Canadian Literature

Call for Papers for a Special Issue on "The Vietnam War and its Afterlife in Canadian Literature" Guest Editor: Y-Dang Troeung (University of British Columbia) Canadian Literature seeks contributions for a guest-edited special issue on the Vietnam War and its Afterlife in Canadian Literature. As a descriptor, the Vietnam War signifies differently across spatial, temporal, and geographical boundaries. Some of its variants, metonymies, proxies, sideshows, and postscript...Continue reading

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Miasol Eguíbar-Holgado Miasol Eguibar-Holgado holds a degree in English Philology from the University of Oviedo, Spain. In 2011, she followed a Master’s Degree on American Literatures in Trinity College, Dublin and she was awarded her PhD in 2015 from the University of Oviedo, for which she received a pre-doctoral scholarship. She currently works as Assistant Lecturer in English in the same university. Her research focuses on Afro-Canadian litera...ture and postcolonial speculative fiction. Article Re-framing the Diasporic Subject: The Supernatural and the Black Female Body in The Salt Roads Abstract This article proposes to analyse Nalo Hopkinson's novel The Salt Roads (2003). It looks at how its intersections with gender, sexuality, and race adds new, unexplored dimensions to the specific genre. More specifically, it examines how the use of the Afro-Caribbean supernatural and of the black female body in the novel, creates a redefinition of Afro-diasporic subjectivities. In many respects this novel departs from the Eurocentric concept of the diaspora and from received epistemologies in the understanding of culture and history. Instead, it creates an alternative set of routes, the salt roads, that relies on a female water spirit as unifying thread. A focus on the enslaved female black body and on relationships of solidarity among the main characters implies a subversion of the traditional heterosexual male roles that dominate works of speculative fiction. Moreover, it creates an imaginative space that redresses traditional, Western readings of Caribbean history and identity. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Lisa Arsenault Lisa Arsenault’s first poetry manuscript, working title The Terrorist: A Book of Love Poems is complete and she is working towards publication. Music has heavily influenced the manuscript’s rhythm and tone: from Beethoven, Mozart, Black Sabbath’s first five albums, Garbage’s Version 2 album, Genesis, Eagles, Soundgarden, Audioslave, and Chris Cornell. She is writing a second manuscript, Nail’er Assault, an anagram of her name. ...Lisa Arsenault is from Timmins, Ontario, and has a B.A. in Psychology from York University. Her poem Forgotten Jasmine can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/forgotten-jasmine/. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

New Issue: Reading, Writing, Listening #241 We are pleased to announce the arrival of Canadian Literature, Issue 241, Reading, Writing, Listening. Laura Moss writes in her last editorial: I know that I am living, today, at an important moment in history and so it seems imperative to share even the small stories for posterity. I think as scholars, mentors, teachers, and parents, much of the past three months has been about being open with our vulnerabilities and insecurities b...ecause there’s been a kind of solidarity in thatwith students, colleagues, friends, and familyletting down the facade of being a composed professional and just being real in our community support. I admit too that keeping reading notes for this editorial served as a kind of coping mechanism for me over the months. I did not plan for forage, Unless the Eye Catch Fire, The Collected Poems of Bronwen Wallace, The Black Prairie Archives, or Little Blue Encyclopedia (For Vivian) to be the books that sustained me through a lockdown, but they did. Laura Moss, 111 Days (http://bit.ly/241Editorial) This issue also features: Articles by Emilie Sarah Caravecchia, Kristina Getz, Bronwyn Malloy, Dale Tracy, Helena Van Praet, and Sam Weselowski. Poetry by Mark Cochrane, Chelsea Coupal, Joanne Epp, Frank Klasssen, Michael Lithgow, Stan Rogal, Jade Wallace, and Tom Wayman. Reviews by Zachary Abram, Lisa Banks, Laura Cameron, Sunny Chan, Ryan J. Cox, Melanie Dennis Unrau, James Gifford, Julian Gunn, Heidi Tiedemann Darroch, Shazia Hafiz Ramji, Carla Harrison, Ceilidh Hart, David Huebert, Scott Inniss, Suzanne James, Sarah-Jean Krahn, Dorothy F. Lane, Angelika Maeser Lemieux, Stephanie L. Lu, Krzysztof Majer, Hannah McGregor, Katherine McLeod, Geordie Miller, Catherine Owen, Neil Querengesser, Dani Spinosa, Robert Thacker, Dale Tracy, Sylvie Vranckx, Paul Watkins, and Carl Watts. The new issue can be ordered through our online store at canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues. Happy reading!

