I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes From The End of the World (Arsenal Pulp Press) Available Now “Reading is for losers, but watching TV is cool.” These were the opening remarks from award-winning author Kai Cheng Thom at the release of her book, I Hope We Choose Love: A Trans Girl’s Notes […]
Literary
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Rebecca Rose wants you to remember Before the parade
Before The Parade (Nimbus Publishing, $19.95) Available now In 2016, journalist and queer activist Rebecca Rose sat down to coffee with local gay elder Robin Metcalfe. He told her that his friend and lesbian elder Anne Fulton had recently died. Fulton was a founding board member of the Gay Alliance for Equality—the first gay and […]
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Garry Leeson’s The Dome Chronicles will inspire you to go off the grid
The Dome Chronicles (Nevermore Press, $24.95) Halifax Signing Coles Scotia Square Thu Jan 9 noon-2pm “It wouldn’t be fair to say that everything that happens around here is funny, but anything that wasn’t, I’d shy away from,” explains Garry Leeson. “This is meant to be a humorous book.” The Dome Chronicles is Leeson’s first […]
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Irène Oore’s The Listener says it all
I rène Oore grew up listening to stories her mother, Stefa, told her. They were not fairy tales or coming-of-age quests. These stories were about Stefa surviving the Holocaust in the notorious Warsaw Ghetto created for Jews in Second World War Poland. She told Irène about the struggle of securing food, shelter and safety for […]
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Calvin Lawrence’s Black Cop tells all
# BlackLivesMatter justifiably draws attention to how racism affects Black civilians—but what about Black police officers? In his recently released memoir Black Cop, Calvin Lawrence recounts the racism he experienced as a Black police officer in Halifax and across Canada. In 1969, Lawrence was one of the first Black men recruited by the Halifax Police […]
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Review: Nosy White Woman won’t make you work
There are some nice moments in Martha Wilson’s collection of 16 short stories. She describes a child’s grandfather as “the silent presence” who communicated through his wife. She recounts how an elderly woman accessed a neglected memory of a family friend when a “pocket door in her mind slid back.” And she explains how, to […]
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Sean Michaels Wagers double or nothing
Does art imitate life or does life chase art down the road, copying its particular posture? For author Sean Michaels, it’s always been a bit of both. “I’d been chewing on questions of luck and the meaning of life for a long time—anyone who does creative things and wants people to look at it, anyone […]
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Tell me a story
My Hair is Beautiful In the late aughts, comedian Chris Rock released a documentary called Good Hair. Rock was inspired to get to the root of the relationship between Black women and their hair when his three-year-old daughter asked him, “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?” It’s a shame she didn’t have Shauntay […]
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AfterWords, after all
AfterWords Literary Festival Oct 2-6 Various locations afterwordsliteraryfestival.com A fterWords is a brand-new multi-day literary festival with an emphasis on representation and accessibility. Local literati mainstays Stehpanie Domet (a Coast contributor) and Ryan Turner have been talking for years about starting an international literary festival here at home. But recently the pair teamed up with […]
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Mckayla Eaton’s Summoned casts a spell
You may have glimpsed Mckayla Eaton hunched over her laptop at Uncommon Grounds or Trident Booksellers & Cafe. But while you were focused on your daily caffeine fix, Eaton was thinking (and writing) about something a bit more magical than a caramel macchiato. Eaton’s debut novel, Summoned, is the first book in a young-adult fantasy […]
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Fall Arts Preview: Four local reads you’ll love
Are You Kidding Me?!: Chronicles of an Ordinary Life Lesley Crewe has written a boatload of novels. One of them, Relative Happiness, was made into a feature film and enjoyed by audiences at the (then) Atlantic Film Festival in 2014. Crewe is known for her long-form fiction, but she’s also known for taking the details […]
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Fall Arts Preview: Get lit(-erary) with these events
Wed Oct 2-Sun Oct 6 Afterwords Literary Festival The brainchild of some of very best and brightest folks putting pen to paper—Stephanie Domet, Sue Goyette, Stephens Gerard Malone, Rebecca Thomas and Ryan Turner—Afterwords aims to bring top-notch writers, both local and visiting, off their pages and into listening rooms around town. Treat your brain to […]