This week we're delighted to welcome Jennifer DeLeskie to the Bridge to discuss her debut YA speculative novel Everclear, from Flame Arrow Publishing.

Everclear is "about a missing father, a changing body, and the buried truths of language, memory, and identity." It's a world of collapse, government overreach and corporate malfeasance, ecocide and malignant garbage. (Related: the word we were looking for is "kipple." Thanks, PKD.) But there's also hope and resistance and a rediscovery of Indigenous knowledge and values as they relate to the dominant systems of the time.

Though Everclear is her first novel, Jennifer is no stranger to deftly stringing words together, especially in service to sci-fi and other genres. Check out her origin story/short essay "Realists of a Larger Reality (Or Why I Read and Write Science Fiction)" and keep listening for her recommendations of some old-timey sexy sci-fi with plenty of "interspecies smashing."

Jennifer is also the Editor-in-Chief and Prose Editor of Quist, an online literary magazine featuring the prose and poetry of young Quebecers; she has a True Grit/Salem Witch Trials mash-up in Suffering the Other; and a short accelerationist horror story in Unréal, a bilingual anthology of Montréal speculative fiction. Plus, In a valiant effort to broaden the fanbase ofThe Epic of Gilgamesh, Jen's novelette "But Mayflies on the Water, Gazing at the Sun" appears in Beneath Ceaseless Skies. In her words: "It's a Sumerian Flood myth retelling that's supposed to be funny." Cinematic universe, anyone?

For more:

Jennifer DeLeskie: https://quietdomino.ca/biography/

Everclear: https://www.flamearrowpublishing.com/products/everclear?srsltid=AU7gw4VcnUmgxiszvxDPzQKPKXT1XtzMHU7mel65y0Xh6Mg4ej_yhFgx

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