Issue 98

Review: Nextdoor in Colonialtown

Rivas’s text — which remix actual Nextdoor posts into fictional dialogues — are both hilarious and alarming. Conversational and matter-of-fact, they reveal obsessions with securing their property, scrutinizing minor disturbances, and calling the police.

Review: On Heaven + Holiness

This dispatch on the intersection of longing and holiness carves a palindromic path from church, to heaven, to bodies, to desire, back to bodies, to holiness and back to church again. These concepts are thoroughly entwined, at least for writer Despy Boutris.

Review: Planet Heaven

What if there was an app that could tap into your brainwaves and wash all your worries away? Help you manifest your dreams at the touch of a button? And what happens when that app is made by the densest men on the planet?

Review: Crowdfunding for Designers

Craig Berman outlines an inspiring — and, quite frankly, increasingly necessary — approach to creativity that questions whether the labour of design must always be in service to others.

Review: Strange and Mysterious Creatures

Amidst loss, struggle, and pain, Douglas owns her experience and contention with mental health with a true gift for language. Her facility with the narration of emotion is moving and resonant.

Review: The Animals

A look into small-town life with a magical air, The Animals reminded me a little of my own travels through some of Ontario’s tourist destinations, and even the game Night in the Woods.

Review: Ticket for Reference

Prolific Australian zinester Kate Dunn writes a frank but sentimental mini-memoir of her call centre work. Drawing on several years experience of frontline phone wrangling, caught between customers, bosses, and a year of middle management.

Review: Pacifique

Sarah L. Taggart’s remarkable debut plays with being a psychological thriller, working in elements of a love story. Never patronizing or judgmental, what sets Pacifique apart is how Taggart writes about mental health.

Review: Run Wolf Run

Run Wolf Run is a well done comic-and printed in nice risograph package to boot, but does that make it worth howling over?