Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to be a part of The & Festival at Sheridan College as the moderator for the Navigating Vulnerabilities in Life Writing with Paige Maylott (My Body is Distant, ECW Press), Christine McNair (Toxemia, Book*hug Press), and Maurice Vellekoop (I’m So Glad We Had This Time Together, Penguin Random House). Our conversation was wonderful, and I walked about feeling energized and dazzled, but I also walked away with a handful of questions we didn’t have time to address.

He has my last name.

He has it because he’s mine—my fourth child and a last chance.

My name because of his puckish brutality and his milkweed tuffs of hair against my face in the dark.

The luxury of finding familiar skin, so close.

Because my name means power. Because of his first name, given after my uncle, who died at 58 of brain cancer.

My uncle, as a child, ran through the house calling to his mother:

You’re very nice, I love you.

(I love you, too.)

Because of sparkling idolatry; my baby’s eyes—they’re warm asphalt after the rain.

CanLit may be a koan, but rob mclennan is a one-man force for hope within the riddle. He runs a fair for small presses, he hosts a site for book reviews and does countless reviews himself. He’s written a whole host of wonderful books. While I have no doubt he must be tired of a great many things, he retains a sort of dignified persistence within a sometimes fraught and often uncertain literary landscape.

When I asked author and fellow League of Canadian Poets board member Rayanne Haines to join me for an instalment of The (CanL)It Crowd, I knew her response would be thoughtful. I also knew I’d probably be a little surprised—in that wonderful, ticklish way good writers can suss out sensitive spots and lean into them. I was not, however, anticipating being moved quite so much by Rayanne’s nuanced call for resistance.

As a naturalized citizen in Canada from the Caribbean, I have a complicated relationship with the words citizenship and community. The sense of belonging has always been a tricky concept for me. Moving from a village where everyone knew my name and my story to a cosmopolitan city where I often felt like a stranger was disorienting. Writing became my anchor, a way to make sense of my experiences, to connect with the world around me, even when it felt foreign.

I love the word ‘citizenship’ that Ghadery has rooted into this conversation about writers’ experiences with building literary community. Citizenship is such a great term in this exchange because the act of creating literary community is truly a give-and-take, labour-of-love endeavour with accompanying rights and responsibilities. Good citizenship is good relationship building.

We create art not just to razzle dazzle and entertain each other but to be in dialogue with each other about concepts and questions. About possible beginnings. And possible endings.

I first heard of Terese Svoboda from Terese herself. She reached out to me about this funny little series of mine that explores (and sure, even interrogates) the koan of CanLit through the lens of literary community and citizenship. Terese was interested in contributing to the discussion, which was great. But I wasn’t sure who she was, exactly. We had a mutual writer friend in common, but beyond that, I was unfamiliar with Terese’s work.

As it turned out, this was kinda Terese’s point. This is what Terese wanted to write about. As a recent immigrant from the U.S. to Victoria, Terese arrived in Canada as a relatively unknown author.

I first met Steven Mayoff when I started working with Radiant Press in 2023 to do publicity for his staggering and strange and altogether wonderful novel of magic realism and satire, The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief—a story about a painter in PEI who is visited by three messengers of The Supreme One who have a bizarre order for Samson: he must build the Island’s first synagogue.

Poet Patrick Connors has been a mainstay of the Toronto literary scene since I’ve started sleazing around the Toronto literary scene. As a reader, audience member, and supporter of other poets, Patrick is thoughtful and easy to engage with—much like his poetry. I am delighted to have him join me for this installment of The (CanL)It Crowd to speak to his experience with literary community and citizenship.

Being a human being is not a natural inclination for me (read my first book: The Woo-Woo for more information.) I had to learn and hone empathy by observing, studying, and practicing based on an unconventional upbringing. Over the years, I have copied models of kindness, reciprocity and empathy and I think I can safely pass as a so-so person in the world. I’m still a far better writer than I am a friend, and sometimes when I think about pushing a neighbor or colleague down the stairs, I tell myself: Wait! You love your job and apartment too much. It’s not worth the temporary moment of satisfaction!

