At our secret lake the smell of cedars floated on the air, water lapped at a fallen tree, sun warmed the towels we spread on a huge rock. When we went there, we’d lie around in our old pilly swimsuits, or nothing, and not worry about sucking in our stomachs or making conversation. The day washed over us. One time, after a dip in the lake, George asked me, “What’s the opposite of déjà vu?”
Read MoreI am the daughter who left
Pacing father and busied mother
Staring out the window on the front door of yesterday
Watching as leaves fall
They look for my footprints in the grass
Parched
They sit in their tubewell
Creative nonfiction is the term of choice these days. It certainly didn’t start that way, and there are still several other ways of referring to “that way of writing” which readers might also be familiar with: literary nonfiction, literary journalism, narrative prose, you get the idea. We’re trying to find a way to nail this baby, the “baby” being, in the short form of the definition, the application of literary techniques to documentary material.
Read More“Nine kegs of nails” was told by Trevor Ferguson at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read More“Getting my mother's story” was told by Monique Polak at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read More“The Deenie Years” was told by Maria Schamis Turner at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read More“Taxidermy” was told by Jeremy Wexler at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read More"The Devil Downstairs" was told by Jane Martin at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read More"I know you want to be like them" was told by Taylor Tower at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, on April 19, 2012 at the Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal.
Read MoreThis Really Happened, carte blanche's true storytelling event, will be at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. Join us at the Hotel Opus on April 19, 2012, at 8 pm.
Read More"The Family of Literature" was told by Joel Yanofsky at our storytelling evening, This Really Happened, at Café Sarajevo on December 6, 2011.
Read More"Bring the Doll to Life" was told by Taylor Tower at This Really Happened at Café Sarajevo on December 6, 2011.
Read MoreWe asked our contributors from the past year for their reading picks from 2011. Here is what they had to share.
Read Morecarte blanche and This Really Happened bring you an evening of nonfiction storytelling on the theme of OBSESSIONS. December 6th at Café Sarajevo, 6548 boul. St. Laurent
Read MoreCongratulations to Gillian Sze!
Read Morecarte blanche is a not-for-profit project published by the Quebec Writers’ Federation. As an online literary publication, we rely on funding from the Canada Council for the Arts and the support of individual sponsors.
Read MoreThis is important in part because it means the benefit to the individual artist and her family will outweigh the relative cost to general tax revenue. It also means that all of her money goes right back into businesses in the local community, since she clearly isn't making enough money to save or travel. Also, with the security the exemption provides, a highly-skilled artist can devote more of her time to her high-value work, doing more good to the Canadian economy than she would wasting her time at a low-skilled job in order to make ends meet.
Read MoreBut film hasn’t given up. Instead, in peculiar ways, film has worked its way back into the network of billions of images that we share on a daily basis. And what is more curious is this: a large number of digital photographers have rejected the hyper-real pretensions of the early medium in favour of filters and effects that mimic the aberrations and limits of film photography.
Read MoreTwitter is also a fiction publishing phenomenon. While not as popular as keitai shosetsu (literally, cellphone novel) in Japan, it is increasingly being taken on by serious writers, serious wannabe writers, and seriously get-on-the-bandwagon publishers.
Read MoreWe the word snobs who point out that, for the love of god, it’s ‘80s not 80’s in every comment box we come upon are as unpopular as grade-school snitches. Why fight it? Why not just hand over the lunch money their wanting alot from us? Well all get along better neways.
Read More