Essais Series

Series · 9 books · 2015-2019

By Amy Fung, Johanna Skibsrud, Erin Wunker, and more

Books in series

Her Paraphernalia

On Motherlines, Sex/Blood/Loss & Selfies

2015

Her Paraphernalia, the new book of creative non-fiction from noted Canadian poet Margaret Christakos, presents an intimate and original collection of midlife writings that seeks to make readers think in a very personalized way about family geneology, private sexuality and life changes, including those experiences that exist at the intersections of contemporary digital culture. Through a sequence of ten etudes (consisting of entre-genre pieces, including prose and lyric poetry, experimental writing that integrates elements of social media posts, and other forms), Christakos' virtuosity with language and wordplay tantalizes, as she explores women's and girls' relationship to self-portraiture in the age of social media, and considers aspects of how we negotiate our public and private identities as women, mothers and daughters. Christakos takes as her starting point the reproductive touchstones of ages 15 and 50, and in this light, reflects upon the closeness and distances between herself, her own daughter, and her Greek and English immigrant grandmothers. Written as a love song to her mother and daughter, Her Paraphernalia is at once a personal and yet wholly personable entree into major themes that so many people of all ages and stages can relate to—self-identity, the beauty of the selfie, social media, partnership, miscarriage, menstruation, sexual lust, solo travel, depression, menopause, the death of a parent, the writing life, divorce, and women's transgenerational vitality, among others. Interesting, unusually honest and open-minded, this collection will find a welcome audience among intelligent, self-actualizing women interested in contemporary culture and feminist questions; mothers of young women; women in midlife who may be experiencing mother-loss, menopause, empty nest, and divorce and those who self-direct their sexuality; readers interested in the overlap of artists who are mothers, and vice versa; and poets and readers interested in Christakos' oeuvre in general.

Notes From a Feminist Killjoy

Essays on Everyday Life

2016

Erin Wunker is a feminist killjoy, and she thinks you should be one, too. Following in the tradition of Sara Ahmed (the originator of the concept of the "feminist killjoy"), Wunker brings memoir, theory, literary criticism, pop culture, and feminist thinking together in this collection of essays that take up Ahmed's project as a multi-faceted lens through which to read the world from a feminist point of view. Neither totemic nor complete, the non-fiction essays that make up Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life attempt to think publicly about why we need feminism, and especially why we need the figure of the feminist killjoy, now. From the complicated practices of being a mother and a feminist, to building friendship amongst women as a community-building and -sustaining project, to writing that addresses rape culture from the Canadian context and beyond, Notes from a Feminist Killjoy: Essays on Everyday Life invites the reader into a conversation about gender, feminism, and living in our inequitable world.

Blank

Essays and Interviews

2017

Blank is a collection of previously out-of-print essays and new works by one of Canada's most important writers and thinkers. Through an engagement with her earlier work, M. NourbeSe Philip comes to realize the existence of a repetition in the world: the return of something that, while still present, has become unembedded from the world, disappeared. Her imperative becomes to make us see what has gone unseen by writing memory upon the margin of history, in the shadow of empire and at the frontier of silence. In heretical writings that work to make the disappeared perceptible, Blank explores questions of timeliness, recurrence, ongoingness, art, race, the body politic, and the so-called multicultural nation. Through these considerations, Philip creates a linguistic form that registers the presence of what has seemingly dissolved, a form that also imprints the loss and the silence surrounding those disappearances in its very presence. Praise for M. NourbeSe Philip "Philip's questions are difficult, and of an intensity of insistence rarely achieved." —Erin Mour&eaccute; "Those still confused about why poetry might fracture and splinter and stutter can find an answer in the work of M. NourbeSe Philip." —Juliana Spahr

My Conversations with Canadians

2017

On her first book tour at the age of 26, Lee Maracle was asked a question from the audience, one she couldn’t possibly answer at that moment. But she has been thinking about it ever since. As time has passed, she has been asked countless similar questions, all of them too big to answer, but not too large to contemplate. These questions, which touch upon subjects such as citizenship, segregation, labour, law, prejudice and reconciliation (to name a few), are the heart of My Conversations with Canadians. In prose essays that are both conversational and direct, Maracle seeks not to provide any answers to these questions she has lived with for so long. Rather, she thinks through each one using a multitude of experiences she’s had in Canada, as an Indigenous leader, a woman and mother and grandmother over the course of her life. Lee Maracle’s My Conversations with Canadians presents a tour de force exploration into this writer’s own history and a reimagining of the future of our nation.

