This issue of Broken Pencil lists the results of the Indie Writer’s Deathmatch, in which Nana K. Adjei-Brenyah emerged victorious. The revised winning story, and two runners up are on display. Running underneath the stories are comments which appeared on the website during battle (including one from me). Contentious stuff. I love it.

Natalie Zina Walschots’s profile of Annie Koyama and the comics press she founded is excellent, and was timely, appearing on newsstands just before TCAF.

Also inside, tons of reviews, including my review of the zine Super Fun Satan Club, and a few poetry books.

Photo by Russell Darnell (WereOutThere)

The proper use of a hammer is to stand fifteen feet away and throw it at the nail. If you’re the hammer in the beginning, you’ve got to be the nail by the end. Such is life, cowboy.

–Dean Young, The Art of Recklessness

April was Poetry Month, and May is Short Story Month. Is there a literary category for every month of the year? No, but perhaps there ought to be.

This Saturday isn’t just Star Wars Day (“May the fourth be with you”), this year it’s also Free Comic Book Day, which is always held the first Saturday in May. So, head on over to your local comic book store and pick up some freebies, and maybe buy a few things while you’re there.

Things you should read this week:

• Zoe Whittall’s poem, “Unequal to Me,” and the sexism and the silence.
• Congratulations to Cassie Stocks on winning the Leacock medal. She is the 6th women to have won the award in its 66 year history.
• Are we entering the twilight of the patriarchy? Lynn Coady this so, and I hope she’s right.
• Claire Messud is asked some very stupid and clearly gender questions, and hits back with intelligence and force.
• For more on this theme, see VIDA’s “Women Writers and Bad Interviews.”
• And “My So-Called ‘Post-Feminist’ Life in Arts and Letters.”
• Nathalie Atkinson makes me think I should read The Torontonians.
• Why you shouldn’t tell that random woman she’s hot. It’s spring, and this is very topical. Please read it, share it, and enforce it.
• Susanna Kearsley on curating CanLit.
• August C. Bourré on writing poetry.
• Lydia’s random spine chewing is a part of a long tradition of cats wrecking books dating back to at least the 15th century. Who knew?
• Tyler Harper on what Bioshock Infinite gets right about racism.
• And, for the record, it’s not gamers who have a problem with female protagonists.

Have a good weekend, kids.