“Tyger, Tyger, Burning Bright” by Margaret Ruttan

I passed by the Strip Club on the corner many times, and although women taking off their clothes and dancing naked for a living had always intrigued me, I never felt compelled enough to go inside. That is, until I heard about the tiger.

The long white semi-trailer was parked on the side street next to the club for several weeks. The newspaper said the show was held over for just one more week and featured the lovely Jane Jones and her lovable co-star, Qadesh, a 465-pound Siberian tiger. The act also featured a large python, a boa constrictor and exotic birds.

The python, boa constrictor and birds didn’t particularly interest me, but the tiger. This I had to see.

Maybe it was the writer in me looking for new material for my next novel or short story, but I was determined I wasn’t going to miss my chance to see it before they left town.

My mom, who was in her eighties, was visiting from Toronto for the weekend. Of course, she wasn’t my first choice. I asked a couple of my friends to accompany me, but they weren’t interested, and the more I tried to convince them, the more I feared I sounded like a bit of a weirdo.

So, I thought, maybe I could convince my mom to come with me.

“Aren’t you at all curious?” I asked her.

“Not really.”

“Don’t you want to see the tiger?”

“Nope.”

“Oh, c’mon, Mom. I can’t go by myself.”

“Can’t you get one of your friends to go with you?”

“I would, but they’re busy this weekend.” Which wasn’t quite true.

“Please mom, I’d go alone, but I’d feel better if someone came with me and I don’t have anybody else.” 

Even my husband wasn’t interested in going, which frankly surprised me.

 “I’m too old for this,” my mom protested.

“No, you’re not. I’m sure people of all ages will be there.”

I was right. There was at least one other elderly person, a man sitting to the right of the stage who appeared to be there alone. He gave my mom a welcoming smile when we looked his way. She snubbed him, turning her head in the opposite direction.

There was an admission fee of $5.00.

The man at the door asked us to hold out the back of our hand so he could stamp it, just in case we left and tried to come back in on another night without paying. I watched as the black ink from the ink pad smudged over my mom’s thin, wrinkled skin.  What was I thinking, bringing my mom to a place like this?

The room was dark and I wondered if that was so people wouldn’t recognize one another or if they couldn’t afford good lighting. I read later it was deliberate to create a sense of privacy for the patrons and to lower inhibitions. For whom, I wondered, the performers or the people watching?

We found some seats not too far from the front of the stage. When I leaned my arm on the table, my skin felt sticky when I lifted it off again, perhaps another reason for the dim lighting – to hide the lack of attention to cleanliness.

I looked around me to see if I recognized anybody. I thought I saw a woman I knew and her boyfriend, but it was hard to tell, two familiar silhouettes.

We ordered a drink and waited for the show to begin.

A petite blonde woman who looked somewhere in her late twenties to early thirties walked by our table towards the stage. She was dressed in a buckskin thong and tight top. She stood about 5 feet tall and didn’t seem to have an ounce of fat on her small, toned body.

The noise in the room went quiet as she walked on stage, removed her clothes and began painting herself in multi-colours. She then turned on an overhead shower washing all the paint off as she ran her hands over every part of her body.

Once she was dried off sufficiently, she reached into a bag and pulled out a flute. I couldn’t imagine what she had in mind for that, until she raised it to her mouth and began to play.

I turned to mom and whispered, “She’s clearly multi-talented.”

The old man at the side of the stage was jumping up and down in excitement, clapping his hands.

“Look at him,” my mom said. “He’s making a spectacle of himself.”

We watched as the dancer twisted her naked, compact body around a rope hanging from the ceiling, climbing high in the air and slid back down again.

Then she walked to the back of the room and in less than a minute returned, dragging a heavy braided rope along the thin, stained carpeted floor.

At the end of that rope was a nine-foot-long female Siberian Tiger named Qadesh, pronounced Kadesh. I’d done my research and the name originated from an ancient Semitic root meaning holy or sacred.

The room fell silent as all eyes were now on the tiger.

As the beast sauntered right past our table, we heard the sound of its heavy breathing.  It was so close mom could have reached out and patted it.

The lovely Jane Jones, as it said in the newspaper, guided her oversized pet to an area on the stage and instructed it to lie down. Then she lay naked against the tiger, cuddling into it like a giant soft plush toy.           

Across the table, I looked at my mom, her mouth open and her eyes wide. 

We stared at that majestic beast, huge and golden and its naked mistress, the tiger’s solemn eyes staring back at us.

In that moment that tiger truly was holy.

