Songs for the End of the World by Saleema Nawaz

It’s available as an eBook for now. It comes out as a paper book in August.

According to Twitter, Saleema Nawaz is a Napper. Tapper. Singer. Pickle enthusiast.

In this book, Saleema Nawz writes about a Corona Virus and its impacts on many individuals. Did you like the way she used different stories and different perspectives? Which was your favourite?

Were you surprised by how much Saleema Nawz seemed to know about Corona Virus, considering she wrote the novel between 2013-2019?

Was the real experience of living through a pandemic reflected in your reading experience? Did you enjoy reading about this alternate but close history?

How does hope play into this book? How did you find Saleema Nawaz used music to express this?

Local Book

Corvus by Harold Johnson

Corvus welcomes readers to a dystopian future not unlike our own where the illusions of an ideal society have been destroyed and rebuilt using technology and class warfare. By joining classical elements of speculative fiction including surveillance, forbidden relationships, and political dissent, to the traditions of aboriginal storytelling and the legends of the Trickster, Harold Johnson invites readers to consider the consequences of our current way of life.

Readers!

 
Questions to think about for Recipe for a Perfect Wife by Karma Brown:
 
1. Alice and Nellie both have very different marriages, yet there are similarities, too. What do you notice about the way the two stories echo each other? Why do you think the author chose to use these two narratives?



2. The book has a lot of information about gardening and homemaking. How does that make you feel about the novel? What role did those elements play in the larger plot?



3. Alice leaves Manhattan to escape her problems. Is it possible to run away from your problems? Is it possible for Alice to?



4: The recipes in the book made me think of my own favourite recipes. Do you have a favourite recipe or a family recipe?



5. Which of the two stories did you prefer—Nellie’s or Alice’s? Did you prefer one of the characters and was this why you preferred their story? Or was it the plot that spoke to you more personally?
 
6. The house and the garden felt almost like characters themselves to me. What did you feel about the setting and the importance of it to the novel?
 
Interesting Fact about the Author: According to her Instagram posts, she can’t sew at all. But she loves baking, rhubarbs desserts and raisins in buttertarts.

Karma Brown @karmakbrown
 
 

Writing Prompt, from Canadian author Paul Coccia @pauljcoccia

For you or for any kids in your life to try:
Hi everyone! I was thinking about my Nonna’s recipes. She usually cooked by instinct but we asked her to start writing things down. She’d write things like “two fingers” of flour, which meant fill a cup with flour up to two of her fingers. But my fingers were bigger. And what cup did she use?

One of things I still love about looking at those recipes though is when she would write UN PO DI MAGIC, which meant to add a little bit of magic. I understood what she meant. Add a little bit of baking powder so your cake would rise and my Nonna only ever bought Magic brand baking powder. It made me think that magic can come from all sorts of places, not just spells and wands.
 
So the prompt:
Like all things magical, it started with something normal.
Something ordinary. It started with a teaspoon.

If you don’t like a teaspoon, add in your own item (no problem!) Tell your readers about something magic that seems ordinary. It can involve real magic or magical creatures if you want. It can involve everyday magic things like baking powder rising a cake. What is magic to you?

For those who like a challenge:
Think about who is telling the story? Is it in third person, first person, or the elusive second person? Who are your cast of characters? What makes each of them unique or surprising?
 
Tell the story the way you like it best. And since this is magic, add as much sparkle and fun as you like.
 
 

Local Author

Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Métis and nêhiyaw writer from Saskatchewan. Her short stories, Just Pretending, give a glimpse of her incredible talent and ability with words. It was a One Book, One Province pick and it’s outstanding.
 
Her novel, Probably Ruby, will be out in 2021 and I can’t wait!

I got this in my inbox today, from One Story. I love them and their stories and I thought one of you might like to try for this opportunity:

Together with the Talve-Goodman Family, One Story is pleased to announce the Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowship. This educational fellowship will offer a year-long mentorship on the craft of fiction writing with One Storymagazine. The first recipient will be for the year 2019.

This fellowship calls for an early-career writer of fiction who has not yet published a book and is not currently nor has ever been enrolled in an MFA program. One Story is seeking writers whose work speaks to issues and experiences related to inhabiting bodies of difference. This means writing that explores being in a body marked by difference, oppression, violence, or exclusion; often through categories of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, religion, illness, disability, trauma, migration, displacement, dispossession, or imprisonment.

Adina Talve-Goodman was raised in St. Louis and attended Clayton High School and Washington University. When she was 19 years-old, Adina received a heart transplant, due to a congenital heart condition, and began writing about it. Adina started working at One Storymagazine as an intern in April 2010 and later became Managing Editor. She supported emerging authors, helped organize donations to prisons, and had a strong interest in issues of embodied difference, illness, and suffering. In 2015, Adina won the Bellevue Literary Review’sNon-Fiction Prizewith her essay, “I Must Have Been That Man.”She left One Story in 2016 to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and was working on her first book when she was diagnosed with cancer. Adina passed away on January 12th, 2018. She was 31 years old.

The 2019 fellow will receive:

• Free tuition for all One Story online classes and programming offered in 2019.
• Travel stipend ($2,000) and tuition to attend One Story’s July 2019 week-long summer writers’ conference in Brooklyn, which includes craft lectures, an in-person intensive fiction workshop, and panels with literary agents and publishers.
• A full manuscript review and consultation with One Story Co-Founder & Executive Editor Hannah Tinti.

Applications are now open and will close November 15th, 2018. The winner of the 2019 Adina Talve-Goodman Fellowshipwill be publicly announced on January 3rd, 2019. For complete details visit our website.