by Jade Palmer
Welcome to carte blanche issue 54. Featuring fiction, poetry, translation, creative nonfiction, photography, and comics, this issue shines a light on our international contributors while still placing these voices in conversation with our Quebecois and Canadian roots.
Read MoreCover art by Laurena Finéus
In “Jardin de Mackandal” (The Garden of Mackandal), the focus is the breadfruit tree, a hardy symbol of survival. Known for its role in Haiti's reforestation, the breadfruit tree thrives in poor soil and is a reliable source of sustenance, especially in times of crisis.
Read MoreComic by Sunny Strader
Sunny Strader is an artist based in rural Illinois, USA. She makes comics and sculpture, works as a psychic medium, and runs an astrology snail mail club from her home studio, sending mailings to readers around the world.
Read MoreComic by Katrina Dahl Vogl
Katrina Dahl Vogl is a Mexico City-based writer and illustrator. She received her MFA from the University of New Orleans in 2023.
Read MoreCreative nonfiction by Mary Fontana
The Pyrenees and the Alps, which stretched from east to west, meant that many trees were unable to move south ahead of the ice.
Read MoreCreative nonfiction by Theresa Lin
In his essay “Exhaling,” Carrère quotes Freud, who quotes Ludwig Börne:
Take a few sheets of paper and for three days on end write down, without fabrication or hypocrisy, everything that comes into your head.
Read MoreCreative nonfiction by by Suzanne Manizza Roszak
Being transported into this forest requires that you first drive a string of streets too narrow for more than a single car, then take a stretch of highway that cuts not through hills but instead through improbably flattened and uniform terrain.
Read MoreFiction by Sharalyn Barg
In late spring the year the virus came, the company treated us to a mental wellness seminar. We joined the video call from separate soundproof booths.
Read MoreFiction by by Garima Chhikara
Ira thrived in the lost hours, the unaccounted hours of her day, when she did absolutely nothing—hours that were fluid, intimate, and ambiguous.
Read MoreFiction by by Adam Dizon
Lying in front of us was the body of a young horse. It looked deflated, its stick-like limbs sprawled over the side of the table, one hoof hovering just above the floor.
Read MoreFiction by by Anja Jovanovic
It always went something like this: a post-lunch stop at the 7-Eleven would turn into passing by the park, leaving footprints on the hot tin slide and debating whether or not they could still squeeze into the baby swings
Read MoreFiction by by Lars Love Philipson
It’s a beautiful June afternoon, and I’m standing barefoot on the gravel driveway, watching Dad load bag after bag into our white BMW. He and Mom will be gone for a long, long time.
Read MorePoetry by Emma Moss Brender
All this time I was thinking about the black lines
I imagined a woman welding chance trusses against a white sky
Poetry by James Hawes
Steve Ambrose likes to watch YouTube videos of people making knives.
Steve Ambrose is lonely.
Poetry by Adegboyega Kayowa
When I finally told you that walking
was harder for me than for others, I was worried
Poetry by Pablo Saborio
Socrates’ dæmon watches a mass of empire vanish.
Doors appear as callous neophytes in the hierarchy of thresholds.
Photography by László Gábor Belicza
László Gábor Belicza’s photographs of Bábolna explore the deep connections between humans, horses, and nature within one of Hungary’s most historic stud farms.
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