For Soraya

Dear readers,

A couple months ago, the Geist inbox received a letter to the editor in response to the essay “Silver & Blue” by Soraya Roberts, published in Geist 129. (Not the first letter that piece inspired.) “This essay is about trains, I swear,” writes Soraya. And it is—both thoroughly researched and deeply personal, as much about the Canadian railway system’s tendency to genuflect to product over people as it is about Soraya’s sudden and invigorating confrontation with midlife. I worked with Soraya on that piece as editor, so I took a particular interest in the letter we received about it. I decided to include it in this newsletter. Then, while making edits to the letter last month, I learned that Soraya Roberts died in August. She was 46.

I didn’t know Soraya long at all. I just had the privilege of working with her on a piece of writing in which she challenged herself to be vulnerable about her age, her past, her momentum. This vulnerability is tethered to Soraya’s intractable voice. On the page she is dynamic and smart and fucking honest. Working with her was like that, too. An absolute joy. Even over email, she constantly made me laugh through her quips and asides, her expressive use of ALL CAPS to convey disbelief or enthusiasm. She was also incredibly kind and generous in her communication. We kept in touch after the publication, and though we lived on opposite sides of the country, I imagined us going for coffee one day. I know that “Silver & Blue” meant a lot to Soraya. Read it—you can tell.

“Silver & Blue” received an Honourable Mention at the 2026 National Magazine Awards, and will be anthologized in Best Canadian Essays 2027, forthcoming by Biblioasis. I find solace in the fact that others get to read this essay, that her spirit is clearly present in her writing. She wrote a lot; she was a prolific journalist and incisive cultural critic for Defector, the Walrus, Longreads, the New York Times Magazine, to name a few. She wrote a book, too—In My Humble Opinion: My So-Called Life (ECW Press)—and was working on a memoir.

What I love about her writing . . . the strength of her opinions becoming only more remarkable by her ability to question them, to make room for beauty:

“Those tracks, those trains, unchanging, immovable, insignificant . . . until you actually take them, and they quietly, unexpectedly drive you into a gloriously intertwined humanity you had forgotten even existed.”

I’ll be reading her words, and I hope you will, too.

—Dayna Mahannah, Events & Outreach Manager

Silver & Blue by Soraya Roberts

An excerpt. Read the full essay here. Published in Geist 129, May 2025.

This is about a vast country of people yearning for connection. But Canada has never, in its infinite practicality, accommodated yearning. This country actively (the rare actively) refuses to reach, for fear of faltering. This country will allow one rail company to monopolize its tracks, one airline to monopolize its skies, highways to be blocked blocked blocked built built built, because that was the future and the future is here and this is what we committed to, even if it no longer works. Even if it never really did.

This was going to be about my fear of planes. This was going to be about a country underwriting that fear. “What do you do when the thing you fear most is the only way to get to the people you love most?” I wanted the answer to be simple, and in a way it was: You grow the fuck up. You make a decision. Like taking the fucking train across the country instead. An expensive choice, but a choice I made. (The rare actively.) I didn’t check with my mom. With my brother. With some guy. With some friend. Just me. Finally. On a track I chose by myself, for myself. Why the fuck did this take so long? And why did it feel like it was coming too late? The real question underneath all of this wasn’t about planes. Or trains. The real question was the one I didn’t want to ask: how do you go forward when all you want to do is go back?

Re: “Silver & Blue” by Soraya Roberts: Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor,

I should declare an interest: Soraya Roberts has written about my colleagues.

The two kinds of conductor are the same age, and that is not a coincidence. The baton arrived around 1820—Spohr startled London by bringing one over from Germany—because orchestras had grown too large and too complicated to be held together from the first violin’s desk. The Stockton and Darlington Railway opened five years later. Both trades exist for one reason: an enterprise has outgrown the capacity of its participants to stay together by ear, and somebody must now be paid to keep time who produces no sound himself and is blamed when it is late.

Where the two trades part company is Roberts’s subject. I own my tracks. The moment my hand goes up, nothing on that platform moves without my consent, and no freight is permitted to cut across the andante because somebody else’s cargo is behind schedule.

