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Published on August 10, 2025 17:56

I must have loved spending time at that art station...

I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human

send my love to anyone - I've been meaning to ask Madhur Anand

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?

Madhur Anand: My first memory of existing is my first memory of art-making. The memory is from my junior kindergarten classroom in Toronto. There was an easel with cheap paper and three pots of tempera paint in primary colours, a bowl with water, and a single medium-sized paintbrush on each side. Two children could work at the easel at a time. None of these details so far are memories, just inducted facts. As far as I can remember, I had not been exposed to art materials, never given the opportunity to mark up a paper with my fancy or imagination before junior kindergarten. I must have loved spending time at that art station, but I cannot remember the feeling of holding or moving the brush. I cannot remember the plastic smock. These projections into my past self come only from having my own three children. I cannot remember which colours I preferred then, nor what I painted. If I had to guess, based on who I thought I was—someone who only attempted to imitate after mastering the art of imitation—I would say abstract. Or I would say, what Cezanne said: "...consider nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything put in perspective." I can only remember the smell of the paint and the sight of the blank page. Existence lay somewhere between the two. Existence was an imminent expression, not unlike its latin origins: "to appear, to arise."

Madhur Anand is a scientist and poet who has just published her first novel, To Place a Rabbit (Knopf Canada, 2025).

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published To Place a Rabbit by Madhur AnandKnopf Canada

Buy To Place a Rabbit

A witty, irresistible debut novel from award-winning poet Madhur Anand about entangled desire in books, life and love.

This delightfully clever, artfully layered novel begins when a scientist who has written a popular book of non-fiction attends a literary festival, where she strikes up a friendship with a charismatic novelist. The novelist reveals that her new work is an experiment: a novella she wrote in English only to have it translated and published solely in French—a language the novelist cannot read. Moreover, she has lost her original English manuscript of this work. Hearing this, the scientist, who is fluent in French, impulsively offers to retranslate the novella back into English for the novelist.

As she embarks on this task, the scientist finds herself haunted by vivid memories and distracting questions—particularly about a passionate affair from her own life with a French lover. These insert themselves into her translation process, troubling it, then disrupting it entirely. She desperately tries to complete her task before losing control of both the work and her well-organized existence—but soon the novelist and the French lover reappear in the present, further complicating both life and art.

Here is sparkling, irresistible debut fiction from one of our most consistently inventive voices, the award-winning and multi-talented Madhur Anand.

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Published on August 08, 2025 23:35

I must have loved spending time at that art station, but I cannot remember the feeling of holding or moving the brush.

I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?

Madhur Anand: My first memory of existing is my first memory of art-making. The memory is from my junior kindergarten classroom in Toronto. There was an easel with cheap paper and three pots of tempera paint in primary colours, a bowl with water, and a single medium-sized paintbrush on each side. Two children could work at the easel at a time. None of these details so far are memories, just inducted facts. As far as I can remember, I had not been exposed to art materials, never given the opportunity to mark up a paper with my fancy or imagination before junior kindergarten. I must have loved spending time at that art station, but I cannot remember the feeling of holding or moving the brush. I cannot remember the plastic smock. These projections into my past self come only from having my own three children. I cannot remember which colours I preferred then, nor what I painted. If I had to guess, based on who I thought I was—someone who only attempted to imitate after mastering the art of imitation—I would say abstract. Or I would say, what Cezanne said: "...consider nature in terms of the cylinder, the sphere, the cone, everything put in perspective." I can only remember the smell of the paint and the sight of the blank page. Existence lay somewhere between the two. Existence was an imminent expression, not unlike its latin origins: "to appear, to arise."

Madhur Anand is a scientist and poet who has just published her first novel, To Place a Rabbit (Knopf Canada, 2025).

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published To Place a Rabbit by Madhur AnandKnopf Canada

Buy To Place a Rabbit

A witty, irresistible debut novel from award-winning poet Madhur Anand about entangled desire in books, life and love.

This delightfully clever, artfully layered novel begins when a scientist who has written a popular book of non-fiction attends a literary festival, where she strikes up a friendship with a charismatic novelist. The novelist reveals that her new work is an experiment: a novella she wrote in English only to have it translated and published solely in French—a language the novelist cannot read. Moreover, she has lost her original English manuscript of this work. Hearing this, the scientist, who is fluent in French, impulsively offers to retranslate the novella back into English for the novelist.

