Tag: canadian literature

Craftwork Episode 32: Gothic Spaces, Familial Secrets, & Diasporic Perspectives w/ Dania Idriss

Listen to Craftwork Episode 32: Gothic Spaces, Familial Secrets, & Diasporic Perspectives w/ Dania Idriss

In this interview, we chat with Dania Idriss about representing human cruelty, finding creative nourishment in academic conferences, spending time in “writing jail”, and so much more.  

Dania Idriss (she/her) is a Lebanese-Canadian author and a doctoral candidate in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. She (currently) gratefully lives and works on the traditional territory of Treaty 7, with her writing focusing on global literatures, particularly Arabic speculative fiction. Her first book, a collection of horror stories titled Tales of the Mountains and the Sea, was released by Freehand Books in May 2026. Dania teaches speculative fiction and global literatures at the Alberta University of the Arts and the University of Calgary. She enjoys all things spooky, warm sweaters, and spending time with her bunny, Arlo.  

Books and stories mentioned in this episode: 

  • Human Sacrifices — María Fernanda Ampuero  
  • American War; One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This — Omar El Akkad 
  • The Woman in White — Wilkie Collins 
  • David Copperfield; Great Expectations; The Old Curiosity Shop — Charles Dickens 
  • The Haunting of Hill House; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle — Shirley Jackson 
  • The Monk — Matthew Gregory Lewis 
  • Forgotten Journey; Thus Were Their Faces — Silvina Ocampo 
  • “Brokeback Mountain” — Annie Proulx 
  • Harry Potter series — J. K. Rowling 
  • Frankenstein — Mary Shelley 
  • Dracula — Bram Stoker 
  • “Hair” — Mike Thorn 
  • The Castle of Otranto — Horace Walpole 
  • Lolly Willowes — Sylvia Townsend Warner 
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Craftwork Episode 30: Ghostwriting, Cold War Propaganda, & Coming Back from a Five-Week Coma w/ Luke Francis Beirne

Listen to Craftwork Episode 30: Ghostwriting, Cold War Propaganda, & Coming Back from a Five-Week Coma w/ Luke Francis Beirne.

In this interview, we chat with Luke Francis Beirne about literature versus entertainment, Atlantic Canadian textures, a literary marriage proposal, and so much more.    

Luke Francis Beirne was born in Ireland in 1995 and now lives on Wolastoqey land in Saint John, New Brunswick. Beirne has published three novels with Baraka Books: Foxhunt, Blacklion, and Saints Rest. His stories, essays, and reviews have appeared in outlets such as Counterpunch, NB Media Co-op, Hamilton Arts & Letters, Honest Ulsterman, and CrimeReads. 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

  • Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King — Caroline Bicks 
  • The Last Thing He Wanted — Joan Didion 
  • The Quiet American — Graham Greene 
  • The Maltese Falcon — Dashiell Hammett 
  • The Outsiders — S. E. Hinton 
  • The Bamboo Blonde; In a Lonely Place — Dorothy B. Hughes 
  • Hatchet — Gary Paulsen 
  • How Fiction Works — James Wood
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Craftwork Episode 29: Gut Feelings, Sonic Recursion, & Raspberry Cordial w/ Cassidy McFadzean

Listen to Craftwork Episode 29: Gut Feelings, Sonic Recursion, & Raspberry Cordial w/ Cassidy McFadzean.

In this interview, we chat with Cassidy McFadzean about skewing prepositions, trusting the reader, opting for vibes over plot, and so much more.   

Cassidy McFadzean is the author of three books of poetry, most recently Crying Dress (House of Anansi, 2024). Her fiction has appeared in Joyland, The Walrus, Hazlitt, and Dead Writers (Invisible Publishing, 2025). Cassidy was born in Regina, earned an MFA in poetry from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, an MFA in fiction from Brooklyn College, and now lives in Toronto. She was the 2024-2025 Writer-in-Residence at Sheridan College, and is the 2025-2026 Poet-in-Residence at Arc Poetry Magazine.

Books mentioned in this episode:   

  • The Weak Spot — Lucie Elven 
  • Bird by Bird — Anne Lamott 
  • Slows: Twice — T. Liem 
  • Anne of Green Gables; Chronicles of Avonlea; Emily of New Moon; The Story Girl — Lucy Maud Montgomery 
  • Fever Dream — Samanta Schweblin 
  • Rock Crystal — Adalbert Stifter 
  • The Ice Palace — Tarjei Vesaas
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Reading Like a Writer (online course through UNB Art Centre) [instructor: Mike Thorn]

Description:

Reading is arguably the most crucial practice for any serious writer. In this course, you will “reverse engineer” acclaimed short stories to determine how and why they work. You will use these stories as lenses into key aspects of effective fiction (dialogue, plotting, voice, character, etc.) The course will help you to identify the key features of various distinctive prose styles, and you will participate in guided writing exercises inspired by those styles.

