NBN host Hollay Ghadery speaks with the wonderful Ottawa writer, Christine McNair about her 2024 book of lyric essays and prose poetry, Toxemia (Book*hug Press, 2024).

In this alchemy of anger and love, history and memoir, Christine McNair delves into various forms of toxicity in the body—from the effects of two life-threatening preeclampsia diagnoses to chronic illness, sexism in medicine, and the toll of societal expectations.

With catharsis and humour, Toxemia pieces together the complexities of identity, motherhood, and living in a body to reveal deeply recognizable raw truths. McNair captures the wrenching feeling of loss of control in the face of an overwhelming medical diagnosis and the small, endless moments in life that underscore it: worrying about mortality in the middle of the night, revolving medical appointments, self-doubt, and all the ways in which illness interrupts.

Toxemia unravels the toxicities that haunt the human body from within and without. Combining lyrical essays, prose poetry, photographs, and more, this hybrid work dips between the sacred and profane, exposing—and holding—some of our greatest fears.

ABOUT CHRISTINE MCNAIR:

Christine MCNair is the author of Charm (winner of the 2018 Archibald Lampman Award) and Conflict (finalist for the City of Ottawa Book Award, the Archibald Lampman Award, and the ReLit Award for Poetry). She was also shortlisted for the Robert Kroetsch Award for Innovative Poetry. Her chapbook pleasantries and other misdemeanours was shortlisted for the bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her work has appeared in sundry literary journals and anthologies. McNair lives in Ottawa where she works as a book doctor.

About Hollay Ghadery:

Hollay Ghadery is an Iranian-Canadian writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity mental health, was released by Guernica Editions and won a 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award. Her poetry collection, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her short fiction collection, Widow Fantasies, with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network and co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is a book publicist, the Regional Chair of the League of Canadian Poets as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. www.hollayghadery.com.

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