Staff – CAROUSEL Magazine: Blog

June 2023 Reviewers-in-Residence: The Ampersand Review’s Shaylyn Schwieg and Becca Lawlor

Introducing our June 2023 Reviewers-in-Residence: June 2023 is a special month here at USEREVIEW, as we’re partnering with The Ampersand Review to bring you some exciting crossover content! Every Wednesday, CAROUSEL will be featuring reviews by Ampersand interns Shaylyn Schwieg and Becca Lawlor. Meanwhile, Ampersand’s June issue will feature a rare full-length external review by CAROUSEL Reviews Editor Jade Wallace, who normally only reviews for CAROUSEL. Without further ado, we introduce this month’s reviewers …

May 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Leah Bobet

Introducing our May 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Novelist, editor and critic Leah Bobet’s novels have won the Sunburst, Copper Cylinder and Aurora Awards, been selected for the Ontario Library Association’s Best Bets program and been shortlisted for the Cybils and the Andre Norton Award. Her short fiction has appeared in multiple Year’s Best anthologies and has been taught in high school and university classrooms in Canada, Australia and the US; her poetry has been multiply shortlisted for

April 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Hollay Ghadery

Introducing our April 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Hollay Ghadery is a writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her fiction, nonfiction and poetry have been published in various literary journals, including Grain, Room, The Antigonish Review, The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review. Her memoir on mixed-race identity and mental health, Fuse, came out with Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in spring 2021. Her debut collection

March 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Joanna Acevedo

Introducing our March 2023 Reviewer-in-Residence: Joanna Acevedo (she/they) is the Pushcart nominated author of the chapbook List of Demands (Bottlecap Press, 2022) and the books The Pathophysiology of Longing (Black Centipede Press, 2020) and Unsaid Things (Flexible Press, 2021). She received her MFA in Fiction from New York University in 2021. More: joannaacevedo.net Over the course of the month, Acevedo will review the following books: • Gabrielle Bates’ debut poetry collection Judas Goat (Tin House,

New at USEREVIEW in 2023

Staff
02, 2023
Book Review, Review
0

Since our debut more than two years ago in September 2020, CAROUSEL’s USEREVIEW has published over 100 traditional, experimental and short-form capsule reviews. Last year, we debuted our Reviewer-in-Residence program, in which we published short capsule reviews from a single reviewer for three weeks in a row. Never ones to coast, we decided this year to expand our Reviewer-in-Residence program to shine an even brighter spotlight on individual reviewers’ critical practices. For 2023, we have

CAROUSEL Recommends: More books from 2022 to check out!

To our infinite dismay, we at USEREVIEW cannot possibly review all of the wonderful books that come out in any given year — but we can do our best to give a little extra attention to books written by our much-appreciated former, current and forthcoming CAROUSEL contributors! As 2022 ends, join us as we look back on some of the amazing books published by CAROUSEL contributors this year … #USEREVIEWEDNESDAY CHAPBOOKS NOVELS & NOVELLAS POETRY

Justin Stephenson’s Titles for Crimes of the Future

Staff
12, 2022
Artist
0

In lieu of our regular weekly USEREVIEW posts, we at CAROUSEL will be using each Wednesday in December to highlight just a few of the many exciting artistic projects that former contributors have been at work on outside of the pages of our magazine. Up now: Justin Stephenson’s film titles for David Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future (2022). Past CAROUSEL contributor Justin Stephenson is an award-winning filmmaker and moving image designer. He has directed, animated

Anders Nilsen Interprets John Wyndham!

Staff
12, 2022
Artist
0

In lieu of our regular weekly USEREVIEW posts, we at CAROUSEL will be using each Wednesday in December to highlight just a few of the many exciting artistic projects that former contributors have been at work on outside of the pages of our magazine. Up now: Anders Nilsen’s covers for new reissues of classic John Wyndham books! Past CAROUSEL contributor Anders Nilsen is the Los Angeles-based artist & author of ten books including Big Questions, The

Hey Witch

Staff
12, 2022
Artist
0

In lieu of our regular weekly USEREVIEW posts, we at CAROUSEL will be using each Wednesday in December to highlight just a few of the many exciting artistic projects that former contributors have been at work on outside of the pages of our magazine. Up first: Hey Witch! Pottery & Art by Jessica Bromley Bartram. CAROUSEL contributor Jessica Bromley Bartram is an illustrator, graphic designer and artist based in Ottawa, Ontario. We’ve featured her work

IN MEMORIAM: David Haskins

Staff
04, 2022
Poet
0

Remembering writer David Haskins (ca. 1945-2022) We at CAROUSEL were deeply sorry to hear of the passing of teacher, father, writer and friend to literature, David Haskins, of Grimsby, Ontario. An emigrant from post-war Britain, Haskins spent his entire adult life in Ontario, where he taught high school English for 36 years, and will continue to be fondly remembered by students as an engaged, thoughtful and kind teacher. As a writer, Haskins was the author

