Any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely vindictive.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
SYLVIA TRAN
Poutine Pilgrimage
Review of poutine at Robson Fries in Tokyo.
Shyla Seller
Postal Lit
Review of "Long Live the Post Horn!" by Vigdis Hjorth.
Robyn Ludwig
Black Velvet, If You Please
The secret is in the velvet.
Michael Hayward
A Longing to Be Far Away
Review of "Fernweh" by Teju Cole.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Eaten to Extinction
Review of "Lost Feast: Culinary Extinction and the Future of Food" by Lenore Newman.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Michael Hayward
Dancing About Architecture
Review of "Utopia Avenue" by David Mitchell.
Jonathan Heggen
Korean Supper
Review of "Crying in H Mart: A Memoir " by Michelle Zauner.
Patty Osborne
Why White People Are Funny
Review of "Qallunaat! Why White People Are Funny" Zebedee Nungak and Mark Sandiford.
Anson Ching
Voyeur Galore
Review of "Captains of the Sands" by Jorge Amado.
Michael Hayward
Tree Lit
Review of "The Overstory" by Richard Powers.
Michael Hayward
Purveyors of Electric Fans
Review of "Clyde Fans" by Seth.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
JILL MANDRAKE
Older and Better
Review of "The Old Man in the Mirror Isn’t Me" by Ray Robertson.
Stephen Osborne
The Becoming of Vancouver
Review of "Becoming Vancouver: A History" by Daniel Francis.
Sara Cassidy
Flying the Coop
You can’t break eggs without making an omelette.
Michael Hayward
A Blindness at the Centre of Seeing
Cole’s most recent book, Blind Spot (Random House), a generous hardcover printed on glossy stock, presents Cole’s photographs on recto pages, with brief, allusive essays on the facing verso page.
Michael Hayward
Known to be Strange
Known and Strange Things (Random House) is a collection of Teju Cole’s essays and other short pieces, many of which have previously appeared in The New Yorker and elsewhere online.
Violence could not reach them only when they were distant as the moon, not of this world
JEROME STUEART
Fact
The Dead Viking My Birthmother Gave Me
“The first time I met him, he caused me to float to the ceiling"
Joseph Pearson
Fact
No Names
Sebastian and I enjoy making fun of le mythomane. We compare him to characters in novels. Maybe he can’t return home because he’s wanted for a crime.
Minelle Mahtani
Fact
Looking for a Place to Happen
What does it mean to love a band? A friend? A nation?
Christine Lai
Fact
Now Must Say Goodbye
The postcard presents a series of absences—the nameless photographer,
the unknown writer and recipient; it is constituted by what is unknown
Gabrielle Marceau
Fact
Main Character
I always longed to be the falling woman—impelled by unruly passion, driven by beauty and desire, turned into stone, drowned in flowers.
Mia + Eric
Future Perfect
New bylaws for civic spaces.
JUDY LEBLANC
Walking in the Wound
It is racism, not race, that is a risk factor for dying of COVID-19.
SADIQA DE MEIJER
Do No Harm
Doing time is not a blank, suspended existence.
Kristen den Hartog
The Insulin Soldiers
It was as though a magic potion had brought him back to life.
Steven Heighton
Everything Turns Away
Going unnoticed must be the root sorrow for the broken.
DANIEL CANTY
The Sum of Lost Steps
On the curve of the contagion and on the measure of Montreality.
Brad Cran
Fact
Potluck Café
It took me a million miles to get here and half the time I was doing it in high heels.
Carellin Brooks
Ripple Effect
I am the only woman in the water. The rest of the swimmers are men or boys. One of them bobs his head near me, a surprising vision in green goggles, like an undocumented sea creature. I imagine us having sex, briefly, him rocking over me like a wave.
MARCELLO DI CINTIO
The Great Wall of Montreal
The chain-link fence along boulevard de l’Acadie— two metres high, with “appropriate hedge”—separates one of the wealthiest neighbourhoods in Montreal from one of the poorest.
Michał Kozłowski
New World Publisher
Randy Fred thought that life after residential school would be drinking, watching TV and dying. Instead, he became the "greatest blind Indian publisher in the world."