Dear Current Occupant

A Memoir

2018

From Vancouver-based writer Chelene Knight, Dear Current Occupant is a creative non-fiction memoir about home and belonging set in the 80s and 90s of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Using a variety of forms, Knight reflects on her childhood through a series of letters addressed to all of the current occupants now living in the twenty different houses she moved in and out of with her mother and brother. From blurry non-chronological memories of trying to fit in with her own family as the only mixed East Indian/Black child, to crystal clear recollections of parental drug use, Knight draws a vivid portrait of memory that still longs for a place and a home. Peering through windows and doors into intimate, remembered spaces now occupied by strangers, Knight writes to them in order to deconstruct her own past. From the rubble of memory she then builds a real place in order to bring herself back home.

Refuse

CanLit in Ruins

2018

CanLit—the commonly used short form for English Canadian Literature as a cultural formation and industry—has been at the heart of several recent public controversies. Why? Because CanLit is breaking open to reveal the accepted injustices at its heart. It is imperative that these public controversies and the issues that sparked them be subject to careful and thorough discussion and critique. provides a critical and historical context to help readers understand conversations happening about CanLit presently. One of its goals is to foreground the perspectives of those who have been changing the conversation about what CanLit is and what it could be. Topics such as literary celebrity, white power, appropriation, class, rape culture, and the ongoing impact of settler colonialism are addressed by a diverse gathering of writers from across Canada. This volume works to avoid a single metanarrative response to these issues, but rather brings together a cacophonous and ruinous multitude of voices.

Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being

2019

In that moment, I felt closer to whiteness than not. I was completely complicit and didn?t think twice about entering a space that could cover their walls with images of contemporary Indigenous perspectives, but exclude their physical bodies from entering and experiencing. In that moment, I felt like a real Canadian. Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being is the debut collection of nonfiction essays by Amy Fung. In it, Fung takes a closer examination at Canada's mythologies of multiculturalism, settler colonialism, and identity through the lens of a national art critic. Following the tangents of a foreign-born perspective and the complexities and complicities in participating in ongoing acts of colonial violence, the book as a whole takes the form of a very long land acknowledgement. Taken individually, each essay roots itself in the learning and unlearning process of a first generation settler immigrant as she unfurls each region's sense of place and identity Praise for Before I Was a Critic I Was a Human Being : ?The hours I've spent with this knowing and moving book about place and placelessness are among the most valuable of my reading life. Wow, thank you, Amy." —Eileen Myles "As an Indigenous/Haudenosaunee writer and reader, I recognize that Amy Fung's book does not try to convince us that she is a native rights ally but shows us with language how to mould the term ally into a verb." —Janet Rogers, author of Totem Poles and Railroads "In this compelling work, Amy Fung breathes life and relevance into criticality. This visitor's guide is integral reading." —Cecily Nicholson, author of Wayside Sang, winner of the Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry.

Disquieting

Essays on Silence

2019

How do our bodies speak for us when words don?t suffice? How can we make ourselves understood when what we have to say is inarticulable? In Disquieting, Cynthia Cruz tarries with others who have provided examples of how to ?turn away,? or reject the ideologies of contemporary Neoliberal culture. These essays inhabit connections between silence, refusal, anorexia, mental illness, and Neoliberalism. Cruz also explores the experience of being working-class and poor in contemporary culture, and how those who are silenced often turn to forms of disquietude that value open-endedness, complexity, and difficulty. Essays on Silence draws on philosophy, theory, art, film, and literature to offer alternative ways of being in this world and possibilities for building a new one.

