About the Authors
Elisabeth Harvor 鴁6), recipient of the Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in Literary Arts 鴈0), grew up in the Kennebecasis Valley, NB. Let Me Be the One 鴇6), one of three collections of stories, was a finalist for the Governor Generals Award for Fiction. Her first collection of poetry, Fortress of Chairs 鴇2), won the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and she has won First Prize in the League of Canadian Poets National Poetry Competition and The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize. Harvor has published a novel, Excessive Joy Injures the Heart 鴈2).
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Harry Bruce was born in Toronto and made his home in Nova Scotia from 1971 until his recent move to Moncton, New Brunswick. He is a celebrated essayist, editor, journalist, and writer, with a dozen books to his credit, including An Illustrated History of Nova Scotia 鴇7) and Down Home: Notes of a Maritime Son 鴆8). In 1997 he won the Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-Fiction, nearly twenty years after it was first awarded to him.
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David Adams Richards was born in 1950 in Newcastle, New Brunswick; by the time he was twenty-one he had written his first novel. He writes fiction, non-fiction, plays, screenplays, and poetry. He has won Governor General’s Awards for both fiction and non-fiction. Nights Below Station Street 鴆8), The Bay of Love and Sorrows 鴇8), and Mercy Among the Children 鴈0) are among his best-known novels. His most recent novel is River of the Brokenhearted 鴈3).
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Elsie Charles Basque was born in 1916. A teacher, elder, and advocate for native culture, she was the first Mi’kmaw in Nova Scotia to obtain a teaching license. She spent much of her life in Boston, and now resides in Saulnierville, Nova Scotia.
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Alistair MacLeod was born in Saskatchewan in 1936 and raised in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He has published two internationally acclaimed collections of short stories: The Lost Salt Gift of Blood 鴅6) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun 鴆6). In 2000, these two books, accompanied by two new stories, were published as Island: The Collected Stories of Alistair MacLeod. In 1999, MacLeods first novel, No Great Mischief, was published to stellar critical acclaim. The novel won the Dartmouth Book Award, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, The Trillium Award, the CAA Award, and the Canadian Booksellers Association Libris Awards for Fiction Book of the Year and Author of the Year. In 2001, No Great Mischief was awarded the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, one of the worlds most prestigious literary prizes.
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Wayne Johnston was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. He obtained a BA in English from Memorial University and worked as a reporter for the St. John's Daily News before deciding to devote himself full-time to writing. Since then, Johnston has written seven books. His novels The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York spent extended periods of time on bestseller lists in Canada and have been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China, and Spain. Colony was identified by The Globe and Mail as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever published. Johnston divides his time between Toronto and Roanoke, Virginia, where he has held the Distinguished Chair in Creative Writing at Hollins University since 2004.
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A twentieth-century descendant of Lavinia, from Bernice Morgan's bestselling novel Random Passage, Lav rediscovers the power of her heritage and a courage she didn't know she possessed.
Waiting for Time continues the saga of the inhabitants of Cape Random. It also tells the story of Newfoundland – a place where the past overshadows the present and shapes the future. This is the story of lonely, unplanned journeys, of courage and pride, of loss that must be endured again and again until we understand the nature of the path we have taken and the place at which we arrived.
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Herménégilde Chiasson has been called "the spokesperson and conscience of the young Acadian poetry." His poetry has been nominated for and won the Governor General's Award and twice won the Prix France-Acadie. In 1990 the French government named him a Chevalier des Arts et des Lettres. Herménégilde Chiasson studied visual arts at Mount Allison University, Université de Moncton, and New York University, and received his PhD from the Sorbonne. He has produced some 15 films, written 20 plays, and exhibited his paintings and photographs in galleries in the Maritimes, Toronto, and internationally. In 2001, Chiasson was one of a select group of artists chosen to accompany Governor General Adrienne Clarkson to South America. This special state visit was organized to foster new cultural and social links between Canada, Chile and Argentina
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David Weale is a folk historian and a popular storyteller and stage performer. He has written thirteen books, four of which are for children. David co-created and wrote The True Meaning of Crumbfest, an animated Christmas special for children, seen in more than twenty-five countries around the world, as well as Eckhart, an animated TV series for children. He is the father of five children and presently lives with his dog, Breaker, in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island.
