Literature
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Words Out There
Women Poets in Atlantic Canada
Edited by Jeanette Lynes
“A book of women poets in Atlantic Canada — not a moment too soon.” —PK Page “Every once in a while an anthology comes along that feels absolutely necessary. It tells us something we need to know about a certain group of people or it alerts us to significant goings-on outside the centres of influence and power. This is such a book. But beyond what it tells us of women poets who write out of the Atlantic provinces, it demands our attention because the writing is so… (more information)
Two of Me
Kim Atwood
“As a therapist, I keep an eye out for creative works which capture the truth of childhood trauma or of the healing process. Kim Atwood’s book, Two of Me, is rich and full in its detailed description of the imaginative and real world of a young girl-child growing up in a fishing village on the seacoast; it is unflinching in its portrayal of the violence and chaos which reign in the home of an alcoholic parent. Atwood’s characters reveal themselves in page after page of simple,… (more information)
The People and Josh Wilson
John Reid
Josh Wilson’s grade nine history project leads him stumbling into a parallel world where Native American people have not been displaced by colonists. Instead, the People thrive in a powerful domain and co-exist with small colonies in Massachusetts and New York. Josh has only a few days to find his way back to his own world. His journey among leaders of the colonists and the Mahican people is an action packed trip through an alternate history that inspires readers to question the past and rethink… (more information)
Quilt
Donna E. Smyth
Quilt is a remarkable work. With a unique and compelling voice, Donna Smyth tells a story that is full of complex relationships, raw domestic violence, and a saving compassion. As I read I kept thinking, “Why have I heard nothing about this novel?” —Budge Wilson, author of The Leaving and The Courtship Quilt affirms that women’s creativity has a long tradition, that it has always been collective, a web of women remembering the traces of the past, reworking them, interweaving… (more information)
Pubs, Pulpits and Prairie Fires
Elroy Deimert
History professor Paul Wessner hangs out at BJ’s Bar and Cue Club on Tuesday nights sharing his accounts of the On-to-Ottawa Trek and the Regina Riot in 1935. Due to local interest in his research, he invites Doc Savage and Matt Shaw, real-life leaders on the Trek, to deliver first-hand accounts of the Trek and the Riot. He encourages listeners to contribute when no guests are scheduled to tell their stories. The narratives broaden to the evolution of the Social Credit and CCF prairie fires… (more information)
Passion Fruit Tea
Eleonore Schönmaier
These are candid but sensitive stories about the relationship between parents and children, whether they live and work in a fishing village in Nova Scotia or in Northern Canada. “Passion Fruit Tea is one gutsy brew. Eleonore Schönmaier’s men and women will win hearts and break them, too.” —Linda Svendsen, author of Marine Life (more information)
Nail Builders Plan for Strength and Growth
Poems
Kathy Mac
“Poets with Kathy Mac’s impeccable technical skill are not too hard to find, but very few can touch her for emotional power, thematic range, gentle humour or quiet courage. As Robert Heinlein said of another writer, these poems should be served with a whisk broom, so that the customer may brush the sawdust off himself when he gets back up.” —Spider Robinson, author of Telempath (1976), The Free Lunch (2001) and many others in between On Mac’s 1991 chapbook, Dust From… (more information)
Lily
Christina Gunn
He did appear, but slowly and cautiously. The lead rider, they all knew, although mainly from stories. Both captors and captives grew silent as they watched her. Slowly, looking puzzled, she walked her horse in a circle. Something caught her eye and she wheeled the beast around. ”It’s a trap,” she screamed, but already the forest rang with swords clashing. “Get out!” Her stallion plunged into the fray as she beat down the Foresters trying to grasp the greatest prize… (more information)
Growing Up Salty and Other Plays
Natalie Meisner
The questions raised in Natalie Meisner’s plays will follow you out the door. At their root is the ghost that haunts the modern theatre: What is the role of live theatre in the information age? Why is it necessary? What do we get from the experience that cannot be had in any other artistic medium? As the plays progress, elements of parody and slapstick are used in tandem with highly-charged dramatic moments in order to challenge the traditional role of the audience member. (Am I an observer… (more information)
Getting Away
K.K. Richardson
from Getting Away… “After trying numerous times to get Peter and Teddy and the nightmare scene of the sliding car off my mind, I finally got up and lit the fire. I walked around and around the tiny area, colliding with the rockers of my favorite chair or avoiding shin hits on the sharp-edged table covered with magazines. I didn’t even light a candle. The glow from the fire lightened the gloom a bit but my own gloom I could hardly deal with. I should have spent more time… (more information)
Drive-by Saviours
Chris Benjamin
Demoralized by his job and dissatisfied with his life, Mark punches the clock with increasing indifference. He wanted to help people; he’d always believed that as social worker he would be able to make a difference in people’s lives. But after six years of bureaucracy and pushing paper Mark has lost hope. All that changes when he meets Bumi, an Indonesian restaurant worker. Moved from his small fishing village and sent to a residential school under the authoritarian Suharto regime… (more information)
