While we’re still hard at work putting together a magazine that holds powers to account, makes you think, and introduces you to some amazing Canadians, we thought we’d take a brief moment to toot our own horn and celebrate our amazing contributors. We are incredibly thrilled to let you know that This has been nominated for three National Magazine Awards this year!

For her piece “American dream versus Russian Doll” in our July/August 2016 issue (which was also our annual Summer Reading Issue!), Helen Guri is nominated in the Poetry category.

For her illustration accompanying “Fly Away, Little Bird” by Nadia Alam in our May/June 2016 issue, Jori van der Linde is nominated for Best Illustration.

And finally, we’ve received a nomination for Best Cover for our November/December 2016 Tiger Beat-esque Justin Trudeau cover. Congratulations to former editor Lauren McKeon and art director Valerie Thai for their work on this issue.

Each year, the National Magazine Awards celebrates the work of Canadian journalists and the magazines writers, artists, and editors work hard to create. We are excited to be nominated among other small magazines, including Geist, Ryerson Review of Journalism, Maisonneuve, and more.

You can find the full list of nominees here.

Drawing from her own experiences working in an office, Rosenblum creates characters who, despite their canned lunches and obligatory office parties, are anything but dull. Anyone who has ever worked inside the partial walls of a cubicle, ignoring the constant hum of a computer, while counting the minutes until lunch, will easily relate.

There is Clint, a contract employee, slurring his words as the result of an infected wisdom tooth he can’t afford to have pulled. There’s Andrea, the new hire, who is “straight out of school” and “as jittery as a jailbreak.” And among the most memorable are Mark and Sanjeet, the company’s CEO and COO, who are likely to blame for the company’s demise.

Rosenblum has crafted a reputation as a Canadian writer to watch for, especially after her 2008 collection of short stories, Once, earned her the Metcalf-Rooke Award. The Big Dream only accelerates this expectation. Each short story is rich with memorable dialogue, capturing the empty banter, complaints, and flirtations that often fill the halls of an office. Rosenblum’s natural dialogue and descriptive prose result in a collection that successfully depicts the complex balancing act between home and work that so often define the lives of office workers who struggle to stay afloat inside and outside of their cubicles.

Booker’s inaugural short-story collection comes highly anticipated after her 2009 Writers’ Union of Canada award for short prose. Up Up Up pokes into the lives of ordinary people who could be sitting next to you on the subway, perusing their memories and picking out the quirkiest parts. A clown comes out of retirement to teach a course as she goes through a painful divorce, only to find she hasn’t lost her madcap mojo after all. A woman fresh from a breakup judges speed-dating partners on what kind of coat hangers they buy.

Booker cites Lisa Moore and Miranda July as influences, and both are present here in her sparse, exacting prose, staccato sentences, and whimsical plot lines. She chooses to spin apt metaphors instead of dousing her characters in emotion. Her characters are reflective, refreshingly free of self-indulgence or self-pity.

Her light tone doesn’t always sit well. One can’t help thinking: shouldn’t a 14-year-old have a less placid, more erratic reaction to an abusive boyfriend? The book’s not all sweetness and light, but amid the struggles these characters face—rape, divorce, obesity—after reading Booker’s stories, there’s a sense you’ve just discussed something important, and it’s okay to leave with a smile on your face.

The Canadian Society of Magazine Editors held their annual Editors’ Choice Awards last night in Toronto, and for the second year in a row, This was named “Magazine of the Year” in the small circulation category.

Many, many people work very hard to make This happen, so it would be impossible to thank by name all the writers, editors, designers, photographers, illustrators, and researchers who put so much work into each issue. Thank you all so much.

A few particular thanks are definitely necessary. Our volunteer section editors who worked on the magazine in 2010 are a huge part of our success, so thanks to: Chantal Braganza, Lindsay Kneteman, Aaron Leaf, Lauren McKeon, Stuart Ross, Eva Salinas, Nick Taylor-Vaisey, Daniel Tencer, and Ivor Tossell. David Donald, our art director, makes us look champagne-good on a juice-box-budget. Lisa Whittington-Hill, our publisher, runs this whole miraculous show and manages the business of running a small magazine — no easy feat in Canada these days. Thank you also to the board of directors of our umbrella organization, the Red Maple Foundation, whose guidance and expertise has sustained This for 45 years now.

Finally, our thanks to you—our readers and supporters. Our mandate is to tell the stories that are going untold in big corporate media and break new talent, and your attention and engagement and interest is the only reason we exist. Awards are swell, but we do it for you, and your support means everything to This.

