ArticlesIssue 76, Spring/Summer 2020
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FictionTyler Enfield aims for the feel of a western in a ‘puzzle-box’ story
Tyler Enfield’s Like Rum-Drunk Angels is a magical, fun novel about Francis Blackstone setting out to seek his fortune and win the hand of his lady in Nowhere, Arizona, 1883. -
Non-FictionFrom a trove of over 5000 stories, his favourites are the ones that moved people
It wasn’t until Reg Sherren, former host of the CBC TV program Country Canada and feature reporter for CBC’s The National, was asked to contribute to the book of a former colleague that the idea of his own memoir struck him as a worthwhile endeavour. -
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.”
