The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Chesley Davis, a student in the Visual and Digital Arts (VADA) program at Humber College.

He chose architecture for its permanence, the grandeur of a beautiful creation, a perfect marriage of mathematics, engineering, history and art from a mere plot of land.

She had given the same box to all of the boys in our class. You didn’t think I was the only recipient, did you?

When I was a little girl growing up in the sloping valleys of Montalbán, I had a dog named Chuwwey.

As I looked at my mom, the woman who has been my role model my entire life, I felt the feeling in my stomach disappear. Maybe I hadn’t accomplished what my mom had at my age, but that didn’t have to mean I failed.

Truth be told, I’ve been possessed by a ghost ever since I was born, passed down by my parents through a generational curse. The spirit, invisible to others, revels in my torment. Try as I might, this phantom of mine refuses to pass into the afterlife.

In Ethiopia, I was just a woman, but in Canada, I am a Black woman.

“I want to go with you to your next appointment,” Lisabetta said. What she meant was, “I never want us to be apart again.”

Jonsey’s heart was beating furiously. No time to be scared, she thought to herself. For this, she had to be angry. Angry at the ground people for shattering all the peace and making her scared. Angry at the ground people for making her hide in a corner.

Chloe had to go home soon but she wasn’t ready to face her parents.  She’d failed them by her very biology. It wasn’t fair. She was their only child. She was expected to give them grandchildren, wasn’t she? What was her purpose if she couldn’t?

You are my companion, my purpose in life, the reason I wake up. Everything is just fine.

The pile of tapes in the trash can had started to melt, the black plastic bubbling and warping, exposing the spools of film underneath.

The people that I care the most about in the world now know me, the real me, without any walls to hide behind or masks to cover my true face. I’m free.

“You know, there’s a word for taking something that isn’t yours. It’s called stealing.”

There is some sort of stigma with learning disabilities, but often you can’t tell when someone has one.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Ebru Kur, a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

She was profoundly comforted by the knowledge that Joseph was inside her. Over the course of each day, her intestines would absorb as much of him as they could. Then he would be in her blood.

I experienced early a challenge that comes ultimately to every parent: the release of control that our children demand of us as they grow. There is, in fact, no grand plan. We give them life, but we raise them in conditions not entirely of our own making.

Phil had a personality as big as the outdoors, whereas I could barely fill a small closet, but I was still cute—as my mother kept reassuring me.

Violet blinked, once, then twice. She opened her eyes to find a meadow stretching into the horizon and her back leaning against something hard. With a gasp, she glanced down only to find herself in the body she would inhabit every night.

The living room saw wars and alliances, a history only known to the citizens of the great tiny country that was held between those very walls. The sisterly fights over clothes, the friends that turn into public enemies in my grandma's eyes if they dare to set an eye on her daughters.

There was a sense of honor that she's walking in the steps of her ancestors from millions of years ago. As badly as she wanted to analyze the carvings and potentially find something that had not been recorded, she wanted to get to the end of the tunnel to see what made the archeologists stop even more.

If I had a heart with which to love him even more, I am not sure how I would survive even seconds without him by my side. I am happy that I do not have a heart with which to love him, because absence can no longer make my heart grow fonder.

Now, as I look fondly at them, I realise even if they were laid to rest, their importance still lingers every time I decide it’s time to let them go. I suddenly understand hoarders and their reluctance, and I see now I am no different.

My eyes shoot open to a stark white ceiling and dim lighting, palms sweaty and chest tight. The suction cups and needles​,​ attaching my arms and legs to the simulation equipment​,​ feel sticky and sharp​, ​and the leather ​pullout​​ ​chair I’m on​ ​suddenly feels like I’m sitting on needles.

I find a tombstone that is unmarked, or perhaps so faded by time and neglect that it may as well be. The plot has been recaptured by nature; no doubt aided by the body below as it fed this overgrowth.

Often change comes when one is done putting up with what they believe they no longer deserve, maybe never did. But for that to happen, the sphere of pessimism must evoke a desire for a life of optimism.

Because of his perceived love for her, he spent every waking day and night lying in bed alone, looking out of his bedroom window and knowing that she was out there, loving someone else, and spending fruitful nights in this new lover’s arms; he, on the other hand, grieved the loss of her from his day-to-day life, wishing that her love for another were not true.

I learned from him that adults are confused about everything, they just don't like to show it because they’re embarrassed.

One of my earliest memories is of being ripped away from the only world I knew—my mom, dad, and all my brothers and sisters gone forever, it seemed.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Jasmine Cowan, a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

You never realize how good you have it until it’s too late. One day you could have everything and everyone you wanted in your life. The next it could be all gone, and you cannot do anything about it.

