Joya Guzmán is a Mexican-Canadian emerging writer and translator at home in northern Mexico and the unceded territories of the Musqueam, Sḵwxwú7mesh, and Tsleil-Waututh Peoples known as Vancouver. Her prose and poetry have been published or forthcoming in Acentos Review, Room Magazine, SOMOS Magazine, and others. Joya Guzmán is a nom de plume.
When they started dating, Almost Daddy visited every month. He picked her up on Sundays after her cashier shift at the pharmacy, at Dundas and Spadina in Downtown Chinatown. She wore the same Niagara Falls coat, layering on a second jacket in the winter. Unlike most refugees that she knew, Guelph Guy had his own car. He’d pick her up and take her on walks by the harbourfront. To feel the humidity of indoor plants at Allan Gardens, to watch movies at the University Theatre on Yonge Street.
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” 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...
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” 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” 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...
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” 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...
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...
ROOM 48.1 WITS END
In times of crisis, we laugh to offer tenderness, to ward off despair— so we can be brave. Gather round ROOM 48.1 WITS END and let humour be a mirror held up to the state of the world as we continue to resist.
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.
Seeking members who love literature, events, merchandise, and supporting marginalized creators.
Wits End | 48.1
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Full Circle | 47.4
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Bodies | 47.3
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Seedpod | 47.2
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Utopia | 47.1
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Sponsor a Contributor
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Sponsor a Writer
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Sponsor a Poet
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Fever Dream | 46.4
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Fever Dream Tote Bag — Limited Edition