Reading Room

I’m Not Here

I’m Not Here

While reading GG’s new graphic novel, I’m Not Here, I was reminded of a short story by Delmore Schwartz, in which the narrator goes into a cinema and, much to their amazement and dismay, finds that the film being screened is of their parents’ first meeting. Knowing...

Don’t Tell Me What to Do

Don’t Tell Me What to Do

Each of the fifteen stories, mostly populated by female protagonists at less-than-perfect moments in their lives, show the work of a generous writer committed to creating characters unapologetically being themselves in all their flawed, misguided glory. In most books...

Where it Hurts

Where it Hurts

The essays in Where It Hurts are deeply felt, original, and a moving requiem for lives extinguished too early to have left a trace. De Leeuw writes with love and conviction while also asking important questions of the reader: how do we live with the empty spaces death...

Table Manners

Table Manners

Table Manners is an unsettling and deeply hilarious book of poetry that is best devoured like any good meal—slowly and with intention. Table Manners, the debut collection of poetry by Toronto writer, editor, and teacher Catriona Wright, is a bold exploration of food,...

Bad Endings

Bad Endings

Carleigh Baker’s debut collection of stories is a weird and wonderful frolic through the vagaries of relationships, especially their ends and mostly from the perspective of women. Bad Endings, Carleigh Baker’s debut collection of stories, is a weird and wonderful...

Untangling Roots

Untangling Roots

I have my mother’s hair. It is a thick, deep black—the kind she calls wūhēi. The strands fall straight down my back after I wash it, glossy and sleek like the feathers of a crow. It never holds a curl. I have only ever had it cut in malls, or in the basements of...

Open Relationship with the Ocean

Open Relationship with the Ocean

A pinhole projects the moon topping the sun onto Portia’s palm A pinhole projects the moon topping the sun onto Portia’s palm she holds the solar eclipse as it holds Monday still we swim naked for five hours in the ocean without sunscreen bare-handed intimacy with a...

Unveiling

Unveiling

Truth has started to call to me. First, as wordless pain, Turning in me quietly, pushing at my gut in the early dawn. Truth is coaxing itself into the corners of my eyes.  Truth is running down my cheeks, silently, & falling down the stream of my neck, into the...

they did

they did

you don’t believe your queer friend could do this to your other queer friend. you don’t believe your father could do this to your mother. you don’t believe your mother could do this to your sibling. you don’t believe your teacher could you don’t believe your best...

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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.

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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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