I couldn’t put my finger on why he trained so hard. Whenever I asked him, he would shrug off my question and say, “I have to look out for my family.”

So, four years later, in another restless summer with my up-north trip just days away, I turned back to Wild.

I’ve seen so much, but I don’t feel wise. My brain is a dizzy mess of too many memories.

Who would have thought that the best decision I could’ve ever made was to jump out of a bedroom window in the farthest corner of my great-aunt’s house and run as fast and as far as I could?

Even though we shared the same culture and beliefs, we were very different, starting with the obvious: the colour of my skin.

My body was still and shrunk like a wilting flower, hugging itself gently, compensating for the bitter battle I was losing inside.

It starts with a house in the heart of the French Quarter in New Orleans; or rather, it starts with a baby born in that house in 1858, because doesn’t every story begin with a baby?

I had a mission: to replace my identity as the quiet girl with something else. Anything else, really. But I didn’t have quite a lot to be known for.

The knot in my stomach now felt big enough to consume me entirely, and the tears in my eyes stung like a thousand bees. There was no way I could do this.

The Meadow Branching Out of Toronto is where my heart lies. It’s where my heart cries over the idea of lacking success in life, but it knows well that I will be safe in my meadow if I take good care of it.

I had been to the observation level so many times during my work hours, but I never got a chance to sit there and observe. This time, I had nowhere to go and nowhere to be.

Ignorance is the only thing that doesn’t have any limits, everything else ends up finding its boundaries sooner or later.

Somehow, you turn out just like me in a dream. In another time I would’ve thought it a bad dream, awful even, but now it’s just a dream.

Sometimes I wish my sister was dead. Perhaps this thought is too macabre. But, given the events that have taken place over the past 48 hours, it’s hard to get it off my mind.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Greig Sanders, a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

I've always thought the hardest part of writing is being read. When the story is a personal experience, then it’s even worse. Being read is the pinnacle of exposition, a nightmare for any introvert who writes precisely to avoid verbalizing anything.

Entertain us. We are the late-night hoards. The chronically tired. The unemployed. Desperate for a quick fix—a date, a dream, a reason, and a meaning. The ones who exist on the edges.

One of my earliest memories is what everyone in our family calls “The Explosion”. My grandmother told the story at every gathering—no Christmas dinner or family reunion passed without a telling…

The doorbell rang, and I rushed to let Dr. Algu in before she might knock or ring again. I was trying to keep things hush-hush, but that was silly of me. These things never go down easy.

“Don’t go chasing waterfalls . . .” Ugh! The year was 1995 and the radio was still playing that TLC song every fucking day! Whatever, it was finally summertime in the Pacific Northwest.

The painter had a simple problem: he could not paint. This persisted for months. Each time he raised his brush, his hand would falter and flaccidly drop to his side.

Flicking the lighter on and off, Rajeev walks in and closes the door. He looks around, realizes he is in his roommate Anthony’s room, and walks out.

When my Ma was angry at me, she would call me by my full name. Other times though, I was either “tsai,” which means “puppy” in Mandarin, or “bao,” which means “baby.”

She watched her brother’s lumbering figure walk the half-block from the corner store toward his apartment, barely lifting his feet off the ground with each step. Even from that distance, his sister, Germaine, could hear him mumble and swear about the slippery sidewalk and the slushy wet snow that slowed his progress.

Margot was eight years old when she first saw God. She was sitting in the Cathedral, her eyes heavy from the incense that burned from the thurible.

Caked in rich mud, it lies in the husband’s gloved hand, plucked from the garden with an accidental carrot and a deliberate handful of weeds. It smells green.

He drops his hands from my hips, grabs a box out of his pocket and gets down on one knee. I want to remember this moment for eternity; I take a deep breath in and slowly close my eyes to cherish this moment.

Reflecting on who I was back then, I assume I took Maria for granted, like everything else in my life at that time. That young teenage boy was filled with naïve understandings and confused perceptions.

He knew his affectionate touches were annoying Rebecca, like a puppy seeking affirmation. Her shoulders tensed in anticipation when he passed by to put the plates back in the cupboard. When he didn’t graze a finger, her shoulders slouched, and the absence of contact felt worse than if he’d never touched her at all.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Patsy Wisniewski. Patsy is a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

My bed was comfortable, my face sank into my pillow, my blanket was pulled up to my chin, and I was huddled into a ball knowing tomorrow’s worries belonged to tomorrow.

I hoped the feng shui would fix it, but it appears all I accomplished was an accidental workout.

There’s danger on either side of me—I’m sitting dead between whatever’s supposed to happen next and what just happened.

Two months into the pandemic—one and a half months longer than anyone thought we’d be in this mess—and I had slowly started unraveling.

How successful would you be if even the person teaching you doesn’t believe you can be?

