Spring 2007

Illustrated By Nate Powell One could become a Toronto lit-culture junkie based on Emily Schultz’s contributions alone. Though Joyland is her first novel, Schultz has already released a short story collection (Black Coffee Nights, Insomniac), a biography (Michael Moore: a Biography, ECW) and an anthology (Outskirts: Women Writing from Small Places, Sumach), played the part of editor for magazines THIS and Broken Pencil and created The Pocket Cannon series. Schultz’s Joyland touches on an ignored past—coming of age in the era of Cheez Whiz and Donkey Kong.

In this illuminating and luminous novel, Kiran Desai assumes the literary baton from her mother, novelist Anita Desai. Kiran won the 2006 Man Booker Prize. Set in the late 20th century at the foothills of Mount Kanchenjunga in the Himalayas, and in New York, this evocative novel intersperses, in measured bursts of humour and compassion, what happens to an orphan girl, Sai, as she comes of age. The 16-year-old Sai is sent from her convent school to live with her anglophile grandfather, who has shut himself off from all human contact, giving all his love to his dog, Mutt.

Samantha King’s Pink Ribbons Inc. follows in the tradition of Sharon Batt’s 1994 classic Patient No More by examining the system that supports breast cancer. Pink Ribbons Inc. adds insights on the roles played by neo-liberalism, which fosters “a state that is no longer required to answer all of society’s problems but that encourages and facilitates the active involvement of individuals, corporations, foundations, charities, schools, hospitals, community associations and so on in resolving these problems.” Pink Ribbons is relatively short, but densely packed.

Ever since Ursula Rucker emerged as a poet and performance artist in 1994 at an open-mic event in Philadelphia, she’s been arousing audiences at home and abroad with her rhythmically diverse and compelling rapid-fire word bullets.

There’s something groovy happening up in the Yukon, and Kim Beggs is part of it. Like fellow northerners Anne Louise Genest and Kim Barlow, Beggs sings compelling tunes about hard lives lived in towns frozen in time. Her sophomore effort, Wanderer’s Paean, demonstrates a roots purity that is seldomfound in similar efforts produced closer to the49th Parallel. “Lips Stained Red with Wine” or “Feel a Little Glum” could have been written by Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn in their barely outta-the-holler days.

Vancouver-based singer-songwriter Kate Reid is one witty chick. She nails the lesbian experience with songs like “Everyone’s Fucked But Me,” with its references to uptight straight women trying fit in at women’s events, two-year relationships and going to therapy to support local women in business. Whether she’s singing about having crushes on “Co-op Girlz,” or living in a town midway to nowhere on “Small Town,” Reid is uncompromisingly queer.