Articles
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FictionFamily conflict, forgiveness, and rural life woven together in four-part novel
Farm women are the unsung heroes of the growth and prosperity of the Western provinces, and they’re not often recognized for their contributions,” declares author Gaylene Dutchyshen. Such is the case with the female characters in her debut novel, A Strange Kind of Comfort. -
Non-FictionEstablishing a Black Prairie literature tradition, starting with a paddler from 1873
The literary tradition of the Prairies – at least, the way it has often been presented in popular culture and in classrooms – has typically not included Black writers or histories. The Black Prairie Archives: An Anthology radically transforms what Prairie literature looks and sounds like, and establishes a Black Prairie literary tradition. -
FictionDystopian tale takes on climate change, but is primarily about family
Watershed has been a work in progress for over 10 years, says Calgary-based author Doreen Vanderstoop. -
FictionStories of doubt, faith, grace, and the grey areas in between
Winnipeg-based David Bergen’s Here the Dark is a collection of short stories and a novella, breathtaking and stop-you-in-your-tracks good. The settings range from the Prairies, to Honduras, to Vietnam, but the themes are a bit more fixed – good and evil, doubt and faith, and the grey areas in between. -
FictionCrime novel explores ‘how style and bombast trumps substance and truth’
Trying to build a fictitious story out of something horrible that happens all too often in real life can be challenging at best. Similar to Douglas Coupland’s 2003 novel, Hey Nostradamus!, the inciting incident in Brad Smith’s The Goliath Run is a fictional school shooting. But when Coupland wrote his book, school shootings were a much less frequent occurrence than they are these days. -
FictionShort story collection revolves around loss and wanting
British Columbia–based Traci Skuce’s debut collection of short stories, Hunger Moon, portrays a variety of characters who are spiritually hungry and wanting more from their lives, though often unsure of what. -
PoetryDebut poetry collection considers transitions under the Prairie sky
Sarah Ens’s first collection of poetry, The World Is Mostly Sky, is a closely observed exploration of her rural Prairie roots, as well as the landscape’s – and the sky’s – changing physical and emotional resonances. -
PoetryCommitting to writing meant committing to a place - and then leaving it
Joel Robert Ferguson took a somewhat circuitous route to publishing his debut poetry collection, The Lost Cafeteria. Ferguson was raised in a conservative Christian home in rural Nova Scotia but spent his 20s enmeshed in what he calls the “anarcho-punk/traveller milieu.” -
PoetryPoet reflects on her grandparents’ lives through poetry and collected letters, artifacts
Faith, love, death, displacement – these are the themes Angeline Schellenberg tackles in her new collection of poetry, Fields of Light and Stone. These poems tell the stories of her grandparents – Abe and Margaret, and Bernhard and Elsa – with whom Schellenberg was especially close as a child. -
DramaOne-act play is based on Lara Rae’s life and transition, with some details changed
In the foreword to Lara Rae’s play Dragonfly, actor and playwright Brian Drader describes how, as Rae’s dramaturg, his most compelling memories are “witnessing the constant ebb and flow of a storyteller wrestling with their own life’s experiences and placing them into dramatic form.”
