Created in 1995 in the pre-digital video days of A/B roll editing, this educational video about media literacy examines the media's shaping of the Montréal Massacre to deconstruct media representations of violence, trauma and gender. Created with the financial support...
Nothing that bad happened to me. Certainly nothing out of the ordinary. I was lucky. I wasn’t raped. I wasn’t sexually assaulted. At most, I was sexually harassed. Cross out at most. I was. And even that is so complex and equivocal and tenuous. Nothing that bad...
If I had to describe myself at twenty, this is what I would write. A hyper-verbal, defensive, funny, and skinny skate betty. A poet, thin-skinned and capable, ambitious and in love with the idea of love. A lonely girl from a big family who was open to everything and...
Before reading this essay about accessing appropriate health and wellness care as a sex worker I’m going to ask you to reflect on your own relationship to othering—perpetuating, witnessing and surviving it—and how it has impacted your health. 1. Trust Exercise One...
I attended the University of British Columbia from 2008-2014. I spent four of those six years in the Creative Writing Department, first to get my Bachelor’s degree, then my Master’s. I was raped twice during my time at UBC, once by one of my classmates in the Creative...
Our 2015 CNF Contest Honourable Mention. It’s my job to iron the napkins. There’s hundreds of them, enough to do two back-to-back weddings in a single weekend, or a three-day golf tournament without re-washing. I don’t mind. It’s quiet down here in the basement...
Mom says she doesn’t know how to twist her tongue in half. Mom says she doesn’t know how to twist her tongue in half. “It’s genetic,” you say as you fold your tongue and stick it out so she can see it. You are sitting at the kitchen table in Brampton. The light from...
Read the Honourable-Mention Winning Entry From Our 2015 CNF Contest “Let’s blow this joint!” Dad said, and stuck the key into the Oldsmobile’s ignition. Mom rode shotgun; my brothers and I had all crammed into the back. Popcorn, our shih tzu, panted nervously at my...
Any writer can give you an angst-filled list of reasons why writing didn’t happen (again) today: there were the kids. Or a special meeting, or the first sunny day in months, or … Rarely do we mention, “Oh yes, and I was afraid.” Any writer can give you an angst-filled...
In truth, I’m not a poet. Nor do I, as a rule, pester strangers with chitchat. In truth, I’m not a poet. Nor do I, as a rule, pester strangers with chitchat. And I’m stingy with friendship, keeping it tucked tight to my chest like a baby chick. Not often showing it...
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ROOM 49.3 NO CANADA
In the new era of CanCon, as feminists and writers it is our task to reject this Canadian exceptionalism, this too-comfortable back-patting. How can we begin to imagine alternative arts economies, Indigenous economies around art, that start with treaty, that align with BDS? What art, what literature, would such a system free us to create?
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ROOM 49.2 Science
Welcome to the Science issue of Room Magazine, where we privilege questions: questions about how to construct better worlds; questions about how to destroy hyper-capitalistic, necropolitical systems; questions that beget questions and new questions.
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