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Jun 7, 2024 | 
theglobeandmail.com | Marta Balcewicz
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May 8, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Erin Brubacher |Eli Burnstein |Marta Balcewicz
The summer I borrowed the white pantsuit was the summer The Weaver and I found The Window Washer, a teenager who grew up and disappeared. The Weaver and I first mentored her, through a performance project we led together in Montréal. When she had graduated from high school, we invited her to Toronto for a few months to work on a new show with us.
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Apr 3, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Jason Kirk |Naomi Skwarna |Marta Balcewicz |Lana Hall
“Jesus is more socialist than the socialists,” wrote the theologian Karl Barth, describing the gospels’ politics as downright anarcho-socialist, a worldview too ambitious and perhaps naive for even some of the most hopeful revolutionaries. If Jesus’s politics remain that far ahead of our time, then how long will it take us to reach the rest of him?
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Feb 28, 2024 | 
hazlitt.net | Marta Balcewicz |Niigaan Sinclair |Nour Abi-Nakhoul |Amitava Kumar
Frogs lie unseen until you happen to walk past them, at which point they jump in large, startling numbers, and cease being not seen. A character in Jennifer Croft’s The Extinction of Irena Rey uses this frog fact to comment on literary translators: they are “invisible other than in motion,” she says. It’s a fitting idea to bring up in a novel that’s teeming with translators—translators who are very much hopping around, present, at the forefront, definitely not not-seen.
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Sep 20, 2023 | 
hazlitt.net | Marta Balcewicz |Hanna Phifer |Jason McBride |Alison Motluk
People who lose a loved one often use the expression “losing a part of myself,” implying that relationships involve a meshing and osmosis. If one’s partner, parent, or family member were to suddenly and inexplicably drop out of their life, how does a person experience it, this double loss of another and a fraction of the self?
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Aug 24, 2023 | 
largeheartedboy.com | Marta Balcewicz
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Marta Balcewicz’s novelBig Shadow is a nuanced coming-of-age story, one of the year’s most stunning debuts.
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Jun 27, 2023 | 
electricliterature.com | Marta Balcewicz
Electric Literature recently launched a new creative nonfiction program, and received 500 submissions in just 36 hours! Now we need your help to grow our team, carefully and efficiently review submitted work, and further establish EL as a home for artful and urgent nonfiction. We’ve set a goal of raising $10,000 by the end of June. We’re almost there! Please give what you can today.
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Jun 21, 2023 | 
reviewcanada.ca | Marta Balcewicz |Kelly G Baron
Marta Balcewicz’s debut novel, Big Shadow, begins with Judy, the seventeen-year-old narrator, describing her curious summer job before starting university: she has been entrusted by her cousin Christopher and his friend Alex to “watch the passing clouds.” She spends her days noticing how they “set themselves apart, by becoming shapes that had nothing to do with one another: wedding veils, curdled milk, trails of horse droppings perfectly spaced out.” And she carries a notebook in which to...
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May 16, 2023 | 
49thshelf.com | Paul Cresey |Trevor Corkum |Marta Balcewicz |MaryLou Driedger
The Bookseller: Jo Treggiari, Block Shop Books (Lunenburg, NS)The Picks: Tell Me Pleasant Things About Immortality, by Lindsay WongA wild, taut, and darkly funny collection of immigrant horror stories. A whip-smart, visceral blend of Chinese folklore, modern life, and Canadian immigration experience. The ghosts and monsters portrayed here are achingly human despite their sometimes gross behaviour. Transformation is a big theme.
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May 12, 2023 | 
49thshelf.com | Marta Balcewicz |MaryLou Driedger |Jane K. Marshall |Paul Cresey
White Riot explores the historical context and aftermath of the 1907 anti-Asian riots in Vancouver. It’s a powerful mix of art and social history. Why is it important for the book to come out at this moment in time?
