We are such stuff as Sainte-Adèle is made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.

Another Sainte-Adèle Thanksgiving long weekend (an hour's drive north of Montreal, into the Laurentides), most likely the last, as mother-in-law has the place up for sale, finding the ongoing maintenance a bit much, especially for a two-plus hour drive each way. We were there in September, which was plenty fun, but do you remember the first time I made my way up there? Another Thanksgiving, eighteen years ago, Christine and I exploring the cottage that her parents purchased back in the 1990s. This time, there with Christine's mother, as well as his brother and his family in from Halifax, four kids younger than Rose. The cousins always enjoy seeing their cousins, which adds to the chaos but I think they wouldn't have it any other way.

We did bring the kittens along this time, uncertain if we should prod the neighbours again to check in on them at home, and they howled the whole drive up and the whole drive back. It was a good twenty-four hours before they calmed down once landing, with Goose rarely leaving the basement, although happy enough, as long as the children didn't frighten him too much. Too many kids for his liking, and Frankie nervous as well, but at least he would wander around where we were. Goose quite literally wouldn't leave the carrier for a full day, but at least his complaining slowed. Perhaps had we been a further day or two, they might have figured it out.

We had big family dinners, with days mostly allowing the kids to interact, each of us in our corners. I held to the sunroom with my notebook and stack of reading, naturally, poking at notes towards eventual reviews. I attempted, as well, to use the time to read longer prose, which is always a challenge (I often save a couple of books for rare flights, knowing the opportunities for reading that travel provides). Oh, and we saw an array of nearly a dozen wild turkeys wandering the yard, which was curious. We often see deer, also, although not this particular time. Perhaps the turkeys chased them away.

Oh, and the final full day we were there, Rose produced, directed, wrote and edited not one but two short "horror movies" involving her and the rest of the children. Her editing and use of music was quite impressive, honestly. I'll be interested to see if she continues along this particular trajectory.

12 or 20 (second series) questions with A.D. Sui

A.D. Sui (London, ON) [photo credit: Yoah Sui] is a Ukrainian-born, internationally raised speculative writer, Nebula winner, and Aurora and Theodore Sturgeon Memorial Award finalist. They are the author of The Dragonfly Gambit, The Iron Garden Sutra, and more than two dozen short stories. A failed academic and retired fencer, they spend most days wrangling their two dogs and tending to their myriad tropical plants.

1 - How did your first book change your life? How does your most recent work compare to your previous? How does it feel different?

I’ll focus on the first book published. The Dragonfly Gambit was a fun book to get started with. It eased me into publishing and working with an editor on a long-form project. It then went on to win the Nebula for best novella, which was wild. Our Infinite and Inevitable Ends will be my third book published and it feels a lot less panicky, and a lot more deliberate. I’m starting to get to a place where I’m gaining a grasp of how publishing works, of which gears need turning and when. Maybe, I’m even beginning to enjoy the process. 

2 - How did you come to fiction first, as opposed to, say, poetry or non-fiction?

I grew up reading nearly exclusively fiction, and I am an awful poet. I think there was always a gap in what I was reading where I wasn’t seeing myself in these works, and while they were good works, I was still left wanting. I came to writing the way many people do, through fanfiction, which in itself was an exercise of creating stories that I wanted to see on screen, just with existing IP. It took many years for me to have the guts to try something original. You know the rest. 

3 - How long does it take to start any particular writing project? Does your writing initially come quickly, or is it a slow process? Do first drafts appear looking close to their final shape, or does your work come out of copious notes?

I tend to draft very quickly. Usually, I’ll plan for a week and then hammer out the first draft in a month. If I stop, I lose momentum and then I lose interest, and then the manuscript goes to the graveyard with the other projects that died at 30k words. I try to draft lean. Most of my speculative manuscripts are about 90k on first draft and then grow to maybe 110k or a little longer on subsequent drafts. I rarely change plot points after the initial draft, but I will dive deeper into characterization and environment in subsequent edits. 

4 - Where does a work of prose usually begin for you? Are you an author of short pieces that end up combining into a larger project, or are you working on a "book" from the very beginning?

I think I know what the story is after I finish plotting. Some stories are short stories, some are novellas, others are novels. I strongly prefer novels. I’m not sure how people write short stories. I try, I really do, but they are so difficult for me that I’d rather write a lot of long-form projects instead of a few short stories. The pacing is completely different. The density of prose is different. It’s a completely different medium to work with. 