Bänoo was and is, to my mind, one of the most powerful and passionate members of the literary community in Canada. As the founder of Shab-e She’r (Poetry Night), Canada’s most diverse and brave poetry open mic (inception 2012), Bänoo has made fostering open and respectful conversations her mission. Any time I hear her speak or read her work, I walk away with much for my brain to chew on.

Today is no exception. I am honoured to welcome Bänoo to this series to share her thoughts about literary community, and raise an important perspective about the words we use to describe this collective.

Last year, after reflecting on my experience working with people across many lifestyles and demographics, and after speaking with several health care professionals due to injuries and a resurgence of my eating disorder (which I tried to frame as “some minor flares of disordered eating” to avoid doing anything about it), I started the ongoing process of overhauling my exercise habits.

Recently, while I was conversing with Tim about publicity plans for his upcoming book, In the Capital City of Autumn—a gut-punchingly breathtaking collection of poetry due out this April with Wolsak & Wynn—Tim expressed a polite wariness about this business bustle.

Understandable.

Tim is the author of twenty-four works of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

I can’t remember how I met Wayne Ng, exactly. I do know it was sometime after my first book was published and through social media. His award-winning book, Letters to Johnny, was published by the same press as me—Guernica Editions. I’m fairly certain that was the connection that brought us together, but what kept me fascinated by this person was not only his incredible writing but his warmth and generosity.

I am happy to welcome Gail Kirkpatrick to The (CanL)It Crowd—a fitting author to feature in this series on literary community and citizenship since I first heard of Gail’s debut novel, Sleepers and Ties, through a dear mutual writer friend who recommended her book. And it’s a book that is (planets align!) also about the power and importance of community, set against the beautifully rendered backdrop of the Canadian prairies. (Learn more about Sleepers and Ties here.)

To kick off The (CanL)It Crowd—my new series on literary citizenship, life, and community—I welcome the irreplaceable and irrepressible, Gary Barwin, who shares an updated version of a blog he wrote when he was Writer-In-Residence at Sheridan College. Gary talks about award culture, winning, losing, and taking care of shit. I’m delighted to host this highly amusing, truth-dropping collection of thoughts.

I once hosted a fantastically embarrassing poetry event at a bar in Uxbridge, Ontario. Even though—by the providence of being in the same MFA cohort—I’d secured an incredible poet to read, no one came except my mother. It was a Sunday afternoon and the venue didn't even have patrons at the time. A woman wandered in off the street and in a promising show of support after surveying the sad scene, vowed to return with more people. I can't remember if she ever did. I was so anxious that parts of the afternoon are a blur.

On a seemingly unremarkable stretch of Highway 11 between Fauquier and Kapuskasing, Ontario, a UFO squats a stone’s throw from the town of Moonbeam’s Visitor Centre. The spacecraft is reminiscent of Gazoo’s ship in The Flintstones—except made of fibreglass and bigger. Much bigger. Standing at approximately nine-feet tall, the Moonbeam UFO monument is striking enough to summon thousands of travelers a year from the roadside, inviting them to take a few snaps and stretch their legs while they explore this intergalactic novelty and learn more about the fascinating town of Moonbeam.

When I was 11 years old, I read Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery, and much like millions of other young girls, I found a kindred spirit in the precocious redhead. It wasn’t until I was 37 that I realized I had far more in common with the author than her feisty fictional character. 

Whether it is a labyrinth on the back of a cereal box or a good crossword inside your newspaper, puzzles can be a fun—albeit, sometimes frustrating—hobby. One puzzle that has caused both amusement and frustration, and in my case, anger, is the Bean Puzzle Tombstone.

Located three kilometres north of the small town of Wellesley, Ontario in the Rushes Cemetery is the confounding Bean Puzzle Tombstone. This tombstone, which was erected by Samuel Bean in memory of two of his wives—both of whom died after being married to Bean for less than a year—features an epitaph in 15x15 alphanumeric code that baffled puzzle masters, historians, tourists, and locals for decades. But it managed to peeve me off within seconds.