It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a writer in possession of a good idea, must be in want of a grant. Last year I was on a Canada Council granting jury, and it not only enlightened me as to how the whole process works, it also renewed my faith in the Canada Council in general, and in the granting process in particular.

Over the years some of my writer friends had gotten the distinct impression that the Canada Council was this edifice of insiders. Those who got grants kept getting them, and those on the juries awarded grants to their writer friends. And this bitter conviction stopped many of them from applying. “I’m not going to win anyway, so why try?” It doesn’t help that by default, a writer’s life is an incessant litany of rejection.

But after having been on the jury, I’m now convinced we all should apply annually.

carte blanche is pleased to announce Carolin Huang has been named guest poetry editor for the winter 2020 issue of the magazine!

Carolin Huang is a writer, archivist, and academic living in Montreal. In 2019, she participated in the Banff Centre Emerging Writers Intensive and the Jack Kerouac Summer Writing Program.

“I’m writing a novel in English that’s inspired by wǔxiá fiction.”

As I finished speaking in Mandarin, forty middle school students stared back at me with stunned eyes. It was as if I had suddenly transformed into a xiákè, a wandering warrior, who had stepped out of the pages of a wǔxiá novel and into their classroom in Chóngqìng, China. In reality, I was only a visiting writer and translator, with no martial arts skills or supernatural powers, recently returned to visit the land of my birth.

Gasps and questions continued, becoming louder and louder.

Mrs. Hé shushed her students and turned to me with awe. “Wǔxiá fiction is so rooted in traditional Chinese literature and culture. How can you write wǔxiá in English?”

We, at carte blanche, are thrilled to announce and welcome our new managing editor: Zoe Shaw! Shaw will be taking on the role of managing editor for our Winter 2020 “Visible/Invisible” (38) issue. Read on to read Shaw’s introductory post. Welcome!