The Nothing That Is

Essays on Art, Literature and Being

2019

Rather than making "something" out of "nothing," what follows is an endeavour to express the potential of language and thought to encounter what is infinitely beyond both yet to be imagined. In The Nothing That Is, Johanna Skibsrud gathers essays about the very concept of "nothing." Addressing a broad range of topics-including false atrocity tales, so-called fake news, high-wire acts, and telepathy, as well as responses to works by John Ashbery, Virginia Woolf, Anne Carson, and more-these essays seek to decentre our relationship to both the "givenness" of history and to a predictive or probable model of the future. The Nothing That Is explores ways in which poetic language can activate the possibilities replete within our every moment. Skibsrud reveals that within every encounter between a speaking "I" and what exceeds subjectivity, there is a listening "Other," be it community or the objective world. Praise for The Nothing That Is : "Skibsrud adds brilliantly to what we can know of poetry. By entering into the words of Woolf, Oppen, Stephens, Rukeyser, Carson and others, and thinking in our presence, she gives us the experience of touch and beauty and the poem. A friend to Burke's sublime and to Pato?s at the limit, this book urges us to receive poetry's "nothing" for here an abundance lives. Put The Nothing That Is into the hands of whoever is puzzled by or afraid of poetry, into the hands of whoever teaches it!" -Erín Moure "Why do I find Skibsrud's consideration of Nothing essentially hopeful? Because her approach to the possibilities of thinking Nothing arise out of, and include, the despair of Celan's babble-which is to say the incomprehensible, a place where all known structures, including language, have fallen away. Skibsrud invites us to participate in the very human process of re-seeing and remaking the world; she challenges us to venture with her into the unknown, where experience and language empty themselves, then create themselves anew." -Sam Ace, author of Our Weather Our Sea "At some point in my relationship with The Nothing That Is I began to forget that I was reading a collection of essays on art, language, and being, and began, instead, to believe that I was reading a guidebook on how to approach and appreciate outer space. Because, in her recuperative and intimate readings of the often despairing, always life-affirming schisms between what is expressed and what remains inexpressible, Johanna Skibsrud has written a manifesto of liminal, reverberative space, as essential to our understanding of poetry and art, as to that of black holes and the Milky Way." -Brandon Shimoda, author of The Grave on the Wall

Authors

Johanna Skibsrud is a Canadian writer whose debut novel The Sentimentalists, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She is also the author of This Will Be Difficult to Explain, as well as two poetry collections. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.

Erin Wunker

Author · 2 books

Erin Wunker is an assistant professor (limited term) in the Department of English at Mount Allison University. She is the co-founder of the feminist academic blog Hook and Eye, and a member of the Board of Canadian Women in the Literary Arts.

