Arts & Entertainment

Opinion

George Walker IV / Associated Press Files Phoebe Bridgers performs as the opening act for Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in 2023 in Nashville, Tenn. Bridgers’ Toronto show was a phone-free experience.

Phoneless concert a beautiful chance to bask in moment

Jen Zoratti 6 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Outside the Scotiabank Arena in Toronto, digital billboards flashed fans their singular photo op for the night: “I took this photo before I saw Phoebe Bridgers: The Lost Tour 2026.”

It is, as it is for so many other people, my only documentation of a concert by one of my favourite artists. The American singer-songwriter — who I discovered at the Winnipeg Folk Festival in 2018 — has had a meteoric rise in the past few years, winning three Grammys in 2024 as one third of Boygenius, the indie-rock supergroup rounded out by Lucy Dacus and Julien Baker, and opening for Taylor Swift on select dates of her titanic Eras Tour.

Now, Bridgers is touring in support of Lost Weekend, her third album and first since 2020’s Punisher. It’s a feat of a record, a richly textured meditation on loss and grief, written in the aftermath of the death of her dad, with whom she had a complicated relationship.

So she is in a position to not only play multiple sold-out arena shows, but also insist that those shows be phone-free.

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Books

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Katherena vermette has made the three-person short list for the inaugural Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing.

Vermette lands on non-fiction editing short list

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Preview

Vermette lands on non-fiction editing short list

Ben Sigurdson 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Winnipeg-based novelist, poet and editor katherena vermette has made the three-person short list for a new $25,000 prize given awarded to the editor of a work of non-fiction.

The inaugural Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing finalists are vermette for Louis Busch’s Carry Your Heart: Indigenous Helping Wisdom & the Science of Psychological Flexibility, George Galt for ​My Year in Fairyland: Grief, MAID and a Lifetime of Books, written by ​Sarah Ellis​, and Rachel Rose for ​Humanitarienne: A Doctor’s Stories from the Conflict Zone, written​ by ​Kirsten Johnson​.

In addition to her writerly output, vermette has served as a senior editor at Simon & Schuster Canada since 2024. The winner of the Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing prize will be announced at the Writers’ Trust Awards on Nov. 10.

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Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Books

SUPPLIED Canisia Lubrin is the author of five award-winning books.

In Conversation: Canisia Lubrin

Ariel Gordon 4 minute read Preview

In Conversation: Canisia Lubrin

Ariel Gordon 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Canisia Lubrin, born in St. Lucia and based in Whitby, Ont., is the author of five award-winning books, poetry and fiction.

Her honours include the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the Derek Walcott Prize and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, in addition to the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. She has been twice a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and Ontario’s Trillium Book Prize.

Lubrin will be bringing her fourth collection of poetry, Bright Machine, to McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Wednesday. The event will be hosted by Winnipeg poet Chimwemwe Undi, who is currently Canada’s Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

Free Press: What are your goals for this collection?

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Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Books

The Inbetween Leader

Unity-based worldview key to good leadership

Reviewed by Rochelle Squires 4 minute read Preview

Unity-based worldview key to good leadership

Reviewed by Rochelle Squires 4 minute read Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Indigenous leader and former justice minister and attorney general of Canada Jody Wilson-Raybould knows first-hand what courageous leadership looks like. As a politician operating in an adversarial and competitive partisan system that favours winning over good public policy, she once took a stand against a leader and his style that was contrary to her values. The move cost her her job. The public fallout was immense as she was removed from cabinet and, later, the caucus.

Now, she’s co-written a book on leadership — one that should be mandatory reading for everyone who wants to advance the state of leadership within themselves and their community.

In The Inbetween Leader, Wilson-Raybould and co-author (and B.C. lawyer and educator) Roshan Danesh advocate for what they call an “inbetween” leadership style. It involves meeting people where they are at, breaking down silos that separate us and being a bridge between different views and opinions.

“A strong leader is also one who can engender respect and be seen as an authority through their ability to be unifying,” Wilson-Raybould writes. “If one divides, one is not a leader. If one promotes conflict, one is not a leader. If one tries to force people to bend to one’s own will, one is not a leader.”

