Jenn Writes

  • What We Are Trying to Understand

    There is a quiet moment that comes before any serious act of writing. It is not the moment of inspiration, as it is often described. Not a sudden idea or a clear sentence forming fully in the mind. It is something slower, less certain. A kind of hesitation. The recognition that there is something you…

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  • Books that see us

    There is a particular kind of reading experience that is difficult to explain without sounding as though something improbable has occurred. You are reading as you always do, moving through sentences, following an argument, inhabiting a voice, and then something shifts. A line stops you. Not because it is especially beautiful, or clever, or even…

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  • The silence around power

    What must we think when a president, during a press conference, can hone in on a journalist doing her job and say, “she’s a horror show”, and the moment simply passes? Not merely passes politically, but morally. No visible discomfort from those around him. No meaningful defence of the journalist’s dignity. No national conversation about…

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  • This elevator pitch gets a thumbs up

    If suspense is your thing, then Linwood Barclay’s Elevator Pitch might be just what you’re looking for. It starts with an actual elevator pitch by a scriptwriter, which ends way worse than the expected “no” from the executive he’s been stalking. By the end of Monday, five people are dead – four in what seems…

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  • Celebrating Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka

    In celebrating a July literary birthday, we reflect on the life and work of Nobel prize winner, Akinwande Oluwole Babatunde Soyinka, better known as Wole Soyinka, born in Abeokuta, Nigeria, on 13 July 1934. Long before #BlackLivesMatter, there was Wole Soyinka. The playwright, essayist, novelist, poet and political activist has, for more than a half…

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