All Write in Sin City

This episode is an excerpt from a longer podcast with Dr. Cheryl Thompson, a reading from her book, Staging Blackface in Canada. The following show notes are from the complete episode, available on this channel. 

Recently, the Amherstburg Freedom Museum hosted a virtual book launch for Cheryl Thompson’s latest work, Staging Blackface in Canada, which was published in April 2026 by Wilfrid Laurier University Press. We’re sharing a portion of that very interesting discussion.

Cheryl Thompson lives in Toronto and is the author of Canada and the Blackface Atlantic: Performing Slavery, Conflict, and Freedom, 1812–1897, Uncle: Race, Nostalgia, and the Politics of Loyalty, and Beauty in a Box: Detangling the Roots of Canada’s Black Beauty Culture. She holds a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Windsor here in the Detroit River Borderlands.

Dr. Thompson is an Associate Professor in Performance at Toronto Metropolitan University and currently director of Black Creative Lab where she heads up projects including a digital mapping of Black archival collections in Ontario and a database that catalogues blackface as performance and Black community's resistance to it. Her latest work, released this spring by Wilfrid Laurier University Press, is Staging Blackface in Canada: Public Amusements, Variety Shows, and Racial Acts in an Age of Imitation, 1898-1919.

To watch the full conversation, go to the Amherstburg Freedom Museum's YouTube channel. For more information about the book, check it out on the WLU Press website.

Lucy E.M. Black joins us today to talk about her novel, A Quilting of Scars. The timeless narrative brings to life a story of forbidden love, abuse and murder. Pulsing with repressed sexuality and guilt, Larkin Beattie reveals the many secrets he has kept hidden throughout his lonely life. The character-driven narrative is a meditation on aging and remorse, offering a rich account of the strictures and rhythms of farming in the not-so-distant past, highlighting the confines of a community where strict moral codes are imposed upon its members and fear of exposure terrifies queer youth. 

Author of The Marzipan Fruit Basket, Eleanor Courtown, Stella's Carpet, The Brickworks, and Class Lessons: Stories of Vulnerable Youth. Lucy E.M. Black's short stories have been published in Britain, Ireland, USA and Canada in a variety of literary journals and magazines. She lives in Port Perry, Ontario, the traditional territory of the Mississaugas of Scugog Island, First Nations.

 Sean Kelly—who has performed with artists including Dee Snider (Twisted Sister), Nelly Furtado, Lee Aaron, Coney Hatch, Helix, Gilby Clarke, Rough Trade, Glass Tiger’s Alan Frew, Harlequin, Honeymoon Suite, and Crash Kelly—brings an insider’s perspective to the guitars, players, and culture that defined a generation. 

His latest book is: Battle Axes: A Hard Rockin’ History of Pointy Guitars published by ECW Press. 

https://ecwpress.com/products/battle-axes

Marie-Joseé Poission joins us to talk about her novel, Blood Bound: Unlacing Secret Ties, published by Guernica Editions. In the novel, successful Montreal communications executive Lou Ashby travels to Paris to trace her ancestry. There, she meets Geoffrey, an academic with a national museum, who is entrusted with finding the story behind a blood-stained gown found in the walls of a palace. Together, they solve the mystery behind the dress and Lou’s ancestry, and shatter historical certainty about one of France’s major female figures, Madame de Pompadour. 

Marie-Josée Poisson has been writing since she was a young girl. Before becoming a full-time novelist, she held senior communications roles at TV5 Monde and the École supérieure de ballet du Québec, follow by five years as editor-in-chief of Le Magazine de la Place des arts. Blood Bound is the first novel in Poission’s trilogy to be translated into English. It's published by Guernica Editions. 

More on the author's website, bloodhound.ca

André Narbonne is a scholar, a poet, the author of four books, and also the publisher of Conspiracy Press, based in Windsor, Ontario. His short fiction has been anthologized in Best Canadian Stories, won the FreeFall Literary Contest, the David Adams Richards Prize, and the Atlantic Writing Contest. His first collection of short fiction, Twelve Miles to Midnight, was shortlisted for the 2017 Danuta Gleed Literary Award. His first novel, Lucien & Olivia, was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Those Are Pearls is published by Palimpsest Press.

https://palimpsestpress.ca/books/those-are-pearls-andre-narbonne/

In this episode of The Reading List, Canadian author Sean Paul Bedell shares his inspiration drawn his paramedic life and a short excerpt from his novel The Shoebox. 

Author Sean Paul Bedell's second book, Shoebox, is published by Now or Never Publishing. In this gritty, emotional novel, Steve Lewis, a dedicated paramedic, faces the emotional aftermath of a fatal accident that casts a shadow over his commitment to saving lives. As Steve grapples with the high stakes of his job and community scrutiny, each life he saves rekindles his passion for his work. The novel explores the human spirit’s capacity for healing.

Sean’s previous novel is Somewhere There’s Music. He has been writing and publishing for more than 30 years. A longtime paramedic and captain with the fire service, he lives in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.

JENNIFER LOVEGROVE is the author of the Giller Prize–longlisted novel Watch How We Walk, as well as three poetry collections: Beautiful Children with Pet Foxes (longlisted for the Raymond Souster Award), I Should Never Have Fired the Sentinel, and The Dagger Between Her Teeth. Her latest poetry collection is The Tinder Sonnets, published by Book*hug Press in Spring 2026. Jennifer LoveGrove divides her time between downtown Toronto and Squirrel Creek Retreat in rural Ontario. 

https://bookhugpress.ca/shop/author/jennifer-lovegrove/the-tinder-sonnets-by-jennifer-lovegrove/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jennifer_LoveGrove

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto. His latest book is Cherry Beach, published by Biblioasis in 2026. 

https://www.biblioasis.com/author/gillmor-don/

Fartumo Kusow is a high school English teacher, novelist, podcaster, activist, and mother of five who lives in Windsor, Ontario. Born in Somalia, Fartumo immigrated to Canada in 1991, at the start of the civil war, with fluency in Somali and Arabic but not English, and went on to earn two degrees. Fartumo Kusow first appeared on this podcast in 2020, chatting about her second novel which was her debut novel in English, Tale of a Boon’s Wife. She’s here with us today to discuss her new novel, Winter of My Spring, published by Spark Press in March 2026. 

https://fartumokusow.com/

https://gosparkpress.com/portfolio/fartumo-kusow/

This episode is an excerpt of a longer interview with Jim Johnstone. 

Jim Johnstone is a Toronto-based poet, editor, and critic. He is the author of seven collections of poetry, including The Chemical Life, which was shortlisted for the 2018 ReLit Award. Johnstone has also won several awards, including the Bliss Carman Poetry Award, a CBC Literary Award, the Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, the Robin Blaser Award, and Poetry's Editors Prize for Book Reviewing. Currently, he curates the Anstruther Books imprint at Windsor’s Palimpsest Press, where he published The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry. His most recent books are Bait & Switch, a collection of reviews, essays and conversations on poetry, and a collection of poems, The King of Terrors.
Bait and Switch was published by Porcupine’s Quill. The King of Terrors was published by Coach House Books. 

 Poetry Magazine Summer 2025