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Saturday, Oct. 10, 2026

Music

Supplied Sean Irvine wrote Forgotten Stories Suite as a way to tell stories of queer experience.

Stellar year for Manitoba artists at WCMAs

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Preview

Stellar year for Manitoba artists at WCMAs

Ben Waldman 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Manitoba acts earned top honours at this past weekend’s Western Canadian Music Awards in Victoria, including pop artist of the year for Begonia, a francophone artist of the year award for Jocelyn Baribeau, video director of the year for Taylor Brown and two awards for the Brandon-raised Fontine, who took home prizes for rock artist and Indigenous artist of the year.

It was double time for the Winnipeg Jazz Orchestra, which for the second consecutive year was named Western Canada’s jazz artist of the year.

The recognition comes on the strength of the WJO’s most recent recording, Forgotten Stories Suite, a project by local woodwind specialist Sean Irvine that blends spoken word, instrumental soundscapes and sung vocals to amplify stories of queer experience.

“As I started becoming a composer, I was thinking about what I had to say,” says Irvine, a musician with a doctorate of jazz performance from the University of Toronto and a master’s in performance and literature from Brandon University.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

Ruth Bonneville / Free Press Chase Winnicky is directing Dancing With the Past, which opens each show of the Gargoyle Theatre’s upcoming four-day festival.

Theatre fest puts queer stories onstage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Preview

Theatre fest puts queer stories onstage

Ben Waldman 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Two sets of scene partners will bring stories of personal and national queer liberation to the stage this week as part of Past, Present, Future, a mini festival of original LGBTTQ+ works at the Gargoyle Theatre.

The four-day event kicks off tonight at 7:30 p.m., with the world première of Ottawa playwright Lawrence Aronovitch’s Dancing With the Past — starring Winnipeg’s Jeff Rivet and Ro Rogalski — and a restaging of Winnipeg playwright Ethan Stark’s romance A Work in Progress, featuring local actors Sadie Kornovski and Mady Richard.

Winnipeg’s première of Dancing With the Past will launch a nationwide Inspire tour, produced by the global advocacy organization International Day of Pink in association with the Gargoyle, the federal government and Via Rail.

The tour will head to Alberta, British Columbia, Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island before visiting Ontario and Quebec in the spring.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

Wojtek Kutyla photo Cory Doctorow

What’s up

6 minute read Preview

What’s up

6 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Usama Siddiquee

West End Cultural Centre, 586 Ellice Ave.

Tonight, 8 p.m.

Tickets are $46.75 at wecc.ca

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Amanda Goldberg is directing the Royal MTC production of Cyrano.

Beautiful beak

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Preview

Beautiful beak

Ben Waldman 6 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

There are more flattering places to have your body described than in a book called Les Grotesques, but it was in that 1844 work that French readers such as playwright Edmond Rostand were reintroduced to a 17th-century firebrand named Cyrano de Bergerac, the subject of Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s season-opening production.

Yes, he was real.

And yes, his nose was apparently spectacular.

“Less doughy, less fleshy in its contours, it shows more bone and cartilage, more flat planes and highlights — it is most heroic,” wrote French poet Théophile Gautier, sparing no detail in his facial analysis.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Partita

In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver’s moving, sonata-like prose plucks emotional heartstrings

Reviewed by Jenna Boholij 4 minute read Preview

In Partita, Barbara Kingsolver’s moving, sonata-like prose plucks emotional heartstrings

Reviewed by Jenna Boholij 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Barbara Kingsolver’s latest novel Partita is as inspiring and beautiful as the musical pieces its title is derived from. The acclaimed Appalachian writer expertly weaves an emotionally charged story about love, heartache, hope, class divide, nostalgia and politics.

Kingsolver is the bestselling author of works of fiction, books of poetry, essays, creative non-fiction and children’s literature. She is an award-winning writer whose achievements include the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her novel Demon Copperhead.

Doubling down on Partita’s musical theme, the chapters are named after musical movements, and Kingsolver offers readers a “Listening List” of compositions to pair with the readings in the way one might suggest complementary wine to cheese.

