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. He lives in Los Angeles.
His poem “I, Wound” can be read on our website at canlit.ca/article/i-wound.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – David Martin
April 14, 2020
David Martin works as a literacy instructor in Calgary and as an organizer for the Single Onion Poetry Series. His first collection, Tar Swan (NeWest Press, 2018), was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award and the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize. David’s work was awarded the CBC Poetry Prize in 2014.
His poem “The Canals of Mars” can be read on our website at canlit.ca/article/the-canals-of-mars.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Sally Chivers
April 7, 2020
Sally Chivers is Director of the Trent Centre for Aging and Society and Professor of English and Gender & Women’s Studies at Trent University. She is the author of The Silvering Screen: Old Age and Disability in Cinema (2011) and From Old Woman to Older Women: Contemporary Culture and Women’s Narratives (2003), and the co-editor of Care Home Stories: Aging, Disability and Long-Term Residential Care (2017) and The Problem Body: Projecting Disability and Film (2010). Her ongoing research focuses on the cultural politics of disability and aging, especially through literature and film.
Article
“‘Your own guilty story’: Rethinking Care Relations through David Chariandy’s Soucouyant”
Abstract
Apocalyptic visions of an aging population rest on negative assumptions about the costs and effects of increasing numbers of people with dementia. Such discourse emphasizes a desire for cure and amplifies the costs of care while ignoring the broader cultural implications of dementia. Literary portrayals offer the opportunity to broaden the figurative landscape to raise questions about what it means for a population to age. Drawing on age studies, this contextualized close reading of David Chariandy’s Soucouyant: a novel of forgetting offers another way to think about global aging, the implications of memory loss, and how care work affects relationships. The novel’s never named narrator concocts “guilty stories” that orient him to his mother’s dementia but do not adequately account for the care work his mother’s friend, Mrs. Christopher, has done over decades. Thus, the novel pertains to the political economy of aging by surfacing connections among care relations, cultural memory, and dementia.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Franco Cortese
March 31, 2020
Franco Cortese is an experimental poet living in Thorold, Ontario. His poetry was longlisted for the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize and has appeared in Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, filling Station, ditch, and others. His recent chapbooks include aeiou (No Press 2018), uoiea (above/ground press 2019), teksker (Simulacrum Press 2019), no mỡ, no mo, no mò (nOIR:Z 2020), lo vỡ yo uo (above/ground press 2020), wú hu uu mù iu (above/ground press, 2020), gó go gó (The Blasted Tree 2020), lő co co lỗ (Timglaset, 2020) and lù vũ yǔ (Timglaset 2020). He also has leaflets, booklets and other poetic ephemera out through The Blasted Tree, Penteract Press, and Spacecraft Press. His work has been published both within Canada and internationally, and has been anthologized in Concrete and Constraint (Penteract Press 2018) and Science Poems (Penteract Press 2020).
His poem “errorgatio*” can be read on our website at canlit.ca/article/errorgatio.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Aislinn Clare McDougall
March 24, 2020
Aislinn Clare McDougall is the Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital Humanities in the Department of English at the University of Utah. She grew up in Lumsden, SK, where she began her academic studies at the University of Regina. She completed both an MA and PhD in English at Queen’s University in Kingston, ON. She specializes in contemporary North American literature and Digital Humanities in both critical and creative contexts.
Article
“The Decolonization of Print, Digital, and Oral Spaces in Jordan Abel’s Injun”
Abstract
In Injun, Jordan Abel aggressively destabilizes print literary space by excavating “91 Western novels” available on Project Gutenburg for every instance of the word “injun.” While Injun offers a decolonial scrutinization of these novels wherein Abel uses their words against them—his extractions from the novels becoming reclaimed territory, refashioned into poetic expression—Abel’s poetic enterprise is inherently digital. This article explores Injun as a project of literary decolonization that uses digital technology to reclaim the colonial language that has been used to define and disempower Indigenous peoples. While it explores how the digital can catalyze an intervention in literature’s colonial roots, it further addresses the crucial tension between print and digital as both predominantly white spaces. Ultimately, Injun instantiates an Indigenous presence digitally via digital excavation, experimental typography and Abel’s digital, oral performance, all of which showcase an uncomfortable, but necessary breaking down of the English language in meatspace and cyberspace.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Cyril Dabydeen
March 17, 2020
Photo credit to Frank Scheme
Cyril Dabydeen’s work has appeared in numerous magazines, including Poetry/Chicago, Prairie Schooner, The Critical Quarterly, and in the Oxford, Penguin, and Heinemann Books of Poetry and Fiction. His latest books include My Undiscovered Country/Stories (Mosaic Press, Oakville); God’s Spider/Poetry (Peepal Tree Press, UK); and My Multi-Ethnic Friends/Stories (Guernica Editions, Toronto). He edited Beyond Sangre Grande: Caribbean Writing Today (Mawenzi House, Toronto). He is a former Poet Laureate of Ottawa (1984-87). He has taught Writing for many years at the University of Ottawa.
His poem “Under Lock & Key” can be read on our website at canlit.ca/article/under-lock-key.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Jamie Paris
March 10, 2020
Jamie Paris is an Assistant Professor of English at Corpus Christi College at the University of British Columbia. His doctoral dissertation focused on the tragedies of William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe. Dr. Paris’ work is focused on intersectionality, with a specific interest in whiteness studies and critical race studies. This has led him to spend more time studying contemporary Canadian and First Nations literature and culture. This paper is part of a larger research project exploring nondominative masculinities in contemporary Canadian Black and First Nations literature.
Article
“‘Men break when things like that happen’: On Indigenous Masculinities in Katherena Vermette’s The Break”
Abstract
This article addresses inner-city Métis and Indigenous Masculinities in Métis novelist, documentary filmmaker, and poet Katherena Vermette’s The Break. The critical reception of Vermette’s novel has focused on the strength and resilience of the women in the text. While this novel primarily focalizes Indigenous and Métis women, Vermette is also interested in masculinity, and in articulating ways of being male that will allow Indigenous and Métis women not to need to be as strong and resilient. Vermette rejects models of Indigenous and Métis masculinity that focus on perceived deficits in Indigenous and Métis men while showing the impacts of “good men” on Indigenous women. She contrasts this with the impact of toxic settler masculinities, masculinities that create fragility. In this way, this is a novel about masculinity and the North End of Winnipeg, and the way that growing up in living in the North End complicate Indigenous and Métis masculinity.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.
60th Anniversary Author Spotlight – Meredith Quartermain
March 3, 2020
© Imaging by Marlis 2012
Meredith Quartermain’s fourth book of poetry, Lullabies in the Real World, appears in spring 2020 from NeWest Press. Her first collection, Vancouver Walking, won a BC Book Award for Poetry, and Nightmarker was a finalist for a Vancouver Book Award. Other books include Recipes from the Red Planet (finalist for a BC Book Award in fiction); I, Bartleby: short stories; and U Girl: a novel.
Her poem “Half Way” can be read on our website at canlit.ca/article/half-way.
Canadian Literature issue 239, 60th Anniversary, is available to order through our online store.