5 - Are public readings part of or counter to your creative process? Are you the sort of writer who enjoys doing readings?

I can do public readings, but I much prefer to just gab about the book instead of reading from it. I do read my drafts out loud to myself as I edit, but I’m not a super strong public reader. I can’t do voices or anything like that. I am far too serious. 

6 - Do you have any theoretical concerns behind your writing? What kinds of questions are you trying to answer with your work? What do you even think the current questions are?

Most of my work centers themes of grief, and loss. Recent works have started to speak far more to climate change and its consequences, which in a way, is also about grief and loss. 

7 – What do you see the current role of the writer being in larger culture? Do they even have one? What do you think the role of the writer should be?

I believe it’s whatever we decide it is. If we want to be entertainers, then we are entertainers. If we want to be fortune tellers, then we can be the crystal ball. There is no manual on how to be a writer. The only requirement is that you write. While writing, in of itself, isn’t advocacy, it can inspire advocacy and can still have strong messages to relay. 

8 - Do you find the process of working with an outside editor difficult or essential (or both)?

I have been very fortunate to work with editors who shared my vision for the book and who allowed me a lot of creative freedom to fine tune all of the elements. So far, I’ve had nothing but great experiences working with editors and I hope this trend continues!

9 - What is the best piece of advice you've heard (not necessarily given to you directly)?

You can’t edit a blank page. Honestly, probably the most useful thing when I hit “writer’s block” (which I do not believe actually exists). 

10 - How easy has it been for you to move between genres (short stories to the novel)? What do you see as the appeal?

Ha! I laugh and then I cry. Difficult. Very difficult. Although the difficult part for me has always been writing short stories and not the novels. Short stories have a great way of training word economy and tightening my prose. In a short story, each and every word needs to justify its existence. In a novel, I can relax a bit and meander, but in short stories, I simply can’t get away with that kind of spending.

11 - What kind of writing routine do you tend to keep, or do you even have one? How does a typical day (for you) begin?

I tend to aim for word counts instead of hours at the laptop. I’ll do 2-3k words a day during drafting, depending on what I want the final wordcount to be and the rest of my time I spend reading and gallivanting about. 

12 - When your writing gets stalled, where do you turn or return for (for lack of a better word) inspiration?

I go for a run! Most plot holes usually get resolved by the end of a 20km run. 

13 - What was your last Hallowe'en costume?

I have never dressed up for Halloween! I have, however, once worked in a haunted house as a creepy tree trunk. 

14 - David W. McFadden once said that books come from books, but are there any other forms that influence your work, whether nature, music, science or visual art?

I take a lot of inspiration from anime!

15 - What other writers or writings are important for your work, or simply your life outside of your work?

Outside of writing, I tend to read a lot of academic papers. Usually, this is because I’m going down a rabbit hole of something that’s sort of important to my daily life, like iron supplementation. I am in a very privileged position where I have access to a lot of primary literature on pretty much any topic. So, I can do deep dives into many everyday topics.

Recently, I’ve been nerding out on nutrition during endurance races, so that’s been fun!

16 - What would you like to do that you haven't yet done?

I want to follow the caribou migration across Canada.

But in terms of writing, maybe do an epic fantasy based in Ukrainian folklore. 

17 - If you could pick any other occupation to attempt, what would it be? Or, alternately, what do you think you would have ended up doing had you not been a writer?

I used to be an academic, but due to the hiring freezes post COVID that didn’t pan out, or maybe I just didn’t allow it to pan out, but here we are. I think in a different world, I’m a professor, doing my research and teaching my lectures, but that’s a very different world.

18 - What made you write, as opposed to doing something else?

I think there’s a massive power to being able to create stories that you wanted to read growing up. That’s it, really. My goal with writing is to fill that niche. Selfish, I know.

19 - What was the last great book you read? What was the last great film?

Playground by Richard Powers. In terms of film, I’d say Past Lives.
 
20 - What are you currently working on?

I have several books under contract, each at various stages of development. So, I’m doing a little of dev edits, and a little of line edits, and some pass pages, and some second pass pages. It’s a tasting menu of edits!

