Mahak Jain

I am excited to be participating as a panelist in this year’s BIPOC Writers Connect, a virtual conference for emerging BIPOC writers organized by The Writers’ Union of Canada and the League of Canadian Poets. This is the third iteration of the conference, taking place this year on October 28, with aims to to facilitate mentorship and create community. The event is free for all attendees, but participants need to apply in advance to join (applications are now closed). I highly recommend that if you are eligible, you apply to participate in the 2022 event. For this year’s conference, I will take part in the closing panel, called the First Pages Challenge, in my capacity as an acquiring fiction editor at Buckrider Books/Wolsak & Wynn. Moderated by Derek Mascarenhas (Author, Coconut Dreams) and accompanied by Bridgette Kam (Literary Associate, Westwood Creative Artists) and Pia Singhal (Acquiring Fiction Editor, ECW Press), I will be sharing my response to first pages submitted anonymously by participants followed by a Q&A. I look forward to meeting the participants and reading their work!

I have some exciting news to share! I have joined the editorial board of Buckrider Books (at Wolsak & Wynn), where I will be acquiring and editing fiction. Previous board members include Jordan Abel, Canisia Lubrin, and Jen Sookfong Lee. I’ll be working alongside poet Liz Howard and senior editor (and poet himself) Paul Vermeersch. More details here. I am very much looking forward to joining the imprint and embodying its spirit of pushing boundaries: “Headed up by our senior editor Paul Vermeersch, Buckrider Books is our outlaw imprint. Named after a Belgian folk tale involving thieves and other rebels doomed to ride flying goats and frighten good citizens, Buckrider is all about books that refuse to conform. Here you’ll find cutting-edge literary works of fiction and poetry. Of course, there’s more than one way to be challenging, and these books can be stylistically daring or question our society. Or both. But they’re all fascinating.”

I have a pretty awesome job where I get to contribute to the creative writing and publishing culture in Canada through the classroom. Sometimes, though, my job goes off syllabus (…forgive me, I couldn’t resist). Sheridan Reads is a community-wide celebration that takes place each year at Sheridan College (well, except in 2020), and for 2021, Sheridan Reads selected Vivek Shraya’s novel The Subtweet, “a novel that highlights and exposes the social power and politics of social media.” I’ll be in conversation with Vivek about her novel at a community-wide celebratory virtual event open to all on Thursday, March 25, at 7:00 p.m. The audience will have a chance to ask questions too. Learn more about the event and how to register here!

We are almost midway through January. Things are already moving so quickly, I’ve barely had a chance to register that we are in a new year, with the possibility of new beginnings. Naseem Hrab over at Open Book asked me and nine other authors and illustrators to share our artistic resolutions for 2021, and for the first time in a few years, I came up with a blank. If anything, I resolved not to resolve anything. In 2021 it seems enough just to be. You can read all the resolutions (or revolutions, as Tasha Spillett-Sumner refers to them) here.

The latest issue of the Bellevue Literary Review just arrived in my mailbox, featuring art from Laura Ferguson! My short story “We Are Only Human” is on page 146 of the issue, which has a theme of “Reading the Body.” You can read the editor’s note and foreword on the website here, and order your copy here. I had such a fantastic experience with the team at Bellevue; I’m grateful to editors Lauralee Leonard and Danielle Ofri, who were so thorough and generous with their notes. The story is the better for their attention. Stacy Bodziak and Anna Laura Falvey have been equally supportive in handling proofs and payment and promotion. “We Are Only Human” previously received honourable mention in one of Glimmer Train’s last contests before the magazine closed permanently. It’s wonderful to now see it out in the world!

Next week is the Wild Writers Literary Festival! Usually, the festival, which is organized by the team at The New Quarterly, takes place in Waterloo, Ontario, but this year, like most things, it is taking place in the virtual space. The festival has done a number of new things this year. In addition to conversations amongst writers, the festival includes mentorships, workshops, and meditations (a series of audio visual reflections by writers on subjects of deep meaning to them). On Thursday, November 12, 7:00-8:00 p.m., I’ll be in conversation with Catherine Bush for an event titled Characterizing Climate Change. “I don’t know how to write any more not in relation to the ecological crisis going on around us. How do we write now – this feels like the essential question.” How can a work of fiction mobilize fact-based science? What are the powers—and perils—of stories about science? Join Catherine Bush and Mahak Jain as they discuss the research and writing process behind Catherine Bush’s latest novel, Blaze Island. This live conversation picks up where their interview with The New Quarterly left off. The event will take place on Zoom and is free to attend. Register here.