Winter term:

Wednesdays, Feb. 11 to March 25 (6 weeks, no class March 4)
6:30 – 8 p.m.
$135 (+ HST)

Registration opens December 1.

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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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Craftwork Episode 24: Building Communities, Finding Guardrails, & Reading the Comments Section w/ Jean Marc Ah-Sen

Listen to Craftwork Episode 24: Building Communities, Finding Guardrails, & Reading the Comments Section w/ Jean Marc Ah-Sen.

In this interview, we chat with Jean Marc Ah-Sen about comic books, literary scenes, flipping the script on what a book can be, and so much more. 

Jean Marc Ah-Sen is the author of Grand Menteur, In the Beggarly Style of Imitation, and Kilworthy Tanner. His writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly Concern, Literary Hub, Catapult, The Comics Journal, Maclean’s, The Walrus, and elsewhere. 

Books mentioned in this episode: 

  • The Fall – Albert Camus 
  • I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp – Richard Hell 
  • The Talented Mr. Ripley – Patricia Highsmith 
  • Intimacy – Hanif Kureishi 
  • Biography of X – Catherine Lacey 
  • Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle – Vladimir Nabokov  
  • Anti-Woo: The Lifeman’s Improved Primer for Non-Lovers; The Theory and Practice of Gamesmanship: Or the Art of Winning Games Without Actually Cheating – Stephen Potter 
  • Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones – Dee Dee Ramone 
  • Endling – Maria Reva 
  • The Dying Animal – Philip Roth 
  • Striptease – Georges Simenon 
  • The Handyman Method – Andrew Sullivan 
  • Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy 
  • The Island of Doctor Moreau; The Time Machine – H. G. Wells 
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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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Craftwork Episode 22: Tonal Registers, Byzantine Journeys, & Repurposing Research w/ Michael LaPointe

Listen to Craftwork Episode 22: Tonal Registers, Byzantine Journeys, & Repurposing Research w/ Michael LaPointe.

In this interview, we chat with Michael LaPointe about navigating the pipeline between impulse and expression, breaking the genteel picture of literature, finding liberation in failure, and so much more.

Michael LaPointe is the author of The Creep, a novel published by Random House Canada. He has written for The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and he was a columnist with The Paris Review. His work has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories and Best Canadian Essays, and he lives in Toronto.

Books mentioned in this episode:

  • Affliction; Continental Drift; Rule of the Bone; The Sweet Hereafter – Russell Banks 
  • Naked Lunch – William S. Burroughs 
  • The Adventures of Pinocchio – Carlo Collodi 
  • Bleak House – Charles Dickens 
  • Play it as it Lays – Joan Didion 
  • The Lover – Marguerite Duras 
  • Middlemarch – George Eliot 
  • American Psycho; Less Than Zero; The Shards – Bret Easton Ellis 
  • Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 
  • Bad Behavior; Two Girls, Fat and Thin – Mary Gaitskill 
  • In a Lonely Place – Dorothy B. Hughes 
  • Snow Country – Yasunari Kawabata 
  • Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination; Sula – Toni Morrison 
  • The Sorrow of War – Bảo Ninh 
  • Inherent Vice – Thomas Pynchon 
  • All Quiet on the Western Front – Erich Maria Remarque 
  • Voyage in the Dark – Jean Rhys 
  • Catcher in the Rye – J. D. Salinger 
  • Last Exit to Brooklyn – Hubert Selby Jr.  
  • Alice James: A Biography – Jean Strouse 
  • The Invisible Woman: The Story Of Nelly Ternan And Charles Dickens – Claire Tomalin 
  • Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte 
  • Ethan Frome – Edith Wharton 
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Craftwork Episode 16: Dream Journals, Imaginary Conversations, & Work-Life Balance w/ Fawn Parker

Listen to Craftwork Episode 16: Dream Journals, Imaginary Conversations, & Work-Life Balance w/ Fawn Parker.

In this interview, we chat with Fawn Parker about showing the reader around the room, finding the right tense, protecting your writing time, and so much more.

Fawn Parker is the author of five books including novels What We Both Know (M&S), nominated for the Giller Prize and Hi, It’s Me (M&S), nominated for the Writer’s Trust Atwood Gibson Prize, and the poetry collection Soft Inheritance, which was awarded the JM Abraham Atlantic Book Award and the Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize. Her work has been published in The Walrus, Hazlitt, Literary Review of Canada, and elsewhere. Fawn is a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick and the Poet Laureate of Fredericton.

Books and stories mentioned in this episode:

  • The Edible Woman – Margaret Atwood
  • The Mountain and the Valley – Ernest Buckler
  • Libra – Don DeLillo
  • The Guest – Emma Cline
  • Attack of the Copula Spiders and Other Essays on Writing – Douglas Glover
  • “Experience” – Tessa Hadley
  • Ulysses – James Joyce
  • Rejection – Tony Tulathimutte
  • This All Happened – Michael Winter
  • How Fiction Works – James Wood
  • Mrs. Dalloway – Virginia Woolf
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