BRAD YUNG
Lessons I’m Going To Teach My Kids Too Late
"I want to buy a house. And build a secret room in it. And not tell the kids about it."
Paul Tough
City Still Breathing: Listening to the Weakerthans
I wasn’t certain whether I was in Winnipeg because of the Weakerthans, or whether I cared about the Weakerthans because I care about Winnipeg.
Stephen Osborne
This Postcard Life
Spiritual landscapes and unknowable people captured on film, used to convey a message.
Hilary M. V. Leathem
To Coronavirus, C: An Anthropological Abecedary
After Paul Muldoon and Raymond Williams.
Bill MacDonald
The Ghost of James Cawdor
A seance to contact a dead miner at Port Arthur, Ontario, in 1923—conducted by Conan Doyle himself.
Ann Diamond
The Second Life of Kiril Kadiiski
He has been called the greatest Bulgarian poet of his generation. Can one literary scandal bury his whole career?
Caroline Adderson
Lives of the House
A basement shrine in her 1920s home inspires Caroline Adderson to discover the past lives of her house and its inhabitants.
Roger Deakin's Wildwood is a heady romp through the world’s forests and their entangled histories. Reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Michael Hayward
The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III
Michael Hayward reviews The Paris Review Interviews, Vol. III, a collection of discussions with the leading dramatists, poets and novelists of the past fifty years.
Leah Rae
The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland
Leah Rae reviews The Echoing Years: An Anthology of Contemporary Poetry and Translation from Canada and Ireland: "Finally, a comprehensive collection of fair-to-middlin’ verse for the multilingual."
Michael Hayward
From A to X
Michael Hayward reviews John Berger’s From A to X, a tale of anger, displacement and resistance.
Michael Hayward
Saudade
Michael Hayward reviews Anik See’s Saudade, a collection of essays to plunge you deep into the meanings of travel and place.
Michael Hayward
Edward Lear in Albania
Michael Hayward reviews Edward Lear in Albania, an account of the author's travels through the Balkans beginning in 1848.
Eve Corbel
Ebb and Flow
Eve Corbel reviews The Sea Lady by Margaret Drabble, a novel that takes place on land but is all about the sea.
Thad McIlroy
Failed Experiments in the Future of Publishing
Thad McIlroy reviews The Reaper by Steven Dunne.
Lily Gontard
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell uses statistical analyses to prove that location and timing are everything in Outliers: The Story of Success, reviewed by Lily Gontard.
Michael Hayward
Notes from Walnut Tree Farm
A peek inside Roger Deakin’s living, breathing farmhouse in the waning years of his life in Notes from Walnut Tree Farm, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Thad McIlroy
Slumdog Millionaire
Thad McIlroy reviews Slumdog Millionaire, a 2009 film by Danny Boyle.
Carrie Villeneuve
When You Leave Town
Carrie Villeneuve reviews a new album from an East Vancouver band that appeals to music fans of all ages.
Michał Kozłowski
The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess
“Adopt a reading pseudonym” is but one piece of advice offered in The Posthuman Dada Guide: Tzara & Lenin Play Chess by Andrei Codrescu, reviewed by Michal Kozlowski.
Michael Hayward
The Discovery of France
Michael Hayward reviews Graham Robb's The Discovery of France, a scholarly but entertaining history of France’s emergence in the modern era.
Leah Rae
The Chicken, the Fish and the King Crab
This edge-of-your-seat film follows a Spanish chef on his quest to win the prestigious cooking competition, the Bocuse D’Or. Review by Leah Rae.
Michael Hayward
The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs
Even the healthiest reader can uncover the fatal illness within thanks to The Complete Manual of Things That Might Kill You: A Guide to Self-Diagnosis for Hypochondriacs, reviewed by Michael Hayward.
Stephen Osborne
Kahn & Engelmann
Stephen Osborne reviews Kahn & Engelmann, a German novel by Hans Eichner hailed as a masterpiece in Europe.
Jennesia Pedri
Scumbags Behaving Badly
Jennesia Pedri reviews Gonzalo Riedel's wonderfully disastrous short story collection, Behaving This Way Is All I Have Left.
