In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Tracy Wai de Boer about her debut poetry collection, Nostos (Palimpsest Press/Anstruther 2025). 

Taking its title from Ancient Greek, Tracy Wai de Boer’s Nostos is a hero’s journey rooted in the quest for selfhood from elemental beginnings to an unknowable end. “Nostos” translates to homecoming and is one of the root words of nostalgia; the other, “algos,” means pain, making nostalgia a painful return home. This etymology acts as guide for de Boer’s “i” when she imagines homecoming as less a moment of arrival and more about desire to move through pain and mystery in the formation of self. Nostos is an essential debut from one of Canada’s fastest rising poets.

About Tracy Wai de Boer:

Tracy Wai de Boer is an award-winning writer, poet, and multidisciplinary artist. She co-authored Impact: Women Writing After Concussion which won the Book Publishers of Alberta Best Non-Fiction Award and was named one of CBC’s Best Non-Fiction Books of 2021. Her chapbook, maybe, basically, was published with Anstruther Press in 2020. Tracy was a resident at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity (2017, 2023) and her work has been featured internationally in outlets including Hypatia: A Journal of Feminist Philosophy, Catapult, Plenitude Magazine, Ricepaper Magazine, G U E S T, canthius, Prude Magazine, Petal Projections, and Unearthed Online Literary Journal. Nostos is Tracy’s first full-length poetry collection.

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