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Moritz Ingwersen Moritz Ingwersen is Assistant Professor of North American Literature and Culture at the University of Konstanz, Germany. He holds a joint PhD in Cultural Studies and English from Trent University, Ontario and the University of Cologne. Building on a dissertation on intersections of science fiction and science studies, his research and teaching focus on speculative fiction, the posthumanities, ecological criticism, and North Ameri...can Indigenous literatures. His publications include articles on J. G. Ballard, China Miéville, N. K. Jemisin, and Neal Stephenson. Article Reclaiming Fossil Ghosts: Indigenous Resistance to Resource Extraction in Works by arren Cariou, Cherie Dimaline, and Nathan Adler Abstract Against the backdrop of recent Anthropocene critiques, this article offers a discussion of Indigenous resistance to resource extraction in Warren Cariou’s An Athabasca Story (2012), Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017), and Nathan Niigan Noodin Adler’s Wrist (2016). Employing elements of gothic, horror, and science fiction, all three works invoke modes of human-geologic enmeshment to imagine Indigenous resistance to settler-colonial fossil fuel industries via the resurgence of fossils who refuse to be commodified. Building on the theoretical work of Kathryn Yusoff and others, I examine their mobilization of fossil metaphors as emancipatory expressions of a type of geologic subjectivity that generates a dislocation of Eurocentric demarcations between the human and the inhuman. Reclaiming fossils, I argue, implies a material-discursive dimension of decolonization that complements the physical repatriation of looted ancestral bones and Indigenous artifacts with the production of self-determined Indigenous narratives of geologic corporeality. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Rebecca Ppucaru Rebecca Ppucaru's short story Yentas won The Malahat Review's 2020 Novella Prize and will appear in the summer issue. Her short story, Tropical Conversation was shortlisted for the Penguin Random House Canada Student Award for Fiction. Her first book, The Panic Room, was awarded the 2018 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Poetry and was also a finalist for the A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry and longlisted for the Gerald Lamper...t Memorial Award. Her poem Anti-depressant Pantoum can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/anti-depressant-pantoum/. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Y-Dang Troeung Y-Dang Troeung is Assistant Professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. She specializes in transnational Asian literatures, Asian Canadian literature, critical refugee studies, and global south studies. Her work focuses on genealogies of colonialism, war, and militarism in the transpacific. She is currently completing a book manuscript on the afterlife of the Cold War in Ca...mbodia. Her publications can be found in journals such as Modern Fiction Studies, Amerasia, ARIEL, MELUS, TOPIA, and Inter-Asia Cultural Studies. Article ’In this very uncertain space’:A Conversation with Omar El Akkad Abstract As a journalist for The Globe and Mail for 10 years, El Akkad has reported on war and conflict from around the world, including the war in Afghanistan, the military trials at Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring revolution in Egypt, and the Black Lives Matter movement in Ferguson, Missouri. In 2018, El Akkad's debut novel, American War, was shortlisted for a number of prominent literary prizes, garnering public attention as a finalist on the CBC Canada Reads competition. In this conversation, we talk to El Akkad about his novel, journalism, literary influences, migrations, and political visions of the future. One recurring theme in the conversation is the relationship between violence and the production of uncertaintythe unpredictability movement and refuge for the displaced; the ambiguity and risks of racial representation; the secrecy of detention and redaction; and the uncertainties of the future in times of change and crisis. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

Deadline Extension: Call for Papers on Pandemics! Our Call for Papers for a special issue on Pandemics has been extended. The new deadline is October 30, 2020. For submission details and a list of possible topics and themes, see bit.ly/panCFP. Send your articles through Canadian Literature’s online submissions system (OJS) today (https://ojs.library.ubc.ca/index.php/canlit/login). Many thanks to those who have already submitted a paper for our consideration.... Questions about the special issue may be directed to can.lit(at)ubc.ca

