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.
How to Bildungsroman at Twenty-Eight Years Old
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.
A Grief Revisited
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.
The Sun vs. The Moon
“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.”
If You Find this Chair Blank
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.
Discovering Amy
Amy yearns for something more than her life in Brisbane, Australia. She just doesn’t expect Noah.
Los Desaparecidos
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
Between the Lines
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.
My Mind Is On Other Things
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.
The Window On Gesia Street
“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.”
568 Miles
"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.
Raised By Wolves, Kind Of
The best kind of family is the one we choose for ourselves, but sometimes they’re a little furrier than anticipated.
Beginnings, Middles, and Ends
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.
The Second-Floor Riverside
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.