The Seaboard Review of Books: Monday Edition
April 6, 2026
Editor's Note: I've chosen to slightly alter our issues' scheduling. I have been publishing a Monday and a Wednesday edition for a while now, along with the occasional “Throwback Thursday” review. I want to send out as many reviews as I can, but I would rather not put more emails in your inbox than are absolutely necessary. Thus, I have determined that there will be a Thursday edition (instead of a Wednesday one) every other week in addition to the regular weekly Monday issue. Throwback Thursday reviews will be published in the weeks when there isn't a Thursday edition.
In short, you will receive two regular emails every week if you are an email subscriber. I hope that this is satisfactory for our regular readers! —James
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In this issue:
Night Birds by Margaret Sweatman (Fiction)
Getting Cozy with A.L Jensen’s Hygge and Homicide (Fiction)
The Art of Getting Lost and Found by Glenna Turnbull (Fiction)
Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story (Non-Fiction)
Do It Wrong: How to be a poet in the twenty-first century by Derek Beaulieu (Non-Fiction)
Thanks for reading this issue of The Seaboard Review of Books!
James M. Fisher, editor-in-chief
Fiction
Night Birds by Margaret Sweatman
I was driving home late one evening last November when I stopped at an exceptionally long red light. The light’s timing was likely on a regular interval, but the lack of any other vehicles combined with the glooming dark stretched out the moment. I looked up through my windshield and saw a burst of black silhouettes, a flurry of unidentifiable birds bre…
Getting Cozy with A.L Jensen’s Hygge and Homicide
Hyyge and Homicide is the first in A.L. Jensen’s self-published Nordic Cozy Mystery series. This cozy mystery (i.e., a mystery involving a crime-solver who is not a law enforcement officer of some description) is set in the fictional town of Lakewood, intended by the author to be a stand-in for “Anytown,” Northern Ontario.
The Art of Getting Lost and Found by Glenna Turnbull
While Glenna Turnbull has previously published well-received short fiction, The Art of Getting Lost and Found is her first novel, one that clearly maps a successful future as a writer. This debut work tracks the lives of two women, one known as “Shorty,” in 1887 Newfoundland, and the other, Maggie, visiting her ancestral home there for the first time i…
Non-Fiction
Shirley: An Indian Residential School Story
The background: grim, grey Shingwauk Hall, once an Indian residential school, now a historic site, in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario.
Do It Wrong: How to be a poet in the twenty-first century by Derek Beaulieu
“Do it wrong,” Derek Beaulieu urges his fellow poets. The rewards for doing it right are so meagre. In doing it right, you risk your soul. Well, he doesn’t say “soul.” But he would exhort us to eschew the poetry economy, with its contests and winners, for the poetry ecosystem, wherein each poet contributes vital soil to the flowering of our collective a…
Poetry
Spruce to Cedar by Lasänmą
From the spruce of Dakwäkäda (Haines Junction, Yukon) to the cedar of British Columbia’s Lower Mainland and back again, Lasänmą charts her passage in a series of delicately drawn poetic observations. The poems are untitled; instead each piece is given geographical location in the form of a thumbnail image: a mountain peak in Southern Yukon for the pie…
In Memoriam
Gordon Phinn
Sadly, Gordon Phinn, a regular contributor to The Seaboard Review of Books, passed away on April 4, 2026 after a brief illness. His reviews and his “New, Old & Notable” column were an important part of our site. You may find all his reviews and columns here. Our sympathies are with his wife and family.
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