M. NourbeSe Philip

Author · 6 books

M. NOURBESE PHILIP is a poet and writer and lawyer who lives in the City of Toronto. She was born in Tobago and now lives in Canada. In l965, when graduating from Bishop Anstey High School, M. NOURBESE PHILIP was awarded the Cipriani Memorial Scholarship for standing first in a Caribbean wide examination at the high school level. This award entitled her to carry out her undergraduate studies at the University of the West Indies. In l968 Ms NOURBESE PHILIP received her B.Sc.(Econ.) degree from the University of the West Indies. M. NOURBESE PHILIP completed a Masters degree in Political Science (1970) as well as a degree in law at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada(1973). She practised law for seven years in Toronto, first at Parkdale Community Services and then in the partnership, Jemmott and Philip. During this time she completed two books of poetry. In l983 she gave up the practice of law to devote more time to writing. Although primarily a poet, NourbeSe Philip also writes both fiction and non-fiction. She has published three books of poetry, Thorns - l980, Salmon Courage - 1983 and She Tries Her Tongue; Her Silence Softly Breaks - 1988 and has been the recipient of Canada Council awards, numerous Ontario Arts Council grants and was the recipient of a Toronto Arts Council award in l989. In l988 M. NOURBESE PHILIP won the prestigious Casa de las Americas prize for the manuscript version of her book, She Tries Her Tongue... She is also the l988 first prize winner of the Tradewinds Collective prize (Trinidad & Tobago) in both the poetry and the short story categories. Ms NOURBESE PHILIP's first novel, Harriet's Daughter, was published in l988 by Heinemann (England) and The Women's Press (Canada). This book was one of two runners up in the l989 Canadian Library Association Prize for children's literature. Harriet's Daughter was also first runner up in the Max and Greta Abel Award for Multicultural Literature. Her second novel, Looking For Livingstone: An Odyssey of Silence, was published in l991. In l994, NOURBESE PHILIP's short story, "Stop Frame" was awarded the Lawrence Foundation Award by the journal, Prairie Schooner. In 1990, M. NOURBESE PHILIP was made a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry and in 1991 became a McDowell Fellow. M. NOURBESE PHILIP'S short stories, essays, reviews and articles have appeared in magazines and journals in North America and England, and her poetry has been extensively anthologized. Her work - poetry, fiction and non-fiction is taught widely at the university level and is the subject of much academic writing and critique. She has taught creative fiction at the third year level at York University. Two collections of Ms PHILIP's essays, Frontiers: Essays and Writings on Racism and Culture and Showing Grit: Showboating North of the 44th Parallel, were published in November l992 and June l993. CARIBANA: African roots and continuities -Race, Space and the Poetics of Moving was published as a chap book in 1996 and a third essay collection, Genealogy of Resistance and Other Essays-followed in 1997. In 1995 M. NOURBESE PHILIP was awarded the Toronto Arts Award in writing and publishing. M. NOURBESE PHILIP's first play, Coups and Calypsos, was produced in both London, England and in Toronto during 1999. A stage adaptation of Harriet's Daughter, her popular novel for young adults was successfully work-shopped in both 2000 and 2001 using a script written by the author. In 2001 NourbeSe Philip was recognized for her work as "a revolutionary poet, writer and thinker" by the Elizabeth Fry Society of Toronto which presented her their 2001 Rebels for a Cause award . That year M. NOURBESE PHILIP was also the recipient of the YWCA Woman of Distinction award in the Arts. Her nominees stated: "The experiences of Black women and girls are foremost in NourbeSe's works, as are issues of belonging, language, place and location." In 2001 Nourbese Philip was

Born in Vancouver, British Columbia, she grew up in the neighbouring city of North Vancouver and attended Simon Fraser University. She was one of the first Aboriginal people to be published in the early 1970s. Maracle is one of the most prolific aboriginal authors in Canada and a recognized authority on issues pertaining to aboriginal people and aboriginal literature. She is an award-winning poet, novelist, performance storyteller, scriptwriter, actor and keeper/mythmaker among the Stó:lō people. Maracle was one of the founders of the En’owkin International School of Writing in Penticton, British Columbia and the cultural director of the Centre for Indigenous Theatre in Toronto, Ontario. Maracle has given hundreds of speeches on political, historical, and feminist sociological topics related to native people, and conducted dozens of workshops on personal and cultural reclamation. She has served as a consultant on First Nations’ self-government and has an extensive history in community development. She has been described as “a walking history book” and an international expert on Canadian First Nations culture and history. Maracle has taught at the University of Toronto, University of Waterloo, Southern Oregon University and has served as professor of Canadian culture at Western Washington University. She currently lives in Toronto, teaching at the University of Toronto First Nations House. She most recently was the writer-in-residence at the University of Guelph.

Chelene Knight

Author · 3 books

Chelene Knight is the author of the poetry collection Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American literary journals, plus the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, and the Toronto Star. Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter. The Toronto Star called Knight, “one of the storytellers we need most right now.” Knight was the previous managing editor at Room (2016- June 2019), and programming director for the Growing Room Festival (2018, 2019), and now CEO of #LearnWritingEssentials and Breathing Space Creative. She often gives talks about home, belonging and belief, inclusivity, and community building through authentic storytelling. Knight is currently working on Junie, a novel set in Vancouver’s Hogan’s Alley, forthcoming in 2020. She was selected as a 2019 Writers' Trust Rising Star by David Chariandy.

Cynthia Cruz

Author · 9 books

Cynthia Cruz is the author of Ruin (Alice James Books) as well as The Glimmering Room, Wunderkammer and How the End Begins (all from Four Way Books). She is the recipient of fellowships from Yaddo, the MacDowell Colony, and a Hodder Fellowship. An essayist and art writer, her first collection of essays, Notes Toward a New Language is forthcoming. She teaches at Sarah Lawrence College and is currently a doctoral student in Germanic Language and Literature.