Staff Rumble

Dear readers,

After a brief stint of monoreading (completing one book before moving onto the next), I’m back to cycling between several interchangeably, based on mood, energy level, setting, time allotment, etc. I had decided to read one book at a time in an attempt to harness my focus. But I’ve sorely missed the magic that arises as multiple stories interact in my brain, or lead to other reading. My mind is now an anteroom where characters from various books meet!

In the current stack:

• The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr
One of Karr’s notes of advice—to ixnay the inclusion of fuzzy memories in your memoir, and stick to writing the ones clearest in your mind—is challenged in …

• May It Have a Happy Ending by Minelle Mahtani
… and challenged successfully. Mahtani’s tender “memoir of finding my voice as my mother lost hers” invites the ambiguity of recall to shape her telling of the story. Compelling enough to read for hours at a time, yet the short chapters lend themselves to brief reading breaks between work tasks (though, arguably, reading is a work-adjacent task at Geist).

• The New Basics Cookbook by Julee Rosso and Sheila Lukins
Story fuel. Wonderful for hosting writing-group dinner parties like it’s 1989. Lydia Davis even references a maxim (“work on your character”) from the cookbook in her essay, “Thirty Recommendations of Good Writing Habits” from her Essays One collection (which I did not sign out from the library, but instead borrowed …)

• Our Strangers by Lydia Davis
Teensy stories! Incredible nighttime reading; anecdotally proven to lower nervous system arousal, leading to better sleep. Stories this short and this good are poetry, no?

• A Poetry Handbook by Mary Oliver
Requires a decent amount of cognitive focus—truly a text to learn from and practice writing your own poetry as you read, at your desk, carafe of coffee within reach.

• Homegoing by Yaa Gyasi
A sweeping novel. Here, poetry is written in the rhythm of generations.

—Dayna Mahannah, Events & Outreach Manager

Geist 133 Out Now!

In this issue:

Jill Boettger • Deborah Ostrovsky • Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri • Sadiqa de Meijer • Jacob Lee Bachinger • Emily Horton • Ysh Cabana • Cynthia Liu • Jen Currin • Evelyn Lau • Angela Schmold • Christine Lai

Dispatches from the edge of grief; about Québec’s living doll. The winning entries of the 2026 PolterGeist Writing Contest. A short fiction called “Deep Fake.” The “S.A.T” you have a lifetime to complete. Poetry on plumbers. A comic about the best kind of friend (with feathers). All this and much, much more in Geist 133. Get your copy here.

Geist is OPEN for Submissions! (Plus, save the date for our Postcard Writing Contest)

Geist is open for non-fiction, fiction, poetry, comics, art & photography submissions. This is our final submission window of 2026—send us your best work!

We'd love to see more art & photography submissions. We publish an eclectic mix of collage, mixed-media, cartography, and artwork that surprises. Browse some of our recent covers for inspiration.

Deadline: October 8, 2026 at 11:59 pm PT

Please read our full guidelines at geist.com/submit.

2026 Postcard Writing Contest: September 18 to October 16

Our annual Postcard Writing Contest will be open again soon! Send us a story and a postcard. The relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image. Cash prizes! Check out past winning entries for inspiration— "Living the Dream" by Shelley Wood; "Desperate" by MJ Malleck; "Should I Be Worried?" by Carrie Mac. Submissions open September 18 and go through our Submittable page.

An important note regarding submissions:
Our priority is to publish work from emerging and established writers and artists who are Canadian or permanent residents of Canada, who live in or outside the country. Occasionally, we publish international contributors whose work has a strong connection to Canada or would be relevant to a Canadian audience.
**This does not apply to our writing contests, which welcome international submissions and are judged anonymously.

Recap: Writing What We Cannot Fully Remember with Minelle Mahtani

Writers gathered at two long tables arranged end-to-end at the Geist office in downtown Vancouver on the evening of Wednesday, August 19. Minelle Mahtani handed out fresh notebooks to workshop participants. The cover of each read Shine Your Light or Find the Beauty or Stay Strong. Minelle smiled as she placed them on the table. “I love cheesy stuff.” The workshop she facilitated was anything but. Over craft sodas and Mandarin oranges, participants scribbled notes. Hard to keep up, as everything she said shimmered with gold.

Memoir is not a perfect account of what happened, we jotted. It’s an inquiry into what remains, what disappears, what changes over time, and what we still cannot resolve.

What if the fragments are the material?

She offered a plethora of generative prompts for us to write into, and by evening’s end we all came away with “some beautiful fragments”—new material, little shards of memoir.

Congratulations to the 2026 PolterGeist Contest WINNERS!

The PolterGeist Writing Contest called for ghost stories of 500 words or less, in fact or fiction. A gesture to the various interpretations of geist, among them “spirit,” “wit” and “ghost.” We looked for stories in the realm of the surreal and the sublime, of hauntings and horror, of spirit and satire.

Congratulations to the authors of the winning entries, whose stunning, spooky pieces will be published in Geist 133, out now!

FIRST PRIZE
"Night Drive" by Jacob Lee Bachinger

SECOND PRIZE
"Angela" by Emily Horton

THIRD PRIZE
"As I wait for the TTC in High Park" by Ysh Cabana

Geist runs three writing contests a year, so keep an eye out for our next one. We post about them on our social media channels, on geist.com and in our monthly newsletter—sign up at geist.com/newsletter.

These Small Moments: A Letter to the Editor

Edited for length and clarity.

As a current journalism student at Vancouver Island University, I only recently began delving into literary magazines. In my exploration I found Rose Divecha’s essay from your Notes & Dispatches section, “Clearing out My Mother’s House” (Geist 128). Her essay is the first time I have seen someone so comfortably write about the mixed feelings that come with grief and the challenge of mourning an imperfect person.

Her beautiful writing highlighted details in her grief journey that lingered with me long after I finished reading. They were intimate memories of her mother, but they weren’t solely focussed on the positives. Divecha ties these small moments together to paint a portrait of grief that feels messy, complicated and painfully relatable.

As someone who writes, I have found that returning to these moments, even when they flood me with grief all over again—like Divecha’s essay did—is sometimes the only way to begin understanding them.

Pieces like these will keep me coming back to Geist again and again.

Sincerely,
Mattia Joel

Micro-horoscopes for the Lit-Lorn

Divinations composed by Geist’s in-house bootleg astrologers.

Image credit: Geist Horoscopes drawn by Dayna Mahannah