If you’re not a subscriber already, we’d like to encourage you to consider it. We’ll continue posting all our articles on the website for free, but a mission like ours needs financial support as well. At $27.99 for six issues mailed straight to your door, buying a subscription is easier and cheaper for you; subscriptions provide us with stable, predictable, and sustainable funding to support the magazine’s mandate. It’s win-win. You can also make a tax-deductible donation to the foundation to support our work.

Finally, telling your friends about This is a great — and free! — way to spread the word and help us reach more people. We don’t have big marketing budgets or advertising campaigns; word of mouth is how most people learn about us. So share a This story on Facebook or Twitter when you like it — just being out there and part of Canada’s public discussion is important to the magazine and our future. Thanks for reading.

Neil Young has been making records for a long time. The sheer length of his career is a feat in itself, but more impressive than just the fact that he’s been making records for roughly 45 years is that he’s managed to stay dedicated, committed, and inspired for that entire time.

Since the mid 60s he’s been releasing albums to varied levels of acclaim, but while critics might not have loved everything he’s ever done, one thing Neil Young can never be accused of is being boring. There is no on — and I’ll repeat that for emphasis — no one who has maintained the level of quality as Young has while still consistently experimenting and reinventing himself, genre-hopping, and basically just being awesome. So because of that, and because the man took home two Junos last Sunday as well as an honorary award for his humanitarian work, this week on Tuesday Tracks we tip out hat to (in our mind) the Greatest Canadian.

His win could be dismissed as a “career award,” one given for a body of work rather than his most recent album, Le Noise. But the thing is, it actually isn’t.

The Daniel Lanois-produced album is an inspired blend of the two things Neil does better than almost anyone: thoughtful folky songwriting and fuzzy, angry guitar work. Traditionally those sounds have been separate, occupying albums all their own, but here, on Le Noise, they meet. Unlike most of his electric albums, there is no band; just Neil and his guitar. But this time his guitar is plugged in—and it’s loud.

Today’s track, “Hitchhiker,” is basically a folk song with layers and layers of droning, distorted guitar overlaid. It’s a five minute biography starting off in Toronto and following Neil as he makes a name for himself in California and dips into drugs, paranoia and reclusiveness along the way.

Cover of the November-December 2009 issue of This Magazine. Click to enlarge.

We’re very proud to announce that This Magazine won a gold medal at the Canadian Newsstand Awards last night in Toronto. The Newsstand Awards recognize excellence in cover design and marketing, and for a small magazine like This, it’s a huge deal to be recognized alongside heavyweights like Flare, Maclean’s, Canadian Art, and Châtelaine. Our winning cover was the provocative November-December 2009 special issue, “Legalize Everything!” (You can read that issue in its entirety here.)

Deserving of recognition for this fantastic achievement are: Lisa Whittington-Hill, our Publisher; David Donald, our art director; Stephen Trumper, our cover consultant/guru; Transcontinental/LGM, our printer; and Magazines Canada/Disticor, our distributors. Thanks also, of course, to the many talented contributors who made this such a special issue, the board of directors for making the whole enterprise viable, and thank you for buying into the idea of This Magazine—and, more to the point, buying a copy or subscribing.

Join me for a little aside about this crazy magazine-selling business, won’t you? This is, in fact, the fifth time in a row (!) we’ve taken the gold medal in the Small Magazine category. But we haven’t let it go to our heads: newsstand sales—that is, people walking into stores and buying a single copy off the shelf—are in decline coast to coast, and we’ve found it especially challenging in the last few years because a shocking number of independent book and magazine stores have gone out of business. Those smaller merchants are the kind of places that promote This because they really get our mission and love the magazine—but there are fewer of them than ever before. And your local megabookstore is less likely to put This on display because they concentrate on selling high-volume, high-sex-appeal, high-turnover magazines with celebrities on the cover. (In fact, those big magazines pay the stores to put them on display more prominently, something we can almost never afford to do.)

That’s why—while we believe it’s still super-important for This to be visible on newsstands, so that we can introduce ourselves to new readers who wouldn’t otherwise discover us—we encourage you to buy a subscription to the magazine. When you buy a single copy of This off the shelf, only a small fraction of that sticker price makes it back to us to support the magazine’s work (the store, the distributors, everyone who touches it on the way to and from the newsstand gets a cut). But when you subscribe, you’re directly supporting the magazine and its contributors, and subscription revenue is more stable and predictable, meaning that we can concentrate less on worrying about the bills and focus on making the best small magazine in Canada.