As she embarks on this task, the scientist finds herself haunted by vivid memories and distracting questions—particularly about a passionate affair from her own life with a French lover. These insert themselves into her translation process, troubling it, then disrupting it entirely. She desperately tries to complete her task before losing control of both the work and her well-organized existence—but soon the novelist and the French lover reappear in the present, further complicating both life and art.

Here is sparkling, irresistible debut fiction from one of our most consistently inventive voices, the award-winning and multi-talented Madhur Anand.

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Published on August 08, 2025 23:35

I can't live in a world without ghosts.

I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human

I've been meaning to ask Dina Del Bucchia

Kathryn Mockler: What is the best or worst dream you ever had?

Dina Del Bucchia: I don't know if it's best or worst, but it's my weirdest childhood dream and lives in my head for all time. It was a recurring dream and it was set in an old timey western saloon, and all the characters (are they characters in a dream?) were anthropomorphic POCKETS! Like western-style pockets. And the pockets had on cowboy boots and hats and bandanas. It was truly so surreal and I would honestly love to re-experience this dream as an adult. The visuals are so vivid in my memory, but I don't remember the plot (do dreams have plots?). But it was an aesthetic delight, and also creepy as hell.

KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?

DDB: I'm basic as hell and my favourite emotion is joy. I love to feel joyful. Usually, joy comes from being around others, joking, chatting, laughing, sharing our shit with each other. Being around other people is also when I feel at my best. I find all emotions are important, useful, crucial to recognize and experience. But, I am at my best when I am riding high. I can move forward when I have a stocked up on some joy.

I hate feeling jealousy, but it happens all the time. I want so much of what other people have and it can really make me a bit of a monster. I see stuff other people have and I think GIMME THAT! And I have absolutely no idea how hard (or not) someone worked for what they have. I think jealousy is pretty common in a society and world where there is so much disparity.

KM: Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?

DDB: I feel embarrassed all the time. I'm a gassy 45-year old woman with no significant savings who owns no property and has multiple precarious non-full time jobs and I'm a poet! Like, if I wasn't a bit embarrassed by that, I think people in my life would need to be more concerned about me. I love being a poet, don't get me wrong, but it's kind of embarrassing. Which is good! I think a good writer and creative person needs to have a humbleness around their art. Don't want to get too cocky!

KM: What do you cherish most about this world?

DDB: People. Socializing. It truly is the thing that makes life worth living for me. If I don't socialize with people it's so hard to do anything else, like basic domestic chores even. Being around other people that I love is amazing, but I'm also folksy as hell and will chat with people in public like the small town girl that I am.

KM: What would you like to change about this world?

DDB: So many things! How to choose? The world needs to fundamentally stop admiring and valuing the opinions of people just because they're hoarders of billions of dollars. Not really good lessons to be learned from these people! Look at how weird my relationship to money is, based solely on this interview!

KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.

DDB: My younger self really needed to consider that while money is fake (and living under capitalism is designed to punish most people), it's actually important, so not understanding how it works (in a variety of ways) isn't cute. This is me as a much younger person, one day ago, and one hour ago. I am learning this lesson slowly, constantly and poorly. While remaining a person who does not retain money.

KM: Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?

DDB: Yes! I believe in ghosts. I've seen a ghost. And we need to have ghosts. I can't live in a world without ghosts.

KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?

DDB: John Lennon was wrong (about a bunch of stuff), but all we need isn't just love. I know that sending love can't stop bombs from dropping, or hate crimes, or abuses of power, or authoritarianism, or any other number of atrocities, but I think anyone who is experiencing that shit needs love.

Dina Del Bucchia is the author of five collections of poetry, Coping with Emotions and Otters (Talonbooks, 2013), Blind Items (Insomniac Press, 2014), Rom Com (Talonbooks, 2015), written with Daniel Zomparelli, It’s a Big Deal! (Talonbooks, 2019), and You’re Gonna Love This (Talonbooks, 2019). For ten years she co-hosted Can’t Lit, a podcast on Canadian literature and culture. Her first collection of short stories, Don’t Tell Me What to Do, was published in fall 2017 with Arsenal Pulp Press. She was the Artistic Director of the Real Vancouver Writers' Series and is on the editorial board of the independent press fine press. You can find out more about her at dinadelbucchia.comDina Del Bucchia’s latest book!

