by Joshua Whitehead, in dialogue with Angie Abdou
ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY PRESS, 2023
“A lot of my material comes from listening fiercely to those around me and witnessing that which is discarded or not seen,” says Joshua Whitehead, in this slim, beautifully designed book of quotes and engaging interviews with novelist Angie Abdou. Whitehead discusses his early writing (when he lived in Selkirk, Manitoba, a town “segregated between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples”), his novel Jonny Appleseed (winner of CBC’s Canada Reads 2021), sex, humour and becoming a professor at the U of C. “We can write what we want to write,” he says of Indigenous authors today, a thought that leaves him “hopeful for the Indigenous literatures to come.”
edited by Alexander Finbow, Emily Pomeroy and Shea Proulx
RENEGADE ARTS ENTERTAINMENT, 2022
“What is a home?” ask the editors of this anthology of Alberta comics—a book created from the deluge of responses they got to a call for comics and graphic stories that are “quintessentially Albertan.” The explorations of home in this colourful, polyphonic book are by turns surprising, sad, funny, shocking and even heartwarming. More than that, from Teresa Wong’s mapping of Chinatown, to Derek Evernden’s several contributions, to Shannon M. Reeves’s story about surviving downtown during COVID, and much more, Alberta Comics is a demonstration of the abundance of talent in this province.
