Essays

On Music | Interview with Niko Stratis

July 3, 2026July 2, 2026 by Amy Keating

Hi Niko! Thank you so much for your time. I must be a fangirl first and let you know I’ve been following your work for some time and I am thrilled to be talking to you today. There are so many exciting themes in “Dad Rock” that I want to ask you about! Though, I’m going to begin with a bit of a bummer question because lately I am so often thinking about grief and mental wellness amongst my peers. When you discuss Jason Molina’s Farewell Transmission in your essay We’re all Supposed to Try, you capture your own memories with the song and you also present bits of Molina’s story. But I was moved by how careful you were to discuss his life and work without overly romanticizing his struggles, while still acknowledging the reality that he lived with alcoholism and ultimately died quite young.

Cover of A Steady Brightness of Being: Truths, Wisdom, and Love from Celebrated Indigenous Voices edited by Sara Sinclair and Stephanie Sinclair. The cover is ivory with two foxes, fish, plants, and suns facing each other. in the middle is a moon and a dragonfly.

A Steady Brightness of Being, edited by Sara Sinclair and Stephanie Sinclair

April 27, 2026 by Aren Morris

A Steady Brightness of Being is a moving collection of letters by celebrated Indigenous Voices from across Turtle Island (North America) with titles like “Dear Relative,” “Letter to Clouds,” and “Dreaming, Listening, Belonging.”

Excavating Identity from a Near-forgotten History: Go-Between Girl by Andrea Gunraj

April 25, 2026April 25, 2026 by Nadia Ragbar

Go-Between Girl, by Andrea Gunraj, is a memoir told across a collection of essays that examines what it means to be the descendent of the racialized indentured class.

Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the Twenty-first Century by Derek Beaulieu

April 18, 2026 by Pearl Pirie

Beaulieu asks, why are we writing?

In the Field by Sadiqa de Meijer

December 13, 2025November 29, 2025 by Ken Wilson

What I wasn’t expecting about In the Field was just how much I love it. It is a remarkable book: thoughtful, nuanced, beautifully written, and thoroughly researched.

Wrestling with Cadence by Dennis Lee

September 22, 2025September 21, 2025 by Sarah Butland

You may know Dennis Lee by the lyrically nonsensical poem and book, Alligator Pie, which came out in 1974.

Because Somebody Asked Me To: Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene by Guy Vanderhaeghe

February 2, 2025February 1, 2025 by Jeff Bursey

The personas writers invent (often subconsciously) for their non-fiction usually attempt or pretend to show more or less of the private self. In Because Somebody Asked Me To, bemedaled and oft-rewarded Guy Vanderhaeghe favours a straight speaking tone, whether reviewing Richard Ford or talking to historians.

Cover of The Canadian Shields by Carol Shields. THe cover is of a sepia toned wall, with a picture of Shields in winter clothing, looking down and away from the camera.

The Canadian Shields: Stories and Essays by Carol Shields, edited by Nora Foster Stovel

January 28, 2025January 28, 2025 by Michael Bryson

Her estate has recently emptied the cupboards with a release of Shields’s previously unpublished and/or uncollected stories and essays.

Cover of Five Manifestos for a beautiful World. The cover is a midtone blue, with two off-set black half-circles on it. The title and authors are written in white text on the black shapes.

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World by Phoebe Bosewell, Saidiya Hartman, Janaína Oliveira, Joseph M. Pierce, and Cristina Rivera Garza, with an introduction by Christina Sharpe

January 22, 2025January 21, 2025 by Catherine Marcotte

Hosted at York University, the free, public events gather writers, artists, and thinkers from various disciplines and geographies to discuss the most pressing issues of our time. The insights shared at the live and streamed events are later transcribed and expanded in artful books published by Alchemy, a Knopf Canada publishing program, in collaboration with York University.

Bait & Switch by Jim Johnstone

December 17, 2024 by Pearl Pirie

Do you ever wish poets would include essays to situate their poems? Some frank prose that ponders what their own poetry comes out of or means to do? We can’t follow every crumb trailer life, and not every aesthetic reaches universally. Consequently this book of essays, Bait & Switch: Essays, Reviews, Conversations, and views on …

On Music | Interview with Niko Stratis

A Steady Brightness of Being, edited by Sara Sinclair and Stephanie Sinclair

Excavating Identity from a Near-forgotten History: Go-Between Girl by Andrea Gunraj

Do It Wrong: How to be a Poet in the Twenty-first Century by Derek Beaulieu

In the Field by Sadiqa de Meijer

Wrestling with Cadence by Dennis Lee

Because Somebody Asked Me To: Observations on History, Literature, and the Passing Scene by Guy Vanderhaeghe

The Canadian Shields: Stories and Essays by Carol Shields, edited by Nora Foster Stovel

Five Manifestos for the Beautiful World by Phoebe Bosewell, Saidiya Hartman, Janaína Oliveira, Joseph M. Pierce, and Cristina Rivera Garza, with an introduction by Christina Sharpe

Bait & Switch by Jim Johnstone

The Coincidence Problem: Social Dispatches 1999-2022 by Stephen Osborne

Best Canadian Essays 2025, selected by Emily Urquhart

I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself by Adelle Purdham

Excerpt: I Don’t Do Disability And Other Lies I’ve Told Myself by Adelle Purdham

Marrow Memory: Essays of Discovery by Margaret Nowaczyk