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published You're Gonna Love This by Dina Del BucchiaTalon Books

You’re Gonna Love This tracks the narrator’s entwined relationships with her spouse, her television, and herself. Displaying Del Bucchia’s trademark nuanced media literacy, this distinctly working-class long poem unravels how media culture’s around-the-clock presence impacts our connection to the world. Recapping episodes in her experience of caregiving, she also addresses her own mental-health journey with dark humour, wry cultural references, and a flair for making the deeply personal especially relatable. You’re gonna love this!

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Published on August 04, 2025 20:57

Describe the body, if you wish to collect it.

Casus BelliText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThe nurses grumble in with saline sacks,pinched metrics, needlepoint faces he prodsfor a casus belli, turn bumptious backsto his howls; ignored, he summons ghosts, gods,stonewalls his living guests, flipflops and nodsyes to cocktails, cigarettes, private yachtsnot proffered, flinches from a firing squadof light, holds forth. Time-lapsed, lucid, he rotsapace, weeps; like an open sore, or apricots.From his bed, oblong squares of gauze unfurllike shitstained kites. He calls for grapes, thrusts,deflects, his intellect a bloated pearllustrous with malice. Settled in its dust,silted. His arms punctured vellum, unpuffedsails, slack with promise. His surgeon he bestswith apt puns; he stymies nous, compels trustand love from richer men who acquiesce to his tall truths, his eyes unspooled as mangled nests.He says The sun has ice cold fangs and I can't. He says it's morning. E-mails he sendscome out all moonfaced yellow suns that cry,leer, wear party hats. Chickenshit, false friends.Favours crowd him. The neighbour boy who lendssweat marked banknotes, students, cousins, paid nurse.He types a row of question marks; and bendsforth from his lips a skein of English verse.He claws the air. The unseen ship he hails – a hearse.On the Subject IIText within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedDescribe the body, if you wish to collectit. Say it could have been no other. Because it could have been and was instead someone five foot six, dimples tits Fernet, mom-patched jeans, ballcapfor all occasions, blackbirds on the house, scars finger-thick. Cleavage of skinned treebranch edging her throat, beau soleil. Semi-permanent shiner – because her Atlantic runoff baby greys rolled cloudward, mussel shell. Bouctouche River silt in her sass.Fuck right off, tell me another one.What else you need to know about this one of many women, a shovelful of carbon?Friday night special, how now to distinguishher, our molecule of molecules,ragged shrine on a Dundas West stoop,crossword puzzle waterlogged. Halfcutthe flowers tear themselves apart for free.The bereavements die of rain and rain.Because she read true crime and couldn’t sleep,comics, jaundiced leaves of Portnoy’s Complaint.The click of her claws on instagram’s carousel blur, trailing carnival of red.Cheek chipmunked with chickenwing,serious ink blooming on her cream like a neck-down haematoma. Incisor glintingin the barlight. You’d remember that.You’d recognise men’s handiwork all over her body. Remember the afterburn?Dust of any other cinderella. Her shards. Gold tooth on a shop floor, lininga lockdown pocket. Cunts. Judy saidyou could also mention bowleggedif you were so inclined. Her Chiac-flecked French, Rs that roll forever, skyline-bent – past the bend in river or road, past the horizonof herself, why should a woman? Go on. Her Acadian laugh.(Judy says A whisky in her name.) You miss her, don’t you?As if that meant a thing.Eva H.D. wrote Rotten Perfect Mouth and The Natural Hustle; also the short film “Jackals & Fireflies.” Her latest film with Charlie is “How To Shoot A Ghost.”

writes the newsletter holes of beauty in the grit: poetry aloud:

holes of beauty in the grit: poetry aloudhistory is in your mouth. poetry & prose aloud and/or in translation.By Eva H.D.Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone!

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Published on July 23, 2025 20:19

I decided a long time ago that the whole point of existence is people.

I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?

Aamir Hussain: My first memory is of me arguing with my sister over which one of us is older. Considering that she is my older sister, it is a fact that the first moment of my consciousness I can recall is of me being wrong about something. Aside from being a funny little story, I do think this early experience, and others like it (many at the hands of my sister again) have given me a healthy amount of introspection, an ability to check my assumptions, and a need to delve deep into subjects that I want to have opinions on.

KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why?

AH: I was a very absent minded and bookish child, so much so that I've been told that once my family could not find me after school and turned the school grounds upside down only to find me in the corner of a classroom lost in a book. That sensation, of being able to disconnect completely from the world and lose myself in a story, is one that I have lost as I have grown older and my worries and responsibilities have as well. I miss it.

KM: What do you cherish most about this world?

AH: I cherish the people of this world. I think I decided a long time ago that the whole point of existence is people. What makes this bearable to me is my added conviction that the vast majority of people are fundamentally decent and humane.

KM: What would you like to change about this world?

AH: While I truly believe that most people are fundamentally decent and humane, I also believe that we are overwhelmingly conformists by nature. This conformity, in many cases, overrules our decency and humanity if we need to get by in an indecent and inhumane society. I wish we had more courage as a whole to not comply in these situations, find each other, and push back.

KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.

AH: My science fiction loving self is too leery of the 'Butterfly Effect' where a slight change in the past could lead to major unpredictable changes in the future. Still, I think I would risk going back to a time when I really badly needed a hug, and giving myself one.

KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?

AH: I would send my love to the people of Palestine. I wish I could do more to help bring an end to the unimaginable pain and suffering being inflicted on them. More than our thoughts and prayers, they need our material support and I wonder what the point is of all the wealth and power our developed societies have accumulated if they are not devoted to preventing this crime of crimes... genocide. Even worse is the knowledge that even a little bit of our resources are being sent to fund it, arm it, and ensure it continues.

Aamir Hussain’s debut novel coming out this fall.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Under the Full and Crescent Moon by Aamir HussainDundurn Press, 2025

Publisher’s Description

In a battle of words and beliefs, a young woman must defend her city against zealotry during the Islamic Golden Age.

After his long-time scribe retires, Khadija’s father, the city’s leading jurist, offers his introverted daughter the opportunity to take on the role of his assistant. In accepting, Khadija is thrust into her community, the medieval hilltop city of Medina’tul-Agham, where she, as a motherless young woman, has spent little time. Led by Imam Fatima and guided by the Circle of Mothers, it is a matriarchy — the only one in the empire. Though forced to set aside her quiet life among the books and parchments of her family home, Khadija thrives, finding her power and place in the world with the support of her new friends and strong female mentors.

Yet Khadija’s idyllic new life is shattered when fanatical forces weaponize Sharia law to threaten the very fabric of the society. Using only the power of her parchment and quill, Khadija must win the support of the people and write fatwas to fight against injustice, or the peace and prosperity of her city will be nothing more than a footnote in the annals of history.

Aamir Hussain was born into a family of strong women in Pakistan, grew up in Saudi Arabia, and moved to Canada when he was fifteen years old. He works in the tech sector in Toronto. Under the Full and Crescent Moon is his debut novel. He lives in Milton, Ontario.Send your love to Send My Love to Anyone!

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Published on July 22, 2025 22:15

I’d send my love to all the kids who feel like weirdos.

I’ve been meaning to ask you is an interview series where Kathryn Mockler invites people to answer questions on being human

Kathryn Mockler: What is your first memory of existing?

Kate Gies: My first fully formed memory is the day I used a toilet for the first time on my own. I’ll spare you some of the specifics, but afterward, I called my parents in and they stood around the toilet and clapped for me and my little floating turd. I was then awarded with a trip to Tim Hortons and a chocolate éclair. I remember being so proud of myself, and also thinking how the éclair looked similar to the turd I’d made.

KM What is your first memory of being creative?

KG: I don’t ever remember a time I was not drawn to colour, words, and music.

I remember being very young and going into a neighbour’s garden, pulling out her own flowers to make a colourful bouquet, and then ringing the doorbell to give it to her. Despite me ruining her garden, she’d always give me a mint. My mother had a talk with me about it and I started drawing her pictures to get my mint. After that, I drew pictures for everybody. I remember a cello and bow I drew that stayed on my musician uncle’s fridge for many years.

In addition to flower arranging and drawing, I made up songs and recorded them on my tape player. I also made up dances to Madonna songs and performed for babysitters.

