Tag: canada

Craftwork Episode 25: Braided Essays, Collective Solitude, & the Objective Correlative w/ Kasia Van Schaik

Listen to Craftwork Episode 25: Braided Essays, Collective Solitude, & the Objective Correlative w/ Kasia Van Schaik.

In this interview, we chat with Kasia Van Schaik about reverse outlining, asking “what if”, sublimating emotion through landscape, and so much more.  

Kasia Van Schaik is the author of the Giller Prize-nominated story collection We Have Never Lived on Earth and the forthcoming book of memoir and cultural criticism, Women Among Monuments. With Myra Bloom, she is the co-editor of the essay collection, Shelter in Text: Essays on Dwelling and Refuge. Kasia’s writing has appeared in Electric Literature, the LA Review of Books, Room, The Rumpus, the Best Canadian Poetry, and the CBC. Kasia holds a PhD in literature from McGill University and is assistant professor of English and co-director of Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton, Wolastoqiyik territory. 

Books mentioned in this episode:  

  • Wuthering Heights — Emily Brontë 
  • The Secret Garden — Frances Hodgson Burnett  
  • Autobiography of Red — Anne Carson 
  • Boyhood; Youth; Summertime — J. M. Coetzee 
  • Outline; Transit; Kudos — Rachel Cusk 
  • The Days of Abandonment; the Neapolitan Quartet — Elena Ferrante 
  • “The Robber Bridegroom” — Brothers Grimm 
  • Sweet Days of Discipline — Fleur Jaeggy 
  • Lucy — Jamaica Kincaid 
  • Her Body and Other Parties — Carmen Maria Machado 
  • Housekeeping — Marilynne Robinson 
  • Rings of Saturn — W. G. Sebald 
  • Flights — Olga Tokarczuk 
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Register to attend Writing Horror Fiction with Mike Thorn (Winter 2026)

Register here.

Where: Charlotte Street Arts Centre (732 Charlotte St, Fredericton, NB E3B 1M5, Canada)

When: Jan 29, 2026 to Mar 5, 2026, Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m. AST

This course will engage with horror literature’s legacies and unique capacities for catharsis, allegory, and personal expression. We will discuss what scares us and investigate the psychology  of fear within the context of fiction, digging into the nuts-and-bolts processes of generating fear  in the reader. We will explore the wide range of horror’s sub-genres and aesthetic possibilities,  looking at tropes, traditions, and metaphors as opportunities for creative openings rather than  restrictions. We will discuss the importance of atmosphere, point-of-view, and convincing  characterization. Drawing on insights and fiction by some of horror literature’s most important  and exciting figures, we will dive into the genre with a focus on craft and technique. 

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The Catch-Up Reading Series featuring Chuck Bowie, Alison Taylor, and Mike Thorn (January 26, 3 pm, Westminster Books)

Fredericton’s monthly reading series, ‘The Catch-Up,’ curated and hosted by acclaimed writer Fawn Parker, returns with readings by local authors Alison Taylor, Chuck Bowie & Mike Thorn!

The reading will take place here at the bookshop on Sunday, January 26th, 2025, @ 3pm.

Alison Taylor (they/them) is a writer, editor, and filmmaker based in Fredericton. Taylor’s short stories have appeared in various journals, and their debut novel Aftershock, published by HarperCollins Canada, received the Atlantic Book Awards John and Margaret Savage First Book Award (Fiction), and was shortlisted for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. They received the 2024 Douglas Adams Richards Prize for Fiction for their work-in-progress, Confessions of a Binge Drinker (working title). They have edited a hundred-plus hours of television and many award-winning short films and music videos, and their own experimental films have screened at festivals internationally. They currently work in the editorial department at Goose Lane Editions and as a freelance editor of both books and film and video, and are working to complete a draft while two cats yell at them and a 70-pound boxer whines in their face.

Mike Thorn is a SSHRC-funded doctoral candidate in the Department of English (Creative Writing) at the University of New Brunswick. He is the author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. His writing has appeared in anthologies, magazines, and podcasts, including NoSleep, Vastarien, In Review Online, and American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper. He co-hosts Craftwork, a writing-themed podcast, with Miriam Richer. Website: mikethornwrites.com.

