Displacement
My first book came out in 2012. Over the past six years, I’ve been lucky enough to give readings at universities, cultural centers, neon-loud bars, gardens, community colleges, and public squares.
Issue 42: Summer 2018
Introduction
A Particular Sensibility
The point of having a guest editor is to get a particular person’s sensibility to shape the section, and I didn’t see how I could do that unless I read every story that was submitted.
Fiction
Seven Letters to an Unknown Godhead
Dear —, This letter already contains a false start, as I don't know how to address you.
Poetry
Goat
Quite unprepared for its irrelevance / the mind goes wandering
Essays
The Strange Case of CanLit’s Disappeared Black Poet
how does one/ write/ poetry/ from a place/ a place structured/ by absence/ One doesn’t. One learns to read the silence/s. —M. NourbeSe Philip
Faith, Literature, And The Delicate Question Of Truth
Growing up with depression in a Muslim household can be a strange experience.
Barbarism as Civilization: White Afghanistan and the Alt-Right
I encountered the phrase "White Afghanistan" a few months ago, while doing rudimentary research about the odd, and seemingly oxymoronic, concept of "White Sharia."
Interviews
“Resisting the Singular Voice": On Canadian Hip-Hop
I remember very clearly watching one of the breakdancing movies, Breakin’ or Beat Street, and hearing the soundtrack and thinking, "Wow. What is that sound? How is it being made?"
“Sounding that Precarious Existence:” On R&B Music, Technology, and Blackness
Scale is an often-useful geographical concept, providing a means through which to organise the world hierarchically, identify connections, determine impacts.
Letters with Three Nigerian Poets
In 2015, David Ishaya Osu’s poem “Playthings” appeared in The Puritan. The next year, he sent us an interview with fellow Nigerian poet Adeeko Ibukun.
Reviews
“If I don’t pick up my phone to look, is anything really happening to me?”
Sarah Selecky’s first novel Radiant Shimmering Light offers a satire of the self-as-brand phenomenon in the social media age
Storytelling and Cruelty: A Review of Miriam Toews’s Women Talking
Any ripped-from-the-headlines premise faces the question of distance: How can an author access real events faithfully and effectively without further violating the people who experienced them?
Everybody Bleeds
Few scenes from modern life carry as much pathetic dissonance as the tyrant laid low.