An unexpected phone call from an old lover threatens to disrupt the prosaic life and marriage of Livia Cable. The novel jumps between past and present, beginning with Livia navigating her earlier years, affected by loss and grief after her brother steps in front of a train, and indifference and coldness from her hardened mother.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Daphnis and Chloe

Modern retelling of ancient Greek story is a moving meditation on love and choices

Reviewed by Joel Boyce 4 minute read Preview

Modern retelling of ancient Greek story is a moving meditation on love and choices

Reviewed by Joel Boyce 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Colin McAdam wrote a PhD thesis on Ancient Greek literature, but wrote four novels on other topics before dusting off his school notes for Daphnis and Chloe.

The Toronto-based writer of A Beautiful Truth won major literary prizes for three of his first four novels, including his 2004 debut Some Great Thing. Daphnis and Chloe, McAdam’s fifth and latest novel, is a modern retelling of the Greek tale of the same name from almost 2,000 years ago, and was longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize.

Brief and quite readable despite its heavy themes and classical pedigree, McAdam’s latest has much to recommend. It’s not immediately obvious which direction the story will take, and the prose has a certain lyricism that makes it easy to keep reading. It does contain some violent scenes, which will not be every reader’s cup of tea, but the beauty of the writing does go some way to softening that.

The basic setup of Daphnis and Chloe is that two abandoned children are found and raised by a pair of poor but loving families. These foundlings grow up together and eventually fall in love, but the world can be a dark and dangerous place, and foreshadowing suggests there will be many obstacles to any kind of happy ending.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Canadian Press files Alberta separatists gather at the legislature in Edmonton in August. On Oct. 19, Albertans will vote on whether to begin the process for a referendum on separating from Canada.

Alberta vote on secession spurred by foreign interference, the American far right and a complicit premier

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Preview

Alberta vote on secession spurred by foreign interference, the American far right and a complicit premier

Reviewed by Matt Henderson 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

On Oct. 19th, Albertans go to the polls to vote on 10 questions. The first question asks Albertans if they wish to begin the process for a referendum on separation from Confederation. The rest are questions about whether or not Alberta should adhere to the Constitution itself — questions layered with racism and xenophobia. All Canadians and classrooms should take a close look at these questions.

Should Alberta ignore Canada, its laws and its people despite only 23 per cent of Albertans indicating that they would vote for separation (coupled with a $130-million referendum price tag)?

While local plebiscites might seem highly democratic, consider that the Oct. 19 referendum and the 10 questions did not come from the Alberta legislature — the body made of elected representatives. The United Conservative Party (UCP) did not run on a platform of separatism. Rather, the idea to separate came directly from the executive, UCP leader and Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, in collusion with a band of unelected and anti-Canadian bandits.

Judicial rulings have deemed the referendum unconstitutional. Enter the notwithstanding clause.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Scion

Enhanced assassin at the core of fast-paced sci-fi story

Reviewed by Bill Rambo 4 minute read Preview

Enhanced assassin at the core of fast-paced sci-fi story

Reviewed by Bill Rambo 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Opening his careening new novel in the middle of a fight to the death, Australian author James Islington plunges his reader into a gory introduction to its main character, Azure.

Islington’s earlier series, the Licanius trilogy, and the Hierarchy series (The Will of the Many and The Strength of the Few, with a third book to come) have been fantasy epics. Scion is science fiction, compact and frenetically paced, set in a world where the ultra-wealthy can become “lifers” using the drug Ichor. However, the world’s “DeGov” has legalized killing lifers, perhaps to add circuses to the bread of a universal basic income.

Lifers’ solitary, hunted lives raise questions about the quality of their extended years. Elaborate defenses include electromagnetic pulse areas which destroy technology as well as biosecurity cloned and cyborg creations, such as the many-eyed Argos that Azure battles as the novel opens.

Azure is an assassin for the Keres Corporation, which assigns him to kill “Proscriptions.” As Lifers come to the attention of the resentful population, crowdfunding makes them “profitable to kill.”