Chuck Bowie is both a writer and an author, with thirteen books/novels published and one just underway. While he enjoys writing mysteries: Suspense-Thrillers and Cozy Mysteries, he also writes short stories. All of his books are well-reviewed, and he has sat on the boards of the Writers’ Federation of NB, The Writers’ Union of Canada, is a Fellow of the Kingsbrae International Residency for the Arts, as well as being acknowledged as a member of the Miramichi Literary Trail. His thriller series chronicles the adventures of Donovan, an international thief for hire, while his cozy series (written as Alexa Bowie) follows the adventures of the owner of an arts centre as Emma solves the crimes that swirl around her centre: The Old Manse. http://www.chuckbowie.ca

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Writing Horror Fiction with Mike Thorn (upcoming workshop course with the Charlotte Street Arts Centre)

This course will engage with horror literature’s legacies and unique capacities for catharsis, allegory, and personal expression. We will discuss what scares us and investigate the psychology  of fear within the context of fiction, digging into the nuts-and-bolts processes of generating fear  in the reader. We will explore the wide range of horror’s subgenres and aesthetic possibilities,  looking at tropes, traditions, and metaphors as opportunities for creative openings rather than  restrictions. We will discuss the importance of atmosphere, point-of-view, and convincing  characterization. Drawing on insights and fiction by some of horror literature’s most important  and exciting figures, we will dive into the genre with a focus on craft and technique. 

Date: Tuesdays, Oct. 29 – Dec. 3
Time: 7-9 p.m.
Location: Community Room (Charlotte Street Arts Centre)
Length: Six week
Cost: $15
Max. class size: 12

Registration now open.

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Craftwork S1E1: Persona Poems, Metacognition, & Vancouver Island Marmots w/ Meghan Kemp-Gee

On the first episode of Craftwork, guest Meghan Kemp-Gee talks about poetry, screenwriting, comics, and so much more.

Meghan is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks, What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted as a graphic novel, One More Year. She is a PhD candidate at UNB and currently lives in North Vancouver BC.

Listen here.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems – Daniel Scott Tysdal
  • Walden – Henry David Thoreau
  • The Artist’s Way – Julia Cameron
  • Bird by Bird – Anne Lamott
  • 20th Century Men – Deniz Camp, Stipan Morian, & Aditya Bidikar
  • The Adversary – Michael Crummey
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The Fiddlehead: Mike Thorn Reviews David Folster’s Discovering the Movies in New Brunswick

“David Folster’s posthumously published Discovering the Movies in New Brunswick offers a journalistic and intentionally wandering study of its title province’s cinematic history. Spanning the late nineteenth to early twenty-first centuries, the book comprises a dense collection of esoterica, six-degrees-of-separation links, margin notes, and coincidences, all centered in a locale not customarily associated with film history (the province of New Brunswick).”

Read the full review.

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Book Signing (February 20, 2-4 pm at Westminster Books, Fredericton, NB)

PhD student Mike Thorn has an upcoming book signing at Westminster Books (February 20, from 2 to 4 pm).

About Peel Back and See

“Mike Thorn’s Peel Back and See is a stunning show-stopper of a fiction collection. Eclectic and truly unnerving, I’ll be thinking of these tales for years to come.”
– Eric LaRocca, author of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke

“Thorn is the real deal. A powerful and exciting new voice in horror literature. His work has teeth and can bite you.”
– Jamie Blanks, director of Urban Legend and Valentine

In spaces both familiar and strange, unknowable horrors lurk.

From the recesses of the Internet, where cosmic terror shows its face on an endless live feed, to a museum celebrating the sordid legacy of an occultist painter, this chilling collection of sixteen short stories will plunge you into the eerie, pessimistic imagination of Mike Thorn.

Peel Back and See urges its readers to look closer, to push past surface-level appearances and face the things that stir below.

About Mike Thorn

Mike Thorn is the author of Shelter for the Damned, Darkest Hours, and Peel Back and See. His fiction has appeared in numerous magazines, anthologies, and podcasts, including Vastarien, Dark Moon Digest, and The NoSleep Podcast. His books have earned praise from Jamie Blanks (director of Urban Legend and Valentine), Jeffrey Reddick (creator of Final Destination), and Daniel Goldhaber (director of Netflix’s Cam). His essays and articles have been published in American Twilight: The Cinema of Tobe Hooper (University of Texas Press), Beyond Empowertainment: Exploring Feminist Horror (Seventh Row), The Film Stage, and elsewhere. He is currently pursuing his PhD in Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick.

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