Tag: coming of age

April 3, 2024

An Interview with Lydia M Hawke

In today’s interview of the brilliant Lydia M Hawke, we explore ageing, coming-of-age stories, parents in coming-of-age stories, paranormal fiction, gender and feminism. Lydia gives us some amazing insights into her Crone series. Lydia M. Hawke is an award-winning urban fantasy and paranormal women’s fiction author and a proud crone living just outside of Ottawa. When worlds collide or apocalyptic...

Categories Interviews/On Air Comments: 0

June 22, 2018

Coming of Age With Super Powers

Coming of Age With Super Powers A review of Mariko Tamaki’s Supergirl: Being Super (DC Comics, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille Canadian comic writer and artist Mariko Tamaki has frequently explored coming of age and that fascinating experience of being between childhood and adulthood in comics like Skim and This One Summer. She shows an incredible ability to draw her readers...

Categories Other Reviews Comments: 0

September 16, 2017

What Happens When the Magical Girl Grows Up?

A review of Nicole Chartrand’s Shattered Starlight # 1  By Derek Newman-Stille We’ve probably all heard of “Magical Girl” stories – figures like Sailor Moon. “Magical Girl” stories generally feature teens who are suddenly called upon to fight forces of evil, given superpowers and magical items, and through their fights learn about responsibility, friendship, and the power of community. But.....

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comment: 1

April 3, 2017

Ageing Into The Future

A review of Lazarus Risen edited by Hayden Trenholm and Michael Rimar (Bundoran, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Hayden Trenholm and Michael Rimar’s collection of fiction Lazarus Risen constructs itself as a collection of stories about the biological singularity, exploring “dreams of immortality and eternal youth”, yet most of the stories in the collection bring attention to that spectre that always...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

November 18, 2015

Timelines

Timelines A review of Joanne Findon’s When Night Eats The Moon (Red Deer Press, 1999)By Derek Newman-Stille Time travel is ultimately about responsibility – responsibility to the timeline, to the past, the present, and the future. Perhaps this is why it works so well for a Young Adult novel. In When Night Eats The Moon, Joanne Findon’s narrator, Holly, begins...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

October 3, 2015

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 48: A Discussion of the Work of Max Turner

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interrogate the work of Max Turner, an author who explores the notion of the psychiatric institution through the perspective of a vampire. Turner sets his vampiric character in a former psychiatric institution in Peterborough Ontario called the Nicholls’ Ward. In this discussion of Max Turner’s work, I explore ideas of...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews/On Air Comments: 0

September 25, 2015

Transitional Words

A review of Nalo Hopkinson’s Falling in Love With Hominids (Tachyon Publications, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Falling in Love with Hominids illustrates Nalo Hopkinson’s playfulness with language, her characteristic exploration of the way that language shapes social interactions and develops plot. Hopkinson illustrates her fascination with ideas of sound and the power of mis-hearings, exploring stories that came from her...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

September 16, 2015

The Oddity of Children

A review of Nalo Hopkinson’s “Message in a Bottle” in Falling in Love with Hominids (Tachyon, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille Nalo Hopkinson’s “Message in a Bottle” explores the strange nature of children and the complicated reaction people have to children who don’t fit the norm. The narrator, Greg, explores the social pressure to have children and his own perception of...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

February 1, 2015

Animal Outbreak

A review of Jeff Lemire’s Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods (Vertigo, 2010) By Derek Newman-Stille Set in a post-outbreak society where most of the society has died of the plague and the remaining bits of humanity know that they have a countdown on their remaining life, Sweet Tooth: Out of the Deep Woods is a tale of loneliness...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0

January 25, 2015

Coming of Age in the End of Days

A review of Brent Hayward’s Head Full of Mountains (ChiZine Publications, 2014) By Derek Newman-Stille The end is a concept that brings hyper attention onto ideas of the body, memory, and the notion of permanence versus change, and Brent Hayward’s Head Full of Mountains constructs a society who, in trying to fend off the end, to preserve humanity, ends up...

Categories Fiction Book Reviews Comments: 0