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From the archives

Positively Shady

The glamorous activism of M.A.C Cosmetics

Muslim Pride

A timely LGBTQ memoir

Minor Hockey as Big Business

The disturbing shift from kids’ game to pricey investment

Karen Connelly

Karen Connelly is the author of nine books, including the recent memoir Burmese Lessons: A Love Story (Random House, 2009), which was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 2010. Her novel of prison life in Burma, The Lizard Cage (Random House, 2005), won Britain’s Orange Broadband New Writers Prize in 2007. Her forthcoming book is a collection of poetry, Come Cold River, which includes “the breakfast cereal of his youth” and many others set in Calgary and Vancouver.

Articles by
Karen Connelly

Why, I asked, is it called crack? Because, my brother began, a smile on his facelike the smirk of a scientist explaining the solar system to a peasant because it crackles when you cook it up and suck itin snap-crackle-popthe smoke swirls, the pipe’s so hotyou burn your mouth(the hotter the higher the faster) because it gives you cracked lips because if you smoke too muchit smashes your heart to smithereens Because it breaks your life into beforeand afterthe first inhalation when every complication falls away.It takes ten seconds for the pleasure-flood of dopamine to drown the brain.Flood of no return.The ship splinters openspills the little white rocks Again the patronizing…