Local Harvest Haisla/Heiltsuk novelist Eden Robinson is the author of a collection of short stories written when she was a Goth called Traplines. Her two previous novels, Monkey Beach and Blood Sports, were written before she discovered she was gluten-intolerant and tend to be quite grim, the latter being especially gruesome because, halfway through writing…
What kind of place is poetry? What place does poetry have in Abbotsford? On April 3, Michelle Elrick returned home to Abbotsford to read from her second collection of poetry, then/again (Nightwood Editions, 2017). The book is a spectacular examination of her desire for home which occurs simultaneously with a need to find home elsewhere….
I knew this wouldn’t be a regular author interview. It couldn’t be. So when I sat down with Andrea MacPherson, a longtime mentor to many of us here at Raspberry, and frequent first reader of most of my own creative fiction, I went for the casual approach. Just a chill conversation between two passionate people…
Local Harvest The underbelly of Vancouver is as vivid as it is gritty, as dangerous as it is beautiful, as delicate as it is hard, and no one knows this better than the five members of the Black Roses. This is Anatomy of a Girl Gang: a vivid world of ragged hope, terrible consequences, and…
Local Harvest Customer service. For many of us it was our first job, for many of us it is still our job. It’s flipping burgers, scooping popcorn, pouring coffee. “Hi there welcome to —. What can I get for you?” Billeh Nickerson’s McPoems delivers a full value menu of what it’s like to put on…
It’s not often that you find a truly nervy novel, but Pedal is just that — so full of guts and so tightly strung that you somehow can’t look at directly or for very long, that it seems to vibrate on the shelf, that it seems to threaten the other books when you try to…
Local Harvest “It wasn’t a question of being opposed to imported ingredients, but of preference, of allegiance, of knowing what goodness came from the earth around you, from the soil under your feet.” Timothy Taylor’s Stanley Park is one part food writing, one part social advocacy, and one part artist’s journey. It unfolds gently, only…
Two-Gun & Sun is part historical fiction, part love story, and 100 per cent feisty wild west. The kicker: this 1920s western isn’t set in the dusty deserts of the United States, but in the deep wilds of British Columbia. Welcome to Black Mountain: a filthy, racist mining town bent on extracting the province’s rich…
Local Harvest Generation A is a weird one, but then again, all of Coupland’s novels are weird to some extent or another. The novel opens on a globalized and overwhelming consumer-capitalism-driven world that looks remarkably like our current one, with a few key differences thrown in. Notably, bees are extinct — making fresh fruit and…
Close your eyes and put aside your pride as you enter your center. The mentor you need is indeed your center so heed his intent and you’re never defeated. Conceited, you’re sent to repent and you will — the aim is restraining your brain and being still so take what you will from the words…
