#14summerprompts: After
As the heat fades and the fallen leaves start to stick to our shoes, it’s natural to start to wonder: where do we go from here? Our summer chapter has closed, and autumn has begun. How do you deal...
#14summerprompts: Endings
Prompt #13: Endings As writers, we think a lot about endings. In stories, there are good endings and bad endings, true endings, and endings that feel forced or contrived. But in real life, endings are not always straight forward:...
#14summerprompts: Secondary
There are times when we feel forgotten, extraneous, and burdensome to the people or institutions in our lives. Sometimes the coin flips the other way around and we realize the people in our lives who are not our top...
Loneliness, Polyamory, and Possibility in Zoey Leigh Peterson’s Next Year, For Sure
Review by Carly Rosalie Vandergriendt
It’s tempting to call Next Year, For Sure, a novel about a millennial couple that happens upon polyamory, a “light” read. Because in many ways, it is a light read. Award-winning short story writer and debut novelist Zoey Leigh Peterson’s prose is deceptively addictive, the kind of writing that can easily keep a reader up until two or three in the morning. (I read it twice; I stayed up late finishing it both times.) Her main characters, nine-years-and-still-going-strong couple Chris and Kathryn, are sensitive and self-aware yuppie Vancouverites who verge on being likeable to a fault. The novel opens with Chris telling Kathryn he has a crush on Emily, a woman he met at the laundromat. Kathryn suggests he take her out on a date, the plot takes off at a brisk pace, alternating between Chris and Kathryn’s point of view as they navigate opening their relationship up to a third person over the course of the year that follows.
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#14summerprompts: Loss
Prompt #10: Loss Loss is a complicated, sometimes all encompassing, experience that comes with waves of pain, confusion, anger, and denial. Sometimes it’s a temporary loss, and other times it’s something more permanent. Whatever the case, loss is something...
I Have Been Learning Cree My Whole Life: An Interview with Artist Joi T. Arcand
Interview by Michelle Cyca. Photo by Red Works: Nadya Kwandibens
Joi T Arcand is a multidisciplinary artist from Saskatchewan, currently living in Ottawa. A nehiyaw iskwew from the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, Joi’s body of work includes representations of the Cree language in photography and other mediums, and she has been exhibited across Canada, including at Vancouver’s grunt gallery. She co-created kimiwan, a quarterly publication for and by Indigenous visual artists and writers that published eight issues between 2012 and 2014. Her piece Northern Pawn, Southern Vietnam appeared on the Spring 2017 cover of PRISM international.
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#14summerprompts: Uncorking
Prompt #9: Uncorking While sitting around a table with friends, we often open up over food, wine, or simply the feeling of genuine connections. This is the process of uncorking: getting to know others, and opening up ourselves. Over...
#14summerprompts: Refill
Prompt #7: Refill A warm hug on a bad day, a heart on the top of your latte, or a bus driver that waits as you run for it. These can be some of the things that restore our...
#14summerprompts: Destiny
Prompt #6: Destiny Finding money on the ground, running into someone you know halfway across the world, cancelling your uber because of a long wait time and then getting matched with one whose driver gives you life-changing advice: are...