Reviews of Vancouver for Beginners
Interview in PRISM: https://prismmagazine.ca/2020/01/31/vancouver-for-beginners-an-interview-with-alex-leslie/
Review/interview in The Vancouver Sun: https://vancouversun.com/entertainment/books/vancouver-author-qa-a-terminal-city-for-yesterday-today-and-tomorrow
Interview on CBC Radio North by Northwest with Sheryl Mackay — my section starts at about 1:42 mark
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/live-radio/1-43/clip/15761618
Interview on BC Book Prize podcast:
CBC’s 2019 poetry books to watch out for: https://www.cbc.ca/books/23-collections-of-canadian-poetry-to-watch-for-this-fall-1.5218685
ARC Poem of the Year 2018 competition citation (short listed): Why the Purity Detector is on Arc’s shortlist
Reviews of We All Need to Eat
NOW Magazine Best 10 Books of 2018
The Chat with Trevor Corkum on 49th Shelf
Globe and Mail: New Reads to Quench your Reading Thirst
49th Shelf Fiction Books of the Year 2018
Reviews of The things I heard about you
On The Found Poetry Review here.
On Michael Dennis’s daily poem blog here.
Review in Simon Fraser University newspaper The Peak here.
On Catherine Owen’s Marrow poetry blog here.
Interview in Xtra here.
Interview in The Rusty Toque here.
Review and interview in Matrix here.
Profile in Open Book Toronto here.
Reviews of People Who Disappear
In The Globe And Mail here. Review by Jim Bartley.
On Kerry Clare’s Pickle Me This here. Kerry Clare is the editor at The 49th Shelf.
In The Quill and Quire here. Review by Emily Donaldson.
In Briarpatch here. Review by Yutaka Dirks.
On Autostraddle here. Review by Malaika.
On Casey The Canadian Lesbrarian here. Review by Casey Stepaniuk.
On Salty Ink here.
In The Winnipeg Review here.
In The National Post here.
On previous work:
A text of “leakage,” a “softwall luminesence” that produces and diminishes its own light. Deep in the “bloodclick,” Alex Leslie’s gorgeous chapbook bonds design materials, transit routes and sky/ocean notes to create both an “impression of…thoughts” and a progressive, “wavering” grid of feeling. Narrative hurts then stops. Gate theory. Then expresses: “when you let it go.” Loved this. Loved what was brought to bear upon: a Westward edge.
— Bhanu Kapil on Nomados chapbook 20 Objects For The New World
“People Who Are Michael” by Alex Leslie subverts the traditional short story form and takes technology to task through its narrative while managing to be interesting to the reader. It comments on our online obsessions and memes but does so subtly. Leslie succeeds by taking a subject that is not commonly perceived as being important or poetic on the surface and making it such.
-Matrix 2010 LitPOP award citation
I loved the intimacy of the voice, the truth of the relationship and the sensual hunger of our narrator. Scenes felt like they could blow up by the incoming barrage of raw events. I felt both vulnerable and excited reading this story.
-Michael Winter, 2008 Prairie Fire judge’s comment
“Preservation” is a story of obsession and love told with a compelling sense of urgency and of looming threat. Two young women defy the conventions and prejudices of their small-town world to give into a passion that is ultimately as much about what divides them as what brings them together. Beautifully crafted and closely observed, the story draws us in with its immediacy and its breadth, setting itself against the backdrop of a natural world that stands both in judgment over the small lives that pass before it, and in consolation.
-Barbara Gowdy, Thomas King and Nino Ricci, 2007 CBC Literary Award jury
Alex Leslie writes fine stories and essays of the west coast, stories dealing with family histories and fissures and geology and music and natural disasters. They read like a new form of ghost story.
-Mark Anthony Jarman’s editor intro, Coming Attractions 09 (Oberon)
Alex Leslie - Writing 