Emily Latimer

In Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Septimus Smith has trouble crossing the street. Set over the course of one day, the narrative follows the shell-shocked veteran as he battles with flashbacks to the First World War. His wife, Rezia, chaperones him around London in search of a distraction. When a car backfires, pale-faced Septimus feels everything stop: “The world wavered and quivered and threatened to burst into flames.” Adam…

As a teenager in the 1990s, Rosalind Fisher had a slippery relationship with the truth. She slung embellishments and fabrications and even pawned off other people’s stories as her own. Now in her forties, she regrets that behaviour. Genevieve Scott’s latest novel, The Damages, is told through the older woman’s perspective. It’s a two-part…

In her memoir and guide to fiction writing, Bird by Bird, from 1994, the best-selling author Anne Lamott explained that she kept an empty one-inch picture frame on her desk as a reminder to focus on small details: “The river at sunrise, or the young child swimming in the pool at the…