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Stan Dragland was born and brought up in Alberta. He was educated at The University of Alberta and Queen's University. He has taught at the University of Alberta, at The Grammar School, Sudbury, Suffolk, England, in the English Department at the University of Western Ontario in London, and in the Banff Centre Writing Studio. He now lives in St. John's, Newfoundland. He was founding editor of Brick, a journal of reviews and founder of Brick Books, a poetry publishing house, which he still serves as publisher and editor. Between 1993 and 1996 he was poetry editor for McClelland and Stewart. He has published three previous books of fiction: Peckertracks, a Chronicle (shortlisted for the 1978 Books in Canada First Novel Prize), Journeys Through Bookland and Other Passages, and (for children) Simon Jesse's Journey. He has edited collections of essays on Duncan Campbell Scott and James Reaney. Wilson MacDonald's Western Tour, a 'critical collage,' has been followed by two other books of criticism, The Bees of the Invisible: Essays in Contemporary English Canadian Writing and Floating Voice: Duncan Campbell Scott and the Literature of Treaty 9, which won the 1995 Gabrielle Roy Prize for Canadian Literary Criticism. 12 Bars, a prose blues, was co-winner of the bp Nichol Chapbook Award in 2003, the same year Apocrypha: Further Journeys appeared in NeWest Press's Writer-as-Critic series. Apocrypha was winner of the Rogers Cable Non-Fiction Award in 2005. In April 2004 the stage adaptation of HalldÛr Laxness's The Atom Station, co-written with Agnes Walsh, was performed at the LSPU Hall in St. John's. His most recent book is Stormy Weather: Foursomes, prose poetry from Pedlar Press, was shortlisted for the EJ Pratt Poetry Award in 2007. He is editor of the recently-released Hard-Headed and Big-Hearted: Writing Newfoundland, a collection of essays by Newfoundland historian Stuart Pierson.
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Anne Simpson is one of Canadas rising stars. Her story Dreaming Snow&148 won the Journey Prize, and her first novel, Canterbury Beach, was a finalist for the Chapters/Robertson Davies Prize and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her first poetry collection, Light Falls Through You, won the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Gerald Lampert Award and was a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award; her second, collection, Loop, has just been published. After spending a year as writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton, she has returned to her home in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
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Joan Clark is one of Canada's most distinguished writers. She was born in Liverpool, Nova Scotia, grew up in Sydney Mines and in Sussex, New Brunswick, and lived for twenty years in Alberta. There, she began her literary career as a children's author and, with Edna Alford, founded Dandelion, Alberta's first literary magazine. Since the mid-1980s, she has made her home in St. John's, Newfoundland. In 1991, Clark received the prestigious Marian Engel Award. In addition to Swimming Toward the Light, she is the author of three novels. The first, The Victory of Geraldine Gull, won the Canadian Authors' Association Award for Fiction and was a finalist for the Governor General's Award and the Books in Canada First Novel Award. Eriksdotter was a fictional account of the voyage to Finland led by Freydis, daughter of Erik the Red. Her most recent novel, Latitudes of Melt, is a finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize, Caribbean and Canada region, and is a recent nominee for the international IMPAC Award.
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Paul Bowdring, a St. Johns, Newfoundland, writer, editor, and teacher, is the author of two novels, The Roncesvalles Pass 鴆9) and The Night Season 鴇7). The Consolation of Pastry was first published in The Fiddlehead and subsequently included in The Night Season, which was broadcast on CBC Radios Between the Covers in December, 1998.
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Ronald F. Hawkins was born in Woodstock, New Brunswick, in 1923. He enlisted in the Carleton Light Infantry when he was only fourteen. By the time he was discharged from the army in 1946, he had seen action in North Africa and throughout Europe. He wrote several books about the war, including We Will Remember Them 鴇5). He died in 2002.
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Ernest Buckler was born at Dalhousie West, Nova Scotia, in 1908. Best known for his novel, The Mountain and the Valley 鴃2), he also wrote short fiction, essays, and a memoir. His work of verse and prose, Whirligig 鴅7), won the Stephen Leacock Award. He was also awarded several honorary degrees for his contribution to literature. He died in 1984.