12 or 20 (second series) questions;

Benjamin Friedlander, One Hundred Etudes

 

By a clumsy
Caress, stands on
Ceremony, not on 

Legs, and speaks,
But under duress.
Thirty: A LITTLE 

BOOK for Robert
Creeley ANSWERING MACHINE
A slurred question

Given that Orono, Maine-based poet, editor and critic Benjamin Friedlander has been publishing full-length poetry collections for nearly four decades, I’m rather late to the game, just now going through his One Hundred Etudes (Washington DC: Edge Books, 2012), the first of his books I’ve properly sat down with [beyond a title he more recently co-edited]. “Prophecy History, driven // From prayer,” Friedlander writes, as part of the book’s thirty-third etude, “lets / The private utterance / Declare its public // Aim: the difference / Between what must / Be and is, [.]” The opening of the collection offers itself as “ONE HUNDRED ETUDES / En hommage à / Louis Zukofsky,” referencing the infamous Objectivist poet Zukofsky’s epic masterpiece, “A” (the first elements of which began being published in the 1940s, with the first complete edition produced through University of California Press in 1978, and a corrected edition produced through New Directions in 2011). One hundred, as Friedlander offers, individual lyric compositions prompted by a particular Zukofsky project, attempting to respond to technique via technique. The stop and start of Friedlander’s line breaks, three lines per stanza, three stanzas per page, offers a curious effect, simultaneously staggered, staccato and continuous. “NATURE / Golden ants gather // Around a brown / Beetle’s crushed armor.” he writes, circling the ends of his thirtieth etude, “MNEMONIC DEVICE for // Jackson Mac Low / My very eccentric / Mother just said // Up now please.”

Capturing some three hundred pages of clipped, extended, continuous sketch-lyrics, Friedlander’s stanzas purposefully bleed into each other; numbered, and with the suggestion that each new etude begins mid-poem, mid-stream; titled within the body of the lyric, with complementary numbering system at the bottom of each page. There’s a curious effect of such a dense lyric, layering and collage, from bolded text and dedications into clipped notes, as though stitching together moments of fragments together to form each poem. One might be better to refer to this, even, as a continuous book-length lyric, through one hundred individual jumping off points into or through this shared, lyric pool. I would only hope that someone more familiar with Zukofsky’s work would attend a proper comparison between the two, to see just how attuned Friedlander’s work remains in conversation, both with his declared source text, and the myriad constellation of all else that may have contributed. Either way, One Hundred Etudes is composed very much a “love letter” of sorts to form, and to Friedlander’s old masters. The single page of “twenty-nine,” set amid multiple pages across “twenty-eight” and “thirty” reads:

Surface on a
Toll road with
Numbered exits. Twenty- 

Nine: CAPTION FOR
A PHOTOGRAPH for
David Levi Strauss 

The orphan frown
Of a war-
Torn town, healed

Anna Veprinska, Wound Archive

 

 

 

Last night your bones ached
next to mine:

 

 

 

 

 

so                                 this is love.

 

 

 

The second full-length poetry title by Calgary-based poet and academic Anna Veprinska, quick on the heels of her debut, Bonememory (Calgary AB: University of Calgary Press, 2025) [see my review of such here], is Wound Archive (Guelph ON: The Porcupine’s Quill, 2026), a book-length sequence of curved, carved minimalism across open space. “Emerging scarred,” she writes, early on in this unpaginated assemblage, six words filling the cracks of this particular printed page, “accountable, reach- /// ing //////////////// for god.” Whereas an archive suggests past tense, one might see the subject matter of Veprinka’s lyric are more ongoing, set across a temporal boundary in which her present perpetually remains, especially across the boundary of what the back cover describes: “[…] the wound left by the concurrent ending of a relationship and the beginning of a chronic invisible illness.” Comparable to the late Vancouver Island poet Phyllis Webb’s Naked Poems (1965), as Ottawa poet Cameron Anstee suggests in his back cover blurb, for their shared use of allusion, brevity, spacing and emotional impact (both poems speaking to and around a relationship as well, although Webb’s piece set around the beginning, whereas this piece articulates the end), Veprinska’s lines are scalpeled, setting lines that slice as well as suggest, set purposefully on the stretch of the open page. “Heaving self //////////// congealed with prayer: //// touched, ////// edged.” Each word, carefully and delicately placed. Across her book-length poem, Veprinska writes a fragmented, careful archive, an exquisite extended lyric, around illness and recovery, wounds and the heart, and of being lost, and becoming found, again and again. This is a deeply satisfying and rich poem, and one to be approached and read with equal care.

 

Offered

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

to the sterile, narrow known.