October 13, 2026

Dish, by Nancy Jo Cullen

While it’s true that Nancy Jo Cullen had me at hello with the Brazilian wax-inspired story “Brenda’s Bush” from her 2013 fiction debut, Canary, she has managed to KEEP me—through 2019’s The Western Alienation Merit Badge and now her new novel Dish—with her keen eye for the perfect detail, her characters’ offbeat insider/outsider perspectives, her fantastic sense of humour, and a prose style whose rhythms I just can’t get enough of.

In Dish (which is just as good as its cover promises!), chef Frida Davis-Lefebvre is already back in her BC hometown with her tail between her legs after the failure of her big-shot Toronto restaurant. To add insult to injury, her new job at a local hotel brings her back into connection with her once-upon-a-time fiance to whom she’s still most explicably attracted. And speaking of blasts from the past, Perry—a down-and-out whose single connection to Frida had been the sperm donation that resulted in her conception decades before—has washed up at Frida’s moms’ house where he’s staying as he tries to put his life back together.

Dish is the story of Frida, and also of Perry, navigating these relationship tangles amidst the twists and turns of life as they try to move forward, stay sober, and figure out both where they’re going and how to get over where they’ve been. A celebration of queer family and chosen family, Dish is a love story—and a most compelling one—on so many levels, and an absolute delight.