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
In this interview, we chat with Michael Wehunt about the administrative side of professional writing, the unanticipated weirdness of public selfhood, the “moment before the moment”, and so much more.
Michael Wehunt has been a finalist for the Bram Stoker Award, multiple Shirley Jackson Awards, and the International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts’ Crawford Award. In Spain, his translated works have garnered nominations for the Premio Ignotus and Premio Amaltea, winning the latter. He haunts the woods of Decatur, Georgia, with his partner and their dog. Together, they hold the horrors at bay. Most recently, he is the author of the novels The October Film Haunt and Nightjars.
Books and poems mentioned in this episode:
Ancient Images; The Grin of the Dark; Incarnate — Ramsey Campbell
Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture — Douglas Coupland
Poems 1962-2020 — Louise Glück
Carrie — Stephen King
Beings — Ilana Masad
The God of the Woods; Long Bright River — Liz Moore
In this interview, we chat with Daniel Braum about exploring the ecology of the supernatural, finding inspiration in liminal spaces, cultivating a sense of awe, and so much more.
Daniel Braum writes short stories that explore the tension between the psychological and the supernatural. He intentionally adopts the term “strange tales” for his “Twilight Zone-like stories in homage to author Robert Aickman and the intentional ambiguities of his work. His latest collection is Phantom Constellations: Strange Tales and Ghost Stories from Cemetery Dance Publications (2025). His stories appear in places ranging from The Best Horror of the Year Volume 12, edited by Ellen Datlow, and Shivers 8, edited by Richard Chizmar.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Cold Hand in Mine — Robert Aickman
The Artist’s Way — Julia Cameron
Ancient Images; The Hungry Moon — Ramsey Campbell
“Plunged in the Years” — Jeffrey Ford
“Children of the Corn” — Stephen King
The Ceremonies — T. E. D. Klein
Beginnings, Middles & Ends — Nancy Kress
Dreams of Dark and Light — Tanith Lee
Rosemary’s Baby; The Stepford Wives — Ira Levin
Story — Robert McKee
Conjunctions 83: The Ghost Issue — Joyce Carol Oates and Bradford Morrow, eds.
The Jaguar Hunter — Lucius Shepard
Shadowland — Peter Straub
Conjunctions 39: The New Wave Fabulists — Peter Straub, ed.
Harvest Home — Thomas Tryon
The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers — Chris Vogler
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen (1817) The Moonstone, by Wilkie Collins (1868) The Island of Dr. Moreau, by H. G. Wells (1896) What Maisie Knew, by Henry James (1897; 1908 New York Edition) The House of Souls, by Arthur Machen (1906) Widdershins, by Oliver Onions (1911) Summer, by Edith Wharton (1917) Tales of the Jazz Age, by F. Scott Fitzgerald (1922) The Maltese Falcon, by Dashiell Hammett (1930) Strangers on a Train, by Patricia Highsmith (1950) The Nothing Man, by Jim Thompson (1954) A Severed Head, by Iris Murdoch (1961) Aura, by Carlos Fuentes (1962) Slouching Towards Bethlehem, by Joan Didion (1968) Sula, by Toni Morrison (1973) The Coherence of Gothic Conventions, by Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick (1980) Bad Behavior, by Mary Gaitskill (1988) Ancient Images, by Ramsey Campbell (1989) Blonde, by Joyce Carol Oates (2000) Border Crossing, by Pat Barker (2001) These Truths: A History of the United States, by Jill Lepore (2018) The Best of Both Worlds, by S. P. Miskowski (2020) Hi, It’s Me, by Fawn Parker (2024) Dark Matter, by Kathe Koja (2025) Wreckage / What Happens in Hello Jack, by Peter Straub (2025)
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)
In this interview, we chat with Sarah Bernstein about contemplation, finding time for writing, capturing the rush of language, and so much more.
Sarah Bernstein is the author of two novels, The Coming Bad Days and Study for Obedience, which was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. She is from Montreal and lives in the Scottish Highlands.
Books and stories mentioned in this episode:
Hysteric; Whore – Nelly Arcan
Giovanni’s Room – James Baldwin
The Moonstone; The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
“A Mown Lawn” – Lydia Davis
Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life – Ruth Franklin
The Book of Questions – Edmond Jabès
The Haunting of Hill House; “The Lottery”; The Sundial; We Have Always Lived in the Castle – Shirley Jackson
The Melancholy of Resistance – László Krasznahorkai
The Place of Shells – Mai Ishizawa
In the Wake: On Blackness and Being – Christina Sharpe
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
In this interview, we chat with Rod Moody-Corbett about tonal dissonance, sponging up influences, writing from memory, and so much more.
Rod Moody-Corbett is an award-winning writer from Newfoundland. His writing has appeared in Socrates on the Beach, The Drift, The Paris Review Daily, and Fiddlehead, among other publications. He is the recipient of the 2022 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story, a Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters Award for Short Fiction, the University of Calgary’s Kaleidoscope Prize, and the CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize (People’s Choice Award). He serves as a contributing editor for Canadian Notes and Queries.
Books mentioned in this episode:
Experience – Martin Amis
Elect Mr. Robinson for a Better World; The Hundred Brothers; The Verificationist – Donald Antrim
Last Evenings on Earth – Roberto Bolaño
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel – Jessica Brody
My Education – Susan Choi
Underworld – Don DeLillo
Notes from Underground – Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Last Samurai – Helen DeWitt
Erasure – Percival Everett
Bad Behavior; Because They Wanted To; Don’t Cry – Mary Gaitskill
A Hand Reached Down to Guide Me; Jernigan – David Gates
Airships – Barry Hannah
The Road Through the Wall – Shirley Jackson
Get Shorty; Rum Punch – Elmore Leonard
Last Resort – Andrew Lipstein
The Sentence is a Lonely Place – Garielle Lutz
Moby Dick – Herman Melville
The Ice Storm – Rick Moody
Lectures on Literature – Vladimir Nabokov
A House for Mr. Biswas – V. S. Naipaul
Casino: Love and Honor in Las Vegas; Wiseguy: Life in a Mafia Family – Nicholas Pileggi
Monkey Beach – Eden Robinson
The Life of the Mind – Christine Smallwood
The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman – Laurence Sterne
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
Mike Thorn 