Reading Room

This Will Be Good

This Will Be Good

My mother in a rental van idling in the Phoenix Airport parkade. She does a word search, finds “tongue” “bitter” “cochlea” lets a ballpoint pen tell her of her own body. I tap the van window, see her face for the first time in months. It’s been too hot, My mother in a...

And now you have what you were waiting for

And now you have what you were waiting for

The first time, you walk into the night and think, This January wind is like death. Then you laugh at the idea that wind can kill in a city where asphalt is streaked with long stripes of blood or shit or mud. The first time, you walk into the night and think, This...

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

The Art of Eating by M.F.K. Fisher

We are getting so excited and inspired (and hungry) watching your submissions roll in for our upcoming Food issue! In the spirit of the food theme, we put together this collection of Roomies’ favourite cookbooks for writers. These books all feature recipes, but also...

Like a Love Story

Like a Love Story

Our 2015 CNF Contest Honourable Mention. It’s my job to iron the napkins. There’s hundreds of them, enough to do two back-to-back weddings in a single weekend, or a three-day golf tournament without re-washing. I don’t mind. It’s quiet down here in the basement...

Best Practices for Time Travel

Best Practices for Time Travel

Doretta Lau is Room’s 2016 fiction contest judge. Who better than the judge herself to inspire you to get working on your contest entry? Read Lau's short story “Best Practices for Time Travel” below, from Room 38.3. Don't forget! The fiction contest closes July 15....

Jaan

Jaan

He was the first guy you dated who resembled anything you knew to be familiar. His moustache reminded you of your uncle so you told him to shave it, and he did. He told you not to speak so quickly. Pronounce the sounds of each word, he said. Exactly what your mother...

Tongues

Tongues

Mom says she doesn’t know how to twist her tongue in half. Mom says she doesn’t know how to twist her tongue in half. “It’s genetic,” you say as you fold your tongue and stick it out so she can see it. You are sitting at the kitchen table in Brampton. The light from...

trans womanhood, in colour

trans womanhood, in colour

i am the flower that grows out of the cliffside overhanging the lake on thin soil birthed by lichen that digested rocks that i might bloom in her body with love to all of us in life, spirit, remembrance, and struggle i. for St. Marsha P and every Miss that took hits i...

Prairie Ostrich

Prairie Ostrich

“The Japanese part has got to go,” Egg Murakami says to herself as she tries to brush off and survive another day of school bullying. It’s 1974 in a small prairie town, Buttercreek, Alberta, and the only Japanese-Canadian family—The Murakamis—are falling apart after...

Pre-order our newest issue

Cover image for Room Magazine Issue 49.2, Science. Art by Candace Cosentino of an old-fashioned computer monitor with a bounty of dandelions growing from it.

ROOM 49.2 SCIENCE

I hope this issue makes you curious and furious, leads to 2 a.m. Wikipedia rabbit holes, fulfills urges to seek out knowledge-keepers. Quickly or slowly, dive in: -ologies of all varieties await you.

Order our previous issue

ROOM 49.1 No Future for Who?

In Room Magazine 49.1 No Future for Who?, we are really asking. We are coming in hot. We are causing a scene. We are being unreasonable. We are not fucking around. We are not taking “no” for an answer. “No” is the only word we still know. For who? For who? No.

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