New at USEREVIEW in 2023
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 ten reviewers lined up, each of whom will take over USEREVIEW for a full month. From each of them we’ll get to see one long-form traditional or experimental review, two capsule reviews and a short video introducing the reviewer.
We are delighted to announce our 2023 Reviewers-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
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 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 the Rhysling and Aurora Awards. She lives in Toronto, where she does mutual aid work and makes large quantities of jam. More: leahbobet.com
Deirdre Danklin holds an MFA from Johns Hopkins University. Her work has been published in Hobart, Pithead Chapel and The Jellyfish Review, among others. Her debut novella, Catastrophe (Texas Review Press, 2022), won the 2021 Clay Reynolds Novella Prize, and her flash fiction novella, How to Start a Coven (Variant Lit, 2023), is available now for pre-order.More: deirdredanklin.com
Hollay Ghadery is a multi-genre writer living in rural Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Her work has appeared in various literary journals and magazines around the world. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental illness, was published by Guernica Editions’ MiroLand imprint in 2021. Her debut collection of poetry, Rebellion Box, is due out with Radiant Press in spring 2023. The title poem from this collection was the winner of The New Quarterly’s 2022 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Prize. Hollay’s short-fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, is scheduled for release with Gordon Hill Press in 2024.
Becca Lawlor is a queer writer and editor in her third year of the Honours Bachelor of Creative Writing & Publishing program at Sheridan College. She has published a short fiction story in The Bangalore Review, self-published an audiobook, Sugar Water, on SoundCloud and is working as an editorial intern for The Ampersand Review. Living in Mississauga, Becca reads most moments of the day while drinking decaffeinated tea.
John Nyman is a poet, critic and book artist from Toronto. His works include a book of poems about houseplants and the Devil, A Devil Every Day (Palimpsest Press, 2023), an erasure of words and images from the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children’s books, Your Very Own (Jack Pine Press, 2022) and a classic text of Lacanian psychoanalysis reprinted in a nearly illegible typeface, The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psycho-analysis: A Selection. Otherwise, John holds a PhD in Theory and Criticism from Western University, co-edits the online visual arts journal Peripheral Review and helps administer the plumb art gallery and project space in midtown Toronto. More: johnnyman.ca
Shantell (Shan) Powell is a two-spirit author, artist, and swamp hag who grew up in an apocalyptic cult while living off the land. Shan is the Vancouver Manuscript Intensive Fellow for 2023, a fellow for the Roots Wounds Words Winter Retreat in 2023 and is a recent graduate of the Writers’ Studio at Simon Fraser University and the LET(s) Lead Academy at Yale University. She has a B.A. in Classics, English Drama and Creative Writing at the University of New Brunswick, and studied art and design at Conestoga College and the New Brunswick College of Craft and Design. Her writing is in Augur, Cloud Lake Literary Journal, Feminist Studies Journal, Prairie Fire, Yellow Medicine Journal and more. Her visual art has been shown in the National Textile Museum, OCAD and Porcelain Painters of Canada magazine. When she’s not writing or making things, she’s getting filthy in the woods. More: mastodon.lol/@Shanmonster + shanmonster.dreamwidth.org
Rasiqra Revulva is a disabled queer femme writer, multimedia artist, editor, musician and performer; developer and co-editor of the Hybrid/Experimental section at The Ex-Puritan; and one half of the experimental electronic duo The Databats (Slice Records). Cephalopography 2.0 (Wolsak & Wynn, 2020) is her award-nominated debut collection.
Shaylyn Schwieg is a writer and reviewer from Brampton, Ontario. Currently she works as the Events and Communications Intern at The Ampersand Review, and studies Creative Writing & Publishing at Sheridan College. She enjoys exploring different writing genres and basking in the beauty of others’ writing.
Emily Woodworth is a writer, filmmaker and proud descendant of the Karuk Tribe. She grew up in rural Oregon, where she developed a love for nature and the psychological pathologies that permeate small towns. Her work has appeared in EcoTheo Review, Joyland, Los Suelos, No Contact and more. Emily graduated with her MFA from CalArts, and has held fellowships from Oregon Literary Arts and the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing. In her spare time, she reads nonfiction for Split Lip Magazine. More: emilywoodworth.org
The first of our 2023 Reviewers-in-Residence will debut their work here on Wednesday March 1, and we hope you’re excited for it as we are.