Tag: story-telling

September 1, 2025

An Interview with Nathan Frechette About “Whispers Between Fairies”

I rarely talk about my own work on Speculating Canada, but because I had the opportunity to co-write Whispers Between Fairies (Renaissance Press) with the wonderful Nathan Frechette, I thought this would be a good space to highlight his work. Whispers Between Fairies was written in collaboration with Nathan Frechette. For this collection, each of us would rewrite a fairy...

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February 22, 2021

Primordial Futures

A review of Amanda Leduc’s The Centaur’s Wife By Derek Newman-Stille Heather and Tasha are both storytellers. Both weave tales for their own needs. When meteors fall and humanity is left starving and disoriented, Heather carries on her father’s tradition of telling fairy tales to create a more magical life while Tasha keeps telling others the bigger fairy tale –...

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December 26, 2020

A New Tool for Story-Writing

A review of The Story Engine by Peter Chiykowski By Derek Newman-Stille Earlier this year, I came across a kickstarter that I just had to support. In addition to my work on Speculating Canada, I teach writing classes, so I am always on the lookout for new and exciting ways to teach. I have a particular interest in teaching through...

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August 22, 2020

Authors in Quarantine – Mark Leslie Lefebvre

With this this series, I am hoping to capture how this cultural moment is affecting our speculative fiction authors and how our authors are surviving during the COVID-19 outbreak Spec Can: What have you been up to during the COVID-19 outbreak? Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I’ve actually been re-discovering a creative exercise that I used to formerly use as a writing...

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May 4, 2020

Why Star Wars is Important To Me As An Abuse Survivor

By Derek Newman-Stille I am a child abuse survivor. My biological father beat me throughout my life until my mother, sister, and I were able to escape when I was 15. This may not seem to be related to Star Wars… but it is. As a child, I read about abuse to try to understand what was happening to me....

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July 23, 2019

Secret Identities

Secret Identities A review of James Alan Gardner’s They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded (Tor, 2018). By Derek Newman-Stille James Alan Gardner’s They Promised Me the Gun Wasn’t Loaded, a sequel to All Those Explosions Were Someone Else’s Fault, continues his exploration of the superhero. Gardner focusses his narrative on the perspective of another of his superheroes, Jools, whose...

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June 24, 2019

A Fantasy Trans Memoir

A Fantasy Trans Memoir A review of Kai Cheng Thom’s Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir (Metonymy Press, 2016). By Derek Newman-Stille Kai Cheng Thom decided to include the word “Memoir” in the title of her book Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir, yet she also cleverly weaves fantasy elements...

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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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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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July 26, 2017

Radical Acts of Beauty

A review of Daniel Heath Justice’s “The Boys Who Became The Hummingbirds” in Moonshot: The Indigenous Comics Collection Volume 2” (Edited by Hope Nicholson, Alternative History Comics, 2017) By Derek Newman-Stille Daniel Heath Justice’s “The Boys Who Became The Hummingbirds” is a comic about resilience and transformation, highlighting the desire of a two-spirit boy to change the world around him...

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