Thad McIlroy
The Celebrated Crad
Thad McIlroy reads Kilodney Does Shakespeare and Other Stories by Lorette Luzajic, the only book that discusses Crad Kilodney’s life and writing.
Michał Kozłowski
Sarajevo Marlboro
Michal Kozlowski reviews Sarajevo Marlboro by Miljenko Jergovic, twenty-nine (very) short stories set in Sarajevo during the Bosnian war of the early 1990s.
Daniel Zomparelli
Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry
Daniel Zomparelli reviews Rocksalt: An Anthology of Contemporary B.C. Poetry edited by Mona Fertig and Harold Rhenisch (Mother Tongue).
Todd Coyne
Black is Back
Todd Coyne reviews Black: The History of a Color by Michel Pastoureau, a book that "charts a European social history of the most symbolic and evocative colour on earth."
Michael Hayward
Beat Generation
Michael Hayward reviews Beat Generation by Jack Kerouac, a three-act play he wrote but never produced.
Patty Osborne
Banana Rose
Patty Osborne reviews Banana Rose by Natalie Goldberg.
Phrase books are tools of cultural globalization—but they are also among its casualties.
Stephen Henighan
Collateral Damage
When building a nation, cultural riches can be lost.
Stephen Henighan
Transatlantic Fictions
Coming to harbour in a new world.
Alberto Manguel
Arms and Letters
Science and the arts fulfil their functions to help us survive through the imagination.
Stephen Henighan
Reheated Races
Dividing and conquering local populations confines them to manageable administrative units.
CHERYL THOMPSON
Dismantling the Myth of the Hero
In a world dominated by heroes, difference is not tolerated.
Alberto Manguel
Achilles and the Lusitan Tortoise
“Have patience” and “Tomorrow” are two inseparable locutions in the Portuguese tongue.
Stephen Henighan
All in the Same CANO
For a brief period the band CANO gave shape to the dream of a bilingual Canadian culture.
Stephen Henighan
Residential Roots
"The hemispheric context reveals the roots of the residential school system...Destroying Indigenous cultures was a positivist policy from Patagonia to Dawson City."
LISA BIRD-WILSON
Occupation Anxiety
Lisa Bird-Wilson on UNDRIP, reconciliation, and the anxiety felt by Indigenous people in Canada.
Stephen Henighan
Not Reading
What we do when we absorb words from a screen—and we haven’t yet evolved a verb for it—is not reading.
Alberto Manguel
Library as Wishful Thinking
Libraries are not only essential in educating the soul, but in forming the identity of a society.
Stephen Henighan
Lethal Evolutions
Our society is formed on the assumption of a healthy immune system.
Stephen Henighan
Confidence Woman
The woman who called herself Tatiana Aarons gave me an address that led to a vacant lot.
Alberto Manguel
Léon Bloy and His Monogamous Reader
Dogged dedication grants a reader vicarious immortality.
Stephen Henighan
Plague
What we can—and can’t—learn from the plague
Stephen Henighan
A Pen Too Far
On March 5, 2006, a group of people gathered in a small Ontario city in the expectation of having books signed by an author who was not present.
George Fetherling
The Daily Apocalypse
The newspaper wars aren’t what they used to be.
Stephen Henighan
Taíno Tales
A package-deal paradise reputation curtails gringo knowledge of Dominican life.
Alberto Manguel
Art and Blasphemy
Faith seems to shiver when confronted by art.
Alberto Manguel
A Fairy Tale for Our Time
What can the Brothers Grimm teach us about the state of our economic system? Everything.
Alberto Manguel
Literature & Morality
Must artists declare their moral integrity?
Stephen Henighan
Flight Shame
Without air travel, family networks might have dissolved long ago.
Alberto Manguel
The Defeat of Sherlock Holmes
There’s something not quite right about the grid on which the game is played.
A short film featuring "Sewing Cabinet" by Julie Vandervoort, originally published in Geist 74.
Rob Kovitz
Question Period
Rob Kovitz compiles the pressing questions of the day—"How are they gonna beat ISIS?" And, "On Twitter, who cares?"
