About the Authors
Ann Copeland, a native of Connecticut, lived in Sackville, New Brunswick, for twenty-five years before moving to Salem, Oregon, in 1996. A popular fiction writing instructor at workshops in Canada, the US, and New Zealand, she is the author of The ABCs of Writing Fiction and six books of stories. The Golden Thread, linked stories about Sister Claire Delaney, was a finalist for a 1990 Governor General&146s Award; Another Christmas, first published in The Fiddlehead, is part of Strange Bodies on a Stranger Shore, the sequel to The Golden Thread.
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Kelly Cooper grew up in the tiny farming community of Senlac, Saskatchewan, where she vaccinated, branded, and ear-tagged cattle, sorted calves on foot and on horseback, drove cattle to pasture on horseback, and drove a tractor and a three-ton truck. A graduate of the University of Saskatchewan, Cooper taught high school English and later moved to Belleisle Creek, New Brunswick, with her husband, where until recently, she worked as an art teacher. The only girl among siblings and cousins, she routinely did men’s work, and now works with her husband on their dairy farm. Coopers stories have been published The Fiddlehead, Room of Ones Own, Descant, Grain, Prairie Fire, The Malahat Review, and The Windsor Review. They have been featured in anthologies such as Coming Attractions 㤊, Water Studies, and Home for Christmas. River Judith won the Fiddlehead Fiction Prize, and an early version of Eyehill won the prestigious David Adams Literary Award. Eyehill is her long-awaited first book.
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Syr Ruus was born in Estonia at the start of the Second World War. As a small child, she escaped with her mother to Germany. After the war ended they lived in various DP camps before immigrating to the United States where she grew up and received her education. In 1970, she moved to Nova Scotia, working as a teacher while raising her three children. She has written a prize-winning juvenile novel and published short fiction in anthologies and journals. Lovesongs of Emmanuel Taggart is the recipient of the H.R. (Bill) Percy Prize from the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia.
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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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As a high-school student, Brian Bartlett was invited to join the Ice House Gang, so-called because they met in the University of New Brunswick's historic Ice House every Tuesday night to read their poetry and hone their talents. Amazed and delighted by Bartlett's gift for words, Robert Gibbs, Bill Bauer, Kent Thompson, and Alden Nowlan inspired him to become the accomplished artist he is today. He published his chapbook Finches for the Wake when he was only 18 years old. The next year, Brother's Insomnia was published as a New Brunswick Chapbook. Since this apprenticeship period, Bartlett has published six highly acclaimed collections: Cattail Week, Planet Harbor, Underwater Carpentry, Granite Erratics, The Afterlife of Trees, and Wanting the Day. His poetry has won Two Malahat Review Long Poem prizes, a fellowship to the Hawthornden Castle International Writers' Retreat in Scotland, and first prize in the 2000 Petra Kenney poetry awards. A talented writer of prose, Bartlett's essays, stories and reviews have appeared in Books in Canada, Canadian Literature, The Fiddlehead, and Brick, as well as Best Canadian Stories and The Journey Prize Anthology. A native of Fredericton, New Brunswick, Bartlett spent 15 years in Montreal, studying at McGill and teaching at Concordia. Today, he teaches creative writing and literature at Saint Mary's University in Halifax.
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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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John Steffler 鴂7) grew up near Thornhill, ON. In 1975, he began teaching at Sir Wilfred Grenfell College in Corner Brook, NL. His novel The Afterlife of George Cartwright won the Smithbooks/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Governor Generals Award and the Commonwealth Prize for best first book in 1992. His other awards include the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize, the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Artist of the Year Award, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize for his most recent collection, That Night We Were Ravenous.
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Ephie Carrier is retired and lives at Dumfries, New Brunswick. Born in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, he has lived in many parts of Canada and travelled all over the world. For the past several years he has been writing and telling stories for Storyfest New Brunswick. He is co-author with Jan Andrews of a children’s book, Harvest *#401999). His story “Just Pick Up the Sticks” appeared in Echoes (Maine).
