Stacey May Fowles

In the title story of A Song for Wildcats, two young men, Felix and Alfie, take a boat to go birdwatching at an archipelago just off the coast of Corsica. Having spent the afternoon together in a lush floral landscape, the near strangers settle onto the rocky shore to share a spliff and embark on a ponderous discussion about the nature of…

At an early age, K. J. Aiello began to feel like a monster. They questioned their level of rage and the intensity of their reactions, believing a darkness lurked at the periphery of their life, waiting to take control. “When I felt threatened, something in me would break and all reason would evaporate,” they write. After a particularly violent interaction with a playground…

In October 1983, Felicity Alexander, an internationally celebrated opera singer, is under house arrest in St. George’s. Grenada is in the midst of a military coup and on the precipice of an American invasion. Felicity has lied about both her name and her Canadian citizenship to protect her identity. Unable to return home, she wonders who the Metropolitan Opera has found to replace her in what would have been her first performance of Verdi’s La Traviata and what kind of gown the wardrobe department would have created for…

The singular voice of Emer McConnell, the narrator of Jane Urquhart’s latest novel, explains, “I was born twice, you see. Once gently, and once violently, which is why, although I am not yet old, I have the stick.” The opening pages of In Winter I Get Up at Night introduce unassuming Emer, a teacher living what appears to be a simple life in rural…

In The Future’s reimagined history, the French never ceded Fort Détroit to the British in 1760, and the British never ceded it to the United States as part of the Treaty of Paris in 1783. Instead, the community has remained proudly French Canadian for centuries. (“Never forget we were two shakes away from becomin’ American,” a current resident proclaims.) But while the Motor City was once “full of…

The twitching core of anxiety is not always, as many would assume, the fear of a terrible thing in front of you. Instead, diagnosis-grade worry can stem from the hovering potential for terrible things. Most anxiety sufferers will report being entirely capable in a genuine crisis — think pandemic — but debilitated by life’s constant parade of question marks: social…