Best Canadian Essays 2021


Book Description

A Winnipeg Free Press Top Read of 2021 The thirteenth installment of Canada's annual volume of essays showcases diverse nonfiction writing from across the country. “The exceptional essay,” writes editor Bruce Whiteman, “derives from a passionate feeling, love and anger being perhaps its upper and lower limits, coexisting with a desire for truth, and it aims for the radiance of what is.” In the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Essays, Whiteman’s selections seek truth in all the places it may be found, from walks in brambled woods and ancient cities to memories of childhoods that shape a life; to analyses of artifacts both legislative and cultural that advance equality long overdue; to reports from the field that articulate the poetry of the present, the invisibility of the poor, the social contours and consuming mental contagions of the ongoing pandemic. Drawn from leading magazines and journals published in 2020, the fifteen essays gathered here brilliantly illuminate what is. Featuring work by: Neil Besner Catherine Bush Yvonne Blomer Jenna Butler Elizabeth Dauphinee Eva-Lynn Jagoe Mark Kingwell Frances Koziar Hilary Morgan V. Leathem Stephanie Nolen Kevin Patterson Soraya Roberts Ian Waddell Sheila Watt-Cloutier Joyce Wayne Rob Winger




Best Canadian Essays 2020


Book Description

The twelfth installment of Best Canadian Essays speaks with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. “This book—like most that have found their way into the world this fall—began life in the Before Times,” writes editor Sarmishta Subramanian. Written and first published by leading magazines and journals in 2019, the essays selected here speak with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. From health concerns both global and individual; to decisions about how much of ourselves we should share, online and in person; to surveillance capitalism and cancel culture, public and private concerns intertwine throughout Best Canadian Essays 2020. Just as our current challenges in public health, policing, and justice require researchers, lawmakers, and citizen groups, writes Subramanian, they also require writers. Here she presents sixteen, “essaying in the French sense of the word to think it through.” Featuring work by: James Brooke-Smith • Larissa Diakiw • Jenny Ferguson • Wayne Grady • Alexandra Kimball • Amorina Kingdon • Andy Lamey • Michael LaPointe • Benjamin Leszcz • Alanna Mitchell • Alexandra Molotkow • Jeremy Narby • Andrew Nikiforuk • Michelle Orange • Christina Sharpe • Carl Wilson




Best Canadian Poetry 2021


Book Description

“This is a book,” writes guest editor Souvankham Thammavongsa, “about what I saw and read and loved, and want you to see and read and love.” Selected from work published by Canadian poets in magazines and journals in 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2021 gathers the poems Thammavongsa loved most over a year’s worth of reading, and draws together voices that “got in and out quickly, that said unusual things, that were clear, spare, and plain, that made [her] laugh out loud … the voices that barely ever survive to make it onto the page.” From new work by Canadian icons to thrilling emerging talents, this year’s anthology offers fifty poems for you to fall in love with as well. Featuring: Margaret Atwood Ken Babstock Manahil Bandukwala Courtney Bates-Hardy Roxanna Bennett Ronna Bloom Louise Carson Kate Cayley Kitty Cheung Dani Couture Kayla Czaga Šari Dale Unnati Desai Tina Do Andrew DuBois Paola Ferrante Beth Goobie Nina Philomena Honorat Liz Howard Maureen Hynes George K Ilsley Eve Joseph Ian Keteku Judith Krause M Travis Lane Mary Dean Lee Canisia Lubrin Randy Lundy David Ly Yohani Mendis Pamela Mosher Susan Musgrave Téa Mutonji Barbara Nickel Ottavia Paluch Kirsten Pendreigh Emily Pohl-Weary David Romanda Matthew Rooney Zoe Imani Sharpe Sue Sinclair John Steffler Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang Arielle Twist David Ezra Wang Phoebe Wang Hayden Ward Elana Wolff Eugenia Zuroski Jan Zwicky




Best Canadian Essays 2024


Book Description

Selected by editor Marcello Di Cintio, the 2024 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2022. Featuring: Lyndsie Bourgon • Nicole Boyce • Robert Colman • Daniel Allen Cox • Acadia Currah • Sadiqa de Meijer • Gabrielle Drolet • Hamed Esmaeilion • Kate Gies • David Huebert • Jenny Hwang • Fiona Tinwei Lam • Kyo Maclear • Sandy Pool




