Guernica Editions

Robin Blackburn McBride was interviewed on Open Book about her historical fiction novel The Shining Fragments. One of the things I explore in the novel is addiction, and at a time when there wasn't a term for it - no treatment or understanding, as we have today, that addiction is not the mark of a “bad person,” and indeed that it can even be the mark of a spiritual seer or seeker. There is to Joseph, I believe, something of the seeker. Yet, he doesn't fully want to find what it is he’s looking for. It’s that tension between desiring something and being terrified by it. His coming of age in The Shining Fragments, then, is really about coming into the fullness of an emotional experience. It’s difficult for Joseph to feel beyond obsessiveness. He loves to draw and paint, and it's through art that he finds solace, relief, and release. For the full interview:

http://open-book.ca/News/Robin-Blackburn-McBride-on-the-Child-Protagonist-of-Her-Novel-He-Said-Take-My-Hand-Which-I-Did-and-He-Led-Me

Congratulations to Bruce Meyer who won The Woolf 2018 Poetry Competition out of Zurich, Switzerland, for his poem "Tom Thomson, First Snow, 1915"

https://thewoolf.org/2018/12/01/2018-poetry-competition-winning-poems/

**Guernica Prize News**

KEVIN WILSON is the winner of the 2018 Guernica Literary prize for his manuscript AN IDEA ABOUT MY DEAD UNCLE, to be released in Fall 2019!

Congratulations to Kevin Wilson!

“A witty, sharp-edged, finely-crafted story about a young man struggling with identity issues, which causes relationship disasters and a quest for his long lost uncle in China.”

Sky Gilbert's piece about gay identity and what it means to be a writer:

https://quillette.com/2018/11/26/if-thats-what-it-means-to-be-a-writer-i-quit/

Emma Reilly interviewed Sky Gilbert about small things for The Hamilton Spectator. "Small Things," is a post-structuralist collection of what he calls "anti-essays." Part memoir, part short story, part stream-of-consciousness narrative, each offering gives readers a glimpse into Gilbert's life and mind. The pieces in "Small Things" tackle a variety of topics: there are stories of intergenerational politics and tension within the LGBTQ+ community, observations about family (Gilbert's relationship with his mother looms large), musings on literature and reflections on sexuality. For the full piece:

https://www.thespec.com/living-story/9047777--small-things-tackles-weighty-topics/

Veena Gokhale was interviewed on Amandla, CKUT 90.3 FM, News and Analysis on Africa, with Doug Miller. To listen to the interview:

https://addax.wordpress.com/2018/11/07/interview-veena-gokhales-book-land-for-fatimah/