by Sean Michaels It feels like I’ve recently been struggling quite a bit to write my reviews, but usually that has something to do with getting to the heart of what I feel about the books I’m reading and why. Oftentimes, I’ll have difficulties when there are objective problems with a story, but I still…
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by Madeleine Thien My first encounter with Do Not Say We Have Nothing was when I saw it on the Giller long list. Out of all the presumably great stories that made the list, the synopsis held my interest the most. Thien’s book follows a group of people as they struggle through the Chinese Cultural…
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by Cordelia Strube In my final review related to the International Festival of Authors, something that hasn’t happened since I think The Fault in Our Stars repeated itself. You see, all the characters in On the Shores of Darkness, There is Light have very clear voices, but one in particular had the wrong one initially….
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by Karen Connelly For the second in my series of reviews related to the International Festival of Authors Thunder Bay events comes another poetry collection, Come Cold River by Karen Connelly. In comparison to Country Club, Connelly forgoes the large range of topics McGuire covers in his poems to pursue a more vivid, narrative verse….
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by Andy McGuire In the lead-up to the International Festival of Authors events in Thunder Bay, I decided to take it upon myself to read something by each of the participating authors. While I have enjoyed past events, I figured this would give me a bit more background so that I can get more out…
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by Mike Barnes The Adjustment League follows The Super, our dangerous and somewhat mentally unbalanced narrator. While his condition leaves him catatonic every November, he fights for those who can’t defend themselves in his functional moments––“adjustments,” as he calls it. When a call for help sends him to investigate the mistreatment of a dementia patient,…
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by Michael Martineck You can see the influence of authors such as Ray Bradbury and George Orwell on a work like The Milkman, but I suppose most science fiction can probably trace back to both of these authors. (Speaking with Martineck at this year’s When Words Collide, he mentioned the influences of Philip K. Dick…
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by Doug Diaczuk I honestly can’t get a lot of writing done in three days. (It probably took me about that long to write this review.) And here comes Diaczuk, the show-off. Not only did he write a book over that period, not only did that story win the 38th 3-Day Novel Contest, but that…
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by Douglas Livingston If you’re anything close to a regular reader of my reviews, you probably caught a bit of my love of Beat literature, and you can probably imagine my excitement when I discovered that we had something of a Beat poet right here in Thunder Bay. Of course, while I have had the…
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by Dave Eggers Let’s talk briefly about gender in writing. (I’m hoping I can broach this subject in a way that doesn’t sound ignorant.) At this time, I’m specifically concerned about how the gender of the author relates to narrators and protagonists. You see, whether an author focuses on characters who share their gender or…
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