We are happy to announce that our annual PRISM international Non-Fiction Contest is now open for submissions. We are absolutely delighted to introduce our judge from across the pond: Jonathan Kemp! Jonathan Kemp’s debut novel London Triptych (Myriad, 2010) was acclaimed...
Heart Berries
Terese Marie Mailhot
Doubleday Canada
Review by Cody Caetano
Often when I’m reading memoir, I’ll remember a quote from a misguided Neil Genzlinger, who penned “The Problem With Memoirs” for The New York Times in 2011: “There was a time when you had to earn the right to draft a memoir… Sure, [Amazon] has authors who would be memoir-eligible under the old rules. But they are lost in a sea of people you’ve never heard of” (italics mine). It is important to note that marginalized memoirists, especially early-career Indigenous women, Two-Spirit, and queer folks, have fraught histories with Genzlinger-types, their “old rules” and antiquated tastes that mar the merit of writing, publishing, and participating in the predominantly white spaces of the literary world. And then along comes Terese Marie Mailhot, a Salish First Nation woman from Seabird Island Indian Reservation with the assertion that memoir “functions as something vulnerable in a sea of posturing” (137). And it is in vulnerability that Mailhot effectively rejects the moth-eaten straightjacket that would otherwise restrict the inventive, decolonial confession of Heart Berries.
Continue reading Decolonial Confession: A Review of Terese Marie Mailhot’s Heart Berries
Chelene Knight’s debut poetry collection, Braided Skin, was celebrated as a vibrant telling of mixed ethnicity and urban childhood poverty. Her sophomore book Dear Current Occupant, a creative nonfiction memoir, is a nuanced account of growing up in Vancouver’s Downtown...
We’ve had the honour of publishing so many outstanding pieces of writing in the past year. We’re pleased to announce that the following authors and their pieces from recent issues of PRISM have been forwarded to the National Magazine Awards competition. (Essays)...
Review by Amy Kenny Becoming Unbecoming By Una Arsenal Pulp Press, 2016 This graphic novel is labelled memoir, but a better categorization might be subconscious. That’s the word that comes to mind reading Becoming Unbecoming—an examination of violence, misogyny,...
PRISM is proud to present an excerpt from our 2016 Creative Non-Fiction Contest winning piece, “Choosing Your Poison” by Krista Foss. The full piece is forthcoming in our Winter issue (55:2), arriving on magazine stands and in mailboxes shortly. This...
Review by Will Preston Evicted by Matthew Desmond Penguin Random House, 2016 Right now, as you read this sentence, somebody in the United States is being evicted. Most likely they’re black; most likely they’re a woman. Most likely it’s...
Matthew Hollett is a visual artist and writer in St. John’s, Newfoundland & Labrador. He makes books and other interactive works that investigate landscape and memory through photography, writing and walking. His work has most recently been published in...
After weeks of careful reading and deliberating over so many quality works of non-fiction, PRISM international is elated to announce the long list for this year’s CNF contest! These are the twelve pieces currently under consideration for the shortlist and the...