Tag: history

April 1, 2024

An Interview with Carolyn Charron

I finally get the opportunity to interview Carolyn Charron and we talk about ageing in fiction, disability, historical fiction, pirates, short stories, and so much more. Carolyn Charron is a speculative fiction writer who’s always wanted to be a pirate or a wizard preferably with a dragon companion. Her short stories have appeared Renaissance Press’ Nothing Without Us, an anthology...

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June 8, 2019

The Teaching Rocks

The Teaching Rocks A review of Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Petropaths” in Take Us To Your Chief (Douglas &McIntyre, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Drew Hayden Taylor’s “Petropaths” is a tale of the ongoing nature of colonial violence, centred on the exploration of the way that this continued assault has created a generation of indigenous youth who are, as he suggests “stuck...

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December 4, 2018

Skin Deep

Skin Deep A review of Nathan Caro Frechette’s “Skin” in Over the Rainbow: Folk and Fairy Tales from the Margins (2018, Exile) By Derek Newman-Stille Selkies are creatures from Scottish folklore (but also noted in the Orkneys and Shetlands) who are capable of transforming from seal to human by shedding their skin. In many selkie tales, female selkies are stolen...

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October 22, 2017

Truths in Fiction

Truths in FictionA review of Kate Story’s “Where Will The Seas Roll Up Their Thunder” in Those Who Make Us: Canadian Creature, Myth, and Monster Stories edited by Kelsi Morris and Kaitlin Tremblay (Exile, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille In “Where Will the Seas Roll Up Their Thunder”, Kate Story speaks through a voice that is underused in fiction in generally,...

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May 4, 2017

A Shattered Touchstone

A review of Sean Virgo’s “My Atlantis” in Cli Fi: Canadian Tales of Climate Change (Exile, 2017).By Derek Newman-Stille Sean Virgo’s “My Atlantis” is a tale about the return to a changed land. Like Rati Mehrotra’s tale in Cli Fi, this tale features an older person, but unlike Mehrotra’s tale, where the protagonist is stationary in a changing land, this...

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May 31, 2016

Putting the Punk Back in Steampunk

Putting the Punk Back in Steampunk A review of Clockwork Canada: Steampunk Fiction Edited by Dominik Parisien (Exile Editions, 2016) By Derek Newman-Stille Steampunk has often struck me as a genre that has tended toward overly rosey views of the Edwardian and Victorian Eras. The steampunk tales I have read have often uncritically represented colonialism as adventure, portrayed technology divorced...

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April 30, 2016

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 62: Afrofuturism

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I explore Afrofuturism and particularly focus my examination on the work of Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson. Even though I am not a black person myself, I felt that it was important to examine Afrofuturism as an important contribution to imagining black futurity and to science fiction in general. In this episode...

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February 3, 2016

Speculating Canada on Trent Radio Episode 57: An Interview with Joanne Findon

In this episode of Speculating Canada on Trent Radio, I interview Joanne Findon – author, professor, medievalist, and specialist in children’s literature. We discuss the complicated category of children’s literature and the fact that children’s lit has a great deal to teach (especially to adult readers). We explore ideas of time travel and the importance of history, medievalism, folklore, feminism,...

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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...

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March 8, 2015

Not Tinkerbell… Welcome to the Fairypocalypse

A review of Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh (S&G Publishing, 2015) By Derek Newman-Stille There has been an incredible interest in apocalyptic scenarios. We are fascinated with the notion of “the end”. Whether zombies, environmental catastrophe, meteors, alien invasion, nuclear war… we are fascinated with the idea of an end of the story of human experience. Marie Bilodeau’s Nigh evokes creatures from...

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