Fiction Anthologies (multiple Authors)
Atlantica
Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland
- Publisher
- Goose Lane Editions
- Initial publish date
- Oct 2001
- Category
- Anthologies (multiple authors), Literary
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9780864923097
- Publish Date
- Oct 2001
- List Price
- $19.95
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Where to buy it
Out of print
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Description
The world has taken notice. From Alistair MacLeod's recent IMPAC literary award, through movies based on the work of David Adams Richards and Sheldon Currie, to the epic television series based on the work of Bernice Morgan, the international community has soundly acknowledged the critical and commercial success of Atlantic writers.
Atlantica is the first major anthology of Atlantic fiction since Best Maritime Short Stories was published in 1988 and showcases stories by some of Canada's most exciting authors — established, newly popular, and emerging. Given the regional penchant for storytelling, it's not surprising that the Maritimes and Newfoundland produce a continuous stream of spellbinding writers.
Among the stories in Atlantica are Anne Simpson's Journey Prize-winning "Dreaming Snow," Carol Bruneau's "The Tarot Reader," "Batter My Heart" by Lynn Coady, Bernice Morgan's "Poems in a Cold Climate" "The Train Family" by Joan Clark, "Missing Notes" by David Helwig, "The Party" by Herb Curtis and "Clearances" by Alistair MacLeod. Readers from "away" will recognize Sheldon Currie's hilariously gothic tale "The Glace Bay Miner's Museum" as the basis of Helena Bonham Carter's acclaimed movie Margaret's Museum. Some stories have been excerpted from novels, including David Adams Richards's The Bay of Love and Sorrows, Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, John Steffler's The Afterlife of George Cartwright, and Donna Morrissey's Kit's Law.
Remarkably diverse in age, style, and cultural identity, the writers in this anthology raise a common voice that defines Atlantic Canada. Each with an individual approach to language and writing, they offer a collective view of the east, conscious of tradition but not confined by it. By turns funny, poignant and pensive, the stories in Atlantica firmly place eastern Canadian culture on the world map of literature.
About the authors
No one has a clearer view of Atlantic Canada's literary endeavours over the past twenty years than Lesley Choyce. He is the founder of the literary journal Pottersfield Portfolio, and the publisher of Pottersfield Press. He has edited several fiction anthologies and has been the in-house editor of many books from Pottersfield Press including Making Waves, a collection of stories by emerging authors from Atlantic Canada. He is the author of more than fifty books in genres ranging from poetry and essays to autobiography, history and fiction for adults, young adults, and children. Among his recent books are the novels The Republic of Nothing, World Enough, and Cold Clear Morning, and the story collection Dance the Rocks Ashore. Choyce is the writer, host, and co-producer of the popular literary show television program, Off the Page with Lesley Choyce, which is broadcast across the country on Vision TV. He also teaches in the English department of Dalhousie University in Halifax and is leader of the rock band The Surf Poets.
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 (1976) and As Birds Bring Forth the Sun (1986). In 2000, these two books, accompanied by two new stories, were published as Island: The Collected Stories of Alistair MacLeod. In 1999, MacLeod's 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 world's most prestigious literary prizes.
Alistair MacLeod's profile page
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.
Wayne Johnston is the author of several novels. He has won many prestigious awards for his work including the Books in Canada First Novel Award for his debut novel, The Story of Bobby O'Malley, the Canadian Authors Association Award for Most Promising Young Writer, and the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award for The Divine Ryans. Both The Colony of Unrequited Dreams and The Navigator of New York spent extended periods of time on bestseller lists in Canada and have also been published in the US, Britain, Germany, Holland, China and Spain. Colony was identified by the Globe and Mail newspaper as one of the 100 most important Canadian books ever produced (including both fiction and non-fiction).
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.
Biography: Maureen Hull was born and raised on Cape Breton Island. She studied at nscad, Dalhousie University and the Pictou Fisheries School. She has worked at the costume department of Neptune Theatre and as a lobster fisher. She lives on Pictou Island in the Northumberland Strait. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies, most recently Christmas Family Treasures. Her short story collection, Righteous Living, was short-listed for the Danuta Gleed Award, and several of her stories have been read on CBC Radio.
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.
Herb Curtis (b. 1949) has lived all his life in New Brunswick; he moves between Fredericton and the Miramichi, where he guides visiting salmon fishermen. His masterpiece, The Brennan Siding Trilogy (Goose Lane, 1997), is a compilation of his first three novels, The Americans Are Coming (1989, 1999), The Last Tasmanian (1991, 2001) and The Lone Angler (1993). A different version of "The Party" appears in The Last Tasmanian.