WRITING THE TAROT themed call — deadline: Mar 15/22

Don’t Delay — submit today! SPECIAL ISSUE EDITORIAL STATEMENT Pick a card, any card . . . Tarot is a vehicle of storytelling. Tarot is divination, self-reflection, ritual. Tarot cards take on new meanings in new contexts, as they travel through the deck to find your touch. The symbols of the cards are laid out before The Magician. Metal bends under his finger tips. Before he can create, he considers the tarot in its most

From the Archive: Sandy Pool (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
11, 2021
Poem
0

SANDY POOL Excerpt from The Ebbinghaus Illusion: A Book of Hybrid Non-Fiction The Ebbinghaus Illusion elegizes the death of my former partner who suffered from early-onset Alzheimer’s disease. After a short battle, my partner chose to take his life, rather than suffer the debilitating effects of the disease. The Ebbinghaus Illusion is structured around a standardized Alzheimer’s memory test. Each piece is titled with a word from the Alzheimer’s word list, which is used to

From the Archive: David Haskins (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
11, 2021
Poem
0

DAVID HASKINS Burning Chair Under the spreading locust limbs, a chair,old, rustic, of bent vines and cedar boards,host to rampant English ivy entwinedaround its feet, winding through its spines,rooting out marrow from its bones, the splits and nicks and splintered shards,the frame twisted as if by hurricane,the seat planks broken from their moorings,fallen askew, showing rot in their ends. In the cool autumnal breezeleaves drift onto the wrecklike pear-shaped daubs of yellowpaint, a last gasp

From the Archive: Chelsea Coupal (CAROUSEL 40)

Staff
10, 2021
Poem
0

CHELSEA COUPAL Rural Hangover I picture myself sometimes, slimas I was then, walking in, stripping down, lying down in that dirt-morninglight, hungover, and nausea tucked under my mind like an old note.I didn’t mind those mornings: click of dried contacts, tumbleweedstomach, and the sun pouring through bedroom windowsslowly. Before the farmhouse, you lived in a trailerwith walls so thin I swear you could see through them.Hardly a yard, just pasture, and cattle peering in, curious

USEREVIEW 049: A Bespoke Respoke

Gary Barwin uses the medium of sound poetry to respond to visual poetry, in this sensory-blurring experimental review of Kate Siklosi and psw’s collaborative artists’ book, Reply (2021). ISBN n/a | 40pp | €22.00 — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Print is synaesthetic. Its shapes and textures, papers and colours make the inner fingers tingle, the brainskin prickle. Looking is tactile, kinesthetic. Reading is musical, evokes sound. And collaboration, such as between Kate Siklosi and psw in

USEREVIEW 048 (Capsule): Talking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator

Rosalind M. PepallTalking to a Portrait: Tales of an Art Curator (Véhicule Press, 2020)ISBN 978-1-55065-541-4 | 224 pp | $22.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY In Talking to a Portrait, Rosalind M. Pepall employs a prose style that combines personal essay with art history to recount notable stories that unfurled during her decades as a curator for the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. None of this is within my areas of expertise, and so I

USEREVIEW 046 (Capsule): Blood Rises

David HaskinsBlood Rises (Guernica Editions, 2020)ISBN 978-1-77183-538-1 | 144 pp | $20 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY Blood Rises is an apt title for the latest poetry collection from longtime figure in the literary scene, David Haskins. These poems are rich in lifeblood — the substance that rises to the skin at the sight of injustice, that brightens the cheek during unstoppable laughter, that pulses on insistently in the face of death and grief. The

USEREVIEW 045 (Capsule): Anthesis

Sue GoyetteAnthesis (Gaspereau Press, 2020)ISBN 978-1-554472-10-9 | 80 pp | $19.95 CAD — BUY Here #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY It was difficult for me, while reading Sue Goyette’s Anthesis, not to compare it to her earlier poetry collection The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl (Gaspereau Press, 2015), which likewise recounts childhood trauma. The difference between the books is that the factual events that form the basis of The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl are readily discoverable in the

USEREVIEW 044 (Capsule): Ghost Tracks

Sneha Subramanian KantaGhost Tracks (Louisiana Literature Press, 2020)ISBN 978-0-94508-351-1 | 30 pp | $8.95 USD #CAROUSELreviews#USEREVIEWEDNESDAY There are ghosts everywhere in Kanta’s chapbook of poetry. The ghosts “freckle silence” and “remove fishhooks from animal bodies” and are “carried on the wind” with “hands full of flowers.” We are told by the title to expect tracks, traces, as if the ghosts were deer disappearing into the woods, but instead the ghosts are moving about in front

From the Archive: Jessica Bromley Bartram (CAROUSEL 39)

Staff
07, 2021
Artist, Fiction
0

JESSICA BROMLEY BARTRAM Skyscrapers When the city sleeps, it emerges, unfurling cloudlike from a ravine and stepping carefully over grumbling streets. Bleary-eyed drivers blink it away, their brains filled with thoughts of home or the next city, naming it Bridge Shadow or Passing Tree. Its missteps leave cars covered in stormy grey streaks that refuse to fade, drivers whose peripheral vision is now filled with flickering shadows, almost-forms almost visible if only they could turn