We are seeking financial support for the year ahead— donate to our fundraiser here.

Staff Rant

Dear readers,

I recently helped a friend move from a shared four-bedroom house to a teensy one-bedroom apartment. Four of us schlepped shelving units and camping gear from our various vehicles into the new spot. Then, four glasses of ice water appeared on the back patio steps. The new landlord poked his head out of the door, squinting into the sun, and said it was for us. We drained our glasses. It was wonderful. It kept us going.

Right now, the Geist staff are at the midpoint of putting together our Spring issue—the first of 2026. It’s the closest point to frenzy in our production schedule. It’s always creatively challenging, always an incredible amount of work. But this is a long-standing practice. What’s brand-new to us is running a fundraising campaign—in this regard, we are learning to walk. We extended the deadline to March 31. Even small donations hit like a glass of ice water on a warm day. It keeps us going.

—The Editors

Loghan Paylor, Writer, Reader, Listener

Congratulations to Geist Reading Collective member, Loghan Paylor! Their debut novel The Cure for Drowning is a contender for Canada Reads 2026, championed by musician Tegan Quin. In an interview with Paylor, published in issue 131, they discuss their writing process while birding in Pacific Spirit Park. Read an excerpt below, or order a copy to read the whole thing.

Tune in to CBC April 13 to 16 to catch the full Canada Reads debate.

We’ve come to a point in the park where the canopy blots out the sky almost completely. For the past five years, Paylor has spent a lot of time hiking in forests like this one, leading to the “percolating stage” of a new novel that they describe as pseudo-historical fiction with fantasy elements. “It’s not a sequel to The Cure for Drowning,” they add quickly. As they observed the birds on their walks, Paylor began to notice patterns and behaviours that fell outside the parameters of the guidebook they carried. “What struck me all over again is that sometimes we have such an idea of what nature is or how it behaves or what it looks like.”

It was the chickadee that first signalled a snag in the pattern. Seven officially recognized species exist in North America, and yet. “There are so many hybrid forms of chickadees that I just started finding in the Fraser Valley.”

The chickadee who looked like a chestnut-backed but sang like a black-capped, for example. At that, the guidebook’s authority fell apart. Even from a broader zoological perspective, the reliability of taxonomic classification methods regularly fail. “We’re constantly updating our rules and our guidelines for science because the nature we find defies all of that. New species are evolving faster than we can categorize them.”

—from “Listening with Loghan” by Dayna Mahannah, Issue 131

Submissions Open!

Calling all writers, artists, photographers and collage-makers! Send us your best, weirdest, most beloved works of non-fiction, comics, art and photography.

We would love to see more COMICS and more COLLAGE submissions!

Submissions close March 12 at 11:59 PM PT ☀️

Please take a look at our website for examples, and read our Submission Guidelines to find out more about what we're looking for and our payment rates: geist.com/submit

We encourage applications and submissions from BIPOC artists and writers, artists and writers with disabilities, LGBTQIA2S+ artists and writers, and artists and writers from other intersectional and marginalized groups.

Geist x Nora Kelly

Toiling away in the office leads to some true (not false) starts! For the first time, Geist collaborated with an independent artist to create original work for our Features section. It was our 35th birthday, after all, and we can try something new if we want to (rough Lesley Gore reference there, in case you missed it).

Nora illustrated three features and drew a handful of very fun ’90s-themed spot illustrations to commemorate Geist’s era of origin.

Check out our special 35th Anniversary issue to see Nora’s incredible work!

Fundraiser Extended!

Geist could still use your support to help our non-profit operate smoothly for the rest of the year. We have extended the deadline for our fundraising campaign to March 31! Help us reach our goal by donating here—every dollar gets us closer.

“The quality of writing that Geist publishes on the regular is fucking legit. Love reading the stories and poems that the editorial staff choose. I often encourage my students to submit to the Postcard Contest (I would myself but unfortunately I’m prone to exaggeration and lying).”

—Conor Kerr, Geist contributor, author of Prairie Edge

If you are into exclusive literary merch with original art, well: Donors of $250 and up receive our special Geist gift box, flush with limited-edition merchandise featuring original art by Nora Kelly and designed by Jia 何家嘉, plus an official Geist ball cap and other surprises. We have a couple more offers, too! Check our website for details.

“I see Geist broadening its reach and serving as a literary and political conduit between artists, their various mediums and the larger North American audience. Particularly in a time when freedom of expression through art needs to be protected.”

—Denise Da Costa, Geist contributor, author of And the Walls Came Down

Please share our campaign with your friends and family, your dog park pals and colleagues, or pass along to a friend of a friend who knows somebody who loves stories, art and CanCon. It means a lot.

Congrats to Katy McLean, the winner of a free seat in the popular UBC course, How to Write a Novel. Thanks for donating, Katy, and happy writing!

Thank you to all who have contributed so far! You can donate here and learn more about our goal to raise $20,000 by March 31.

Geist is grateful to Creative BC and the Province of British Columbia, Museum of Vancouver, Vancouver Art Gallery, and the UBC School of Creative Writing for supporting our fundraiser.

Dream Reportage: A Two-Part Writing Workshop with José Teodoro, February 15 & 22

“The dream is the aquarium of night.” Opening with this quote by Ursula K. Le Guin, José Teodoro led a writing workshop group through a fascinating array of research and personal insight about the dream-state, about the act of dreaming and about the relevance of dreams in our lives. His suggestion that dream logic might be closer to our own lived experience than that of the strictures of reality felt especially apropos. To leave the first of a two-part workshop with homework that largely consisted of sleeping—to dream, one must rest—became its own dramatic irony. The pressure to dream! But José prepared participants with practical techniques for recording and recalling. On the second Sunday, the group gathered again in the sunny Geist office and shared our dreams. No person or thing was described in such terms as “and you were there, but it wasn’t you.” The assignment offered enough structure so that our dreams could be used as material for crafting narratives that ranged from terrifying to bizarre to hilarious—sometimes all at once.

Thank you to José for his superb facilitation, and to all the registrants for their impressive engagement.