Emily Strempler

@estrempler.bsky.social

689 Followers 231 Following

🏳️‍🌈✊🧡 (She/Her) Lit and lit-genre crossover author, work in Agnes and True, Broken Pencil, the BK, and many more. Editor at the Baltimore Review. Managing Editor at Li Isprii. Banff, AB, 🇨🇦 / Treaty 7 / Homeland of the Red River Metis www.estrempler.com

A copy of "Foolish" by Barbara Westwood Diehl sits on a granite restaurant bartop alongside cutlery and a large cup of coffee
A book being held on a person's lap. The painted cover depicts Elmer Ghostkeeper staring out from a background of spirits, presumably ancestors, and a horse, amid tree trunks. The title reads "Spirit Gifting: The Concept of Spiritual Exchange" by "Elmer Ghostkeeper".
Two coffee cups, an empty dessert plate with two forks, a laptop, and an open book crowd a small white cafe table. The man sitting opposite, typing on the laptop, is wearing a black and white Li Isprii magazine t-shirt.
A photo of the lakeshore at Waterton townsite, rows of empty docks ring the bottom of the photo, mirrored by a mountain that rises over the lake in the background. The sky is blue and full of fluffy white clouds.
A library copy of "Pourin' Down Rain" by Cheryl Foggo resting on a wooden cafĂŠ table. The cover depicts two young black women holding an umbrella over their heads.
Quote from page 145 of Bad Indians Book Club by Patty Krawec: "Toni Morrison, in her essay 'Rootedness: The Ancestor as Foundation,' attributes the popularity of the contemporary novel to the rising middle class and its isolation from extended family and community, where the stories we just thought up have traditionally been held. Morrison explains that in the absence of multigenerational families and stable communities, we needed some way to teach each other how to be human. We needed to teach others how we express our humanity, to learn to live together in communities that are constantly coalescing and remaking themselves. Novels become a kind of permanence in an impermanent world."
Quote from page 64 of "Bad Indians Book Club" by Patty Krawec. It reads: "How we arrive in a place, and then how we receive others, matters deeply. When I studied social work, a professor once asked us to make a list of the things that somebody would need to do to make a cup of coffee. What steps are involved? We started with the obvious: boil water. Then he asked what room we were in. Why did we assume that the person we were writing the instructions for was in the kitchen? So, we backed up. Go to the kitchen, we added as an instruction. Then our professor asked: How are they supposed to do that? What assumptions are we making about the person and where they lived? By the end of the exercise, we had more than two hundred steps involved just to make a cup of coffee. Nobody working in an assisted-living facility or doing homecare work was going to provide a list of over two hundred steps for a client who needed to make a cup of coffee. But it forced us to think about everything we assumed. It forced us to shift the centre."
Photo of a quote from "Bad Indians Book Club" by Patty Krawec. It reads: "What would it take for an urban child to see the night sky? At the end of the conversation in April, I posed that question to the panelists. What do our communities need to see the night sky, to connect with the natural world around us? We need our land back, and for that land to be free. We need a world where a single mother has the means and the time to take their child to a place where the city lights do not drown out the sky. We need a world of mobility, free from physical and financial barriers. We need oceans filled with fish instead of plastic. And we need time for curiosity, a life free from the exhaustion that strangles our desire to see."
Rolston Recital Hall at the Banff Centre, filling up before the show. Seating in the foreground with scattered people sitting, a stage in the centre under a display that reads "Toga da wĂ´hnagabi."
A wooden restaurant table, with a long platw of fish tacos in the foreground and an open book, bowl of fries, and pint of hazy pale ale in the background.
A book and a cup of coffee sit on a round, wood-topped table. An empty section of a small mall can be seen in the background.
A stack of hardcover library books sits on a wooden dining table. The titles, from top to bottom, are “How High We Go in the Dark” by Sequoia Nagamatsu, “The Sunflower Boys” by Sam Wachman, “Apple Skin to the Core” by Eric Gansworth, “Black Cake” by Charmaine Wilkerson, and “The Talk” by Darrin Bell. A Christmas tree with multicoloured lights can be seen in the background.
Cover of “small ceremonies by kyle edwards” featuring a blue river full of stars snaking across a white landscape under an orange sky. A tiger is stalking out of frame.
A plate of fish tacos, a pale, hazy beer, a plate of fries, and a book held open with a piece of cutlery, rest on a restaurant table. In the background, diners sit at a bar.
Foreground, in focus, a bowl of tantan ramen topped with greens, green onion, fried garlic, and two pieces of karaage chicken. In the background, a half-empty glass of water and an open book rest on a dark wood table.
