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WRITER
LAUREN KIRSHNER is a very talented young writer. I first met her in an undergraduate workshop I gave at the University of Toronto in 2003. She was such a natural that I submitted one of her stories to Barry Callaghan's journal Exile. When she read at the launch ofthat issue, I remember how nervous she was - but she persisted and triumphed. I was thrilled when our jury selected her as one of the seven students admitted to our MA Program in Creative Writing in 2005 and when Margaret Atwood chose hers as the manuscript with which she wanted to work Lauren went on to publish the collection of stories she completed as an integrated novel titled Where We Have to Go. In 2009, she was named Best Emerging Author by NOW magazine. In 2010 she founded Sister Writes, a writing program for marginalized women in Parkdale and Toronto's downtown west end. On her web page she explains; "Creativity builds confidence. Women learn how to represent their stories and interests through writing, becoming active and positive participants in their communities." There are so many fine young writers whose work I admire and wanted to select for this issue, but I chose Lauren as exemplary because, as a writer, her impulse is to give back. - rosemary sullivan
THE UGLY BUILDING
There once was an apartment building and everybody who lived there was ugly. The building was 100 years old but looked much older. Developers wanted to demolish it, but it was historical so they couldn't, and the City did not know what to do, and they had other worries anyway. The building was simply called Ugly Building. Crows shat on the windows constantly. They did so nowhere else. Mail carriers Frisbee-tossed mail onto the lawn, then ran like children. When garbage workers picked Ugly Building's bags off the curb, they made a big show of plugging their noses and pretending to faint. Rats dragged pieces of cheese from Ugly Building and between chomps told stories about the ugly people. All of the stories began, "Those people..."
Those people took up too much space. Those people hassled bus drivers. Those people stole. Those people lived...