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Lauren Nerfa Lauren Nerfa is a PhD student at the University of Hawai’I at Mnoa. She focuses on cultural perceptions of and interactions with landscapes, community well-being and ecological conservation in tropical forests. Born in British Columbia and raised in the Caribbean and central Canada, Lauren is at home in the temperate zone and the tropics. She draws inspiration for her poetry from the beauty of landscapes and philosophical traditions... from around the world. Her poem Gift can be read on our website at http://canlit.ca/article/gift/. Canadian Literature issue 240, Lost and Found, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Larissa Lai Larissa Lai is the author of six books, including the novels Salt Fish Girl and The Tiger Flu, and the monograph Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. Recipient of the Lambda Literary Award, the Astraea Award, and the Tiptree Honor Book Award and finalist for the ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism and seven more, she lives on Treaty Seven Territory in southern Alberta, where ...she holds a Canada Research Chair in the Department of English at the University of Calgary and directs The Insurgent Architects’ House for Creative Writing. Article Familiarizing Grist Village: Why I Write Speculative Fiction Abstract Larissa Lai explains that she writes speculative fiction in order to embrace her own writerly agency. She takes up the practice of the thought experiment, first envisioned by Ursula LeGuin, as a way of narratively testing out ideas that could be practiced in the world as it is. Lai adds to this by recognizing that the world changes in multiple ways at once, and that we get new worlds and fresh futures not through a single change but through the concatenation of many, often driven by differing ideals. We can’t predict the results of ideals interacting, but we can learn to recognize beautiful, freeing or interesting things when they emerge. The marvel of speculative fiction is that it can show us how this might work, as for example in The Tiger Flu, Lai's novel about a community of self-reproducing women and a disease that favours men. Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Maureen Moynagh Maureen Moynagh is Professor in the Department of English at St. Francis Xavier University, in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq. She teaches postcolonial literature and theory, and she has published in the areas of African and African Diaspora literatures, transnational feminist collaborations, anti-imperialist travel writing, and child-soldier narratives. She received the Joe Weixlmann prize of 2019 for a recent es...say about Nalo Hopkinson’s speculative fiction, published in the African American Review. Her editorial can be read on our website at link Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at https://canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues/.

New Issue 240 Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror bit.ly/CanLit240

CanLit 240 Author Spotlight - Lou Cornum Lou Cornum is a Diné writer born in Arizona and living now in Brooklyn, New York. They received their Masters Degree in English literature from the University of British Columbia and are currently an English literature PhD candidate at the City University of New York Graduate Center. Their dissertation is titled Skin Worlds: Science Fiction Theorizing in Black and Indigenous Science Fiction since the 1970s. Their editorial can be read ...on our website at http://canlit.ca//introduction-decolonial-revisions-of-sc/ Canadian Literature issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, is available to order through our online store at canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues.

New Issue: Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror #240 We are pleased to announce the arrival of Canadian Literature, Issue 240, Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror. Lou Cornum and Maureen Moynagh write in their guest editorial: We are conscious of the ground shifting beneath our feet as we write of the relationship between capitalist/imperialist speculations and decolonial (re)visions of speculative fiction (sf). We, too, ar...e writing into the future, aware that when this issue appears, the future might well look very different from the one we anticipate now on the basis of dystopian projections of longstanding settler-colonial deterritorializations, even as those projections allow for glimpses of a utopian horizon (Moylan xii). In addressing decolonial (re)visions of settler-colonial futures, we look to the texts and thinkers on the margins of the literary who in their estranged testament represent variably what made this crisis world possible and speculate on how the dispossessed might build a world from and of other possibilities. Lou Cornum and Maureen Moynagh, Introduction: Decolonial (Re)Visions of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (bit.ly/240editorial) This issue also features: Articles by George Elliott Clarke, Miasol Eguíbar-Holgado, Moritz Ingwersen, Larissa Lai, Jody Mason, and Y-Dang Troeung and Phanuel Antwi. Poetry by Lisa Arsenault, Barry Dempster, Dan MacIsaac, Lauren Nerfa, Rebecca Ppucaru, and Vivian Zenari. Reviews by Alex Assaly, Veronica Austen, Gregory Betts, Alison Calder, Alessandra Capperdoni, Karen Charleson, Sijia Cheng, David Creelman, Margery Fee, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Lydia Forssander-Song, Sherrill Grace, Lisa Grekul, Weldon Hunter, Evangeline Holtz-Schramek, Crystal Hurdle, Jessica Janssen, Valerie Legge, Brandon McFarlane, Michael Minor, Shane Neilson, Stephen Ney, Claire Omhovère, Michael A. Peterman, Ian Rae, Laurie Ricou, Ralph Sarkonak, Jasmine Spencer, Dani Spinosa, Marianne A. Stenbaek, Neil Surkan, Julie Sutherland, Eleanor Ty, Emily Wall, and Brooke Xiang. The new issue can be ordered through our online store at canlit.ca/support/purchase/single-issues. Happy reading!