Margaret Ruttan is an award-winning contemporary visual artist, performing artist and published author based in Belleville, Ontario. 

During the past several years, she turned her hand to writing one-act plays, several of which were performed in local community theatres and one even went international being performed in the United Kingdom earlier this summer. Presently, she is working on a novel with the feedback and support of online classes offered by Brian Henry.

See some of Margaret's artwork here. 

For more short stories, poetry, and essays by you fellow writers see here (and scroll down).

See Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, afternoon workshops, and wonderful writing retreats here.

Tanya has a new book out: Carrying War: A Memoir

Carrying War: A Memoir
  by Tanya Bellehumeur-Allat 

Instead of letting fear rule her life, Tanya found ways to overcome it.
Terrorism first intersected Tanya’s life in 1982 when she was twelve years old and living in Israel. Its shadow loomed closer when her family moved to Beirut at the height of the Lebanese Civil War to accompany her father on his United Nations peacekeeping mission. That was forty years ago. But the aftershock, the trauma, and the imprint of terror remain.

In these narrative essays, the reader moves from the Middle East to Europe, from Quebec’s Eastern Townships to Yellowknife in a personal exploration of terror — psychic, criminal, spiritual, and political. The journey is challenging, yet it carries both redemption and hope.

When asked how to defeat terrorism, Salman Rushdie answered, “Don’t be terrorized. Don’t let fear rule your life. Even if you are scared.” The essays in Carrying War are about one woman’s lifelong struggle with fear and the ways she has found to overcome it.

Carrying War: A Memoir is available from the publisher Dundurn Press here.

Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt is the author of the critically acclaimed Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle East Memoir (Thistledown, 2021, see here) and two collections of poetry: Chaos Theories of Goodness, (Shoreline, 2022, see here) and The Hospitality of Trees (Shoreline, 2025, see here).

Tanya’s award-winning essays, poems and fictions have been published in numerous journals and anthologies, including Grain, Prairie Fire, Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, and Best Canadian Essays 2015 and 2019. She holds an MA in English Literature from McGill and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC.

Visit Tanya at her website here: https://tanyaallattbellehumeur.com/

For information about submitting to Dundurn Press, see here.

See more new books by your fellow writers  here (and scroll down).

If you’ve had a story (or a book!) published, if you’ve won or placed in a writing contest, if you’ve gotten yourself an agent, or if you have any other news, send me an email so I can share your success. As writers, we’re all in this together, and your good news gives us all a boost. Email me at: brianhenry@sympatico.ca  

See all my upcoming weekly writing classes, afternoon workshops, and wonderful writing retreats here. ~Brian

“Do You Have Demons?” by Andrea Whittle

 

Amelia, Andrea's cat. Yes, she has demons - she's a cat!

“Friday’d give me time, Saturday could wait, but Sunday’d be too late…”                 
 –  “Seven Days,” Sting

“I’ll do it later” – every teenager, everywhere, has said this at least once. Spoiler: they never do.

I shouldn’t throw stones, for me, it’s the height of hypocrisy, because I am a terrible procrastinator. It’s a curse. Partly ADHD – self-diagnosed, but before you scoff, try having a conversation with me.

What else inspires my procrastination? Fear of failure maybe? Hard to be sure.

I was visiting family when we found ourselves watching their still-kittenish cat rolling around on the floor, apparently playing with air. My friend studied the cat for a moment before asking (with a laconic air I’d dearly love to emulate), “Do you have demons?”

Well, yes, obviously for the cat – all cats do.

And yes, me, too. I have demons. Well, one demon.

No, I am not schizophrenic.

My demon is my narrator. Think The Wonder Years: grown-up Kevin Arnold calmly explaining to the audience what was really going on while his younger self blundered enthusiastically through life.

Unlike Kevin, however, I'm a fifty-something, grown-ass-looking adult still faking my way through life while my internal narrator placidly comments on whichever ridiculous rabbit hole has most recently caught my attention.

I’m just a girl with an iPhone, a perpetually open Notes app, and a narrator who seems convinced the bathtub is the ideal place to workshop an essay. Yes, it’s a bizarre premise, but don’t knock it. There are still people who think gummy bears and Frank’s RedHot can’t be a wonderful combination. How is a sensory deprivation bathtub writing space any stranger?

I have a bone-deep faith in the Wizard of Oz business model – hide behind a curtain and fake it! Or perhaps it’s simply this: if it looks like a writer, acts like a writer, and sounds like a writer… then, egad, it must be a writer.