Grey text on a crinkly paper background reads "Spill the Tea, Oct 07, 6pm-8pm, Wild Flour Bakery." A grainy picture of a book sits open amind the text.
A magpie wanders across the hardwood floor of a quiet restaurant set for dinner service. It perches briefly on the lower crossbar of a chair before hopping down to pick up a snack.
On a restaurant table in the foreground, a hand rests on an open book next to a hazy golden beer. Through the open wall, patio tables can be seen, and beyond them a mountain view.
A hand holds a paperback book. The cover fills most of the frame. The image shows stylized video game worlds as floating islands against a blue sky filled with soft clouds. Black text reads, “Of Floating Isles: On Growing Pains and Video Games.”
A plate of sugary donuts on a plate are drawn with a chalk-like brush on a black background. Above them, in block white text is the title "GODSEND."
In the foreground a blurry copy of “All the Little Monsters” by David A Robertson rests on a light wood cafe table. In focus in the background, a tiny brown sparrow meanders between the legs of occupied tables.
Four books lying on a wooden table. Clockwise from top left: “Beaver Hills Forever” by Conor Kerr, “A Safe Girl to Love” by Casey Plett, “Of Floating Islands” by Kawika Guillermo, and “Queers at the Table” by Alex F Ketchum and Megan J Elias
A beer, a menu in a menu stand, and an open book sit on a sunny wooden restaurant table. Through a large window there’s a view of businesses on Banff Avenue over colourful flower-boxes.
Photo of a plate of fish and chips sitting on a wooden restaurant table beside a book, a tall can of PBR, and a glass of water.
Portion of a page from the poetry book “a fate worse than death” by Nisha Patel. The poem reads: “the curse of the Kohinoor diamond tells us that all empires who covet it will fall but when the British East India Company forces all 105 carats of it into the centre of the coronation crown Queen Elizabeth calls it merely heavy the way the intergenerational epigenetics of colonial famine are heavy the way the shortened lifespans of my grandfather and grandmother and grandmother and mother-in-law and father-in-law and father and aunt and aunt and uncle and uncle are heavy.”
Photo of a large portion of a page in a book. The text reads: "The long history of human habitation on Rum came to a dramatic conclusion in the early nineteenth century. Rum's clan chief in 1815 was the respected Alexander Maclean, but he made a disastrous investment in kelp by buying the small island of Muck at precisely the moment the kelp boom collapsed when cheaper imports of Spanish barilla were resumed at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. Bankrupted, he was forced to let the island of Rum to a tenant, Dr Lachlan Maclean, who planned to make Rum profitable by farming sheep. The islanders were not needed; in the infamous contemporary phrase they were a 'redundant population. In 1825 every islander was given a year's notice to leave. In 1826, three hundred men, women and children were herded onto two ships. An Edinburgh lawyer, Alexander Hunter, supervised the operation, and he admitted to a government committee in 1827 that some islanders 'were not very willing to leave the land of their ancestors'. A Rum shepherd, John McMaister, provided a rather more vivid picture: 'The wild outcries of the men and the heart-breaking wails of the women and their children filled all the air between the mountainous shores of the bay.'"
A laptop, pot of colourful flowers, and a gin and tonic, sit on a small round tabletop. A sunny courtyard crisscrossed with hanging lights can be seen in the background. A rim of mountaintops are just visible over the top of the far wall.
Cover of “Truth and Conviction: Donald Marshall Jr. and the Mi’kmaw Quest for Justice” by L. Jane McMillan. The cover features a pale, blue-tone image of a man fishing in a quiet body of water.
A crowd watches hoop dancer Lakota Tootoosis perform inside a municipal rec centre. Behind him, is a large, brightly coloured tipi. The image captures Tootoosis in a complex pose with hoops framing his arms and legs, and hoop spheres held aloft in his hands. The crowd is visibly applauding.
A scuffed MacBook with headphones plugged in, a black paper coffee cup, and a glass of water and ice sit on a dark wood table. In the background you can see empty hotel cafĂŠ tables.
A large beaver sits on the grassy bank of a creek. After a moment, it hops off into the water and swims away.
A book, cup of mint tea, large plate of chips with onion dip, and a flowering potted plant sit on a small circular table in the open courtyard of a hotel. A pool and strings of unlit hanging lights can be seen in the background. The sky is still blue and bright despite it being late in the day (it gets dark very late here in the summer).
View from a second floor restaurant patio overlooking Banff Avenue. A book rests on the wooden tabletop beside a glass of water and a pint of dark beer. Flower-filled planters line the railing.
Hand holding a copy of the novel “Hold your Tongue” by Matthew Tétreault, the cover features a bison standing in a circle of blue sky on a peach-coloured backdrop.
