Readings

|| All My Puny Sorrows author Miriam Toews
‘No Wonder People Are Reluctant to Talk About Mental Health’: An Interview With Miriam Toews

Miriam Toews, author of All My Puny Sorrows, discusses fictionalizing her family history, how shame begets art, and creating a community with her writing.

||The Chamber of the House of Commons of Canada via Wikimedia Commons
Canada’s Rotten Government

Alison Loat and Michael MacMillan’s Tragedy in the Commons depicts a parliamentary system in active decay—one that, like so many Canadian failures, will have its defenders until the bitter end, no matter the consequences.

||Photo by Noah Kalina
Sex Work, Without the Sex

In Playing the Whore, Melissa Gira Grant identifies a crucial point: talking about sex work is essential for advocating on behalf of sex workers, but inciting arousal distracts from real issues—and might prove an uncompensated form of sexual service.

|| Genesis P-Orridge and Jacqueline Breyer in The Ballad of Genesis and Lady Jaye
Killing Your Self For Love

Some relationships are artful; some relationships—say, ones in which the participants undergo surgery to look like each other—are art. Is that romantic?