Show Notes
In this NBN episode, host Hollay Ghadery speaks with Anna Veprinksa about her book of poetry, Wound Archive (Gordon Hill Press/The Porcupine's Quill, 2026).
Wound Archive is a collection of minimalist poems that archives the wound left by the concurrent ending of a relationship and the beginning of a chronic invisible illness. These poems comprise a fragmented archive in which woundedness turns language—figuratively and at times formally—upside down. The symbol of the wound recurs throughout, punctuating the ways both heartbreak and illness are experienced in the body. Find the book on the publisher's website here.
Anna Veprinska is the author of the poetry collections Bonememory (University of Calgary Press, 2025) and Sew with Butterflies (Steel Bananas Press, 2014), the chapbooks Stone Blossom (Anstruther Press, 2022) and Spirit-clenched (Gap Riot Press, 2020), and the monograph Empathy in Contemporary Poetry after Crisis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), which received Honourable Mention in the Memory Studies Association First Book Award. She won the 2025 Chinook Poetry Contest, was a finalist for the 2024 Ralph Gustafson Prize, and was shortlisted for the 2023 and 2021 Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at the University of Calgary. Her collection of poetry Wound Archive was released spring 2026.
Hollay Ghadery is an award-winning Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. She has her MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, was released by Guernica Editions in 2021 and won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. Her collection of poetry, Rebellion Box was released by Radiant Press in 2023, and her collection of short fiction, Widow Fantasies, was released with Gordon Hill Press in fall 2024 and was longlisted for the Toronto Book Award. Her debut novel, The Unraveling of Ou, was released with Palimpsest Press in 2026, and her children’s book, Being with the Birds, with Guernica Editions in 2027. Hollay is a host on The New Books Network, as well as a co-host on HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM. She is also a book publicist, the Founder of River Street, and the co-chair of the League of Canadian Poets BIPOC committee, as well as the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. She is also a member of The National Book Critics Circle, The Creative Nonfiction Collective, and The Writers Union of Canada. Hollay was also featured on the cover of issue 10 of The Ampersand Review. Learn more about Hollay here.
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