Y'all. Today we're teachin' VIDEO GAAAMES and I'm so excited! I'm not really a big gamer, but I loved chatting with Catherine Nygren about the ways she incorporates The Stanley Parable into her intro to literature classes.

• To download The Stanley Parable, or to access a free demo and/or watch the trailer, find it on Steam. You can find out more about the game on its Wikipedia page, but of course beware of spoilers if you plan to venture into the game “unspoiled” first. 😊
• Check out the handout Catherine uses in her classes on The Stanley Parable.
• Catherine would like to highlight a couple of blog posts about The Stanley Parable that she is beholden to: one by Javy Gwaltney and another by Gregory Anderson. There's also a newer post by Zachary Hartzman that has a lesson plan connected to making decisions (and he has other lesson plans for teaching with games – check them out!).
• Here is the Wiki we refer to a few times that describes the different Stanley Parable endings.
• Find more about Ian Bogost's concept "procedural rhetoric."
• Here is more about adrienne maree brown's Pleasure Activism.
• You can find more about the FableLabs Tales app on their website, and there you can also get a link to Tonia Laird's Poster Girl. Find out more about Laird’s work in this news story.  

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

Please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use. It really helps the podcast if you rate and review, so consider doing so if you like what you're hearing.... :D

 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

Heyyy all! I’m talkin’ about Instapoetry in today’s episode of Teachin’ Books. 

In particular, I share three short exercises I use to teach Instapoetry, two of which (in response to a listener request (!!!)) were designed for online teaching environments. I also chat a bit about the debates that surround Instapoetry and why the question “what counts as poetry?” matters.

• If you’re not familiar with Instapoetry, see work by Rupi Kaur, Lang Leav, Atticus, and Amanda Lovelace, who are mentioned in the episode.
• Other poems and poets referred to in the episode include Shakespeare’s sonnets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dylan Thomas’s “Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night,” bpNichol, Jordan Abel, Nada Gordon’s “Poem to My Enemies,” Craig Dworkin’s “Fact,” Ezra Pound’s “In a Station of the Metro,” Vivek Shraya’s “Part-time Woman,” and Robert Montgomery.  
• Check out Tenille Campbell’s book #IndianLovePoems and her other Instawork here @sweetmoonphoto. You should also pre-order her new book of poems nedi nezu (Good Medicine).
• The episode photo is a picture of the chair that features in one of the Instapoetry exercises I describe in the episode. Ahhh, an uncomfortable classroom chair in a room that was always too hot... I miss that :( 

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

Please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use. If you like what you’re hearing, please do rate, review, and spread the word about the podcast :D 

 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

In this episode of Teachin’ Books, I talk to a few members from the lovely Alice Munro book club I’ve been participating in this year: Sarah Roger, Taylor Graham, Tracy Ware, Sandra Hoenle, and Bob Thacker. We chat about Alice Munro’s short story collection Dear Life and, in general, about the experience of ~being in a book club~ (particularly during the pandemic) and how book clubs intersect with teaching and learning. 

Stories! Feelings! The realities of book-clubbing via Zoom! This episode has it all.

• Pick up or order Dear Life from your local bookstore – for example, in S’toon, Turning the Tide.
• Check out the Canadians Read project, where Sarah Roger and Paul Barrett (two of the Munro book club organizers) share their research and blog about the impact of digital media on literatures in Canada.
•  While you’re at it, why don’t you check out Alice Munro: Writing Her Lives: A Biography (2005, updated 2011) and Reading Alice Munro, 1973-2013 (2016), both of which are authored by podcast guest Robert Thacker.
• For more about the Saskatoon Public Library and their programming, see their website, and watch the Indigenous Spotlight performances and readings on their Facebook page.

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

Please subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or whatever podcatcher you tend to use. If you rate and review the podcast, that would also be helpful... :D

 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

In this episode of Teachin’ Books, I talk to... myself!... about teaching Kazuo Ishiguro's 2005 novel Never Let Me Go. 

• Get the novel through your library or local bookstore. In Saskatoon, I like Turning the Tide and McNally Robinson. There's also the film adaptation.
• Check out Dorothy Ellen Palmer's work as a disability activist and writer.
• Listen and subscribe to Métis in Space, an awesome podcast by Molly Swain and Chelsea Vowel that joins decolonial cultural criticism with sf.

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

In this episode of Teachin’ Books, host Jessica McDonald talks to Dr. Joanne Leow, Assistant Professor of English at the University of Saskatchewan, about teaching David Chariandy's novel Brother.

• Find out more about David Chariandy’s novel Brother.
• You can find Karina Vernon’s edited anthology The Black Prairie Archives at Wilfrid Laurier University Press. And you can find her U Winnipeg English talk “Changing the Prairie Story: Reading Black & Black-Indigenous Writers in the Prairie Archive” here on YouTube.
• Go here to listen to Nina Simone sing “Ne Me Quitte Pas.”
• Some of the texts Joanne refers to include: “mihkokwaniy” by Joshua Whitehead; “This is America” by Childish Gambino; “Harlem” by Langston Hughes; “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z feat. Alicia Keys; the play Reasonable Doubt (created by Joel Bernbaum, Lancelot Knight, and Yvette Nolan); the play Consecrated Ground by George Boyd; the Unteachable documentary.

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod – join me in using it! You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

In this first official / full-length episode of Teachin’ Books, host Jessica McDonald talks to Ph.D. candidate and instructor Jade McDougall about teaching Marilyn Dumont’s “Letter to Sir John A Macdonald.” So, today we’re teachin’ POEMS, y’all. 

• Find more about Jade here. 
• Find Marilyn Dumont’s poem “Letter to Sir John A Macdonald” at Muskrat Magazine.
•  More information about Idle No More’s National Week of Action (Oct 19-Oct 23 2020) in solidarity with Mi’kmaq fishers and Mi’kmaq treaty rights can be found here.
• See more details about Marie Battiste’s edited book Living Treaties: Narrating Mi’kmaw Treaty Relations.

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by today’s rad guest, @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod – why don’t you use it right now, so I’m not alone! You can also get in touch at [email protected]. 

What should my sign-off be?? I’m still thinking, but am loving the suggestions I’ve gotten so far. Keep sending them along, or I might have to stick with OKAYBYEEE.
 
 **Read the transcript for this episode here.**

Welcome to Teachin' Books! 

In this first episode / minisode / trailer (who can decide?), host Jessica McDonald chats about her intentions for the podcast and about what you can expect in future episodes.  

• See more about Dissonant Methods: Undoing Discipline in the Humanities Classroom, edited by Ada S. Jaarsma and Kit Dobson.
• See more about Hannah McGregor’s work on podcasting as a community- and relationship- building practice, or as “collaborative co-creation."
• See Mathieu Aubin’s piece on “SpokenWeb Podcasting as Scholarly Feminist Practice” here.
• Check out Skydancer Louise Bernice Halfe’s work through this selected collection of her poetry, Sôhkêyihta: The Poetry of Sky Dancer Louise Bernice Halfe (edited by David Gaertner).

The podcast music is by Dyalla Swain, whose work you can find here. The podcast graphics are by @muskrathands.

You can follow the podcast on Twitter and Instagram @TeachinBooksPod. To chat about the podcast, use the hashtag #TeachinBooksPod. You can also get in touch at [email protected].

**Read the transcript for this episode here.**