Reading Room

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...

Tarry This Night

Tarry This Night

In a world not unimaginably different from our own, members of a religious cult wait out a civil war in an underground bunker. Tarry This Night, Kristyn Dunnion’s second novel, is an unsettling tale told in turns by five members of the Family, including Father Ernst,...

Letters to My Father

Letters to My Father

Bänoo Zan’s second book of poetry, Letters to My Father, opens with her rationale for seeking refuge in poetry, and fleeing from stories. Bänoo Zan’s second book of poetry, Letters to My Father, opens with her rationale for seeking refuge in poetry, and fleeing from...

Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales

Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales

Children Shouldn’t Use Knives and Other Tales shreds the yellow ribbons of childhood sentimentality and, instead, offers an exploration of what it feels like to be small and vulnerable in a stormy world. I’m not nostalgic for childhood. Childhood was terrifying—the...

What’s up, Room’s Short Forms Contest Winners?

What’s up, Room’s Short Forms Contest Winners?

When Room decided to launch a Short Forms Contest a few years ago, we wanted to create an avenue for writers who write flash fiction, non-fiction, and/or prose poems—and perhaps writers who experiment with blending and bending genres—to submit their work. (Contest...

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...

A ballad for messy brown girls

A ballad for messy brown girls

“A ballad for messy brown girls” is the honourable mention of Room’s Poetry and Fiction Contest 2018 as selected by judge Vivek Shraya. Brown girls with combed out curls that frizz and fly and fuzz, Baby hair halos, -  angels - of the 43 Kennedy bus.i Shorts that...

Diction (a glossary of terms)

Diction (a glossary of terms)

Aunt: f. from the Latin amita 1. small creatures that can carry more than their share 1.2 stand-in mothers (who can’t hold seventeen hours of labour over you) 2. photo filler used for major childhood moments: christenings, communions, etc. 3. antonym ex-aunts: members...

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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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