CONNIE KUHNS
The Ove Within
For Ove, the central character in the film A Man Called Ove there is nothing ahead but frustration, disappointment and sadness. “It’s just chaos when you’re not here,” he says to his newly departed wife as he lays flowers on her grave.
Roni Simunovic
Middle-Aged Soft Rock Band
The first thing John K. Samson said when he and his band stepped onstage at the Commodore Ballroom on February 2 was, “Hi, we’re a middle-aged soft rock band from Winnipeg, Manitoba.”
David Koulack
A Different Sort of Synagogue
David Koulack spends Yom Kippur in a packed gymnasium in Paris among a beehive of activity and a cacophony of sound.
Michael Hayward
Another Way of Saying Goodbye
Those who were close to the late John Berger have spoken of his generosity, praising Berger’s collaborative nature and his ability to establish and sustain creative friendships throughout a long and productive life.
JILL MANDRAKE
Seabrook Adventure
In The Abominable Mr. Seabrook, Joe Ollmann begins with a reflective preamble called “Me and Mr. Seabrook,” part of which reads, “I realized that no one knew about Seabrook’s work—all his books were out of print at the time…”
Stephen Henighan
Write What You Can Imagine
Like most advice given to writers, the injunction to “write what you know” is misleading.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Graphic Heroism
The One Hundred Nights of Hero by Isabel Greenberg (Doubleday Canada) is a beautifully illustrated graphic novel offering feminist adaptations of folk tales wrapped in an epic-feeling love story.
Thad McIlroy
I'm Sorry
In Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (Doubleday) the main character Jude says “I’m sorry” over 100 times. And he adds in “I’m so sorry” 30 times.
Eve Corbel
Some Lesser-Known Emoji
Eve Corbel draws emoji you can use when Mercury is in retrograde, when you've eaten too much hot sauce and during other specific times of need.
Michael Hayward
Sarah Lund's Sweater
Michael Hayward reviews the sweater that Sarah Lund wears in every episode of Season 1 of The Killing, a serial crime drama.
KELSEA O'CONNOR
Steampunk Crimefighters
The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage by Sydney Padua asks the question: what would the world be like if mathematician Ada Lovelace and inventor Charles Babbage had succeeded in creating the first Victorian computer?
Angela Wheelock
Something Like Armenian
Angela Wheelock meets a stranger at a bus stop and discusses Rumi, Hafiz and other great poets who were terrible leaders.
JILL MANDRAKE
Scary Stocking Stuffers
Jill Mandrake a new series called Christmas Ghost Stories (Biblioasis), selected and illustrated by Seth.
Patty Osborne
Keep On Truckin'
This fast-paced, quirky, heart warming and hilarious novel captures the fast and loose crossovers of language and culture that make southeast New Brunswick unique.
EVELYN LAU
24 Sussex
Picture Harper lounging among pastel cushions, his stiff grey hair tight as a helmet on his head.
Geist Staff
Path of the Jaguar
This past December longtime Geist columnist Stephen Henighan did a promotional tour of western Canada for his latest novel, Path of the Jaguar.
Michael Hayward
Rain Falls in Norway
Michael Hayward reviews Some Rain Must Fall, part of the six volume memoir by Karl Ove Knausgaard.
Stephen Osborne
The Great Game
The British called it the Great Game. The Russians called it Bolshoya Igra. The playing field was, and still is, Afghanistan.
CONNIE KUHNS
Last Day in Cheyenne
Remembering her father's last days in a hospital in Wyoming, Connie Kuhns struggles with questions of mortality, memory and how to fulfill her father's dying wish.
Patty Osborne
The Other Side of the Mountain
"The Orange Grove is dry and sparse and heartbreaking, much like the unnamed country in which it takes place."
CARY FAGAN
What I Learned in Florida
There were always things to see at the pond—tadpoles, leopard frogs, dragonflies—but that day we saw two boys, with a rifle.
M.A.C. Farrant
Selected Days
On Dorothy Parker Day we wear wool suits and little hats, smoke with cigarette holders and have a liver-coloured dachshund on a lead.
Eve Corbel
Greeting Cards for Tiny Occasions
Eve Corbel creates a set of greeting cards to celebrate life's best and worst mundane moments.