Literary
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Light a candle; carry a torch to the shortest day
It began, as most things do, with a feeling: A feeling of disbelief at the clock. A feeling that a year that’s been a months-drawn-out dusk couldn’t possibly get by with less sunlight. A feeling that there must be others who feel this way, too. “If I need this, I bet other people need this,” […]
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An advent calendar of poetry: December 1
Editor’s Note: Each day from December 1 -21, Halifax’ poet laureate Sue Goyette will write a new poem to share with the city on The Coast’s website and social media. “If I need this, I bet other people need this,” she told us on day one—and we think she’s right. In a year that’s felt […]
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Celebration of Life
Editor’s Note: From the moment you read the forward of Peter Counter’s new book Be Scared of Everything, your pulse will sit up a bit straighter, tying its shoes so it’s ready to race. “The names and identifying details of the humans mentioned in this book have been changed,” it reads. “The names of the demons […]
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Roxane Gay knows the way
Roxane Gay at Afterwords Literary Festival Sunday Oct 4, 4pm Zoom; eventbrite.ca for tickets and details It’s early morning Halifax time when Roxane Gay answers her call from The Coast. The New York Times bestselling author and journalist has just finished self-isolating in Iceland, so she’s understandably keen for an efficient chat (after all, her first […]
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Behind the verse with Arielle Twist
It wouldn’t be fair to say Arielle Twist is on the come-up: The multidisciplinary artist and poet has been ripening words on the vines of her mind since at least spring of 2017, when writer Kai Cheng Thom became a mentor to her. She’d been seeing the world with the eyes of an artist for […]
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Afterwords Literary Festival releases 2020 lineup
Maybe the worst purchase of 2020 was a calendar, but now you officially have something to write (and highlight, and underline) in yours: Roxane Gay (yup, the author of Bad Feminist, Hunger, Difficult Women and a million tweets so biting they’re corrosive) is taking part in this year’s Afterwords Literary Festival. The fest—which debuted last […]
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Six questions with Sue Goyette, Halifax’s new Poet Laureate
Hot off yesterday’s news that the city has selected the incomparable Sue Goyette—author of seven poetry books and heart-disarming lines like “I bulldozed a dream on waking from it last night. Drove around, pushing, until it was compact and easy to carry“—to be its latest Poet Laureate, we called up the Masterworks Award winner to […]
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The science of memoir writing with Ami McKay
Daughter of Family G (Penguin Random House) Available now In 1895 Michigan, a seamstress named Pauline Gross confided in a pathologist at that she feared she’d die young. The pathologist, intrigued, asked what she thought she’d die of. Cancer, she said—just as it had killed many of her relatives. At the time, Gross didn’t know […]
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In Desmond Cole’s Skin
Book Launch: Desmond Cole in Conversation w/El Jones Feb 13, 7pm Alumni Hall, King’s College 6350 Coburg Road Free Desmond Cole’s activism and journalism have focused national attention on systemic racism and police brutality in Canada. Now, he’s launching a book on the subject. In The Skin We’re In, Cole chronicles one year of anti-Black racism […]
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Toni Morrison’s magnificent sense of self
Evelyn C. White on Toni Morrison’s Sula Halifax Central Library, 5440 Spring Garden Road Feb 18, 7pm, Free It was the late 1980s and I wasn’t feeling Toni Morrison’s latest release, Beloved. Not even a titch. This, despite my respect for a cadre of African-American writers then so enraged by the “sometime-y” treatment Morrison […]
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Christy Ann Conlin’s high Watermark
Watermark (House of Anansi) Available now In her new collection of short stories—already in its second printing—Christy Ann Conlin explores connections between water, life and death. Conlin grew up in Turners Brook on the Bay of Fundy. Nowadays, she lives outside Wolfville. Her stories have been influenced by her oceanfront life and her reverence for […]