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Sue Sinclair grew up in St. John146s, Newfoundland. Her extraordinary poetic powers were first recognized when she won two creative writing awards at University of New Brunswick: the Walker Prize and the Angela Ludvine Memorial Prize. Her first poetry collection, Secrets of Weather & Hope, was a finalist for the 2002 Gerald Lampert Award, and her second, Mortal Arguments, was a finalist for the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Her work appears frequently in magazines such as The Fiddlehead, Canadian Literature, Grain, The New Quarterly, and The Malahat Review, and in anthologies such as Coastlines and Breathing Fire II.
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Sabine Campbell co-edited Fiddlehead Gold, an anthology marking the 50th anniversary of Canada’s oldest literary magazine. As managing editor of The Fiddlehead and a member of its editorial staff since 1985, she knows the work of almost every writer in and from the Maritimes and Newfoundland. She also loves Christmas.
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Mark Tunney is the editor of The New Brunswick Reader. Born in Toronto, he has lived in New Brunswick since 1982. Although he has been a journalist for many years, this is the first time his work has appeared in a book.
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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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Robert B. Richards is a retired librarian living in Fredericton. He has been a New Brunswicker forever and an on-again off-again contributor of poetry to different periodicals, notably The Fiddlehead and The Cormorant. His poetry chapbook Unfolding Fern was published by Spare Time Editions.
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Lynn Coady is the author of the bestselling novel The Antagonist, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, as well as the novels Mean Boy, Saints of Big Harbour, and Strange Heaven and the short story collection Play the Monster Blind. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and has four times made the Globe and Mail’s annual list of Top 100 Books. Originally from Cape Breton, she now lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she is a founding and senior editor of the award-winning magazine Eighteen Bridges.
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Jess Bond was born and raised in Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. A graduate of the University of New Brunswick and Fredericton Teachers’ College, she taught elementary school in Fredericton for several years and then moved to Scarborough, Ontario, where she taught for twenty years. Now retired, she lives near Belleville, Ontario.
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Edward “Ted” Russell was born in Coley’s Point, Conception Bay, in 1904. At sixteen, he undertook his first teaching assignment at Pass Island. For the next twenty-three years he worked in outport communities as a teacher and later a magistrate. In 1943 he moved to St. John’s to accept the position of Director of Co-operatives for the Commission of Government.
After a brief stint in politics (a member of the first Smallwood cabinet), Ted returned to teaching. But he also found a new opportunity to give expression to the more creative side of his nature. In 1953 he was offered a spot on CBC Radio’s Fishermen’s Broadcast as Uncle Mose. The highly successful “Chronicles of Uncle Mose” continued until 1962. During this period Ted also wrote several radio plays, all of which were broadcast by CBC. The last years of his working life were spent on the faculty of Memorial University (English Department) from which he retired in 1973. He died four years later.
Ted married Dora Oake (of Change Islands) in 1934. They had five children: Rhona; Elizabeth “Betty”; June; Margaret “Peggy”; and Kelly.
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Mary Jane Losier wrote “Whisper to the Wind” in memory of her mother-in-law, Lina Robichaud. She is a co-author of The Children of Lazarus: The Story of the Lazaretto at Tracadie 鴆7) and the author of Amanda Viger: Spiritual Healer to New Brunswick’s Leprosy Victims 鴇9). She is the Community Liaison Representative in Bathurst for the Department of Extension, University of New Brunswick, and she gives workshops on life writing to children and adults.
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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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Clarissa Hurley, a writer and actor, lives in Fredericton. Her story “Women and Linen Look Best in the Dark” won first prize for short fiction in the 1998 New Brunswick Writers’ Federation Competition.
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Born in Toronto in 1938, David Helwig attended the University of Toronto and the University of Liverpool. His first stories were published in Canadian Forum and The Montrealer while he was still an undergraduate. He then went on to teach at Queen's University. He worked in summer stock with the Straw Hat Players, mostly as a business manager and technician, rubbing elbows with such actors as Gordon Pinsent, Jackie Burroughs and Timothy Findley.
While at Queen's University, Helwig did some informal teaching in Collins Bay Penitentiary and subsequently wrote A Book About Billie with a former inmate.
Helwig has also served as literary manager of CBC Television Drama, working under John Hirsch, supervising the work of story editors and the department's relations with writers.
In 1980, he gave up teaching and became a full-time freelance writer. He has done a wide range of writing -- fiction, poetry, essays -- authoring more than twenty books. Helwig is also the founder and long-time editor of the Best Canadian Stories annual. In 2009 he was named as a member of the Order of Canada.