Lynn Coady is a novelist and essayist whose fiction has been garnering acclaim since her first novel, Strange Heaven, was published and subsequently nominated for the Governor General’s Award for Fiction when she was twenty-eight. Her short story collection Hellgoing won the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s most prestigious literary award, for which her novel The Antagonist was also nominated in 2011. Her books have been published in the UK, US, Holland, France, and Germany. Coady has been a journalist, magazine editor, and advice columnist, and is currently writing for television. She divides her time between Edmonton and Toronto. Follow her on Twitter @Lynn_Coady.
Donna Morrissey (b. 1956) grew up in the isolated western Newfoundland community of The Beaches, where, she says, "There were twelve families and we didn't talk to six of them." She studied at Memorial University in St. John's, lived in various other parts of Canada, and makes her home in Halifax. Her first novel, Kit's Law (Penguin, 1999), the source of "Grieving Nan," won the National Booksellers Association Libris Award and garnered international praise.
Donna Morrissey's profile page
Poet, fiction writer, and playwright J. J. Steinfeld lives on Prince Edward Island, where he is patiently waiting for Godot’s arrival and a phone call from Kafka. While waiting, he has published twenty-two books: two novels, Our Hero in the Cradle of Confederation (1987) and Word Burials (2009), thirteen short story collections—The Apostate's Tattoo (1983), Forms of Captivity and Escape (1988), Unmapped Dreams (1989), The Miraculous Hand and Other Stories (1991), Dancing at the Club Holocaust (1993), Disturbing Identities (1997), Should the Word Hell Be Capitalized? (1999), Anton Chekhov Was Never in Charlottetown (2000), Would You Hide Me? (2003), A Glass Shard and Memory (2010), Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell (2015), An Unauthorized Biography of Being (2016), and Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles (2019)—and seven poetry collections, An Affection for Precipices (2006), Misshapenness (2009), Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds (2014), Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be (2017), A Visit to the Kafka Café (2018), Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement (2020), and Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential (2021).
Budge Wilson (b. 1927) was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and lived in Kingston, Ontario, before moving back to North West Cove, Nova Scotia. A former commercial artist and photographer, she has written more than twenty books, many of them for children and young adults; her awards include the Ann Connor Brimer Award for children's literature. "Mr. Manuel Jenkins" is included in her story collecton The Leaving (Anansi, 1991).
John Steffler (1947) 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 General's 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.
Helen Fogwill Porter #&40;b. 1939) was born in Newfoundland and lives in St. John's. "One Saturday#&34; appeared in The Pottersfield Portfolio (1983) and was included in her collection, A Long and Lonely Ride (Breakwater, 1991#&41;. A memoir, Below the Bridge, appeared in 1980 (Breakwater#&41;, and she was honoured with the Newfoundland and Labrador Lifetime Acheivement Award in 1993.
Helen Fogwill Porter's profile page
Wayne Curtis is the author of six novels, and many essays and short stories. He has contributed to such publications as the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, Fly Fisherman, Quill & Quire, and Outdoor Canada. Winner of the David Adams Richards Award for short fiction, his stories have appeared in literary journals, been dramatized for CBC Radio, and filmed for CBC. He has been Writer-in-Residence at Berton House in Dawson City and Havana's prestigious Instituto Superior de Arte. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from St. Thomas University in Fredericton. A native of Blackville, New Brunswick, Wayne caught his first salmon at the age of 8. He is an avid fly fisherman and spends half of each year on the Miramichi River where he finds time to work as a guide as well as write.
Bernice Morgan (b. 1935), a life-long Newfoundlaner, lives in St. John's. Her stories have been published widely in literary journals, and in 1996, she was named Newfoundland Artist of the Year for her writing. Her novel Waiting for Time (Breakwater, 1994) won the Thomas Raddall Award for Fiction, and Random Passage (Breakwater, 1992) has been developed as a TV series. "Poems in a Cold Climate," which first appeared in The Fiddlehead, is from her collection, The Topography of Love (Breakwater, 2000).
David Adams Richards studied English from 1970 to 1973, when he left university to become a full-time writer. Although known mainly as a novelist, he has written poetry, short stories, non-fiction, screenplays, and biography. He has won many important awards, including the Governor General's Award both for fiction (Nights Below Station Street, M&S, 1988) and for non-fiction (Lines on the Water, Doubleday, 1998). Mercy Among the Children (Doubleday) was co-winner of the Giller Prize in 2000. In 1993, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by STU.
