Tag: death

September 5, 2024

Haunting Lights

A review of Jen Storm’s “Little Moons”By Derek Newman-Stille Little Moons is a powerful exploration of the violence inflicted on the Indigenous community, particularly through missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people. It is an examination of grief and how grief shapes us, changes us, and can bring some of us closer to traditions while it may also...

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March 9, 2019

Chrysalis

Chrysalis  A review of Lena Ng’s Love Transcendent in We Shall Be Monsters (Renaissance Press, 2018) By Derek Newman-Stille Lena Ng’s Love Transcendent is a belle mort tale of transformation. Exploring the Ancient Greek image of the soul represented as a butterfly, Ng explores the idea of death itself as a process of beautiful transformation, as a chrysalis in which...

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June 20, 2018

Next Top Villain

Next Top Villain A review of Jeff Lemire’s Thanos Vol 1: Thanos Returns (Marvel Comics, 2017). By Derek Newman-Stille Canadian comic book writer and artist Jeff Lemire has worked on independent comics, but has also worked with the comic company giants DC and Marvel. He tends to take his Canadian interest in grey areas and ambiguous endings into his comics...

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July 8, 2017

Insectile Intimacies

A review of Edward Willett’s “The Mother’s Keeper” in The Sum of Us by Susan Forest and Lucas Law (Laksa Media Group, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille Edward Willett takes a different perspective than many of the authors in the collection “The Sum of Us”, a collection about caregiving, and, instead LITERALLY dehumanizes caregiving. Instead of focusing on caregiving among humans,...

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March 3, 2016

Inevitability

Inevitability A review of “Expiration Date” Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick (Edge, 2015). By Derek Newman-Stille    Nancy Kilpatrick’s “Expiration Date” is a collection of stories that investigate one of our closest companions, an ever-present voyager on our path through life: Death. From Vampires to Banshee to the Grim Reaper him/herself, “Expiration Date” is an exploration of that inevitable force that...

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March 1, 2016

Deadly Musings

Deadly Musings A review of Mary E. Choo’s “That Brightness” in Expiration Date, Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick (Edge, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille    Having a gift for artistic expression is a challenging thing. It tends to come with a heavy dose of “imposter syndrome” and the feeling that one is never doing enough or that one’s work is not good...

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February 10, 2016

Immortality Quest

Immortality Quest A review of Kelley Armstrong’s “Sorry Seems to be the Hardest Word” from “Expiration Date”, Edited by Nancy Kilpatrick (Edge, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille It is always exciting to see a collection on the notion of the “Expiration Date” open with a vampire story – a monster developed as a fundamental question to the notion of death itself...

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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...

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June 21, 2015

No Longer Invulnerable, But Not Vulnerable Enough

A review of Matthew Johnson’s “Heroic Measures” in Irregular Verbs and Other Stories (ChiZine, 2014) by Derek Newman-Stille Superheroes inspire the imagination. They are larger than life. They are impossible. They are figures of immortality, defying the touch of death and aging. So, what happens when our superheroes age? What happens when their bodies begin to change?  Matthew Johnson explores...

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November 14, 2014

Spin The Bottle With Death

A review of Helen Marshall’s “Death and the Girl from Pi Delta Zeta” in Gifts For The One Who Comes After (ChiZine Publications, 2014). By Derek Newman-Stille In horror films, sorority girls have a metaphorical relationship with death, perpetually constructed as figures who are courted by death. Helen Marshall, demonstrating her characteristic desire to play with tropes to disempower, subvert,...

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