Fiction

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...

Patchwork

Patchwork

The Honourable Mention in our Winter 2017–2018 Short Forms Contest. She did her eyebrows in seventh grade, her pubic hair in eighth. By grade nine she had found the sweet spot between total visibility and inconvenient stealth: the downy patches above each temple,...

Running a Balance (excerpt)

Running a Balance (excerpt)

The anonymous woman in bed beside me adamantly shakes my shoulder. She had a name last night. She must have, as part of my hook-and-line I complimented her “pretty name” and said, “it suits you.” Unless a woman’s name is Mavis, I normally compliment her pretty name....

Dead Amy

Dead Amy

Our 2017 Fiction Contest Honourable Mention. Dead Amy Amy could be heavy-handed with obscure trends like silver hair or emerald green lipstick but when she showed up for brunch that Sunday morning, it was plain as day that she was dead. She was gorgeous but years...

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