Contributors’ Notes

katrina onstad “Class Divide,” p. 26

“When you’re a parent thinking about where to send your kid to school, the first question is, What’s the best thing for my kid? And the last question is, What’s the best thing for everybody? We all want what’s best for our children, but the result is an education system that’s increasingly stratified. In that way, sadly, I guess it’s a reflection of where we’re at as a society.” Katrina Onstad is a Toronto-based journalist and novelist. Her most recent book, The Weekend Effect, was released last year.

Kagan mcleod Illustration for “Views Feed,” p. 16

“It was a challenge to illustrate an article about the political Facebook group Ontario Proud, so I focused on the group’s memes. Online visuals are hard to present in other contexts, but I thought the memes could be shown as a modern version of standing out on a street corner with a The End is Nigh sign.” Kagan Mcleod’s work has been published in the Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. He is working on his next book, Drawing People Every Day.

Patti sonntag “The Cat Who Ate Like a Lion,” p. 66

“Writing about my parents’ cat, Heidi, was a way for me to process what was a tumultuous time for my family and me (I was moving from New York City to Montreal). It helped me come to the conclusion that the only way to prepare for an uncertain future is to foster the bonds we have with each other.” Patti Sonntag is the director of the Institute for Investigative Journalism at Concordia University.

Donna bailey nurse “Out of Bounds,” p. 58

“In Esi Edugyan’s latest novel, Washington Black, we see the title character coming out of slavery, heading to the Arctic to meet up with an expedition, and later travelling to London, Amsterdam, and Morocco. Ordinarily, literature does not show us that black people were and are everywhere. But that’s something Edugyan always brings to her work: the reality that black people are not relegated to one place, and we’re not relegated to one corner of literature.” Donna Bailey Nurse is a columnist for the cbc’s The Next Chapter. Her book of essays, Black Girls: Women of African Descent Write Their World, will be released later this year.

casey plett “A Time to Speak,” p. 63

“I’ve seen discussions about Women Talking, Miriam Toews’s latest novel, being related to the #Metoo movement, but I think that’s only half accurate. One of the most powerful things #Metoo has done is bring men to account, but in Women Talking, which is set in a Mennonite community, that possibility is not there. My family is from a Mennonite background, so I have more of a window into where the women in the story are coming from than the average reader. The thought process I had while reading the book was, ‘If there are good things in your life that you believe in and that are hurting you, how do you deal with that?’ That felt like the wider conversation Toews was coming to.” Casey Plett is the author of the novel Little Fish and the shortstory collection A Safe Girl to Love and an editor of the sci-fi and fantasy collection Meanwhile, Elsewhere.