Rebecca interviews author Marion Agnew. Marion is a dual US/Canadian citizen, who moved north mid-life, after a career in technical writing and editing. MAKING UP THE GODS (Latitude 46, Sudbury, 2023) is her first novel. Her previous book, REVERBERATIONS: A DAUGHTER’S MEDITATIONS ON ALZHEIMER’S (Signature Editions, Winnipeg, 2019) was shortlisted for the Louise de Kiriline Lawrence award for nonfiction. She lives on the Lake Superior shoreline, a grateful guest in Robinson-Superior Treaty territory, home of the Anishinaabe (Fort William First Nation) and Metis peoples.

https://www.marionagnew.com/ (includes citations to Marion's fiction and essays, short and collected)

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marionagnew/

Currently reading:

Fuse; Rebellion Box; Widow Fantasies by Hollay Ghadery

If Sylvie Had Nine Lives by Leona Theis

Rebecca and Tara provide an update on their 2024 goals!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Project 562: Changing the Way We See Native America by Matika Wilbur
• 2024 Inclusive Picture Book Read Along Challenge @readingwithredandthemagpie
• My Ántonia by Willa Cather
• The Street by Ann Petry
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• Picnic at Hanging Rock by Joan Lindsay
• The Optimist's Daughter by Eudora Welty
• My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
• February by Lisa Moore

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan
• Merlin bird ID app

2023 Giller Books:

• Away from the Dead by David Bergen
• Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
• Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton
• The Double Life of Benson Yu by Kevin Chong
• We Meant Well by Erum Shazia Hasan
• The Island: Stories by Dionne Irving
• Wait Softly Brother by Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
• Girlfriend on Mars by Deborah Willis

Helen Humphreys:

• The Lost Garden
• The Frozen Thames
• Followed by the Lark
• Leaving Earth

Currently reading:

• I'm Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
• All the Colors of the Dark by Chris Whitaker

Rebecca and Tara share their latest reads!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• The People's Hospital: Hope and Peril in American Medicine by Ricardo Nuila
• The Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers
• Autokrator by Emily A. Weedon
• The Street by Ann Petry
• The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
• Small Acts of Courage: A Legacy of Endurance and the Fight for Democracy by Ali Velshi

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• The Bones of Ruin by Sarah Raughley
• Indian Burial Ground; Sisters of the Lost Nation by Nick Medina
• The Shining; Salem's Lot by Stephen King
• The Residence; The Damned by Andrew Pyper
• Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart
• Fungal: Foraging in the Urban Forest by Ariel Gordon

Rebecca welcomes Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara, whose third novel, Sisters of the Spruce, is on Quill & Quire's "2024 Spring Preview: Fiction" and the 49th Shelf's "Most Anticipated: Our 2024 Spring Fiction Preview." Her memoir, The Reading List, won the Canada-Japan Literary Prize and has been translated into Japanese, and her fiction has been shortlisted for the KM Hunter Artist Award. She has written two other critically acclaimed novels, After the Bloom and Red Oblivion.

Leslie’s writing has appeared in the National Post, World Literature Today, and Changing the Face of Canadian Literature, among other anthologies and periodicals. She completed a PhD in English at Brown University, after which she returned to her hometown of Toronto, where she now resides with her husband.

https://leslieshimotakahara.com/

https://www.instagram.com/leslieshimotakahara/

https://caitlinpress.com/Books/S/Sisters-of-the-Spruce

• From Slave Girls to Salvation: Gender, Race, and Victoria's Chinese Rescue Home, 1886-1923 by Shelly D. Ikebuchi
• We Measure the Earth with Our Bodies by Tsering Yangzom Lama
• Within the Barbed Wire Fence: A Japanese Man's Account of his Internment in Canada by Takeo Ujo Nakano

https://www.ekphrastic.net/

https://megpokrass.com/about/

The Work of Art: How Something Comes from Nothing by Adam Moss

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/192723955-the-work-of-art

• Curious Wine by Katherine V. Forrest
• Cold by Drew Hayden Taylor
• The Scourge by Jennifer A. Nielsen
• Poet Miranda Krogstad
• Moon of the Crusted Snow by Waubgeshig Rice
• All the Quiet Places by Brian Thomas Isaac
• Never Let Me Go; Klara in the Sun by Kazuo Ishiguro

Don't forget to check out Rebecca and Tara live on YouTube:

https://www.youtube.com/@canadareadsamericanstyle/streams

Rebecca and Tara share their latest reads and links to their new feature on YouTube: Reading From Our Shelves!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Somehow by Anne Lamott
• Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity & Infinity by Gary Barwin
• Autokrator by Emily A. Weedon
• I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity by Izzeldin Abuelaish
• James by Percival Everett
• The Last Slave Ship: The True Story of How Clotilda Was Found, Her Descendants, and an Extraordinary Reckoning by Ben Raines
• Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" by Zora Neale Hurston
• Eleanor Courtown; The Brickworks; Stella's Carpet; The Marzipan Fruit Basket by Lucy E.M. Black
• Making Up the Gods by Marion Agnew

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• Cold; Chasing Painted Horses by Drew Hayden Taylor
• Coexistence: Stories; A Minor Chorus by Billy-Ray Belcourt
• A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland
• Nosy Parker; The Spoon Stealer by Lesley Crewe
• Followed by the Lark by Helen Humphreys
• Walden by Henry David Thoreau
• A House with Good Bones; Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Reading From Our Shelves:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ObgtKpEdnRE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lek38hy8jCA&t=93s

Rebecca is excited to speak with Sydney Hegele, a queer Anglo-Catholic writer from the Greenbelt in Southern Ontario. They are the author of Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing, May 7, 2024) and The Pump (Invisible Publishing 2021), which was the winner of the 2022 ReLit Literary Award for Short Fiction and a finalist for the 2022 Trillium Book Award. Their essays have appeared in Catapult and Electric Literature, EVENT, and have been featured by Lithub, The Poetry Foundation, and Psychology Today. Their essay collection Bad Kids is forthcoming with Invisible in Fall 2025. Sydney’s work often explores small-town queerness, environmental justice, mental illness, religious life, and the complicated relationships between these things. They live with their husband and French Bulldog on Treaty 13 Land (Toronto, Canada).

https://www.sydneyhegele.com/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sydneyhegele/

Titles mentioned:

• Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston, Alice Walker (Foreword)
• Play by Jess Taylor

• Imagining Imagining: Essays on Language, Identity and Infinity by Gary Barwin