Magnificent Octopus

Madam Józefina Przełęska had woken up on the wrong side of the bed that morning. By ten o'clock, this fact had become a universally ackn...

It has begun. The second wave of the pandemic. I keep thinking of it as a sociological phenomenon rather than a biological one, like fifth-w...

Sometimes I felt that my mind was a soft cloud of air around me, taking in whatever flew in, spinning around, and delivering it out into the...

(Too good to be true. It's not true. It stung me in the heart.)  A----o The trouble with you, dear, is that your name is so damn Shakesp...

Cory Doctorow emailed me yesterday, following up on a note I'd sent him in 2014 about his novel Little Brother . It's about his new ...

I went to a psychiatrist once. I was doing something that had become a pattern in my life, and I thought, Well, I should go talk to a psychi...

Traveling to another province has a postapocalyptic vibe. You see everyone wearing masks and you wonder what happened here. And then you rea...

We're packing up my mother's house to move her to Montreal. I'm finding joy scattered throughout her basement.  My father's ...

"Songs do not change the world," declares Jasper. "People do. People pass laws, riot, hear God and act accordingly. People in...

About this time last summer, my espresso machine clogged up. After several failed attempts to clean it, I gave up the double espresso filter...

The dirt floor was warm and damp. The space inside the pigsty glowed brightly, then crumbled into little pieces, like a mosaic. Swallows g...

"In June of this year patient experienced an attack of vertigo, nausea, and a feeling that she was going to pass out. A thorough medic...

Nobody dies of consumption anymore. The wasting disease of frail women. The body consumes itself. Was it cured by the mass consumption ...

When companies posted open recruitment notices for the second half of the year, Jiyoung felt as though she was standing in a narrow alley cl...

The Woman is well dressed and clean, but there is a high, manic gleam in her gaze, and her bright, cheerful voice sounds false. No one is...

Everything feels off today. Yesterday was brilliant, but today is off, like I got up on the wrong side of bed today, only it's the same ...

Days are getting shorter. Like I'm running out of time for things. We're having a heatwave. The city phoned me yesterday with an...

You're not built from the soles of your feet up — it's more like your head is a "castle in the air," with scaffolding rea...

I am unable to concentrate on work this past week. I sit and stare at my laptop for hours. Not cooking or cleaning or distracting myself wit...

I, Hazel Brown, eldest daughter of a disappearing class, penniless neophyte stunned by the glamour of literature, tradeless, clueless, yet w...