You like Grandma’s house more than you like your own. That’s what you tell your mom even though it probably hurts her feelings.

Being a woman is hard. Being a woman of colour is even more difficult. Being a woman of colour with a medical condition can feel like an impossible existence.

Lost Lake and its forests occupied such sweet brilliance in Kell’s memories; they smelled of incense and leaf litter and occupied the corners of the cabin like dust motes in sunlight.

We cannot wait until it is too late for us, or for someone we know, to become an ally and an advocate.

In the beginning, when I started to eat meat again, it felt strange. I felt like I was doing something wrong.

Being a good teacher is like being a good architect.

It’s like I don’t quite meet the criteria to be in this exclusive club; no matter what I do and what I face, there will always be someone who thinks I don’t belong.

Recounting each trouble in my life is getting harder and harder to accomplish without breaking down in some way.

He had attempted to cheat death; instead, he’d invited it into his home.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Meaha Caudle-Choi. Meaha is a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

There’s a pressure in my chest and I can’t breathe, thinking I heard her voice—just there, beyond reach, in the dark.

I could tell he fascinated her, the way he seemed touched with magic dust.

It would make his father proud, he thought. To be the first to break a law.

In the beginning, there were seven. Rua. Oraiste. Bui. Uaine. Gorm. Cor. And Cair. And they were far from pure and solitary.

Seven years, seven shoes

True love waits, when you pay your dues.

“How long will it take, Schmidt?” I asked my junior officer.

He glanced at me. “We are almost here, Oberführer.”

You are the most prolific farmer in federation space. Today marks the sprouting of your two-trillionth concurrent ear of corn. The local news operation sent a crew to your cottage in the centre of the field to ask you about it.

Richard Morin creaked down the stairs to the storm cellar with a packet of letters and a bottle of cognac tucked under his arm.

The mental health counsellor said writing out my story might help. I don’t know about that, but here goes.

I have received much support for my transition. And suddenly, everyone wants me to go swimming all the time. They don’t understand that I don’t have a reflection in bodies of water.

It didn’t matter that Jane was 13. She loved spending time with her mom. They were tight—Gilmore Girls tight.

If you’re not careful, a marriage will swallow you up.

I haven't had a clear thought in days. Not one word you are about to read has been written without a therapeutic-bordering-on-toxic level of coffee consumption beforehand.

The house was full of people, but none of them cared about the nine-year-old running in and out of their rooms.

The featured artist for this edition of HLR Spotlight is Anna Sergeevna Bondarenko. Anna is a student in the Visual & Digital Arts program, which is part of Humber’s Faculty of Media & Creative Arts.

A reporter takes a summer internship with the goal of leaving home and learning about his new career, only to discover he had more to learn about himself.

At the funeral service, I stood to read a poem and lost my cool. I choked on the lines and forgot how to read. The mask I worked so hard to create in high school shattered. The confident, at times arrogant, know-it-all me died that day.

“Well Re, here’s the thing,” Celine tells him. “I’m going back to the apartment and packing up everything that is mine and what I want to be mine, and I’m leaving.” Re opens his mouth, but Celine holds up her other hand, “Oh no, no, no. I’m not done.”

I move between my new, enclosed white walls as suspiciously as a foreigner might move through a new country—never mind that my skin is also dark, never mind that the metaphor has been reduced to my race. I stare at the new blankness at my door and feel it’s oddly familiar.

Amy yearns for something more than her life in Brisbane, Australia. She just doesn’t expect Noah.

The air is filled with anticipation, the kind just before fireworks. At least, that’s what it feels like for Rahel. It’s her very first time going abroad and her first time travelling without her parents

A young woman seeks her voice in a new language and culture. It’s not just learning words; it’s about finding the confidence to use them.

I was seventeen years old when my parents separated. At the time, some people (including my father) suggested the experience was probably easier on me than it would have been if I was younger. My experience, however, was something much different.

“There were no wanderers during the daytime on Gesia Street. Beggars sat against the walls of the brick buildings with red, swollen legs poking out from their torn trousers.”

"You're in the homestretch, Ethan, just forty-five more minutes," I told myself, trying to stay awake. It's a nine-hour drive from where I live in Portland, Maine to my parents’ house in Niagara Falls, Canada. I thought nine hours would be an easy drive to do alone. I was wrong.

The best kind of family is the one we choose for ourselves, but sometimes they’re a little furrier than anticipated.

Morning light filtered in through the billowy curtains, but there was no one to witness its beauty. The door of the wrought-iron fence banged softly against its side with the ocean wind. Inside, empty unmade beds, open cupboard drawers, and missing baggage could be found.

On the second floor of the Humber Lakeshore residence, tucked away in the corner beside the main elevators, there is a room dominated by machines where the residents become part of an endless cycle.