OK, nagging over. We’re thrilled by this win and thank all of the wonderful people who made it a reality. Our thanks to the judges for recognizing This among the other strong contenders in the category, and congratulations to our fellow winners. See you on the newsstand!

A little while ago we alerted you to the fact that This contributor Jenn Hardy was nominated for the inaugural Professional Writers Association of Canada Writing Awards. Well, the awards were given out last Friday, and Jenn won! Please join us in congratulating her on the article and the award.

We take great pride in being a magazine that supports, publishes, and advocates for young or emerging writers, so it’s really gratifying to see other organizations recognizing the writing our contributors work so hard on. Jenn continues writing for us, most recently in the May-June issue, a short profile of Montreal band Po’ Girl.

Last night was the annual Canadian Society of Magazine Editors gala, and we’re very happy to report that This was named Magazine of the Year in the small publication category. We think it’s a huge honour, especially considering the fearsome quality of the nominees, including our friends at Explore and Spacing.

Industry awards are always a bit inside baseball, I know, but there are some important thank yous I’d like you to note: Thank you to our many talented and hard-working writers, photographers, and illustrators whose work you can find all over this website. This dedicated group of people work diligently to uncover stories you won’t read anywhere else, and they tell those stories beautifully. Thanks to the section editors who worked on This in 2009 (the issues the judges were reading)—Jordan Himelfarb, Lindsay Kneteman, Stuart Ross, Eva Salinas, and Ivor Tossell, all virtuoso wielders of the red pen. Thanks to David Donald, our art director, who led the redesign of the magazine last spring and makes our words pop on the page each issue. Thanks to publisher Lisa Whittington-Hill, who oversees all the business operations that make this whole show run. And thank you to the Red Maple Foundation’s board of directors, the bedrock team whose guidance and mentorship has sustained This Magazine for 44 years.

And, of course, thanks to you, the readers, donors, volunteers, and supporters who believe in the magazine and its mandate. We love the work we do and we hope that comes through on the page. The award is nice—we were thrilled to get it—but the award isn’t an end in itself. Publishing the best journalism by the next generation of great Canadian writers is the mission, award or no.

A mission like that needs your support. If you like This, please tell your friends about it. If you haven’t already, buy a subscription (before the HST crash lands, Ontario and B.C.!). Or buy someone else a subscription. Or become a donor. Your support doesn’t have to be monetary, either—retweeting that story you liked or sharing it on Facebook is a great way to spread the word. Thanks for reading.

Congratulations to This Magazine contributor (and former intern!) Jenn Hardy for her nomination in the inaugural Professional Writers Association of Canada Writing Awards. Jenn’s cover story on permaculture, “Cleanup in Aisle One,” in the July-August 2009 issue of This was a reader favourite from last year, so it’s great to see it getting some more recognition now from her professional writer peers.

This is the first year that PWAC is running awards of this kind, and it’s another much-needed opportunity to recognize and thank the talented, hard-working (and usually underpaid) freelance writers who make magazines like This possible. We were thrilled to be able to publish Jenn’s article and we’ve got our fingers crossed for next Friday, when PWAC will announce the winners at the Writers’ Industry Awards Luncheon. Friday’s also the day of the National Magazine Awards, where we have three nominations. Big day!

But the thing is, the Junos’ didn’t do so badly. There was plenty of praise left over for a whole heap of praise for some fringe Canadian talent. K’naan, for example, is this year’s Artist of the Year based on his latest album Troubador; while East Coast troubador Joel Plaskett walked away with Adult Alternative Album of the Year. Not to mention wins for Metric, Drake, Deadmau5 and Bell Orchestre.

So, for this week’s edition of Tuesday Tracks, please enjoy another helping of Juno glory. These three acts were each honoured with well deserved statues this weekend. Congratulations.

First, Charles Spearin’s The Happiness Project took home the award for Contemporary Jazz Album of the Year. This album is a meditation on happiness as told through interviews with Spearin’s neighbours. After the interviews Spearin wrote music to frame the tone, pace, inflection and cadence of their voices. Sometimes following note for note, sometimes, as in the song “Vittoria” below, the voice is used as punctuation to the melody.

Next, The Arkells picked up a trophy for New Group of the Year based on the strength of their debut album Jackson Square. This album tweaks honest blue collar rock n’ roll just enough to make it both fresh and timeless. “Pulling Punches” invokes a “Dancing in the Dark” feeling:

Finally, The Good Lovelies took home Roots Album of the Year. Their bio calls them the “perfect antidote” to recession caused doom and gloom and they would be right. Their self-titled debut is a beautiful and playful reflection on life, love and the wonderful little things that make it all worthwhile.