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Wilfred Grenfell was born in Parkgate, England, in 1865. He studied medicine and later volunteered to go to Newfoundland and Labrador, where he quickly gained great respect among the people. He established a mission, an orphanage, and a school at St. Anthony, Labrador. His tale Adrift on an Ice Pan 鳾8, 1992) is an account of how he was stranded overnight on the ice. He died in 1941.
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Mark Anthony Jarman is the author of 19 Knives, New Orleans Is Sinking, Dancing Nightly in the Tavern, and the travel book Ireland's Eye. His novel, Salvage King Ya!, is on Amazon.ca's list of 50 Essential Canadian Books and is the number one book on Amazon's list of best hockey fiction.
He has been short-listed for the O. Henry Prize and Best American Essays, he won a Gold National Magazine Award in nonfiction, has twice won the Maclean-Hunter Endowment Award, won the Jack Hodgins Fiction Prize, and has been included in The Journey Prize Anthology and Best Canadian Stories.
He has published recently in Walrus, Canadian Geographic, Hobart, The Barcelona Review, Vrij Nederland, and reviews for The Globe & Mail. He is a graduate of The Iowa Writers' Workshop, a Yaddo fellow, has taught at the University of Victoria, the Banff Centre for the Arts, and now teaches at the University of New Brunswick, where he is fiction editor of The Fiddlehead.
His newest collection of stories, My White Planet, was published in 2008.
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Lucy Maud Montgomery was born in Clifton (now New London), Prince Edward Island, in 1874. After the death of her mother in 1876, Montgomery was raised by her maternal grandparents in the nearby community of Cavendish. She received a teaching certificate in 1894, and studied literature at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in 1895. After a brief career as a teacher at various island schools, she moved back to Cavendish in 1898. In 1911, she married the Reverend Ewan Macdonald and moved to Leaskdale, Ontario, where Macdonald was minister in the Presbyterian Church. A prolific writer, she published a number of short stories, poems, and novels, but is best known for Anne of Green Gables and its sequels: Anne of Avonlea, Anne of the Island, Anne of Windy Poplars, Anne's House of Dreams, Anne of Ingleside, Rainbow Valley, and Rilla of Ingleside. Montgomery died in Toronto in 1942 and was buried in her beloved Cavendish, Prince Edward Island.
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Alden Nowlan 鴁3-1983) was born in Windsor, NS. Primarily self-educated, Nowlan worked as a newspaperman, and published poetry, plays, short stories, and novels. Writer-in-residence at the University of New Brunswick from 1969 to 1983, he was famous for the gatherings at his home, known as Windsor Castle. His awards include the Governor Generals Award for Poetry in 1967 for Bread, Wine and Salt and a Guggenheim Fellowship 鴄7-68). Alden Nowlan: Selected Poems wa published in 1996. The literary award for excellence for the province of New Brunswick is named in his honour. The annual Alden Nowlan Literary Festival in Fredericton honours his contribution to Canadian literature.
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Hugh MacLennan was born in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia in 1907. A novelist and essayist, he became a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford and later completed a PhD in classics at Princeton. He won the Governor Generals Award more often than any other writer: three times for fiction and twice for non-fiction. His best-known novels are Barometer Rising 鴂1), Two Solitudes 鴂5), and The Watch that Ends the Night 鴃9). He died in 1990.
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Michael Crummey is the author of four books of poetry, and a book of short stories, Flesh and Blood. His first novel, River Thieves, was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, his second, The Wreckage, was a national bestseller and a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His most recent novel, the bestselling Galore, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best Book. Under the Keel is his first collection in a decade. He lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland.
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Richard Cumyn was born in Ottawa and has degrees in english and education from Queen's University. He is the fiction editor for The Antigonish Review and has published four collections of short fiction: The Limit of Delta Y over Delta X (Goose Lane), I Am Not Most Places (Beach Holme), Viking Brides (Oberon), and The Obstacle Course (Oberon). Cumyn's short stories have appeared in many Canadian literary publications, including The Journey Prize Anthology. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
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Bert Batstone, born in 1922, grew up in an isolated Newfoundland hamlet, where, he has said, “life in the village was virtually unchanged from what it had been more than one hundred years before.” When he left Newfoundland, he earned degrees from Mount Allison and McGill universities. The Mysterious Mummer and Other Newfoundland Stories was published by Jesperson Press in 1984.
