Open Minds Quarterly asked me to record a reading of my poem and to provide insight into mental health and what living with mental illness means to me. This short talk and poem are incredibly personal to me. In this recording, I read my poem “Swell” which was the winner of the 2018 BrainStorm Poetry Contest. Continue reading Swell (Audio)
I have heard all the stories about girls like me, and I am unafraid to make more of them… If I had to summarize Carmen Maria Machado’s debut collection in one word, it would be haunting. I’ve never read anything like most of these stories, which is really exciting as a big reader (my fellow big readers can attest to this feeling). Her stories are imaginative and … Continue reading Review: Her Body and Other Parties
The world was made for the dead. Think of all the dead there are… There’s a million times more dead than living and the dead are dead a million times longer than the living are alive… Flannery O’Connor has always been one of my favourite authors. She’s the queen of the Southern Gothic and at one time, she had fifty peacocks on her property. She wrote … Continue reading The Violent Bear it Away
This was probably my best reading year ever. I finished my English Lit degree and suddenly had full control of my reading time. Since it got so cold this year over the holidays, I ended up reading more than usual and managed to beat my reading goal for the year by finishing 60 books. I discovered some new favourite authors like Ali Smith and Kazuo … Continue reading A Year in Book Reviews
I’m a BIG fan of books and I’m an even bigger fan of used books on sale. A lot of my books come from scouring the Good Will, Fair’s Fair books, or Better World Books (I have a blurb about them at the end of this post). There are a couple in this pile that I’d almost bought for full price over the last few … Continue reading July’s Thrifty Book Buys
Right now, I’m between degrees and only working in the archives part time, which means that I have more time for myself than I’ve had in years. The biggest trademark of my English degree was the way it structured my reading and not always in great ways (hello, Chaucer) but now I have full freedom to choose what I want to read and when. This … Continue reading an unconventional (and unorganized) summer of reading
Amy J LeBlanc 