For years, I comforted myself by insisting I simply wasn’t a writer. Other than an admiring English teacher or two – about as objective as your mother telling you you’re pretty – the concept of being a writer belonged to other people. My friends with agents, journal publications, and six fantasy novels – or is it seven? The closest I’d ever come was a three-year stint as a book blogger.

Ask me how pissed I am that it wasn’t my blog that gave Ice Planet Barbarians its big break, but some BookToker’s! Four years after I’d read Ice Planet Barbarian and raved about it.

Ugh.

Not to worry. Here’s my next step toward World Domination: I shall conquer BookTok, bend it toward nonfiction, essays, to be specific.  

But I’m getting ahead of myself. (Another good way to procrastinate.) Six months ago, my self-image was best described as … murky. I was the last one to know writing was my path. Even my internal narrator hadn’t caught on. She just kept talking about stuff. I was like one of those people you read about who show up with a complete tiny human being and earnestly tell people they had no idea they were pregnant.

Perhaps I assumed everyone had internal commentary on their life, the universe and everything going on inside their skull. It never occurred to me that writing any of it down might become a vocation. My entry into writing was more akin to a harassed mother finally exclaiming, "Fine, we'll go to the park NOW!"

So, I began writing without much of a destination, simply following the white rabbit – or, in this case, my demon.

When I shared this disturbing development with a friend, her advice was refreshingly straightforward: “You should take a course.”

Not just any course. Brian Henry’s “Writing Personal Stories” happened to be starting a new session just a couple of weeks later. I wasn’t entirely sold on what I assumed was the memoir aspect.

Memoirs are things people like Greta Thunberg write, not hockey moms in the middle of an existential crisis.

My pieces were certainly personal. I just wasn't convinced they were stories.

None of my bathtub recollections could reasonably be considered memoir any more than a conversation that begins, “This reminds me of this one time at band camp…” before abruptly veering into, “Did you know dolphins and whales are both cetaceans – and closely related to hippopotamuses?”

Regardless, I decided professional help was in order. One of our first exercises was to draw our childhood home, street, or neighbourhood. Brian is a delightfully flexible instructor.

We were then asked to write something inspired by it.

I wrote a confessional about the death of a neighbourhood pet.

We were witnesses, not future serial killers. Rest easy.

But it still amazes me that a rudimentary – not even remotely to scale – floor plan of my childhood home somehow unearthed the memory of a blistering summer day straight out of Cujo, complete with second-guessing ourselves over the fate of a stray cat that had somehow gone from being the neighbourhood’s pet to mine. And then died.

At the end of class, Brian outlined our homework. I’ve since dubbed it the Choose Your Own Adventure approach to creative writing.

Option one: continue the piece we’d started.

Option two: write about something else we’d discussed in class.

And if neither of those appealed?

Write whatever we wanted. Just write.

Week after week, I did.

I wrote.

I started a Substack. I researched; I read and researched some more. All the while, I kept writing.

The essays wandered drunkenly from The Three Little Pigs as an analogy for birth order to a rumination on why Prince Harry gets on my last nerve, from hockey fandom as a meditation on business practices to… well… octopuses.

Lots of octopuses. And crows.

Looking back, none of this should have surprised me.

Even in my twenties, I imagined my life revolving around books. Publishing. Editing. Marketing. Eventually, book blogging. I seemed determined to find every job adjacent to writing while avoiding the uncomfortable business of becoming a writer.

Perhaps it was lack of confidence. Or much more likely procrastination dressed up as practicality. They can look remarkably similar from the inside.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped focusing on what a writer was and simply wrote.

These days, whenever someone tells me they’d love to write someday, I hear echoes of my former self: “I’d love to write, but …

“I don’t have enough time.”

“I need another course.”

“I should read a few more books first.”

“I’m waiting until I feel like a writer.”

I understand the instinct to avoid, to procrastinate; I spent decades perfecting it. But apparently, all those hippies and yogi types were onto something:

Sometimes the doing comes first.

Being catches up.

“Later” has an uncanny habit of becoming “never.”

Andrea Whittle is a writer and market analyst with a longstanding habit of looking for patterns and asking why things work the way they do. After spending much of her career finding patterns in data, she now finds them everywhere – which is either useful for an essayist or a terrible way to get anything else done.

Her creative nonfiction combines personal narrative, cultural observation, and whatever has most recently sent her down a rabbit hole. Previous subjects have included hockey, fairy tales, Prince Harry, octopuses, crows, and the occasional existential crisis.

