Canadian publisher Wolsak and Wynn has launched a new online magazine called House Style, which will feature fiction, poetry and essays with a Canadian slant. As publisher Noelle Allen says in her thoughtful piece “Why We’re Not Afraid to Be Provincial,” readers want more Canada.

Canada is beautiful and complicated, pieced together over the lands of many Indigenous nations who still struggle for autonomy today. Our history is breathtaking and bloody, not boring. Our people are fascinating and dynamic. Why wouldn’t we want to delve into these stories? Why wouldn’t we want to publish them? Why wouldn’t we try to share them across provincial lines? The life you live in Fredericton is very different from the life you live in Hamilton and not at all like your life in Calgary. The stories, poems, songs and art from each city are equally different and fascinating. Why don’t we know them as well as those stories streaming to us from the States?

I had the privilege of writing one of the first essays featured on House Style, “Conjuring a Magical Canada with Canadian Urban Fantasy.” I consider a number of Canadian urban fantasy books and try to get to the heart of how Canadian urban fantasy may be different from other works in the genre — and why we need Canadian urban fantasy at the moment.

I hope you’ll give the essay a read and then check out some of the writers mentioned in it. They include:

• Jes Battis
• Kristi Charish
• Andrew Kaufman
• Chadwick Ginther
• David Neil Lee
• JR McConvey
• Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Corey Redekop
• Eden Robinson
• Andrew Sullivan
• Drew Hayden Taylor
• Richard Van Camp
• Katie Welch
• Thomas Wharton
• Robert J. Wiersema