If mags like Broken Pencil, with their short, disgustingly clever, underdeveloped flashes of insight, appeal to you in some warped, yet highly unfulfilling way, if they draw you in, only to blow you out the other end feeling hungry, go out and get an issue of The New Quarterly. Why the editors have chosen to subtitle the magazine “New directions in Canadian writing” is beyond me, since most of the writing is pretty conventional stuff, in terms of the direction writing seems to be taking in the glossy lit mags in Canada these days. The thing is, the writers here do it so well you have to forgive them for not living up to the subtitle. Wonderful tales with strong characterization — even the short shorts at the end of this issue are, for the most part, very storyesque.
literary journal / no known publisher / main creator: Mary Merikle (Managing Editor) / $5 per issue / co ELPP, PAS 2082, University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1 /