My debut novel, Temporary Palaces, centers around a short-lived illegal squat in Ottawa, the city where I grew up. In part, it is a tribute to a real squat opened by activists in 2002. Their goal was to bring attention to an emerging housing crisis that, now, twenty-plus years later, has become endemic to the city and has come to define urban life across North America.
The fictional squat is just one of the many creative solutions to cheap living that form the backdrop for the punk, art, and activist communities that populate Temporary Palaces. Sprawling industrial lofts-turned-artist studios, communal punk houses, urban campsites on the secret fringes of downtown, ephemeral concert venues and art installations. These spaces mirror places I lived and frequented. A series of cheap lofts and apartments in post-referendum Montreal allowed me to dedicate time to working on my zine Ghost Pine – which is how I became a writer.
Creativity requires space, and time. Inexpensive living goes hand in hand with new movements in art and enables the conditions for political ferment. From a Booker-winning novel to surreal graphics, on this list I recommend titles that feature (or were created within) alternative living arrangements and forms of community-making, most with a punk or anarchist bent.
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