Best Canadian Stories 2021


Book Description

Selected by guest editor Diane Schoemperlen, the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Stories continues not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. “The best short stories,” writes editor Diane Schoemperlen, “are disruptive in all the best ways, diverse in all senses of the word, always looking back and leading forward at the same time ... they must be written in the world, in the midst of a pandemic, in the midst of more horrifying news every day.” Submitted and published by Canadian writers in 2020, Schoemperlen’s selections for Best Canadian Stories 2021 feature work by established practitioners of the form alongside exciting newcomers, and stories published by leading magazines and journals as well as those appearing in print for the first time—all of which, as Schoemperlen writes, “bring us news of the world and the shape of things to come.” Featuring work by: Senaa Ahmad Chris Bailey Shashi Bhat Megan Callahan Francine Cunningham Lucia Gagliese Alice Gauntley Don Gillmor Angélique Lalonde Elise Levine Colette Maitland Sara O’Leary Jasmine Sealy Joshua Wales Joy Waller




The Best American Essays 2021


Book Description

A collection of the year's best essays, selected by award-winning journalist and New Yorker staff writer Kathryn Schulz "The world is abundant even in bad times,"guest editor Kathryn Schulz writes in her introduction, "it is lush with interestingness, and always, somewhere, offering up consolation or beauty or humor or happiness, or at least the hope of future happiness."The essays Schulz selected are a powerful time capsule of 2020, showcasing that even if our lives as we knew them stopped, the beauty to be found in them flourished. From an intimate account of nursing a loved one in the early days of the pandemic, to a masterful portrait of grieving the loss of a husband as the country grieved the loss of George Floyd, this collection brilliantly shapes the grief, hardship, and hope of a singular year. The Best American Essays 2021 includes ELIZABETH ALEXANDER - HILTON ALS - GABRIELLE HAMILTON - RUCHIR JOSHI - PATRICIA LOCKWOOD- CLAIRE MESSUD - WESLEY MORRIS - BETH NGUYEN - JESMYN WARD and others




Top Secret Canada


Book Description

National security in the interest of preserving the well-being of a country is arguably the first and most important responsibility of any democratic government. Motivated by some of the pressing questions and concerns of citizens, Top Secret Canada is the first book to offer a comprehensive study of the Canadian intelligence community, its different parts, and how it functions as a whole. In taking up this important task, contributors aim to identify the key players, explain their mandates and functions, and assess their interactions. Top Secret Canada features essays by the country’s foremost experts on law, foreign policy, intelligence, and national security, and will become the go-to resource for those seeking to understand Canada’s intelligence community and the challenges it faces now and in the future.




Best Canadian Essays 2023


Book Description

Selected by editor Mireille Silcoff, the 2023 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2021. “Our current, tumultuous age” writes editor Mireille Silcoff, “is an important time for essayists, because in moments of great change, it’s good to have chroniclers with the presence of mind to step back and assess.” Silcoff’s selections for Best Canadian Essays 2023 do just that. In examinations of identity—personal, familial, racial, and cultural—and investigations of the far-reaching shockwaves of war; in mediations on illness and health, belonging and alienation, parents and children; in unexpected arguments about novel-writing, Donald Trump, and the Filet-O-Fish sandwich, the essays gathered here chart all kinds of boundaries, comprising, as Silcoff terms it, “a small bid for understanding that a border, a line drawn, need not be only the beginning or the end of something. That a frontier can be a place—indeed is the best place—for a conversation between sides to begin.” Featuring works by: Jamaluddin Aram • Sharon Butala • Kunal Chaudhary • Christopher Cheung • Emma Gilchrist • Michelle Good • Paul Howe • Jane Hu • Heather Jessup • Chafic LaRochelle • Stephen Marche • Kathy Page • Tom Rachman • M.E. Rogan • Allan Stratton • Sarmishta Subramanian




The Hard Crowd


Book Description

A career-spanning anthology of essays on politics and culture by the best-selling author of The Flamethrowers includes entries discussing a Palestinian refugee camp, an illegal Baja Peninsula motorcycle race, and the 1970s Fiat factory wildcat strikes.




The Quarantine Review, Issue 9


Book Description

The ninth issue of a digital journal created to alleviate the malaise of social distancing with exceptional writing and artwork. The Quarantine Review celebrates literature and art, connecting readers through reflections on the human condition — our lived experiences, afflictions, and dreams. As we face a pandemic with profound implications, the essays within offer a variety of perspectives on the current predicament, encouraging readers to reflect on the world we knew before and contemplate how society can be reshaped once we emerge. Through The Quarantine Review, Dupuis and Sarfraz hope to give voice to the swirling emotions inside each of us during this unprecedented moment, to create a circuit of empathy between the reader, the work itself, and the wider world beyond the walls of our homes. This issue includes writing from Jowita Bydlowska, Yuan Changming, Teresa Douglas, Hollay Ghadery, Eleni Gouliaras, Vera Hadzic, Kevin Heslop, Carol Lipszyc, Monty Reid, Deryck N. Robertson, Lynn Tait, Myna Wallin, Matthew Walsh, and Katie Welch, with art by Shannon Kennedy.