Gabriel Lightfoot is the executive chef of the once-thriving Imperial Hotel in London. Pumped by his backers as a future star-chef, Gabe has a secret partnership to open his own restaurant, and plans to marry his gorgeous lounge-singing girlfriend. But then Yuri, a porter, is found dead in the hotel basement, and things start to […]
Literary
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Punk Rock Fun Time Activity Book, Aye Jay (ECW Press)
Sharpen your pencil and your inner mohawk for Aye Jay’s latest activity book (following Heavy Metal Fun Time Activity Book, among others). Sticking to the oldies, you can draw on Henry Rollins’ tattoos and graffiti the CBGB walls, colour in The Ramones and Patti Smith, or try your hand at Punk Libs (Dead Kennedys’ “California […]
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Shandi Mitchell breaks ground
Buses roll by frequently. Dog-walkers stroll past, some stopping to chat with coffee-drinkers sitting in a line of chairs and tables. Cyclists pull up and lock their bikes. It’s an everyday scene, an intersection of activity that Shandi Mitchell might well describe. A screenwriter and filmmaker by trade, her first novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, […]
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The Muppet Show: Meet The Muppets (Boom! Studios)
Boom! Studios, a smaller big comic book publisher, launched their new Boom! Kids line earlier this year, which features comics based on the Disney-owned properties Pixar and The Muppets. Time will tell if this arrangement lasts now that Disney owns Marvel. Hopefully nothing will happen that affects the Muppet Show comics that cartoonist Roger Langridge […]
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Under This Unbroken Sky, Shandi Mitchell (Viking Canada)
In Depression-era northern Alberta, Theo Mykolayenko returns to the family homestead an almost-broken man. He was imprisoned for breaking bureaucratic regulations regarding his own wheat. (He’d similarly suffered under the Ukraine’s Stalinist regime.) Shandi Mitchell, a screenwriter and producer (see story on page 32), describes Theo’s slow movements, the family’s uneasy readjustment, with trimmed, precise […]
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By the book: literary news round-up
It’s been a quiet summer, literary-wise, but book season is upon us, heavier than last weekend’s lame hurricane. Next Thursday, September 3, is Shandi Mitchell‘s book launch at Pier 21 (6:30pm, reading at 7pm) for Under This Unbroken Sky. This is the first novel for the film producer-director (Baba’s House), which has attracted Canadian, American […]
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Harmonics, Jesse Patrick Ferguson (Freehand Books)
Ferguson divides his poems into two parts, “Fundamental Tones” and “Overtones.” In the first part, Ferguson offers short, declarative lines in “Norval,” stating “Morrisseau’s paintings prove/there are no new pigments.” In part two, Ferguson extends line-lengths a little and lets images linger and resonate a little longer in “Shaman Traveler to Other Worlds For Blessings,” […]
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Q&A with the Hali Slam team
Stephanie Lent Stephanie Lent, 24, began her career in the Vancouver poetry scene, impressing everyone with how both dirty-minded and articulate she could be. Michael Kimber: How would you describe your poetry? Stephanie Lent :Roses are red Violets are violet if my poetry was an airplane I would be the sexy pilot MK: What is […]
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Wednesday Comics (DC Comics)
Six weeks ago, DC Comics unleashed one of the most ingenious ideas to hit the stands in years. While publishers everywhere are rushing to make books smaller, digital and more portable, DC boldly released Wednesday Comics, a giant-ass newspaper-sized collection of superhero comic strips by some of today’s biggest stars. This delightful format pays tribute […]
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Great Thing echoed in the Fall
In Some Great Thing (2003) and now Fall, Colin McAdam investigates a disappearance. True, in each book, someone actually disappears, but late in the novels’ progress. The more important disappearance for McAdam is how some people conceal themselves from others, receding from the world, despite remaining physically in it. Of course, this behaviour has consequences. […]
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February doesn’t grow old
For 25 years, Helen O’Mara has been living with the ghost of her husband Carl, who died, along with 83 other men in 1982 when the off-shore oil rig Ocean Ranger sank off the coast of Newfoundland. A historically true story that shattered many lives, Moore filters a painful event through one woman and her […]
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Stuart Ross’ synaptic fireworks
To be inside Stuart Ross’s head: that would be some display of synaptic fireworks. Of course, all the oohing-and-aahing grows a little tired as, paradoxically, the unexpected and absurd becomes the expected and the accepted norm. What’s he gonna try now, one asks a few times over the course of these 23 mostly truncated stories. […]