David Helwig lives in the village of Eldon on Prince Edward Island, where he is the third Poet Laureate. He indulges his passion for vocal music by singing with choirs in Montreal, Kingston, and Charlottetown. He has appeared as bass soloist in Handel's Messiah, Bach's St Matthew Passion and Mozart's Requiem.
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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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Patrick OFlaherty, who lives in St. Johns, Newfoundland, has written four works of fiction, the most recent of which is the novel Bennys Island. His latest books is Old Newfoundland: A History to 1843 鴇9).
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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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An International Christmas brings together seven stories and eight poems by well-known authors from Canada, the United States, Britain, and Germany. Included is Christmas fiction by Margaret Laurence, Roy MacGregor, Tim Wynne-Jones, Maureen Hull, Annie Dillard, Grace Paley, and Heinrich Böll. It also features poetry by such celebrated Canadian poets as P.K. Page, Milton Acorn, and John Terpstra, as well as Britains John Julius Norwich and Wendy Cope.
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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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Robert Gibbs was born in Saint John, New Brunswick in 1930. He joined the Bliss Carman Society at the University of New Brunswick in the late 1940s where he was mentored by Don Gammon, Elizabeth Brewster, Fred Cogswell, and Alfred Bailey, the founder of The Fiddlehead magazine. Gibbs's poetry started to appear in this publication in 1949.
In his more than twenty-five years of teaching at UNB, Gibbs taught general undergraduate and Canadian literature courses and was the director of UNB's creative writing graduate program. He served as both editor and poetry editor of The Fiddlehead. Upon his retirement from UNB in 1989, he was named Professor Emeritus.
Gibbs was the keynote speaker at the first Alden Nowlan Literary Festival, and the Festival two years later paid tribute to Gibbs. His body of work was further recognized in 1998 with New Brunswick's Alden Nowlan Award for Excellence in English-Language Literary Arts. He has been involved with the Maritime Writers' Workshop since its inception and continues to live and write in Fredericton.
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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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Susan Haley’s first two novels, A Nest of Singing Birds and Getting Married in Buffalo Jump, were made into movies for CBC-TV. Most recently she has published The Complaints Department (2000), Maggie's Family (2002) and The Murder of Medicine Bear (2003). Haley lived in Fort Norman, Northwest Territories, for 15 years where she ran a charter airline with her partner. Haley now lives in Black River, Nova Scotia.
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Ray Guy is a Newfoundland journalist and humorist best known for his satirical newspaper and magazine columns.
He was born in Come By Chance, Placentia Bay, to George Hynes and Alice Louise Guy, but was raised and schooled in Arnold’s Cove, the community that was to provide fodder for many of his columns.
Guy studied journalism at Ryerson Polytechnic Institute. After graduation, he wrote for the St. John’s Evening Telegram 1963–1974, and his columns also appeared in magazines such as Atlantic Insight and the Newfoundland Quarterly. His writings included political satire and humorous essays on life in a Newfoundland outport, and his columns in the Evening Telegram often criticized the policies and ridiculed the excesses of Premier Joseph Smallwood, during a time when political opposition to Smallwood was ineffectual. In 1977, Ray Guy received the Stephen Leacock Award for the collection That Far Greater Bay.
In 1979, Gordon Pinsent created Up at Ours, a half-hour CBC St. John’s television series that starred Mary Walsh as the owner of a boarding house and Ray Guy as the principal boarder. In 1985, Walsh appeared in and directed a stage play written by Guy, Young Triffie’s Been Made Away With, which Walsh directed as a film in 2006, promoted in some markets under the shorter title Young Triffie.
Guy also appeared as a commentator on the CBC St. John’s news program Here & Now. He was awarded an honorary doctorate by Memorial University of Newfoundland in 2001. Guy currently writes a monthly column for the Northeast Avalon Times.
Other books to Ray Guy’s credit include You May Know Them As Sea Urchins, Ma’am (1975), Outhouses of the East (1978), Beneficial Vapors (1981), An Heroine for Our Time (1983), This Dear and Fine Country (1985), Ray Guy’s Best (1987), and Ray Guy: The Smallwood Years (2008).
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