Andrea previously published "Do you have demons" on  The Intellectual Peacock, her weekly Substack about culture, behaviour, books, media, and the wonderfully strange business of paying attention.

See more pieces about or inspired by Brian’s retreats, workshops and classes here (and scroll down).

For more essays, short stories, and poetry by you fellow writers see here (and scroll down).

See Brian’s upcoming  weekly writing classes (including a “Writing Personal Stories” class), afternoon workshops, and wonderful writing retreats here.

 

There's a brand new Canadian literary agency: The READ Agency

The Read Agency

Toronto, Canada

https://thereadagency.com/

Olga Filina recently left 5 Otter Literary to create her own agency: The READ Agency. How new is this agency? Well, when I started preparing this post, her website wasn’t up yet and I had to get the scoop on how to submit straight from Olga. If you’re looking for representation, this strikes me as good opportunity to get in on the ground floor. ~Brian

Olga’s worked at every level of the publishing industry for over twenty-five years: bookselling, buying, directing literary festivals, editing, consulting, and agenting, and she’s a founding member and former executive treasurer of PACLA, the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents.

“Understanding how books are sold and discovered allows me to position the clients I represent in both English language and translation markets,” says Olga. “I'm drawn to work that's intellectually stimulating, ambitious, or written from a perspective that hasn't yet been heard. As an immigrant, I have a particular affinity for stories of belonging, displacement, and international experience. If your book could be banned in the current political climate, I want to read it.”

If you have a project ready to share, here’s what you need to know to submit:

Currently, Olga is looking for literary and upmarket fiction, narrative nonfiction, cultural criticism, and projects from experts in their subject matter.

Plus, children's literature across all ages.  

She also has particular focus on underrepresented voices, international stories, and the global diaspora.

Query Olga at: submissions@thereadagency.com

Submit your query and the first ten pages of your manuscript pasted into the body of your email.

Full submission guidelines here.

Note: If you’re interested in getting published and meeting an agent, check out upcoming “How to Get Published” workshops here. We always have a literary agent as a guest speaker at these workshops.

See all our upcoming weekly writing classes, afternoon workshops, and glorious writing retreats here.

 

Three good places to send your short fiction, poetry, and personal essays

The Summerset Review

This online journal invites submissions of literary fiction or nonfiction of up to eight thousand words. Poets may submit up to five poems.

While primarily an online publication, the Summerset Review does periodically generate print issues.

To get more of an idea of what we they’re looking for, The Summerset Review asks writers to please read the journal. Writers can also consult their list of Recommended Reading or may be interested in additional advice (contains no mandatory requirements). To learn more about the history, aesthetic, and underpinning of the journal, you may be interested in an interview with the editor, held at Lit Mag News in March, 2024.

Full submission guidelines here. No deadline – open for submissions year-round.

  

The Globe and Mail – First Person Essays

The daily First Person essay (formerly called Facts&Arguments) is a great forum for you to share your own experiences, viewpoints and writing flair with other Globe readers.

So what makes a good essay?

They look for an original voice; an unexpected view; an unfamiliar perspective; humour; vivid details that show rather than tell; anecdotes that illuminate a wider theme.

A successful First Person essay may be funny, surprising, touching or enlightening – or all of these. It may present a slice of life or a powerful experience that changed you in some way. It may be a meditation on something that matters to you. It goes beyond a rant, and it is deft in moving from the particular to the universal.

Above all, an essay should be personal rather than political. It must be true, not fictional.

Essays should run between 700 and 900 words.

Full submission guidelines here. No deadlines. The Globe needs a First Person essay 5 days a week, every week of the year.

 

Pure Slush

Pure Slush publishes anthologies of flash fiction, nonfiction and poetry. Curently, they’s looking for submissions for Volume 25. Theme: Someday

Your Someday submission must be:

• original, so previously unpublished online or in print (so that includes authors’ websites and blogs)
• 150-word minimum limit for fiction and nonfiction, stories and essays / maximum 1000 words. (That’s for each story / essay: maximum number of prose pieces you can submit is 3.)
• 80-word minimum limit for poetry / maximum 1000 words. (That’s for each poem: maximum number of poems you can submit is 5.)
• must include something about plans or hopes or wishes or wants or desires about the future … “some day something will happen” …

Full submission guidelines here. Deadline: August 31, 2026

Their next submission period will run October 1 – November 30, 2026. They’ll be looking for fiction, nonfiction and poetry that includes the City or Rome. Details here.

*** 

See more writing contests and markets for your short pieces here (and scroll down).

See information about all our upcoming weekly writing classes, afternoon workshops, and writing retreats here.

