LGBTQ2

1894 Notes on grief

The All + Flesh By Brandi Bird  Toronto: House of Anansi, 2023 $16.99 / 9781487011826 Reviewed by Linda Rogers * We are all changed. Plague and pestilence have left many of us in a state of grief, our innocence lost, experience teaching us the perils of hubris. As usual, prayer translates to poetry as our…
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1841 BC Review interviews update

Interview channel update by Richard Mackie * Since January 2023 Trevor Hughes, interim non-fiction editor of The British Columbia Review, has branched out as Video Segment Producer and curator of our new Interview Channel, hosted by YouTube. So far, Trevor has uploaded thirteen interviews that capture in words a broad spectrum of British Columbian authors,…
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1813 Welcome Trevor and Brett

Welcome Trevor and Brett by Richard Mackie * On behalf of the Board of the Ormsby Literary Society and our Advisory Board I’d like to welcome Trevor Marc Hughes and Brett Josef Grubisic as interim editors of The British Columbia Review for the year May 1, 2023 to May 1, 2024. The position was made possible…
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1805 Nêhiyawêwin: being Cree

Indigiqueerness: A Conversation About Storytelling by Joshua Whitehead, in dialogue with Angie Abdou Athabasca, Alberta: Athabasca University Press, 2023 $19.99 / 9781771993913 Reviewed by Mary Ann Moore * Joshua Whitehead doesn’t feel ashamed writing about sex he says. When he went home to “the rez,” he’d prefer helping the women in the kitchen where all…
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1796 Rock ’n’ roll trans recall

Any Other City by Hazel Jane Plante Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023 $22.95 / 9781551529110 Reviewed by Brett Josef Grubisic * Whenever film critics gripe about pop music biopics, “cliché-ridden” is standard fare. Considering a pop star’s ready-made chapters — juvenile precocity, discovery, rise and fall, triumphs and tragedies, and so on — over-reliance on…
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1757 Announcing interview series

Announcing the BC Review interview series by Richard Mackie * In November 2022, at the most recent board meeting of the Ormsby Literary Society, the chair, Byron Sheardown, suggested that we open a YouTube channel and start an interview series. Board member Trevor Marc Hughes jumped at the suggestion. “I’ve got filmmaking experience,” he said,…
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1746 Much grows in shadow

This Unlikely Soil by Andrea Routley Qualicum Beach: Caitlin Press, 2022 $24.95  /  9781773860985 Reviewed by Amy Reiswig * Anyone who has spent time in a BC forest knows it can be hard to navigate. Spaces between tall trunks are filled with thick tangles of salal, huckleberry, and ferns, and the way forward is strewn…
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1722 Time travel with Jo & Anne

Two books reviewed by Carole Gerson in consultation with Clarissa Gerson Jo: An Adaptation of Little Women (Sort Of) by Kathleen Gros Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Quill Tree Books), 2020 $15.99 / 9780062875969 * Anne: An Adaptation of Anne of Green Gables (Sort Of) by Kathleen Gros Toronto: HarperCollins Canada (Quill Tree Books), 2022 $28.50 /…
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1713 Getting emotional

Feeling Feminism: Activism, Affect, and Canada’s Second Wave by Lara Campbell, Michael Dawson, and Catherine Gidney (editors) Vancouver: UBC Press, 2022 $34.95 / 9780774866507 Reviewed by Phyllis Reeve * Increasingly I feel myself becoming historical. The feeling comes with advancing age, enhanced by encountering the work of a younger generation of scholars such as Lara…
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1694 A history play for the ages

Michael Turner reviews In My Day by Rick Waines Produced by Norman Armour, Rick Waines and Zee Zee Theatre presented by The Cultch Theatre, Vancouver December 02-11, 2022 * As a late-born North American Baby Boomer, I am not old enough to remember all the defining moments assigned to my generation. I was barely fifteen…
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1618 Goaltender, heal thyself

The Save of My Life: My Journey Out of the Dark by Corey Hirsch, with Sean Patrick Conboy Toronto: HarperCollins Canada, 2022 $32.99 / 9781443461092 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * It must be hard to write a good topical hockey book these days. The goalposts, as it were, keep shifting on the zeitgeist as Canada’s…
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1601 Timely monstrosities

Queer Little Nightmares: An Anthology of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry by David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli (editors) Vancouver: Arsenal Pulp Press, 2022 $21.95 /  9781551529011 Reviewed by Zoe McKenna * Everybody is afraid of something. David Ly and Daniel Zomparelli’s Queer Little Nightmares: An Antholgy of Monstrous Fiction and Poetry offers a chilling seasonal collection…
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1502 Rapist, your time is up

Victim: A feminist manifesto from a fierce survivor by Karen Moe Lantzville, BC: Vigilance Press, 2022 $24.99 / 9781647044701  Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * For any new author seeking a large audience for a polemical work, the self-declared “manifesto” is a risky undertaking. Driven by the urgency of singular purpose, a manifesto in the wrong…
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1472 Girl interrupted … or imagined

The Bridge: Writing Across the Binary by Keith Maillard Calgary: Freehand Books, 2021 $22.95 / 9781988298788 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * In the imaginative universe that inspired this book, the metaphor of “the bridge” offered Keith Maillard two related themes worth exploring: the socially-constructed divide between the sexes that his younger self struggled for years…
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1456 Butterflies and affirmation

The Box in the Closet: A Memoir by Jayne Doxtater West Vancouver: ‎The Self-Publishing Agency, 2021 $23.95 / 9781777642013 Reviewed by Margot Fedoruk * The Box in the Closet: A Story of Hope Is love enough to keep two people together when your partner’s needs surpass your own? This is one of the questions Jayne…
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1441 Oh, the good new hockey game

Overcoming the Neutral Zone Trap: Hockey’s Agents of Change by Cheryl A. MacDonald and Jonathon R.J. Edwards (editors) Edmonton: University of Alberta Press, 2021 $34.99 / 9781772125795 Reviewed by Daniel Gawthrop * To anyone who watches the game with a critical eye, it should not come as news that the mainstream hockey establishment suffers from…
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1402 Lovers, friends, family

Duct-taped Roses by Billeh Nickerson Toronto: Book*hug Press, 2021 $20.00 / 9781771666909 Reviewed by Grace Lau * Lovers, friends, family: We are all we have Duct-taped Roses, Billeh Nickerson’s sixth book (note to self: must read the other five) is divided into five parts, each one a vivid meditation on a theme in his life….
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1397 Portraits of East Vancouver

Heroines Revisited by Lincoln Clarkes Vancouver: Anvil Press, 2021 (revised edition; first published 2002) $48.00 / 9781772140712 Reviewed by Lani Russwurm * Lincoln Clarkes started his “Heroines Project” in the late 1990s when he began photographing women who use drugs on the streets of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It took about five years and resulted in…
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