The New Quarterly Issue 172: Bad Behaviour - Fall 2024

Jaime Black is a multidisciplinary artist of mixed Anishinaabe and Finnish descent. Black’s art practice engages in themes of memory, identity, place, and resistance and is grounded in an understanding of the body and the land as sources of cultural and spiritual knowledge. Through her art practice Black creates space and time to connect with and enter into a relationship with the land in which she works. Her land art practice begins with spending time out on the land and connecting to the stories, knowledge and history the land carries, paying respect and attention to the lessons the land has to teach. Black then weaves these teachings with her own experiences and insights, creating images and impressions from that space of connection.…

THERE IS BAD BEHAVIOUR THAT IS TRULY, OBJECTIVELY BAD, AND THERE IS BAD behaviour that appears bad, to some at least, but otherwise might be a form of truth-telling. The truly bad—racist spewing, unrepentant violence—that populate our screens is so relentless that we’ve almost become immune to it. We live in a world where the good/bad dichotomy is almost the norm, so that it’s hard to get to some form of truth, to peel back the layers and see a more considered perspective. Where has all the nuance gone? I wonder. This is the role, and dare I say, the balm of literature. When we can read stellar essays like the Edna Staebler Personal essay contest winner “The Isabel Letters” from Geoff Martin where through email correspondence, he developed a…

WHAT MAKES A STRONG PERSONAL ESSAY? WHAT EXPERIENCES DO WE PUT TO pen and reconstruct creatively in essay form? These two questions guided my own reading and evaluation for the 2024 Edna Staebler Personal Essay. The first, a critical question, and the other, one that arose out of fascination with the variety of personal stories shared, expanding the confines of the essay genre. These two questions also guided the adjudication meeting. I’ve been lucky enough to engage more with non-fiction in the last couple of years professionally as an editor and critical reader, and I was joined with established and esteemed authors and readers Pamela Mulloy, Alister Thomas, and Tasneem Jamal. The four of us engaged in a dynamic conversation about personal essays guided by the longlist we had accumulated.…

“DEAR ISABEL HUGGAN,” I FINALLY WROTE IN AN EMAIL IN MARCH 2020, back when we feared we might lose all our elders in one fell swoop of the virus. I’d wanted to write for a while. I explained that we’d grown up in the same small town, exactly forty years apart, which was where I first encountered The Elizabeth Stories, her award-winning 1984 book of short fiction. My English teacher had sent us home with the book and instructions to read only the first story. Even in the late 1990s, a faint whiff of scandal still surrounded the book, which followed the coming-of-age of Elizabeth Kessler in the fictive town of Garten, a place akin to Elmira, Ontario, our hometown. That suggestion of controversy—which could only mean sex—had perked my…

I TAKE THE LEFT TURN COMING OUT OF THE PARK TOO FAST. MY BIKE TRAILER TIPS, I sail over my handlebars and land on the right-hand side of my forehead just above the hairline, then flip over onto my back. There is hardly a scratch on my bike helmet, though this spot will become the epicentre of the headaches that will plague me for years to come. Shock and super-mom adrenalin carry me through. I leap up to make sure my four-year old is okay (he is). I comfort him and, being Martha, I get back on the bike. My kiddo to daycare, me to my meeting. The second accident happens on my ride home: a passing cyclist t-bones me as I go to make a left turn. The fall…

WHEN I MENTION I’M TAKING A TOUR TO THE CAUCASUS, THE FIRST QUESTION I generally get is “Where’s that?” Between the Black and Caspian Seas, I say, hands rising and separating. Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia. The next question is usually “Why?” Then I rush on to explain, as briefly as I can, that my grandfather served there in the First World War, when the Caucasus were part of the Russian Empire fighting the Ottoman Empire, which was allied with Germany. He was a medic, I say, he worked on the trains carrying wounded men away from the front, the Caucasus front, that is, today’s Turkey, and all that time he was writing letters to my grandmother, his fiancée, 141 letters that we still have, translated by an aunt, and there are…