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Carol Bruneau's most recent title from Cormorant Books is Glass Voices. She is also the author of Berth. Her novel Purple For Sky (Cormorant, 2000) won the City of Dartmouth Fiction Prize and the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize. She is also the author of two collections of short stories, Depth Rapture and After the Angel Mill, both published by Cormorant Books. She has taught creative writing in the continuing education departments of Mount St.Vincent University and Nova Scotia Community College; she is now on faculty of the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University, where she teaches writing. Carol lives in Halifax with her husband and three sons.
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In 2007, Canada Post released a new stamp featuring a colourful painting of three jam bottles by East Coast artist Mary Pratt. Her work displays a nearly photographic realism, focusing on everyday objects connected with raising a family or running a home. Just before the stamp came out, Mary Pratt's official portrait of her friend, former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, was unveiled at Rideau Hall. Although she has been getting a lot of attention lately, she has been painting for most of her seventy-three years. Mary Pratt was born in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where she and her sister enjoyed an idyllic childhood. Her father was a lawyer and prominent local politician; her mother ran the household and tinted photographs on the side. Mary Pratt studied fine arts at Mount Allison University, where she met her future husband, the artist Christopher Pratt. In 1963, they moved to Salmonier, Newfoundland.
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Lynn Davies’s remarkable debut collection, The Bridge that Carries the Road, was a finalist for both the 1999 Governor General’s Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. Her poems are frequently broadcast on CBC Radio and have appeared in magazines such as The Fiddlehead and The Malahat Review and in anthologies such as Why I Sing The Blues, An Orange From Portugal, Listening With The Ear Of The Heart, Coastlines, and New Canadian Poetry. Originally from Moncton, NB, she lived in Dartmouth, NS, for more than a decade, where she obtained a BA in Honours English from the University of King’s College. An alumnus of both the Banff Writers’ Studio and St. Peter’s College in Saskatchewan, Lynn Davies now resides near Fredericton.
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Charles G.D Roberts (1860-1943) was a poet and prose writer. After a childhood in New Brunswick, he became a heralded poet who later turned to fiction, writing an extensive series of animal stories and pioneering a genre that remains popular today. His works include Eyes of the Wilderness, The Vagrant of Time, and Earth's Enigmas. Roberts spent the last years of his life in Toronto, where he died.
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Lisa Moore is the acclaimed author of February, which was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, selected as one of The New Yorker's Best Books of the Year, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book; and Alligator, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Commonwealth Fiction Prize (Canada and the Caribbean), and was a national bestseller. Her story collection Open was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a national bestseller. Her third novel, Caught, will be published by House of Anansi Press in June 2013. She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
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Rhoda Graser writes fiction and non-fiction. She was born in Fredericton and lived there during the Depression and World War II. A number of her stories were published in The New Brunswick Reader in 2000. She lives in Toronto.
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Grace Ladd was born in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, in 1864. She spent many years travelling around the world with her husband, Frederick Arthur Ladd, a Nova Scotian sea captain. Their children, Forrest and Kathryn, were raised on board ship. Her letters to her family offer a rich account of a life aboard sailing ships and steamers during the Victorian era.
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Herb Curtis was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Award for his collection of humourous stories, Luther Corhern's Salmon Camp Chronicles. The Americans Are Coming is the first novel in his acclaimed Brennan Siding trilogy. He has won the Thomas Head Raddall Prize for fiction and been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Prize (Canada and the Caribbean). Although born near the Dungarvon River, he now lives in Fredericton.
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Widely acknowledged to be Prince Edward Island’s greatest poet, Milton Acorn was born in Charlottetown in 1923 and died there in 1986. A significant contributor to the Canadian literary scene of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, he counted Al Purdy, Eli Mandel, Leonard Cohen, Irving Layton and Patrick Lane among his friends. The original “People’s Poet,” Acorn received a medal and cash prize from his peers at Toronto’s Grossman’s Tavern in 1970 when his selected poems, I’ve Tasted My Blood, failed to win the Governor General’s Award. He went on to receive Canada’s highest literary honour for The Island Means Minago, published in 1975. Acorn was the author of ten books of poetry, and, with Cedric Smith, he co-authored the play, The Road to Charlottetown. Although he lived in various Canadian cities between 1951 and 1981, Acorn’s finely tuned homing instincts always brought him back to the Island.
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