Fifty-four periodicals submitted their 2008 issues to A.F. Moritz, editor of this second poetry anthology in the Best Canadian series. When Moritz was awarded the 2009 Griffin prize, the judges’ citation referred to “his formal grace”—an aesthetic which clearly underlies his choices. Of the magazines known for publishing edgier work, only PRECIPICe even makes the [...]

Along with disaster movies of the 1970s and all-night bowling alleys, strange little books are one of life’s great pleasures. Just such a creation is The Olive and the Dawn, a slim short story collection by Montreal author Ian Orti.
Dreamlike in tone, Orti’s work is at once odd and humorous. Linear time is insignificant; the [...]

It’s always interesting when a story is published years after it was written—56 years later in the case of Hubert Aquin’s Les sables mouvants. Interesting because Aquin committed suicide in 1977, leaving it slightly unpolished, long before editors got their hands on the text.

On August 30th, 2005, Abdulrahman Zeitoun woke on the second floor of his house in New Orleans to the sound of running water. The flooding of the city by Hurricane Katrina had begun. Water was flowing into his yard, and up around his house. Zeitoun had not been expecting this. He had surveyed the damage [...]