Perhaps not surprisingly, I didn’t have a lot of friends when I was really young and I was set up with a girl whose parents were friends with my parents (she didn’t have a lot of friends either). We wrote plays together and presented them to our parents. Some of my favourite creative memories come from that friendship.

KM: What is the best or worst dream you ever had?

KG: A long-time favourite dream of mine is from when I was thirteen. At the time, I was bullied by a group of boys in my class after showing up to school with a large bandage wrapped around my head (a souvenir from a surgery). In the dream, I was part of a secret society that met under a sun-drenched willow tree. The boys who bullied me were also part of the secret society. Under the willow tree, we’d eat fistfuls of All-Bran that would make us “high”. (To note: I didn’t have a concept of what “being high” was like, as I wasn’t cool enough for anyone to offer me drugs in real life, but in the dream, it made us all huddle in a giant group hug.) Anyway, I loved that dream. I’d flick back to the memory of it for years, the warm feeling of “being high” under the willow tree, the sun glittering on my face, enveloped in the arms of the kids who hated me most.

KM: What is your favourite or significant coincidence story to tell?

KG: I’ve had many moments of synchronicity throughout my life. For me, they are a beautiful reminder that there is something big connecting us all to each other.

Two examples:

1. I teach creative writing in a program for people with mental health and addiction issues. About ten years ago, one of my students mentioned a poet he liked who’d just written an e-book about his mental health journey. Two days later, I shared a bathroom with that poet at a week-long writing retreat. We ended up dating on and off for two years and he became a significant part of my own life journey.

2. I took a writing and meditation course with a beautiful instructor who left a big impact on me. A few years later, I attended a conference for work on the importance of meditation in education. There were thousands of participants spread over multiple dorms across the campus. In my dorm, I shared a bathroom with the person in the room next to me (the bathroom connected our rooms together). On the first night, I opened the bathroom door at the same time as the person in the other room opened the bathroom door from her end. And yes, it was my writing and meditation teacher.

KM: Do you have a preferred emotion to experience? What is it and why? Or is there an emotion that you detest having and why?

KG: I’ve been off chocolate since I was twelve, as it causes me migraines. Once, while riding passenger side on a coastal drive through Florida, I ate a red-velvet cupcake (not realizing that it had chocolate in it). What resulted was a calm that spread through me like light. Not a quiet calm, but the calm one gets when neurons explode in perfect symphony. With the ocean beside me, and the orange-red bleed of a late afternoon sun, everything around me felt illuminated, like a childhood memory of summer. That was a good feeling.

My least favourite feeling is definitely shame. This has been a big one throughout my life and I’m working hard at eliminating it where I can. For me, shame feels like a belly full of glass—heavy, sharp, and immobilizing. It’s such a damaging emotion.

KM: Can you recount a time (that you're willing to share) when you were embarrassed?

KG: As someone who is hard of hearing, I’ve many moments of embarrassment. Often mis-hearing words, or having to ask people to repeat themselves many times until it’s super awkward socially. When I was young, gym class was the worst, as the teacher and students kept moving around and it was hard to hear instructions. I have a story in my memoir about playing Ring Around the Rosey and falling too soon, dragging all the kids down with me.

Two other embarrassing moments unrelated to hearing:

1. In eighth grade, we were in an assembly where I had to read something in front of the school. I had a dentist appointment that day and my mother had given me instructions to meet her in front of the school at a specific time. I thought I’d have time to do my reading, but realized just as I was walking up the steps to the stage that it was time to meet my mother. I got up on stage, leaned into the mic, and instead of doing the 2-minute reading, I said “I have to go to the dentist”. I then promptly exited stage right to a loud and sarcastic applause.

2. In my mid-twenties, I was just finishing up a job interview at York University that I’d thought had gone really well. The HR person walked me out to the elevator. She leaned to put down her suitcase and I thought she was going in for a hug. So I hugged her. It wasn’t until I felt her body stiffening that I realized, she had, in fact, not leaned in for a hug.

KM: What advice would you give to your younger self? Your younger self could be you at any age.

KG: Don’t, under any circumstances, hug the HR person at a job interview.

KM: Do you believe in ghosts? Why or why not?

KG: Yes. I haven’t had a personal experience with a traditionally conceptualized ghost, but I’ve definitely felt the essence of people after they’ve passed.

