carte blanche, n° 54

Welcome to carte blanche issue 54. Featuring fiction, poetry, translation, creative nonfiction, photography, and comics, this issue shines a light on our international contributors while still placing these voices in conversation with our roots in Quebec and Canada.

We are honoured to have Laurena Finéus’ painting Jardin de Mackandal grace the cover of this issue. Focusing on the breadfruit tree as “a symbol of survival” in Haitian culture and reforestation, the work bursts with colour. Each thumbnail created from this work is a world of its own, as is each piece selected by our editors that they accompany.

“HOST CELL” by Brandi Bird opens the poetry section, curated by Veronique Synnott, with a fervent dive into the grizzle and gore of the female body. Within the pieces that follow, readers will encounter a search for human understanding through mistaken identities, knife-making, disclosing disability with one’s family, the ringing of glass, the multi-faceted sun, and language as a mythic figure from poets Emma Moss Brender, James Hawes, Adegboyega Kayowa, Julia Lina, Sarah Oso, and Pablo Saborío.

The fiction section, curated by Liana Cusmano, is largely concerned with states of unreality. Words lose their meaning in a captioning office; illness fractures familial relationships; carcasses and constructions of animals haunt New York City; confections like candy, slurpees, and early adulthood friendships don’t last long enough; and a day home alone distances a narrator from their parents and the rhythm of daily life. Writers featured here include Sharalyn Barg, Garima Chhikara, Adam Dizon, Anja Jovanovic, and Lars Love Phillipson.

Set in personal, political, and imagined places, Nicola Danby’s translation picks feature the island of Ys populated by the Issois in Jessica Moore’s translation of Dominique Scali’s novel Sailors Can’t Swim forthcoming in fall 2026 from Talonbooks. Complete with illustrations, “My Haunted Houses” by Éléonore Goldberg translated by Phyllis Aronoff moves through two childhood homes, and Jacob Mattke’s translation of Yara El-Ghadban’s “The Flamingos’ Dance” introduces us to the unexpected survivors of the pandemic conditions ensuing after the Dead Sea dries up.

Caite McNeil’s creative nonfiction selections are a collection of meditations. From tree migration and cancer treatment to birds and literature and how “Everything shifts and stays the same and it is both relieving and terrible,” pieces by Mary Fontana, Theresa Lin, and Suzanne Manizza Roszak weave through human-made and natural spaces, as well as the narrative and the lyric.

The photography pieces chosen by Shaney Herrman move across international borders. A famous stud farm in Hungary is the subject of “Bábolna” by László Gábor Belicza, while Andrii Halischev’s “Sentimental Value” roams through an abandoned airfield in Vovchansk, Ukraine. The urban and natural spaces in “poetics of the eye” by Ruxandra Mitache feel like they’re both staples of human experience and out of familiar time.

Selected by Gabrielle Cole, the comics section explores the loss of a twin pregnancy in “Buntings” by Sunny Strader and contemplates friendship after seeing an old friend’s mugshots after losing contact in Katrina Dahl Vogl’s “We Tigers.”

Thanks to all of our editors for choosing such wonderful pieces to kick off the summer season, and to editor-in-chief Greg Santos, who keeps carte blanche running smoothly no matter the obstacle. Most importantly, we thank the contributors that make up this issue and the readers who take the time to enjoy it.

Happy reading!

Jade Palmer Managing Editor carte blanche magazine June 2026