As we bear witness to this period of rapid change and global upheaval, our latest issue of Inventio features pieces that explore identity, culture, and the bittersweet and often strange nature of human relationships. In their intimate writings, our authors share flashes of beauty, awe-inspiring settings, and reflections on the delicate balance between life and death. They consider not only their place in the world, but also how their realities already position them within their larger contexts.
Our non-fiction pieces explore hidden perspectives, reshaping how we understand our human relationship to the natural or non-human world. Two of our poems examine the personal impacts of generational trauma and immigration, while another explores how identity is formed through history and memory. Our two fiction pieces take place ages apart—one follows a young soldier through the Vietnam war, and the other imagines an Earth centuries in the future, when time is running out for humanity. Our featured art piece evokes nostalgia through an intimate visualization of home and family ties. Altogether, these pieces move between real and imagined realities to take us into the worlds and lives of these fully realized characters.
Our team is truly grateful to all our incredible contributors for their beautiful work: Abbey Rain Hanson, Ambreen Rafique, Ani Teengs, Dylan Parkins, Illyria Volcansek, Lynnea Morales, Owen Argo, and Soraya Patel. Thank you for trusting us with your ideas. We hope that by inhabiting our author’s characters, our readers can develop new perspectives and make room for alternate ways of thinking and being.
—Written by Chanelle, AEiC, and edited by Madeline Sanguedolce, EiC
In this personal essay, the author researches the death process of whales to create new ways of understanding death for humans.
Written in the second person, this piece of creative nonfiction sees a woman address the crystal cave she descends to explore.
In this tender, yet profound poem, the speaker paints a picture of a vibrant teaching lodge and while reckoning with the violence of colonialism.
In this poem, the speaker contemplates the past lives of objects in a thrift store while coming to terms with their identity.
This poem explores the inherent misogyny rooted in womanhood and the pain of exclusion caused by a lack of representation.
A speculative fiction piece that imagines humanity thousands of years in the future and follows one man as he tries to save the human race from our dying sun.
The story of a young soldier forced to participate in the Vietnam war and how he copes with the violence raging around him.
Ba’s Bedroom is a linocut that depicts the bedroom of the artist’s grandmother in the author’s hope to “reclaim a sense of cultural connection.”
Writing is a road to discovery. We make and find meaning through writing, language, and symbols, and we use these to communicate what we’ve discovered: knowledge, worlds, people, ourselves. We write through various modes of expression in the hopes of leaving an imprint on the world for others to discover.
Inventio is a student-run online literary magazine that publishes these discoveries. Since its beginning in 2017, through York University’s Professional Writing Students’ Association, Inventio has been a platform for the unique talents of post-secondary students. Whether they are thoughtful compositions of fiction, non-fiction, poetry, or art, we share what you create.
We encourage creative expression in all forms, including experimental works that utilize, blend, and defy genre conventions. Much like its Latin root, Inventio serves as a canon for student invention that launches us into finding and establishing our own voices with the support of our writerly community.
We publish twice each academic year: April and December.
We would like to begin by acknowledging the Indigenous Peoples of all the lands that we are on today. While we meet today on a virtual platform, we would like to take a moment to acknowledge the importance of the lands, on which we each call home. We do this to reaffirm our commitment and responsibility in improving relationships between nations and to improve our own understanding of local Indigenous peoples and their cultures.
York University’s land acknowledgement may not represent the territory that you are currently on, and we would ask that if this is the case, you take responsibility to acknowledge the traditional territory that you are on and its current treaty holders.
York University acknowledges its presence on the traditional territory of many Indigenous Nations. The area known as Tkaronto has been care taken by the Anishinabek Nation, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, the Huron-Wendat. It is now home to many First Nation, Inuit and Métis communities.
We acknowledge the current treaty holders, the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. This territory is subject of the Dish With One Spoon Wampum Belt Covenant, an agreement to peaceably share and care for the Great Lakes region.
From coast to coast to coast, we acknowledge the ancestral and unceded territory of all the Inuit, Métis, and First Nations people that call this land home. Please join us in a moment of reflection to acknowledge the effect of residential schools and colonialism on Indigenous families and communities and to consider how it is our collective responsibility to recognize colonial and arrivant histories and present-day implications in order to honour, protect, and sustain this land.
In recognizing that these spaces occupy colonized First Nations territories and out of respect for the rights of the Indigenous people, please look for, in your own way, to engage in a spirit of reconciliation and collaboration.