I’m at a dirty little music festival in Guelph, Ontario this weekend, most likely eating popsicles and all-dressed chips in the rain and pretending I don’t have a million other things to be doing. Hope you’re also enjoying your weekend ?
We’re thrilled to hear that Billy-Ray Belcourt, a poet, artist, critic, and past GUTS contributor, will be joining Canadian Art this summer. Also, just a reminder: if you haven’t checked out Canadian Art’s summer issue, Kinship, do so right away!
“Everyone seems to want publishing to be diverse and for the literary conversation to reflect the perspectives and ideas of the other and outsider. This can’t happen without dismantling the literary models that make impossible demands on those without whiteness and its accrued privileges.” Why we should stop describing work as “Didion-esque” and start dismantling accepted literary models to make space for new voices, writing styles, and perspectives.
“If you’re not into social media, it shows, and I find that half-hearted social media is worse than no social media at all. Try it, and if it feeds you, great. If it doesn’t, or it doesn’t click with you, try another form, or just don’t do it.” Roxanne Gay, along with Alexander Chee, Celeste Ng, and Adam M. Grant talk about how to be a writer on social media.
Who Benefits from a $15 minimum wage? A new CCPA report finds that in Ontario, it’s mostly workers over the age of 20 and work for big companies, not small businesses.
money mart: for when you work endlessly but still need a payday loan with an APR of 469.29% to support your baby pic.twitter.com/xIIljIhOwa
— imogen birchard (@imogenjmb) July 10, 2017
Feeling behind on the NDP leadership race? Nora Loreto made an incredibly helpful quick and dirty breakdown of who said what at this week’s leadership debate in Saskatoon. Please note, this is not intended to elaborate or referee the candidates’ promises!
On September 7 2016, Debra Chrisjohn, of Oneida Nation of the Thames was arrested in London, Ontario. Chrisjohn died hours after her arrest. While the cause of Chrisjohn’s death has not yet been released, two police officers have been charged in relation to her death. Find out more here.
A new exhibit showcasing work by LGBTQ+ youth on what it looks like to grow up queer in Hamilton.
After deciding that the publications they were reading don’t represent them, a group of Greater Toronto Area students have created their own publication. Black Girl’s Magazine contains a collection of articles and cartoons written by contributors aged 9 to 13. Check out the incredible work they are doing!
Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s modest proposal for a fair trade emotional labour economy.
“For the most part, periods remain periods to me, not reminders of my own difference from other women—much less the sign of potential motherhood.” Jen Richards on being a woman who doesn’t getting a period.
“In fanfiction, you take the characters, and tell the stories that Tolkien didn’t have time to tell” A very erotic little episode of Love and Radio, which might make you want to spend the afternoon reading LOTR slash fanfic!
This is from a couple years ago, but some of the content included in this bisexuality reading list looks really great!
“I had to to learn to love myself to learn how to love my voice” Toronto R&B artist TiKA talks about depression and art in a new short film, “Heartbreak to Art.”
Can’t wait for Scaachi Koul’s new comedy series! She’ll be directing and producing, and it will be inspired by her autobiographical book of essays, One Day We’ll All Be Dead and None of this Will Matter.
In other TV news, new web series, Let Me Die a Nun, is about a soon-to-be nun who falls in love with Hari Nef, and looks pretty cute! And of course, The L Word is rebooting. If you’re like me and are embarassed you haven’t yet watched the series, this “best of” might help you figure out the basics!
Feminista Jones on Lil’ Kim: “At only 4’11”, Ms. Jones (aka Lil’ Kim) immediately grabbed the world’s attention with her clear demands that men do what she said, how she said it, when she wanted it, and urged the world to respect that the other side of the newly coined “Girl Power” era was an all-or-nothing, put-up-or-shut-up, Big Momma Thang.”
On the uncertain state of queer narratives and not caring what straight people think: “I remember all the fanfare surrounding A Little Life. For the first time, it seemed to me then, queer lives were being treated as a worthy subject for art. Not merely for queer people, but for straight people too…But I also remember thinking how predictable it was that a book all about queer people suffering was being adulated by straight people”
And finally, another incredible poster from the graphic history collective. This one draws on the history of the Métis Red River Resistance to tell the story of artist Jerry Thistle and writer Jesse Thistle’s great-grandmother Marianne Morrissette’s experience at the battle of Batoche.
