Matthew Forsythe has worked as an animator, a children’s book illustrator, and a graphic novelist. He has two books coming out in the near future. The Gold Leaf (Enchanted Lion Books) with Kirsten Hall is out on May 26th. The Bad Mood & The Stick (Little Brown) with Lemony Snicket will be in stores this fall.Brad de Roo caught up by phone with Matthew just as he arrived in his hometown of Port Colborne for a library talk. They chatted about teaching, comics, visual culture, narrative structure, work, and the improbability of artistic satisfaction.

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Last summer I pitched a small essay to carte blanche because I wanted to write about an out-of-print novel that I had discovered several years before. The author has long since passed away, and the book itself has been all but forgotten: with the exception, perhaps, of a handful of people, most of whom are outside of the literary community and who were interested in the life of the writer, who was a scientist. The novel received lukewarm reviews following its publication in the 1960s. After a small print run, it seems to have disappeared altogether, besides a handful of copies from online used bookstores, and one I found in a book saleroom tucked behind a torn Atlas and a Baby-Sitters Club boxed set.

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Stephen Henighan is a novelist, short-story writer, journalist, and professor of Hispanic Studies at the University of Guelph. Most recently, he was written the novels The Path of the Jaguar (Thistledown Press, 2016) and Mr. Singh Among the Fugitives (Linda Leith Publishing), which is available on March 25. Brad de Roo chatted with Stephen about multiculturalism, literary nepotism, satire, Victorianism, performativity, and cultural appropriation.

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I am shortly going to be leaving the team in my official capacity as editor. I do so with mixed feelings. Once upon a time, I honestly felt I could tackle any amount of work that was thrown at me. The days seemed elastic. I could stretch them at either end, conjuring up just enough minutes or hours to always get things done. But I don’t feel that way anymore. I am trying to figure out how big each relative part of me is, and how to accommodate them all within a finite body.

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"One of the reasons I find Seth and his contemporaries’ works so interesting is because it and they ask the reader to use a very different rubric when they are experiencing – reading – the art. For me, the critical debates in the visual arts seemed to dead end when the voices of anti-skilling, self-reference demanded that analysis always trumped emotion and humanity when confronting a work of art to determine significance. For me, there was always a whiff of intolerance toward visual art that explored humanity as a wide-spectrum project."

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The first job I ever had in the Montreal region was at a company called Bath Fitter, aka Bain Magique, up beyond Laval in a town called Saint Eustache. As I listened to the explanation of the pension benefits that I was entitled to, a repeat of conversations I’d had with prior employers in Edmonton, it dawned on me: I’ve never cared about this conversation, I still don’t care, and I actually feel it’s OK to not care, because I have very little faith that, by the time my retirement rolls around, the world that we know – mortgages, insurance plans, “financial security” etc. – will exist.

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As part of our upcoming Issue 28, we are thrilled to present a commissioned interview between two of Canada’s best-loved writers of their generation, Madeleine Thien and Heather O’Neill. In this brief excerpt, Thien and O’Neill talk about their hometown, Montreal, O’Neill as a native and Thien as an adopted daughter of the city. Stay tuned to Issue 28 (which goes live on November 7) for the entire conversation.

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Jenny Ferguson is a Canadian writer, editor, and teacher from many places. Her debut book, Border Markers (NeWest Press), a collection of interrelated flash fictions, was released this September. Brad de Roo chatted with her about the ambiguity of genres, the ubiquity of ghosts, and the reorienting power of flash. "Flash-or-micro fiction, as genre," Jenny said, "likes to end on a turn, or a moment that asks the reader to re-evaluate what s/he has read."

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I don’t know about you, but when I’m in a rough spot or running out of steam, looking back at a joyful moment helps.For me, one of those moments happened last November, when I learned I’d been selected to be the CBC/QWF’s first writer-in-residence. I still grin when I remember jumping up from my chair when my name was called during the QWF Literary Awards Gala.

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Avalon Moore is a comics artist based out of Nova Scotia that is releasing a few pages of her graphic novel, Between, online every week. Eve Nixen sat down with Avalon to talk about the creative process, relationships and finishing projects, no matter how challenging they become.

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Writing about my experience of someone else’s death feels like a million acupuncture needles at once—I know it’s serving some mysterious purpose, but it feels strange, surreal, selfish. I’ve decided to trust that it will do some good, and frankly, I don’t know what else to do.

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New Zealander-Canadian author Alice Petersen’s first collection of short stories, All the Voices Cry (Biblioasis) won the 2012 Quebec Writer’s Federation Concordia University First Book Prize. Her newest collection Worldly Goods (Biblioasis) was released in May. Brad de Roo asked her about the object of books and the music of objects for carte blanche this July.

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It’s hardly a matter of speculation that Antonio Tabucchi (1943-2012) set his novels Pereira Declares (1994) and Tristano Dies (2004) against the backdrop of European fascism—the former at its onset and the latter after its fall—in order to inquire, by revealing the undisclosed consciousness of his protagonists, to what extent his era was different from theirs, and to what extent it was the same.

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Mark Foss is the author of the short-story collection Kissing the Damned and the novel Spoilers. His new novel Molly O (Cormorant Books, 2016) follows Montreal film professor Little Joe's obsessive search for his missing sister Candy, who may or may not be Molly O, the lead in a series of erotically charged silent, experimental films. When a death sets the stage for reconnecting with his brother Hoss and his father Joseph at the family homestead, Little Joe must relive the rural auctions and wastelands of his past to get to the truth about Candy. Brad de Roo got some cinematic answers from Mark for carte blanche this May.

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carte blanche seeks to expand its pool of bloggers in support of our regular literary magazine. We want writing that explores some aspect of literary and artistic culture in Montreal, Quebec, Canada or the wider world. You can feature an event, a trend, a movement, an anecdote, an experience or whatever you think might engage the public in a literary topic. Dug that poetry reading last night? Irritated at that famous writer’s new interview with Book Riot? Up in arms about a literary feud? Give us the skinny![read_more]

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I am bad at saying no. As part of a better-late-in-life-than-never self-improvement exercise, I try to turn down extra work—especially the non-paying variety.So last summer, when Michelle Sylvestre of the Make A Wish Foundation phoned to tell me about a volunteer opportunity—Raphaëlla Vaillancourt, a young survivor of a life-threatening illness, wished to publish a book and needed mentoring—I referred Michelle to Lori Schubert at the Quebec Writers’ Federation.A few days later, Lori contacted me. If the QWF could fund a mentorship for Raphaëlla, would I take the job?



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Kembrew McLeod is a Professor of Communication Studies at the University of Iowa.  He is a prolific author, filmmaker, and prankster.  His latest book is Blondie’s Parallel Lines (Bloomsbury, 2016) the 111th book in 33 1/3’s series on classic albums.  Brad deRoo nerded out via email to get to some intersecting lines from Kembrew McLeod for carte blanche this April. [read_more]

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In the hospitality room at the Hôtel Gouverneurs in Trois-Rivières, you are greeted by two perky volunteers whose first question after introductions is: “Will you three be reading the French translations of your poems yourselves, or will you be requiring the services of a French reader?” Oh, my, you think. What translations? The hotel carpet begins to yaw under your chair. What was I thinking coming to a poetry festival in a city whose population is 97 percent French—without translations?



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