Reading Room

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...

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...

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ROOM 49.1 NO FUTURE FOR WHO?

We are really asking. We are coming in hot. We are not fucking around. These existential crises, these states of emergency. The poetry, prose, and art in this issue ask: what are we to make of, or in, them?

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ROOM 48.3 Rest/Unrest

In Room Magazine 48.3 Rest/Unrest, may you find rest as you engage with profound, necessary unrest.

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