VIA Rail’s conductor has none of this. Roberts supplies the figures: VIA owns less than 1% of Canada’s tracks, and CN Rail’s largest shareholder is Bill Gates. A conductor who does not own the tracks is not a conductor. He is a passenger with a clipboard.

Which answers her question from an unexpected direction. How do you go forward when all you want is to go back? You cannot set a tempo you do not control. Canada’s difficulty is not that it has lost the appetite to move. It is this: Since 1990 the right to decide when has belonged to somebody else.

Yours sincerely,

David Woodard, Conductor
Tampere, Finland

Author Spotlight: Daniel Naawenkangua Abukur and Sadiqa de Meijer

POETRY

They said, call this peace a seed, call this anger bloom.

—From the poem, “Ballad of the Green Beginning” by Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri, published in Geist 133

Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri (he/him) is a Black poet and prose writer from Ghana. His work has appeared or is forthcoming in Poetry Wales, Prairie Schooner, Magma, North American Review, The Malahat Review and elsewhere.

DISPATCH

Palabras I can locate in the streams of conversation now are día, chica, mañana, como, problema. The clearest word I hear is claro. On the page, I can decipher more. I have a dictionary at my side. The niece of someone who was disappeared has written a book of poetry about him and gives me a copy. Today I am you, is how I interpret one of her phrases, but in her language it is a charged, symmetric, three-word rhyme.

—From the dispatch “La Ciudad” by Sadiqa de Meijer, published in Geist 133

Sadiqa de Meijer's latest books are Qaf's People (Vehicule Press 2026) and In The Field (Palimpsest Press 2025). Her award-winning book alfabet/alphabet is forthcoming in French translation (Editions Triptyque 2028).

Photo credit: Max Montalvo

Geist: OPEN for Submissions ’til Oct. 8!

Geist is open for non-fiction, fiction, poetry, comics, art & photography submissions. This is our final submission window of 2026—send us your best work!

We'd love to see more art & photography submissions. We publish an eclectic mix of collage, mixed-media, cartography, and artwork that surprises. Browse some of our recent covers for inspiration.

Deadline: October 8, 2026 at 11:59 pm PT

Please read our full guidelines at geist.com/submit.

2026 Postcard Writing Contest: Open ’til October 16

Our annual Postcard Writing Contest is open! Send us a story and a postcard. The relationship can be as strong or as tangential as you like, so long as there is a clear connection between the story and the image. Cash prizes! Check out past winning entries for inspiration—"Living the Dream" by Shelley Wood; "Desperate" by MJ Malleck; "Should I Be Worried?" by Carrie Mac. Submissions welcome until October 16 and go through our Submittable page.

An important note regarding submissions:
Our priority is to publish work from emerging and established writers and artists who are Canadian or permanent residents of Canada, who live in or outside the country. Occasionally, we publish international contributors whose work has a strong connection to Canada or would be relevant to a Canadian audience.
**This does not apply to our writing contests, which welcome international submissions and are judged anonymously.

The Wall

A few items of interest among Geist staff of late.

Melissa Febos urinates on an old man’s face because he pays her to, and rediscovers a new form of language as a professional dominatrix in her 2010 memoir Whip Smart (Thomas Dunne Books). Revel in true (cozy) disorientation in the maze-like nooks and crannies of Ted’s Paperback: Used Books & Comics in Kelowna (1329 Sutherland Avenue), housed in an old spa and fitness centre (for Kelowna, this is peak irony). Whether “Lost Things” is a prologue, an essay, or a prose poem is up for debate, but it’s a superlative opener to Elizabeth Bachinsky’s sixth collection of poetry, Real Grownup (Nightwood), and proof that she can alchemize words into treasure: “I thought, Well, if I can’t have the things, then I can have poems of the things, which is not as good, but almost.” Funny women deliver news and cultural phenomena—why has this not always been the way?—on the Canadian podcast Your Weekly Breakdown (Hard Copy Media), hosted by comedian Caitlin Howden and ex-tech exec Emily Key, which includes episode titles such as “Penis Facials, Moon Denialists, Cringe!, and (yo!) the Clit Map Finally Dropped” (April 26, 2026).

Micro-horoscopes for the Lit-Lorn

Divinations composed by Geist’s in-house bootleg astrologers.

Image credit: Geist Horoscopes drawn by Dayna Mahannah