The Town Crier

The Town Crier operated as a hub for criticism and commentary, connecting a community of writers, readers, and commentators through social media, and focusing on the interplay of literary opinion in and around the city of Toronto until its closure in February 2021.

• A Walk Through the City

  By André Forget | March 23, 2015

  André Forget claims walkability is crucial to mythology in his op-ed about Orhan Pamuk, Amy Lavender Harris, Shawn Micallef, and Canada's post-war urbanism

• Rebecca Mead and Abstract Place

  By Julienne Isaacs | March 20, 2015

  Julienne Isaacs debates the abstracted place in the literary imagination through George Eliot’s Middlemarch, Robert Pogue Harrison, and Rebecca Mead

• Interview: Sue Goyette

  By André Forget | March 18, 2015

  Sue Goyette discusses moving to Nova Scotia, the ocean, growing up on Montreal’s South Shore, enviro-politics, and playing to manage to despair

• Canadian Literature After Nationalism

  By André Forget | March 16, 2015

  André Forget recounts what Lee Maracle, George Elliot Clarke, Lenore Keeshig-Tobias, and Rinaldo Walcott said at 20 Years of Writing Thru Race

• “Imagining Impractical Ideas About Bodies”

  By Phoebe Wang | March 13, 2015

  Lucas Crawford on being CWILA’s 2015 Critic-in-Residence, trans and genderqueer narratives and stereotypes, “Academic Breakfast,” gendered mental illness

• Interview: John K Samson

  By Adam Klassen Bartel | March 11, 2015

  Adam Klassen Bartel interviews John K. Samson of ARP Books and The Weakerthans about Winnipeg, regional writing, Canadian literature, and peripatetics.

• CanLit: From Calcified to Cape Town

  By André Forget | March 9, 2015

  Town Crier editor derides self-conscious CanLit category in Hugh MacLennan and Emily Keeler, urges recognizing periphery of empire in Hage, Brand, Nasrallah

• Bums, Bikers, and Tattoo Parlours

  By Jason Freure | March 6, 2015

  Richard Suicide’s graphic novel, Chroniques du Centre-Sud, is a counter-memorialization of a now-demolished slum in downtown Montreal.

• Interview: dalton derkson

  By Jessica Bebenek | March 4, 2015

  dalton derkson talks W.H. Drummond, Al Purdy, bill bissett, P.K. Page, Fred Wah, shocking the Ottawa poetry scene, and what it means to be a Canadian poet.

• Where We Are: The Place of “Place” In Contemporary Canadian Writing

  By André Forget | March 2, 2015

  Editor-in-Residences announces “Where Are We,” debates over Northrop Frye, Italo Calvino, Michael Crummey, and place criticism in a globalized Canada.

• Boyden’s The Orenda: All Bets Are Off

  By Julienne Isaacs | February 27, 2015

  Isaacs on The Orenda, Poems from Guantamo, Laurie D. Graham, Roland Bleiker, Wab Kinew, Sami al-Hajj, and Stephen Lewis.

• Kisses of Acadian and Gobs of Québécois

  By The Town Crier | February 25, 2015

  Puritan staffer reviews Denise Duhamel poem about Jessice Paré and Québécois celebrities that treads unwittingly into péquiste political rhetoric.