Fiction

A Hundred Unions

A Hundred Unions

For their tenth wedding anniversary, Robin and Yu’en planned a small gathering at The Peony, the Chinese restaurant at the Imperial Club. Nothing extravagant. The first of October fell on mid-autumn, the fifteenth day of the eighth lunar month, an auspicious day for...

Good Friends We Have

Good Friends We Have

“Good Friends We Have” is the honourable mention for Room’s Fiction Contest 2020. My grandmother said, you can’t choose your family, but you can choose your friends, so choose wisely. But I didn’t so much choose my friends as they chose me. At school, we clung...

Wards

Wards

A gargoyle sits at the end of my garden, a plastic resin Mother’s Day present, wrapped with charms of love and my children’s perspicacity. Her name is Marthe and her job is protection. Most of all, she is to guard me and mine from the dragon. A gargoyle sits at the...

Pieces of Me

Pieces of Me

“Pieces of Me” is the honourable mention of Room’s 2019 Fiction Contest as selected by judge Catherine Hernandez. I woke up one morning to bigger breasts. I’m not talking triangle pointies from puberty (which hit well over a decade ago), a few extra pounds from the...

Baby Food

Baby Food

“Baby Food” is the honourable mention of Room’s Short Forms Contest 2018 as selected by judge Hiromi Goto. We called it baby food. We were secretive and gleeful. At fourteen, we’d outrun our periods—literally—clomping down Kimberly Hill with such exaggerated...

Phosphorescence

Phosphorescence

Simple pleasure: diving inside a night tank while bubbles ascend and whales from the Saint Lawrence materialize and vaporize, pin eyes black in white lumpy heads. Simple pleasure: diving inside a night tank while bubbles ascend and whales from the Saint Lawrence...

They Comes On the Ice

They Comes On the Ice

“They Comes On the Ice” is the honourable mention of Room’s Poetry and Fiction Contest 2018 as selected by judge Zoe Whittall. The day I arrived on Fogo Island there was a polar bear loose in Joe Batt’s Arm. I had driven from St. Johns to Gander, caught the ferry from...

504

504

Gymnasts are brave and like to brag about how much pain they can take. Girls who couldn’t handle it were pulled out of class and enrolled in ballet. They were going to be disappointed when they learned the truth about that one, too. I didn’t live in Mississauga but...

Tseung Family Snapshot

Tseung Family Snapshot

See, the living room’s TV is on. It is always on when the Tseung family is home—and sometimes even when they are out—during, before, and after meals, which are the markers the family uses to record the passing of each day. See, the living room’s TV is on. It is always...

Force Field

Force Field

If I think about what I’m doing, I’ll never get off the plane. After all, it’s ridiculous to believe a computer program can predict two strangers will develop a meaningful relationship. It’s even more ridiculous to test that prediction by flying halfway across the...

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ROOM 47.4 FULL CIRCLE
Step back with Room into the past, to parents, to childhood homes, and to people once known and loved; dig into themes of grief and healing; and ultimately explore what it means to come full circle in literature.

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