Friday, October 14th, 2011
What an honour to find Pathologies on Charlotte Gill’s recommended reading list at Canadian Bookshelf. She calls it a “literary antidote” to the lately much-abused memoir. Can’t help but like that!
Charlotte’s most recent book is Eating Dirt: Deep Forests, Big Timber, and Life with the Tree-Planting Tribe, which was recently shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize.
Friday, March 11th, 2011
….winner of the Edna Award for Creative Nonfiction from The New Quarterly. I was the judge. The award was presented last night in Toronto. I guarantee that Heather’s piece, “The Mr. Shredder Man,” will make you laugh even as it shreds your heart. It’s wry, wise, and beautifully wrought. You can find it in The New Quarterly Xtra.
My task was to pick just one winner from a selection of thirteen of the best nonfiction pieces published in the previous year. I had a hard time narrowing the field. So congratulations also to The New Quarterly’s many wonderful nonfiction contributors, and to editor Kim Jernigan, for consistently publishing such interesting work.
Wednesday, March 9th, 2011
Hardworking Melissa Krone of The New Quarterly must have thought I was the rudest writer on their rosters; she kept sending emails asking to interview me and I kept “ignoring” her. The culprit was my spam filter. But at last we connected, and she’s posted an interview we did at The Literary Type and on The New Quarterly’s website. Thanks, Melissa, for your thought-provoking questions and for the opportunity to share my thoughts.
There’s still time to enter The New Quarterly’s annual contests: details on their site.
Tuesday, March 1st, 2011
I’m delighted to say that an excerpt of my essay “Library Haunting” appears in the March/April edition of The Utne Reader. It appeared originally in The New Quarterly, where it won second place in the Edna Staebler Contest for the Personal Essay last year. Which reminds me: Enter soon! Details are available on The New Quarterly’s website; the deadline is March 28th.
The editors at The Utne Reader were wonderful to work with. Brad Zellar’s sensitive and respectful incisions are hardly noticeable. It’s an honour (or should I say honor?) to appear in this publication, which prides itself on selecting the best from the alternative presses.
They also picked up a piece by Laurie Block that originally appeared in Prairie Fire. Hooray for Canada’s “little” magazines.
Wednesday, November 17th, 2010
I’m proud to say that an essay of mine, “Library Haunting” has placed in The New Quarterly’s first essay contest, named in honour of Edna Staebler. You can find it in the latest issue, along with first place winner Theresa Kishkan’s magnificent piece. It’s called “Arbutus menziesii: The make-up secrets of the Byzantine Madonnas,” and if that doesn’t pique your interest, you’re crazy. Her essay is beautiful, thoughtful, surprising, and deep—everything an essay ought to be. You’ll also find a fresh, funny, and honest piece on early motherhood by Kerry Clare, whose reviews and interviews with authors I’ve been following with interest for some time. It’s an honour to appear here with both of them.
The entire issue is packed with great stuff, including prize-winning poems by Jeanette Lynes, Patricia Young, and Kerry Ryan, fiction by Isabel Huggan, Holley Rubinsky, and Jessica Westhead, a reminiscence by the wonderful Sarah Selecky, an introduction to A.J. Somerset, winner of this year’s Metcalf Rooke award, and a series of amazing portraits of writers by Alan Drayton.
I was fortunate enough to win the inaugural Edna Staebler prize from TNQ in 2008. Then, it was not a contest; instead, judges chose from a selection of nonfiction published in the journal during the previous year. So the prize came as a total shock.
It was just before Christmas, a Friday evening, and I was sitting down to supper with my family, when the doorbell rang. With some irritation (imagining it was somebody soliciting for something or other) I went to answer. The mailman handed me a package. I looked at the return address and wondered why in heaven’s name Kim Jernigan would be sending me something at this time of year. I was pretty sure I had already received my issue of the magazine, and besides, this was heavier.
I opened it up to find two cookbooks by Edna Staebler. Two cookbooks that my mother’s friends had used back in the 80s. What the heck?
And then I found the envelope. In it, the most generous letter imaginable from Kim, generous words from that year’s judge, Elizabeth Ruth, and an even more generous cheque.
What better Christmas gift, for a writer?
Thank you, again, New Quarterly, for the continuously evolving gift of new and exciting writing.