Join us with Gaby Sheiner, a new agent with a major U.S. agency

Margaret Atwood is one of many
major authors represented by CAA

"How to Get Published"

 ~ With literary agent Gaby Sheiner
       of Creative Artists Agency 

Sunday, September 27, 2026
1:15 – 5:00 p.m. Toronto time
Offered online and accessible wherever there's Internet

If you've ever dreamed of becoming a published author, this workshop is for you. We’ll focus on the process of submitting to an agent or publisher, and show you exactly how to write a query letter that will get a “yes.” Bring all your questions. Come and get ready to be published!

Special Option: Participants are invited to prepare a draft of a query letter you might use to interest an agent or publisher in your book. You don't need to prepare anything, but if you like, email me a draft of your query prior to our workshop. Gaby and I will critique several queries, perhaps half a dozen, so everyone can see what works, what doesn’t and how to improve your query. Do remember that agents come to these events wanting to hear what you’ve got. ~Brian

Guest speaker Gaby Sheiner works in the publishing department at leading entertainment and sports agency Creative Artists Agency (CAA), where she represents authors across fiction and nonfiction. 

On the fiction side, she represents commercial and upmarket authors and is always on the lookout for buzzy book club fiction, thrillers and suspense, romance, and family sagas. 

On the nonfiction side, she is particularly interested in cookbooks and lifestyle, psychology, memoirs, and books by experts with distinctive perspectives and authority in their fields. 

Gabby began her career at CAA in 2023. She is from Toronto, Ontario, and is a graduate of Tufts University.

Workshop leader Brian Henry has been a book editor and creative writing instructor for more than 25 years. He publishes Quick Brown Fox, Canada’s most popular blog for writers, taught creative writing at Ryerson University (now known as Toronto Metropolitan University), and has led workshops everywhere from Boston to Buffalo and from Saskatoon to Toronto to Charlottetown. But his proudest boast is that he has helped many of his students get their first book published and launch their careers as authors.  

See reviews of and works inspired by Brian's classes, workshops, and retreats here.

Fee: $46.90 + 13% hst = $53 paid in advance by mail or Interac

To reserve a spot now, email: brianhenry@sympatico.ca

See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, one-day workshops, and weekend retreats here. 

Note: To get new posting delivered to your Inbox as they go up, go to the Quick Brown Fox Substack and subscribe: https://brian999.substack.com/

Two book publishers that favour older writers: House of Anansi and Book*hug

House of Anansi Press and Groundwood Books. 

Here are two Canadian book publishers that explicitly invite submissions from older writers:

House of Anansi Press is looking for literary fiction, especially from Canadian authors. Anansi is always open for submissions and they particularly welcome submissions from authors launching their literary careers later in life.  

Groundwood is looking for Picture Books, Middle Grade and Young Adult fiction and nonfiction. They open for submissions in August and September.

More about Anansi and Groundwood here.

Book*hug Press is a radically optimistic Canadian-owned publisher based in Toronto.

“We are deeply committed to advancing and integrating equity, diversity, inclusion, and accessibility in all our publishing activities. We prioritize submissions from equity-deserving writers marginalized by attitudinal, historical, social, and environmental barriers based on race, ethnicity, nationality, disability, economic status, age, gender, and sexual orientation.”

Book*hug Press publishes contemporary, innovative, and boundary-pushing books of literary fiction, translated literature, poetry, and creative nonfiction.

They do not publish commercial fiction, thrillers, crime fiction, fantasy, children’s books, YA books, graphic novels, cookbooks, scholarly or academic texts, or self-help books.

Book*hug seeks to acquire innovative, groundbreaking, and adventurous literary books that thoughtfully engage with contemporary cultural and social issues. They’re most excited by bold, dynamic writing that challenges and pushes the boundaries of cultural expectations and conventions, and that offers new ideas and perspectives.

They love formally innovative writing that takes risks and plays with form and style, but we are not interested in experimentation for its own sake. We love hybrid, genre-defying writing. Above all else, they value the quality and craft of the writing. 

Book*hug books and authors receive regular recognition and acclaim in the media and from literary awards. Their authors have been nominated for and won national and international awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Awards, the Giller Prize, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the League of Canadian Poets’ Book Awards, the Griffin Poetry Prize and more.

Book*Hug will open for submissions in September. Full submission guidelines here.

***

See all of Brian’s upcoming weekly writing classes, afternoon workshops, and writing retreats here.

For information about other publishers looking for manuscripts, see here (and scroll down).