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In the early 1970s Vici Johnstone was a young woman with questions about her identity. "I'd go into the libraries and what you'd find in the libraries way back then was mostly medical," she recalls. "Medical descriptions of this condition called homosexuality."

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Many Canadian women hold a place in popular culture as iconic writers. From Lucy Maud Montgomery to Margaret Atwood to Alice Munro, women loom large in the Canadian literary scene. When it comes to the contemporary literature scene, female writers are still struggling to be acknowledged and heard.

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The Canada Council for the Arts is reinventing itself for the better according to new CEO Simon Brault.

The council is developing a new funding model, which will be put into action in April 2017, that is a radical departure from the way the council has been run for decades Brault says.

"The way we approach funding is now less the way it was imagined in the 1960s and more the way it should be imagined in 2016," Brault says.

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This post is reprinted with permission from 49thShelf.com. Follow the link to see more great features and to explore the more than 80,000 Canadian books listed on the site.

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"Never explain, never retract, never apologize, just get the thing done and let them howl."

- Nellie McClung, suffragist, writer and activist

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Andrea Bull wasn't quite sure what to expect when she asked her brother Robert to illustrate the quirky alphabet inspired children's book she'd written. Robert, who was diagnosed with autism at the age of four, had been drawing for years. But what would he produce when faced with lines like "alligators eating anchovies on an airplane?"

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2015 brought Canada many things: a new sex-ed curriculum in Ontario schools, a new prime minister, and a new agreement at the Paris Climate Conference. But what about the world of literature? If you're a few chapters behind in your CanLit news here's an overview to help catch you up.

Increased funding for Canada's Council for the arts

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Rashmi Luther looked around at the first, second, and third-generation immigrant women in the audience for the launch of Resilience and Triumph at Octopus Books in Ottawa Dec. 3.

"I don't want you to be shy," she said.

"You're not subjects in somebody else's research. You're not characters in somebody else's stories. You're telling your own narrative."

The applause was thunderous.

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"One of the most important books of the last 50 years" writes world-renowned primatologist Jane Goodall in her foreword to Steven Druker's tome Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, an alarming peek behind the curtain that shrouds the science of genetically engineered food.

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