Middle-grade. Contemporary. The book opens with the 12 year-old Sunny St. James about to enter surgery for a long-awaited heart transplant. With a penchant for gallows humour, rash decisions, and secret poetry, Sunny is committed to seizing the opportunity presented by her new heart – in the face of painful friend-drama, the sudden return of …
A collection of short stories by one of the current giants of speculative fiction. A pretty wide range of lengths, tones, and kinds of stories. I think novel length work actually shows off her brilliance more effectively, but I definitely enjoyed this. One good measure of that is the fact that even with short story …
A revised and updated version (published in 2018) of Katsiaficas’ classic book (originally published in 1987) on the uprisings of 1968, notable as the first attempt to understand the peak years of the New Left in a truly global context. There are definitely some quirky elements to this book. I’m not convinced, for instance, that …
Sound studies. Indigenous sound studies, to be precise, by Stó:lō scholar Dylan Robinson. The centre of the work is consideration, through very close and careful attention to a range of works and performances, of the various ways in which settler art music and Indigenous music get put in relation and taken up. That might seem …
Cole Rockarts is a labour and community organizer, and a member of Free Transit Edmonton. Scott Neigh interviews them about the importance of public transit and about the growing effort to make it public, accessible, high quality, and free. It wasn’t too long ago, at least in the Canadian context, that the idea of free public transit did not …
Sidrah Ahmad-Chan and N.A. are members of Rivers of Hope, an organization based in Toronto whose “mission is to dismantle Islamophobia, racism, and all related forms of oppression” in order “to create a safer and more equitable world for us all.” Scott Neigh interviews them about Islamophobia in Canada and about the work they are doing to address it. …
A novella by a fairly new sci-fi/fantasy author whose debut short story collection I read earlier this year and liked. Features two twenty-somethings precariously employed in low-wage retail jobs in a big box store – a sort of low-rent Ikea knock-off – who just broke up a few days before. A customer wanders into one …
Contemporary fiction. Picked it up because I saw a few bookish people online speak well of it and I thought it might be a pleasant diversion, even if it’s a bit outside my usual range, and it mostly was. The story was pretty predictable but engagingly told. The writing did once in awhile go for …
Max ZB is a musician and photographer, and a member of the core organizing team for the Toronto-based queer and trans community arts festival Bricks and Glitter. Bricks and Glitter is a collective response to a lack in the present, and an insurgent act towards what the world could be. Its mission statement begins, “We are a trouble …
Just finished an interview with Sharon Gregson about the $10 a Day Child Care Campaign from the Coalition of Childcare Advocates of BC. Listen for it on Talking Radical Radio in a few weeks!