Dim Time and History on a Garrison Clock
A Collection of Poetry
Margaret Benjamin Hammer
”This is modern poetry: its eye always open for the telling image, ear cocked to an internal music, and tongue ready to taste the tartness of irony…. These poems are not only thoughtful in an intellectual sense but in a compassionate one as well. Peggy’s poems delve into the human condition and reach out to the animate world around us. In all, there is praise for the passing moment and a catching at it with the gossamer mesh of imagination.” —Harry Thurston, poet… (more information)
Deep Roots
Kathleen Tudor
It’s the early 1950s, and Ira and Lydia Hardy, in their 70s, join their neighbours and large family to face the challenge of their lives. The government has chosen their fishing community for the construction of a provincial park. The community rallies against the plan, encouraged by Ira’s gentle and persistent efforts and those of his radical daughter Sal, home from college to help in the protest. Between lively gatherings in the family home in Collupy Point, Ira tramps across woodlands… (more information)
Counting Crows
Jenni Blackmore
This collection of stories and poems charts various pathways and detours in the universal quest for love. It’s a journey towards joy which begins with the call of a frog searching for a mate and ends as a woman inadvertently thwarts her own desire as she attempts to construct the perfect token of her love. Between these two way points, past is tightly bound to present and ready to snap back into focus at the slightest provocation. Needy characters form unlikely liaisons, they stumble over… (more information)
Conductor of Waves
Stories
Darcy Rhyno
”Darcy Rhyno’s stories evoke the rich history of place in a way that makes you care about it and want to know more. More than this, he snaps the reader awake by layine bare the bones of a character’s life. It is this ability to see what’s out there, and offer it back to us, unflinchingly and compellingly, that drives Rhyno’s stopries home.” Anne Simpson, author of Canterbury Beach ”Darcy Rhyno’s stories eloquently evoke the experience of growing… (more information)
Chasing Freedom
Gloria Ann Wesley
“...This novel of a revolutionary era, of Yanks and Africans “chasing freedom,” is arresting, with startling events, intriguing characters, and vivid language. ...“ — George Elliott Clarke The American Revolutionary War is being waged, and the fate of slaves in the colonies is on the line. Sarah Redmond, a slave on a South Carolina plantation, watches with a heavy heart as her father steals away in the dead of the night to join the British army, enticed by promises… (more information)
Back Talk
Plays of Black Experience
Louise Delisle
”To read Delisle’s plays is to be sat right sown on the front stoop or round the kitchen table of Africadian fact. She puts us there, centre stage, right in the midst of the country-and-town reality of The People philosophizin, drinkin. singin, prayin, quiltin,laughin, gamblin, churchgoin, runnin, braidin hair, lovin, workin, fightin, talkin back to cops an such, and just keepin on keepin on. Delisle’s sociology is exactly who we be, so doncha get upset; her vision of our history… (more information)
Among the Saints
Selected Stories
Donna E. Smyth
”Donna E. Smyth — adventures with words; she is always doing something new and unique. Beginning with her visceral morality, her stories are startling, nerve wracking, provocative: she combines Angela Carter’s beautiful style with Patricia Highsmith’s malevolent atmospheres. Smyth shatters clichés and dismisses mere sociology. She knows that pleasure is besieged by terror. She tells us what we don’t want to know, but need to know. Smyth’s writing disturbs… (more information)
Alice The Musical
Peter Oliver
Alice, The Musical is a classic tale of making theatre happen. In the inspiring words of Mickey Rooney (Babes in Arms, 1939), “Hey kids, let’s put on a show. We can do it, and we can do it here!” Or, in Lewis Carroll logic, “Don’t just do something! Stand there! Something may happen!” And something really did happen. In a small Nova Scotian town, over the past three years, a group of sixty-odd people has produced quality musicals in its new theatre converted from… (more information)
The Hundefraulein Papers
Poems
Kathy Mac
Hunde/fräulein: Dog/nanny. For five and a half years (1995-2001) Kathy Mac lived in Sambro Head, NS, looking after anywhere from four to twelve English Setters. The post entailed maintaining the ocean-side doghouse and looking after the many, varied houseguests of the hundemutter — ocean activist Elisabeth Mann Borgese, youngest daughter of Thomas Mann. These poems take their tone from the days and dogs that inspired them — by turns extravagant, intense, celebratory, wistful. (more information)
Escape!
Young Adult Fiction
John Reid
The exciting events of this tale begin with young Russian emigre, Alexi Gertoff, meeting a mysterious boy on the streets of Amherst, Nova Scotia. The boy, who barely speaks English, turns out to be the son of Leon Trotsky, and he has come to town to spring his father from the wartime prison camp. Alexi and his family become involved in a dangerous attempt to reunite Trotsky with his wife and children. Based on the real-life imprisonment of Trotsky at the Amherst prison camp during the month of April… (more information)