Feuilles: January 2026 Newsletter
Open submissions, Internship welcome, AGO Exhibitions, and more!
Dear Traces community,
I hope you all had a joyous Christmas season. I had the opportunity to visit many friends and family members in Toronto, Ottawa, and Montreal. Keep reading for some beautiful photos from my time in the snowy Ottawa Valley, and my thoughts on the current AGO exhibition, David Blackwood: Myth & Legend.
Traces News
Welcome to our 2026 Interns
This January, we launched our inaugural Traces Internship Program. For 2026, we have two interns joining our editorial team. Read more about them below!
Lucia Ottenbreit: My name is Lucia Ottenbreit, and I am a fourth-year literature student at Our Lady Seat of Wisdom College in Barry's Bay, Ontario. I'm currently working at the college as a student events organizer. My hobbies include playing piano, swing dancing, and writing. In this internship, I am most excited to work with the Traces team and learn how to cultivate my own voice as an author!
Sydney Goodreau: Hello everyone! My name is Sydney Goodreau and I am a fourth-year Creative Writing honours major at Redeemer University. My passion for both reading and writing go hand-in-hand. And while my classes often bury me in books, I spend my extra time playing the piano, singing in choir, and travelling with my friends. I can't wait to intern at Traces, a magazine that combines my passion for tasteful literature and my love for seeking God's divine hand in my home country, Canada.
Submissions are OPEN!
We’re now open for submissions for our Spring issue, which will be published in May 2026. We’re accepting poetry, book reviews, and interviews (pitches and completed pieces).
We are also open to prose pieces, and are especially interested in publishing short essay series on topics related to Canadian and Christian art. Check out Burl Horniachek’s latest essay in his series on Christian Canadian poets and Norm Klassen’s latest dispatch from The Order of Love, as examples.
The Order of Love
Our Traces dispatch, “The Order of Love,” is published monthly. In the January instalment, Klassen comments on another recent AGO retrospective on Joyce Wieland:
“A metaphysically assured aesthetic beckons this generation of Canadian Christian artists, critics, and curators, one that looks to politics and art and to an “eternal” it dares to name, even as it acknowledges the inexhaustibility of its naming and its making.”
Joyce Wieland, Heart On
Joyce Wieland was recently the subject of a retrospective at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in Toronto. I finally saw it over the holidays, though sadly I missed the opportunity to do so with Traces’ redoubtable editor. A Canadian, Wieland (1930-1998) split her time between Toronto and New York and was an activist and nationalist in the time of Pierre…
Contributor Sightings
The Traces community out in the wild…
The Colosseum: A New Journal of Arts and Letters
This new journal features new work from many members of the Traces community! Consider subscribing or submitting your own work to this new, exciting journal.
The Colosseum “will publish new poetry, fiction, essays, and reviews in hopes of enlivening contemporary literature, renewing our culture, and supporting the return to literary craft and intellectual and spiritual depth in the arts.”
Greening the White Cube: Josh Tiessen’s new Substack newsletter!
From Tiessen: “I am excited to launch a newsletter featuring my paintings, essays, lectures, and films, exploring the intersection of creativity, ecology, and spirituality. This will include my free Josh Tiessen Insider Report, an occasional update for my art exhibitions, public talks, print releases, books, and more.”
Josh Nadeau launches new book: Heaven Meets Earth: A 40-Day Journey of Transformation Through the Nicene Creed
In Heaven Meets Earth, philosopher-artist Josh Nadeau, creator of Sword and Pencil, invites you to explore the Nicene Creed in this 40-day devotional journey of transformation for everyday saints. With his iconographic-style art and his insightful words, Josh brings the traditional to the present day in this visually inspired exploration of the faith.
Do you have a publication, event, or milestone you’d like to share with the Traces community? Submit your news to be featured in a future edition of “Contributor Sightings.”
Ordinary Time
Things we’re reading and listening to in our spare time…
David Blackwood: Myth & Legend
This month, I’ve spent a lot of time with the works of the Canadian printmaker, David Blackwood. The current exhibition at the Art Gallery of Ontario, “David Blackwood: Myth & Legend,” is one of the best exhibitions I’ve seen at the AGO since the Rubens exhibit in 2019.
Rather than repeating myself too much here, I’d like to direct you to my personal Substack, The North Facing Window, launched this week. There, you can find my first post introducing the life and work of David Blackwood, with additional posts on specific aspects of his work to follow in the coming weeks.
The North Facing Window is a place for my personal reflections on Canadian art and writing, which I hope will be of interest to many of our Traces readers.
Wellwater by Karen Solie
Karen Solie is perhaps one of Canada’s most internationally recognized poets, making a name for herself in Canada, the USA, and the UK. Her most recent collection, Wellwater, was published with Picador Poetry and House of Anansi Press in April 2025. So far, the collection has been awarded the 2025 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, the Forward Prize for Best Collection of Poetry, and was a CBC, Observer, Financial Times, and Guardian Best Book of 2025. On January 18th, the winner of the esteemed T. S. Eliot Prize will be announced, for which Solie’s Wellwater is a finalist in the running.
I have been rereading Solie’s collection, and I plan to share some extensive thoughts on her work in the coming weeks. For now, I’ll share a poem from the collection and simply encourage readers to purchase this brilliantly executed collection from perhaps Canada’s best living poet.
Community Events & Opportunities
Call for Submissions: Poems for Persons of Interest
Poems for Persons of Interest is now open to submissions for their March issue. Submission window closes on February 10th.
David Blackwood: Myth & Legend
The David Blackwood Exhibition is now open at the Art Gallery of Ontario until July 26, 2026.
ZOOM Seminar: Faith, Forgiveness & Fortitude in Jane Eyre
Shemaiah Gonzalez, author of Undaunted Joy: The Revolutionary Act of Cultivating Delight, is running an online seminar on Faith, Forgiveness & Fortitude in Jane Eyre. Sessions take place on Wednesdays for the months of February, and spaces are filling quickly!
