Reviewed by Robert Runté
Lintusen Press is a small collaborative, Canadian publisher, best known for “Murdering Mr. Edwards,” wherein various classroom teachers each separately plot the death of the obnoxious Chair of an English Department. I particularly recommend (April 2023, ORB) the audiobook version read by Bird (herself a former English teacher) and actor/author Chris Humphreys. They bring just the right tone to this wincingly funny, how-are-they-going-to-do-it story. Shawn Bird has a sort of genius for organizing collaborative projects: an annual novel where each contributor writes a chapter to a common outline, creating a cohesive whole, as well as a range of themed anthologies.
Canada Writes is the CBC Books Facebook group of authors invested in the various CBC writing contests. It is a representative cross-section of winning and aspiring authors, a supportive if sometimes fractious Who’s Who of those active in the Canadian literary online community.
Murgatroyd Monaghan is a Canadian slam poet and author. A regular commentator on Canada Writes, her poetry and creative nonfiction document a life filled with adversity and optimism, love and rage, humour and activism. Her online presence stands out even in a crowd of talented and idiosyncratic writers. Every author has at least one friend who is a bit of a character, who sooner or later works their way into their writing. Murgatroyd might be that Facebook friend for a lot of us.
Thus was born Heavens to Murgatroyd, an anthology of largely speculative fiction featuring a “brilliant, talented, whacky, wild-child character” named Murgatroyd. These fictional Murgatroyds are not necessarily based on the real-world one: e.g., Murgatroyd is a male in one story, a mountain in another. Nor did Murgatroyd have to be the central figure in the story, just there somewhere. Nineteen authors and poets took up the challenge.
As this anthology is based on a broad cross-section of the CanLit community, not everything will be to everybody’s taste. Indeed, one of the things that distinguishes Lintusen Press is Bird’s openness to all voices and styles, rather than imposing a singular editorial vision. The anthology ranges from poetry to psychology, from genre to character study, from light to serious, as befits the variation within the community.
Trent Levin’s “Chris Hemsworth”, about a road trip to CERN, is an example of a mainstream author successfully crossing-over into speculative fiction while maintaining their characteristic CanLit vibe. Zilla Jones’ “hyster/ia”, about a Black woman reflecting on her life choices, is strictly mainstream CanLit, but dazzling and intense as all Jones’ writing is. I can hardly wait for the release of Jones’ novel later this spring. This anthology is the first time Levin and Jones have shared a table of contents—pretty sure, this review is the first time both names have appeared in the same sentence—so yes, a real cross-section of the CanLit scene.
Finnian Burnett’s “New Earth” is another notable entry, this time about emigration to the stars, reprinted from an earlier Lintusen anthology where it was the stand-out story.
My personal favourite in this collection, though, was Robyn Diner’s “Cuddle Me Outside”. Wow. Worth the price of the collection for this one alone. Speculative in the sense that her cuddle party concept could never work in the real world, the story is a joy to read. Her POV character is so hilariously self-deprecating, the story such a breath of fresh air in the dumpster fire that is this year in the news, I am going to have to track down everything else I can find by this new-to-me author.
Which is partly the point here, of course. This sampler from the online CanLit community is bound to introduce you to authors you may not have known before—including, hopefully, looking up the amazing Murgatroyd Monaghan herself. (She has a poetry chapbook forthcoming from Off Topic Publishing, another small Canadian press worthy of your support.) Whatever your tastes, there will be something in here for you.
Full disclosure: two of my own short pieces are included in this collection.
Heaven to Murgatroyd is out this month from Lintusen Press.