David Adams Richards' profile page
Joan Baxter (b. 1955) grew up in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, and now makes her home in Bamako, Mali, West Africa, where she is a correspondent for the BBC. In 2001, she received the Evelyn Richardson Award for her non-fiction book about Africa, A Serious Pair of Shoes (Pottersfield, 2000). "Act of God" is from her collection Strangers Are Like Children (Pottersfield, 1998).
Born in Reserve Mines, Cape Breton, Sheldon Currie is professor emeritus at St. Francis Xavier University and author of short stories, novels, and plays. Probably his most widely known work is The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which was also adapted for radio and stage plays, and made into the critically acclaimed film Margaret’s Museum, starring Helena Bonham Carter. In his varied career, Sheldon has also served in the RAF and as fiction editor of The Antigonish Review. His play Lauchie, Liza and Rory won the 2004 Merritt Award for best play by a Nova Scotia writer. Down the Coaltown Road, first published in 2002, was nominated for the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
Editorial Reviews
"The truffles of the fiction chocolate box . . . offer[s] established stars and newer lights . . . In this collection, story is not only essential, but both profound and prismatic . . . if you like well-wrought stories, you will find plenty here to savour." — Globe and Mail
"The editor draws upon some of the best known names in fiction . . . A great gift for the brooding, serious fiction lover in the family, and those too who simply enjoy a good story." — Newfoundland Herald
"The editor draws upon some of the best known names in fiction . . . A great gift for the brooding, serious fiction lover in the family, and those too who simply enjoy a good story." — Newfoundland Herald
"The truffles of the fiction chocolate box . . . offer[s] established stars and newer lights . . . In this collection, story is not only essential, but both profound and prismatic . . . if you like well-wrought stories, you will find plenty here to savour." — Globe and Mail
Other titles by Lesley Choyce
Face the Music
Down Home for Christmas - Holiday Stories from Atlantic Canada
Peggy's Cove
The Amazing History of a Coastal Village, Second Edition
The Trouble With Everything
The Rules Have Changed
Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea
A Living History
In Praise of Small Mistakes
Saltwater Chronicles
Notes on Everything Under the Nova Scotia Sun
Sid the Kid and the Dryer
A Story About Sidney Crosby
The Ledge
Other titles by Alistair MacLeod
Island
Penguin Modern Classics Edition
Remembrance
To Every Thing There is a Season
A Cape Breton Christmas Story
Lives of Short Duration
No Great Mischief
Brigh an Òrain - A Story in Every Song
Gifts to Last
Christmas Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland
As Birds Bring Forth the Sun and Other Stories
Other titles by Joan Clark
Other titles by Wayne Johnston
The Mystery of Right and Wrong
First Snow, Last Light
The Son of a Certain Woman
A World Elsewhere
Old Lost Land of Newfoundland, The
Family, Memory, Fiction, and Myth
The Custodian of Paradise
Modern Classics Who Do You Think You Are
Evening Snow Will Bring Such Peace
The Navigator of New York
Human Amusements
Other titles by Carol Bruneau
Other titles by Maureen Hull
Other titles by David Helwig
Other titles by Herb Curtis
Other titles by Anne Simpson
Other titles by Lynn Coady
Other titles by Donna Morrissey
Pluck
A memoir of a Newfoundland childhood and the raucous, terrible, amazing journey to becoming a novelist
Mother of the Regiment and Other Remarkable Women of Newfoundland and Labrador
The Promise
The Fortunate Brother
The Deception of Livvy Higgs
Sylvanus Now Audio Book
Cross Katie Kross
Sylvanus Now
Kit's Law
What They Wanted
Other titles by J.J. Steinfeld
Somewhat Absurd, Somehow Existential
Morning Bafflement and Timeless Puzzlement
Gregor Samsa Was Never in The Beatles
A Visit to the Kafka Café
Absurdity, Woe Is Me, Glory Be
An Unauthorized Biography of Being
Madhouses in Heaven, Castles in Hell
Identity Dreams and Memory Sounds
Poetry New & Selected
Misshapenness
Would You Hide Me?
Other titles by Budge Wilson
Other titles by John Steffler
Other titles by Helen Fogwill Porter
Other titles by Wayne Curtis
Winter Road
Fishing the High Country
A Memoir of the River
Homecoming: The Road Less Travelled
Homecoming
The Road Less Travelled
In the Country
Sleigh Tracks in New Snow
Maritime Christmas Stories
Of Earthly and River Things
An Angler's Memoir
Long Ago and Far Away
STU Reader
Wild Apples
Field Notes from a River Farm
