Some love for CNQ

Jeet Heer has a post about the new issue of CNQ. I'm still waiting for my copy to arrive, dagnabbit. One of the disadvantages of life on the periphery.

Carmine Starnino says something very flattering about yours truly in the comments thread to Heer's post. While I appreciate it very much, I don't think it's all that true. Well before CNQ changed hands and I started working on it, it was one of the few literary magazines I'd regularly pick up at the newsstand, largely because the critical writing in it was very much "up to snuff." So I really think my contribution to the magazine's review section has been more a matter of honouring an established tradition than any kind of re-invention. One thing we do differently now, in part because of my own sense of review ethics, is we don't review books published by Biblioasis or authored by CNQ editors. That was one of the downsides of the Porcupine's Quill version of CNQ, that it often felt like something of an in-house magazine. The books being talked about were worthy and the people writing about them took the job seriously, so it never felt like propaganda, and there is still content related to Biblioasis-affiliated authors in the new incarnation of CNQ, but the present editorial collective has certainly taken pains to make the magazine more expansive in its coverage. And everyone involved deserves credit for that.