May 2026 newsletter
issue 5, volume 23
Early Bird discount on now!
Submit by June 30 for $15 off your initial entry. Send us your best personal essays, memoir, biographies, travel writing, and more.
This year's judge:
Odette Auger—interview below
Early Bird entry fee until June 30, 2026 (includes a one-year print subscription):
CAD $20 for each entry from Canada
CAD $30 for each entry from elsewhere
CAD $15 for each additional entry, no limit
Janet S. Pollock interviews Odette Auger, 2026 CNF Prize judge
JSP: You’ve written extensively as a journalist about the lives of, and the quest for justice for, Indigenous peoples. How do you see the relationship between the role of writer/artist and the role of activist working for societal change?
OA: I think artists can move in places where other kinds of work can’t.
Art can sit with something, or return to it from different angles, until it becomes harder to ignore. I’m less interested in trying to convince people, and more interested in people understanding.
But even in journalism, sharing a moment, a detail, a way of seeing that lands and stays with someone. For example, Jared Lowndes’ mother recalling a story book he made when he was seven about orca families staying together. He put his little arms around her legs and said, “I’m going to live with you forever.” She told me sitting in the shade of a tree, outside the funeral home waiting for his ashes, after RCMP killed him.
Shared stories can shift how we understand something, even slightly.
Sometimes the most effective kind of change doesn’t come from being told what to think, but from being made to feel something you can’t quite shake.
Chimedum Ohaegbu interviews Cassandra Myers, 2026 Open Season Poetry Award winner
CO: This is our second encounter over poetry—Room Magazine, which I edit for, is excited to publish a few poems of yours for our Science issue. When I read “Quantum Entanglement for Honeybees and Other Yellow Collisions,” I was pleased to re-encounter the interest in scientific language that pulled me towards your poems in Room. Could you tell me more about your connection to science, how it made this poem possible, and how/if this relationship has changed from the past to the present?
CM: I believe a good poem always has three things—reality, specificity, and prophecy. When my memory fails me, and the details are slippery, science comes in as a somatic bridge. A sensorium can be called upon from a perfumery encyclopedia when the smell of her hair is a concept rather than an experience I can call upon and feel on command. Science—with its claims on the universe of truth—supplements a macrocosmic honesty within a poem's microcosmicity. It provides, again and again, even when debunked, a timelessness I do not afford myself in how I record my life. My journals, often anxiety ledgers, miss the best parts of my inch-by-inches, but the 700-page textbook I made for myself on the science of my disability? It brings me comfort that when the worms come, someone might name my fossil.
Saba Pakdel interviews Ayaz Pirani, issue #234 poetry contributor
SP: What’s next for your writing? Are you currently working on any projects?
AP: I’m working on a new manuscript of poems called Extra Virgins for the University of Calgary Press. I’m piqued by the ethical position of the Anti-Martyr, for whom no ideology or conviction could be so firmly held that they would give up their life and destroy others. The poem “Featherweight” is part of this manuscript and this theme. I guess I find everything I do idiosyncratic and local, peculiar even. So I find it hard to believe in things that are beyond my backyard. I certainly could never give up my life for someone else’s idea. I’d rather take a punch if I had to, because there is also the small chance of catching a touch of enlightenment. That’s what I’m trying to say in the poem.
upcoming local events
current issue: spring #234
Name acknowledgement & the Malahat Nation
When The Malahat Review was founded in 1967 at the University of Victoria, the name “Malahat” was taken and used without consultation, permission, or acknowledgment. In response to our desire to make right this wrong, the Malahat Nation has graciously offered the words that follow.
Malahat Nation is part of the W̱SÁNEĆ People, one of five Nations with deep roots along the lands and waters of southern Vancouver Island. Our people speak SENĆOŦEN, hul’q’umi’num’, and Samish—traditional languages that carry our teachings, stories, and responsibilities.* We are a Coast Salish Nation, living and working together as we walk forward in a good way.
[…] The name “Malahat” (MÁLEXEŁ, me’luxulh, ma’7lexelh) means “caterpillars.” This name speaks to our relationship with the land, with its beings, and with the cycles of life. Over time, settlers expanded the use of the word to cover the whole west side of the inlet and the mountain, but its meaning remains tied to our people.
Moving Beyond Acknowledgements for Deeper Reconciliation Action
Malahat Nation continues to walk forward in the teachings of our ancestors—building community and governance in a way that honours our Elders, uplifts our youth, and protects the land and waters for generations to come.
Malahat Nation, through the ȾEX̱NÁLEṈ Initiative, invites you to join us in our walk of stewardship and reconciliation. The ȾEX̱NÁLEṈ Initiative provides one avenue through which monetary contributions may be made to Malahat Nation to acknowledge and reciprocate the on‐going stewardship responsibilities that Malahat carries so that we can all continue to enjoy the gifts of these lands. For more information on the ȾEX̱NÁLEṈ Initiative, reach out to: lands@malahatnation.com.
Donate to the ȾEX̱NÁLEṈ Initiative:
https://malahatnation.com/news/malahat-nation-exnalen-initiative
Malahat Nation is not affiliated with nor endorses any content included in The Malahat Review. The Nation has been engaged with the magazine on the name of the magazine itself and is open to the magazine continuing to use the name.