We’re holding onto summer with a flashback to our Summer Issue 55:4, which was stacked with amazing contributors. Among them was Beasa Dukes, author of “The Heart-Hum.” Read the first of the three sections of this amazing piece below and check out our interview with them here. Weren’t able to pick up a copy of the issue during the summer? No worries, you can order one here!
Continue reading Issue 55:4 Flashback: The Heart-Hum by Beasa Dukes
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...
Interview by Kyla Jamieson.
Get to Know is a new PRISM interview series dedicated to introducing you to our favourite writers and contributors by way of a range of questions that touch on quotidian details, public spaces, risk-taking, and advice for young writers. This week it’s our pleasure to introduce you to Jessica Bebenek (@notyrmuse), a writer and transdisciplinary artist currently pursuing an MA at Concordia University in Montreal. Her non-fiction piece “For J” appeared in PRISM’s Spring 2017 issue after being shortlisted for our Non-Fiction Contest; this piece is part of Writing for Men, a non-fiction collection she’s currently working on.
Bebenek’s poetry chapbook Fourth Walk was released this Spring by Desert Pets Press, and she is currently completing her first full collection of lyric poetry, No One Knows Us Here. This Fall, the knitted tapestries in Bebenek’s k2tog series, which explore how women speak to each other through both ‘art’ and ‘craft,’ will be displayed at The Gladstone’s Hard Twist exhibition, alongside the launch of her accompanying chapbook of knitting patterns (k2tog), forthcoming from Berlin’s Broken Dimanche Press. You can find further info on publications and readings on Bebenek’s website.
Interview by Jasmine Sealy. Photo by Carly Shaia. Beasa Dukes writes ghost stories. But these stories are far from ephemeral. These stories are about spirits that are born of the earth, that inhabit bodies and influence our every waking...
Prompt #11: Movie Moments There’s something in the way you lock eyes (or don’t, maybe it’s nerves), an August evening warmth, a late bus that perhaps allows for things to feel somehow organic and both scripted. Maybe something in...
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.
Continue reading Loneliness, Polyamory, and Possibility in Zoey Leigh Peterson’s Next Year, For Sure
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...
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.
Continue reading I Have Been Learning Cree My Whole Life: An Interview with Artist Joi T. Arcand
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...