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

A loving legacy

Missing grandfather’s writing spurs moving memoir, short fictions

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 4 minute read Preview

Missing grandfather’s writing spurs moving memoir, short fictions

Reviewed by Keith Cadieux 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Born in the U.K., having grown up in B.C. and now based in Kingston, Ont., prolific author Helen Humphreys is no stranger to personal memoirs. Among her numerous books, including nine novels, four books of poetry, and five works of creative non-fiction, she has written about the hidden history of the apple and how it connected agriculture and human settlements in North America in The Ghost Orchard, and the devastating loss of her brother in Nocturne — two seemingly unconnected topics which coalesce in her latest work, Summerland.

When her father was 12, Humphrey’s grandfather Dudley went missing, presumed killed on a secret military flight to Malta during the Second World War. Meant to take command of an air base, his mission was a covert operation, and so his family received only the sparest information about what happened to him.

In recent years, the British government finally released the investigative file into his death and, even more recently, Humphrey’s aunt discovered a stash of her grandfather’s writing.

With this sudden influx of information, Humphreys is able to piece together a portrait of her grandfather, a man she was never able to meet. She discovers that he had grand plans to move his family from England to Summerland, B.C., where he spent some time working as a bank clerk when he was a young man, and wanted to build an apple orchard. He also hoped to become a writer and wrote several stories about his wartime experiences in both the First and Second World Wars.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

The Arts

MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS Sally Ito is the new writer-in-residence for the Winnipeg Public Library.

Ito in the house

Sheldon Birnie 5 minute read Preview

Ito in the house

Sheldon Birnie 5 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

It didn’t take Sally Ito long to settle into her new role as the Winnipeg Public Library’s latest writer-in-residence.

“The library itself is such a fascinating place,” Ito says in her new office on the second floor of the Millennium Library downtown on her first day on the job.

“There are all kinds of books here, and all kinds of people. I want to explore both the books and the people.”

A Japanese-Canadian writer, translator and instructor of creative writing at Canadian Mennonite University, Ito’s most recent poetry collection, Heart’s Hydrography, was published by Turnstone Press in 2022. She previously served as writer-in-residence at the University of Manitoba’s Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

David Hirst photo Ann Cleeves

Ann Cleeves in fine form in new Venn mystery

Reviewed by Ron Robinson 4 minute read Preview

Ann Cleeves in fine form in new Venn mystery

Reviewed by Ron Robinson 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Some friendships are toxic. In Ann Cleeves’ fourth mystery in her Two Rivers series, it proves to be fatal.

Hannah and Lottie are teenage school chums with little in common. And on a summer holiday in North Devon, their differences leads to one found dead and the other missing.

Detective inspector Matthew Venn and his team, consisting of the straight-talking Jen and the ambitious Ross, have their hands full as each partial answer only leads to more questions.

Lottie, found dead in a swimming pool, was headstrong, pampered and entitled. Hannah, who can’t be found, was hesitant and looking to Lottie to lead the way in adventures and risk taking.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Books

Corinne Dubreuil/ TNS In 2021, former women’s top-ranked tennis player Naomi Osaka stepped away briefly from the sport, opting to prioritize her mental health.

Veteran sportswriter uncovers the many pitfalls of professional tennis

Reviewed by Jordan Ross 4 minute read Preview

Veteran sportswriter uncovers the many pitfalls of professional tennis

Reviewed by Jordan Ross 4 minute read Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

Why does tennis drive so many of its top athletes mad, leading some to quit at the peak of their career? Matthew Futterman explores this question after several years of full-time tennis writing for the Athletic, the sports arm of the New York Times.

This is Futterman’s third book. His first, Running to the Edge, chronicled a group of Olympic runners and their visionary coach. His second, Players, explained how sports became big business.

Futterman is a veteran sportswriter who has covered many Olympic Games and World Cups, as well as the NFL and NBA. But the tennis beat hit different. “I was completely blown away, immediately, by how miserable tennis players were,” he said in an interview on The Tennis Podcast.

Tennis pros might be miserable because of the sport’s gruelling season, which spans 11 months and six continents. Or because the sport lacks a bona fide players’ union, leaving athletes to labour as independent contractors without a safety net.

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Friday, Oct. 9, 2026

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