A crowd of poets and attendees listens to hosts Tim Murphy and Nikki Tate at the opening of Canmore’s first poetry slam. The dark room is laid out with tables and chairs, cabaret-style, with a low stage at the front.
Photo of a small auditorium. On stage Sol Chiniquay and Nic Latulippe present from arm chairs. A slide show of photos plays behind them on a large projector screen.
View of an empty patio in Banff, Canada, with chairs flipped up due to rain, a slice of coconut cake, a coffee, and a book rest on a dry table.
Silhouette of a young man against a paper-white background. A title, "The Boy From the 'Good' Family," floats above his head.
Cover of “Shaping a World Already Made: Landscape and Poetry of the Canadian Prairies” by Carl J. Tracie. The abstract image depicts a flat, golden landscape under a grey sky.
Hardcover copies of “Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism” by Sarah Wynn-Williams and “Abundance” by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson rest on a wooden coffee table. Both have matte beige covers with minimal serif-font titles and a single illustration in the centre.
Cover of “American Teenager: How Trans Kids are Surviving Hate and Finding Joy in a Turbulent Era” by Nico Lang. The art is colourful and modern, depicting a crowd of teen faces.
Four books stacked on a living room coffee table. The spines read: “This Bright Dust” by Nina Berkhout, “Small Ceremonies” by Kyle Edwards, “Hold Your Tongue” by Matthew Tétreault, and “Native Air” by Jonathan Howland.
A man wearing a black jean jacket decorated with traditional Red River MĂŠtis beadwork stands on top of Sleeping Buffalo Mountain (Tunnel Mountain) overlooking the town of Banff, Alberta.
A book rests on a reader‘s lap. A small section of living room is blurry in the background. The cover features a young black man standing in front of a city skyline, with the title “Isaac’s Song” by Daniel Black. Part of the cover is obscured by library stickers.
Inside wall of a women’s washroom stall. A trans flag sticker with the text “A trans person shit here and you survived” is stuck to the surface. Beneath someone with neat handwriting has added the note “love you ❤️ keep shitting here.”
A copy of “Fight Night” by Miriam Toews rests on a readers knees, a living room is blurred in the background.
Photo of the dark interior of a restaurant and bar. An open book is visible in the foreground beside a glass of water and pint of amber beer.
Photo of the top portion of a pair of slightly tattered blue jeans lying on a wooden table. A blue bordered patch, decorated with the outline of mountains and clouds, also made of jean fabric, has been stitched onto the pant leg.
Photo of part of a book page, the text reads: “IN ANTÍGONA GONZÁLEZ, SARA URIBE WRITES: Count them all. Name them so as to say: this body could be mine. The body of one of my own. So as not to forget that all the bodies without names are our lost bodies.”
Photo of a paragraph of text in a book. The text reads: “By dumping their victims in empty lots and trash heaps, González asserts, the perpetrators of these crimes negated the essential humanity of their victims: ‘To leave a raped, abused, half-naked woman's body in a garbage dump is to resignify the body with indifference and abjec-tion. The act suppresses the distance between objects and humans, and calls out for savage disorder... Through it, the victim is reminded of her restricted status in domestic and industrial spheres ... Her identity is predestined not to exist.’"
Faded photo of a bookshelf with white text over the top reading, "Newsletter, 10th of Every Month, News and Updates, Links to Stories, Exclusive Media Recommendations, Sign Up: www.estrempler.com/newsletter"
Cover image of “An Ordinary Violence” by Adriana Chartrand. A large grey rabbit hunches against a black background, splattered with red. The title is overlaid in semi-transparent white.
Book cover reading “Fair Play: How Sports Shape the Gender Debates” by “Katie Barnes” in purple and blue text. There is a small rainbow illustration of athletes jumping a hurdle across the middle.
Cover of Madame by Jessica George, white text on a colourful patterned background.
Photo of an open book, a few tasting glasses of beer, and a pint, on an outdoor table with a fire in the center. In the background, you can see a street in Banff, Alberta, with pedestrians walking by, shops, and a mountain in the distance.
Photograph of a paragraph of text that reads as follows: “When it comes to the eel, we can allow ourselves to ask banal questions, simply because the banal questions don't always have immediate answers. We can also allow ourselves to welcome this. We should be glad that knowledge has its limits. This response isn't just a defense mechanism; it's also a way for us to understand the fact that the world is an incomprehensible place. There is something compelling about the mysterious.”
The title text: "She is not a metropolis: Land speculation, settler politics, and the invention of Silver City" appears across the top, the word "Essay" appears at the bottom. The image underneath is a photo of Castle Mountain in Banff National Park, covered in a layer of snow