Author: leah

More good news for “Sunday in the Park With Hank”, the very much experimental 1920s New York ghost story I had in The Deadlands last July: it’ll be included in the first volume of Ansible Press’s Year’s Best Canadian Fantasy and Science Fiction this autumn.

I’m pretty unendingly proud of where this story takes itself, and looking forward to the rest of the table of contents!

The schedule is up for the Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize award ceremony, and I’ll be reading as part of it!

It’s a virtual event this year, part of Word Vancouver, and the stream kicks off Saturday, September 9, 2023 at 2:30 PM PST / 5:30 PM EST. There’ll be an announcement of the winners and readings from the winning and honourably mentioned poets.

Hope to see you there!

Some lovely and unexpected news announced last week, while I was away at a writing workshop: one of my short poems, “what Mama says”, received an honourable mention in the 5th Annual Muriel’s Journey Poetry Prize.

The prize is in honour of social justice activist and poet Muriel Marjorie, and it’s an extra honour to be part of something built around putting good in the world.

The piece will be published alongside the winners and other honourable mentions in this year’s chapbook from Three Ocean Press, and there’s an event in the works for Word on the Street Vancouver.

A new short poem live this week at Strange Horizons: “Notable Escapes” is about Harry Houdini/good Rabbi’s son Ehrich Weisz and not being small for anyone, and I am terribly fond of it.

The title comes from a heading on Houdini’s Wikipedia entry. There was no way I could read that and not start doodling with words.

As promised! This month was my reviewing residency at CAROUSEL Magazine, and all three pieces are now up:

“Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality”, CAROUSEL Magazine, May 10, 2023.

“Meghan Kemp-Gee’s The Animal in the Room”, CAROUSEL Magazine, May 17, 2023.

“The Ending Isn’t More Important than Any of the Moments Leading to It: A Narrative Review of Freebird Games’s To the Moon, Finding Paradise, and Impostor Factory”, CAROUSEL Magazine, May 24, 2023.

It’s a great mix of what I’m most interested in these days: climate fiction, different expressions of fabulism, poetry, literary video games, and the high-wire structural craft running through all of them. And it’s such a pleasure to write about work you really like: all three works could have supported whole essays by themselves.

I hope you enjoy, and keep a lookout for next month’s resident reviewer — and beyond! It’s going all year.

Event news: I’ll be reading at the online launch for Reckoning: Our Beautiful Reward, the special issue around bodily autonomy, on March 19th.

There are going to be draws, readings, book giveaways, and a few chances to not just talk about bodily autonomy, but organize around it. I’ll be reading “fertile week”, and the lineup of readers looks smart, thoughtful, and well worth hearing.

Straight-up: This is not going to be an emotionally easy evening for those of us affected by the past few years of this issue, but I think it’s going to be a fiercely rewarding one.

Carousel Magazine is doing something fun with their reviews section this year: a series of one-month takeovers by reviewers in residence, who’ll turn out one longform review, two short, and shed a little light on how critical practice works.

I’m going to be the Reviewer in Residence in May, and we’re going to hit an interactive fiction/video game trilogy, Canadian climate fiction, and either animal poetry or surrealist prose (haven’t made the final decision yet!).

This is shaping up to be bunches of fun, so tune in starting March!

The first public event of 2023 is coming up fast: A panel and discussion about climate fiction and the ecopoetics journal Reckoning next Wednesday, February 8th at the University of Notre Dame!

I’ll be there as Reckoning 5 poetry editor, alongside publisher Michael J. DeLuca, Our Beautiful Reward editor Catherine Rockwood, and Reckoning 7 poetry editor Tim Fab-Eme.

The event runs from 7:30pm onward, and since it’s my first in-person appearance since 2020, I’d love to see people there.

Stuck my head above the freezing cold ground this morning, and behold: “Sunday in the Park with Hank”, the terribly experimental 1920s New York ghost story I had in The Deadlands last July, has made the Locus Magazine Recommended Reading List.

So: that’s cool. 🙂 Congrats to everyone!

A new poem’s hitting print: “white squirrel season again,” which is unsurprisingly a very Toronto-centric piece, is in the new issue of Canthius alongside work from some excellent writers.

You can pre-order the issue now, or pick up a subscription for a little less than the cost of two. It’s perfect-bound, and just a really physically gorgeous journal.