My Oma passed away very suddenly when I was eighteen. She was truly an amazing woman. She was orphaned at age nine and became a wife and mother in her late teens. At age fifty, she decided she wanted to learn to paint and by sixty, she was restoring AY Jacksons and other famous Canadian painters. She was generous and brilliant and humble. When I was a little kid, I was terrified of the large moths that showed up at the cottage we used to rent in the summer. I found their frenetic enthusiasm for light very disturbing. My Oma took it upon herself to help me through this fear. She walked me out to the trees and I remember her guiding my finger over the velvet-soft nest of the moths. She told me all sorts of interesting facts about moths, and effectively turned my fear into fascination. Many years later, in what would be our last conversation, I reminded my Oma of this gift she gave me. We laughed and reminisced about our times at the cottage. Three days later, she died of a brain aneurism. I was devastated. One night, early in my grief, a large moth found its way into my bedroom. Instead of flying into the light of the lamp, it stayed still on the wall beside my bed. I swear I could feel the soft energy of my Oma in this moth.

KM: If you could send your love to anyone, who would it be and why?

KG: I’d send my love to all the kids who feel like weirdos. The kids who feel they need to hide parts of themselves to be loved. I see you. You’re cooler than you think, I promise. And those parts of yourself you feel you need to hide are the very parts that make you most human, and by extension, most loveable.

KM: Tell me about your latest book.

KG: My book, It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body, is about my experiences growing up missing an ear, the well-intentioned violence of the medical system intent on “fixing” me, and the booms and echoes of the body shame I’ve carried throughout my life. It’s a story about coming of age in the 90’s, and all the gross and insidious messages girls received about their bodies at that time. It’s about coming of age again, much later in life, and learning to fully inhabit a body I never believed was mine to own.

It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished

Kate Gies is a writer and educator living in Toronto. She teaches creative nonfiction and expressive arts at George Brown College. Her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry have been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, Minola Review, and The Conium Review. She was a finalist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize, and her essay “Foreign Bodies” (excerpted from It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished) will be included in the forthcoming Best Canadian Essays anthology from Biblioasis.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body by Kate GiesSimon Schuster, 2025

A raw, beautiful memoir of a girl born missing an ear, a medical system insistent on saving her from herself, and our culture’s desire to “fix” bodies.

When Kate Gies was four years old, a plastic surgeon pressed a synthetic ear to the right side of her head and pulled out a mirror. He told her he could make her “whole”—could make her “right”—and she believed him. From the age of four to thirteen, she underwent fourteen surgeries, including skin and bone grafts, to craft the appearance of an outer ear. Many of the surgeries failed, leaving permanent damage to her body.

In short, lyrical vignettes, Kate writes about how her “disfigured” body was scrutinized, pathologized, and even weaponized. She describes the physical and psychic trauma of medical intervention and its effects on her sense of self, first as a child needing to be fixed and, later, as a teenager and adult navigating the complex expectations and dangers of being a woman.

It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is the story of a girl desperately trying to have a body that makes her acceptable and of a woman learning to own a body she has never felt was hers to define. In an age of speaking out about the abuse of marginalized bodies, this memoir takes a hard look at the role of the medical system in body oppression and trauma.

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Published on July 22, 2025 22:02

Help help!

Donate to the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

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Published on July 11, 2025 11:11

Three Send My Love to Anyone Contributors are on the Toronto Book Awards Longlist!

3 Send My Love to Anyone contributors make the 2025 Toronto Book Awards Longlist!!!

Congrats to Maggie Helwig, Hollay Ghadery, and Farah Ghafoor on being longlisted along with all the other amazing authors!

You can read excerpts from their books on Send My Love to Anyone:

Encampment by Maggie Helwig

Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery

Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor

Read more at the Toronto Public Library

The 2025 Toronto Book Awards longlisted titles are:

Encampment by Maggie Helwig

Unlike The Rest by Chika Stacy Oriuwa

Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor

The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse by Vinh Nguyen

Other Worlds by André Alexis

Nobody Asked For This by Georgia Toews

Story of Your Mother by Chantal Braganza

All the Parts We Exile by Roza Nozari

Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery

The Knowing by Tanya Talaga

The Immortal Woman by Su Chang

Anne of the Library-on-the-Hill by Catherine Little with Sae Kimura

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