In need of joy? Check out this powerful instrumental underground rock and feel alive again

ZINEDUMP is a new Toronto #zinefair that aims to provide a venue for the open expression for independent publications, radical art and ideas. The inaugural fest will be held on Nov. 9th between 12-5pm at the Cecil Community Centre. Applications are due August 31st!!! zinedump.fyi #zines #zinesdiy

After an 11-year hiatus, @theghostpine.bsky.social has put out a new zine! Memories of growing up in suburban Ottawa and discovering coffee and punk as a teenager, Jeff’s current life in rural Nova Scotia, exchanging letters with friends across decades. sheerspite.ca/product/ghos...

Beautiful review of the reunion of one of the greatest bands of the 2010s. They made music perfect for hot sunny days like these

Yesssss up on the website soon >:)

Heading to Sappyfest this weekend with a new issue of Ghost Pine zine, the first in a while!

New from Internet Archive Canada: Queen’s University Library has digitized a collection of rare, self-published sci-fi & fantasy fanzines, making long-lost voices from 1940s–1980s more widely accessible. ⚔️ Start your side quest: blog.archive.org/2025/07/15/s... @internetarchiveca.bsky.social

I asked our friend Paul to design this Cooler At The Coast shirt for Jeff's birthday and it turned out so rad! Now you can get your own and/or some other cool stuff from him! Check out the Peace Worm pin ☮︎

Buy some of @paulghammond.bsky.social's excellent work!

RIP to the first place I bought nutritional yeast

The French balados on Radio Canada's Ohdio app are wild. Today I listened to a lady who wrote a book about Proust, a gruff chansonier, and the first drummer of Motorhead(!) on a panel discussion about books and music. The Ringer podcast network would never

Sweet essay, with cameos from some of my all-time favourite novels

@wordsweaver.bsky.social‬ on writing stories of African Black queer joy under oppression as an act of faith.

Happy new Pulp album day! Here’s an interview I did with Jarvis Cocker in 1998 about life after Britpop, making adult-contemporary pop music that isn't shit, not understanding 22-year-olds, and why he's mortified by his early records: stubermania.substack.com/i/148668090/...

New Pulp and Turnstile records on the same day feels like a rare celestial event. A solar eclipse I'm going to stare into all day long

Encampment by @maggiehelwig.bsky.social is wonderful. A clear-eyed look at a broken system, yes. But also a rare honouring and centering of people on the margins. Helwig captures individuality and never caricatures. Beautiful and troubling and alive. Read it! @coachhousebooks.bsky.social

Whoo hoo! New book day! My sci-fi rom-com graphic novel about a shapeshifting situationship ZEROED OUT is out now. Sample and buy it via jimmunroe.net/comics/zeroe...

Always thrilling to pick up my pre-orders! Especially an all-Canadian indie line up! Looking forward to reading Andy Brown's Why Fish Piss Matters from Vehicule, Maggie Helwig's Encampment from @coachhousebooks.bsky.social, and @terivlass.bsky.social's Living Expenses from @invisibooks.bsky.social!

Our rural grocery store, largely unchanged for 40 years, closed today (replaced by a fancy new store across the parking lot). When I popped in earlier, everyone was chatting at the checkouts as usual. That won't change, but I'll miss the familiar nostalgic space and feel of our dear little Sobeys 💗

Happy Birthday, David! Hearing Kim Stanley Robinson tear up while discussing the loss of his mentor and friend Ursula K LeGuin was incredibly moving. Utopias too contain grief ❤️ tinhouse.com/podcast/craf...

New Pulp single is perfectly magical!!

Grey and white morning

Los Crudos got me pogoing around the kitchen while I make lunch

We had a lot of fun talking with Emma about QZAP and zines last week! www.atlasobscura.com/articles/que...

This Tessa Hadley review of the new Uncollected Gallant is great! But tbh I would also love a listicle of All 441 Mavis Gallant stories RANKED

Thrilled to get my pre-ordered copy of Everything Is Fine Here from my local bookstore! Set in Uganda, the debut novel from my friend, the incredible @wordsweaver.bsky.social follows a woman experiencing the effects of anti-LBGTQ laws on her family houseofanansi.com/products/eve...

Biggest day for Nepean since the Sportsplex opened!!

What a joy to have some copies of Ghost Pine in stock, one of my all-time favourite zines! @theghostpine.bsky.social's writing ranges from lovingly wry observation to gut-punches of sincerity, with a deep love for the mundane spaces & interactions that make up a life. sheerspite.ca/product/ghos...

Clear view of the lunar eclipse right now. Look up, Nova Scotians! The moon is red

What are your favourite books from independent Canadian publishers from the last 10 years? I'll start! Susan Olding's 2021 collection of essays Big Reader from Freehand Press is an engaging meditation on reading and living. I love the one about her discovery of the personal essay!

happy new record by the tubs day thetubs.bandcamp.com/album/cotton...

Anyone know the origin of the expression "that's it, that's all"? Every francophone in Quebec says it, but I've never heard an English-speaker say it outside la belle province. What's up?

I put out "PALS: The Radical Possibilities of Friendship" over a decade ago. There are many thousands of them out in the world, people have gotten tattoos about it (?!??!?!), and it's still going-- I have two big boxes of copies at home I need to fold. sheerspite.ca/product/pals...

Sheer Spite's first book came out almost a year ago and I'm still so thrilled to get to have put it out. It's a double memoir (two heartfelt, funny transfemme coming of age stories, published back to back in a single volume) by two of my favourite people in the world. sheerspite.ca/product/cros...

So excited to read this!! Fish Piss is a monumental zine, an iconic cross section of Franco and Anglo underground art that completely transformed Montreal's scene. Massive!!

Some other movies to think about.. I wrote about Alice Rohrwacher, esp. La Chimera, for @nybooks.com www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Holy frig

“I want the reader to feel something. To be moved. The best reason to read a novel is to feel life more fully.” @harrisonmooney.bsky.social interviews author Jack Wang. 

« Chacun recèle en lui [...] une étendue de neige » Virginia Woolf

🖤🖤🖤

Today would have been Will Munro's 50th birthday. He changed many, many lives for the better, including mine. It's hard to believe he's been gone so long.

This song rips

Godspeed You Black Emperor! Live at Can-Zine Festival, Symptom Hall on 1997-10-05 https://archive.org/details/gybe1997-10-05.DAT

Two boys, Chas Nixon known as ‘Dried Apples’ and Robt Muise, were caught stealing oats from the stable of EK Spinney. Yarmouth Feb 11 1898

In my life Why do I give valuable time To podcasts that don't care if I live or I die?

Any Alice Rohrwacher heads on here? I watched La Chimera and Happy as Lazzaro this month. Dang! So real and yet so mysterious. The stories are compelling and constantly surprising. A true shining beacon of arthouse cinema in the midst of a bitter winter!

Was not expecting the climax of a Netflix action movie to feature a narcan tutorial, but holy hell! Rebel Ridge is the ACAB movie of my dreams!

My beagle complains loudly when he hears the opening waves of feedback on the Black Dice hardcore comp. Should I trade him in for a cooler dog? Y or N

So excited for this incredible book by @saraspike.bsky.social!!