Shortlisted for the 2011 Northern "LIT" Award (Northern Libraries recognizing Northern Authors)

A book of voices arising out of the lives of people who populated outport Newfoundland.

Drawing on family recollections, interviews with elders and extensive research in archives and regional museums, The Fetch, Nico Rogers' first book, is a brilliant hybrid -- neither a novel nor a collection of short stories. This compelling volume of tales and prose poems contains a broad range of characters. There is the slow-witted girl who has lost her mother and now has only the cow named Fatty for a friend; the hard-bitten captain of a schooner in recoil from the ways of his alcoholic father; the child born premature, swaddled in olive oil-soaked linen, placed in a pan and incubated in an oven. And so on, twenty-eight vignettes in all, all tightly written and highly evocative of outport Newfoundland before Confederation. Funny, tragic, and just.

Nico Rogers writes poetry and fiction. He published his first book, The Fetch, in 2010. His latest poems come from being at home with his son and from being a stepfather to a 10-year-old girl. They reach into his personal and family history, while also attempting to flesh out some of the complexities of contemporary, urban maleness. They are also about the daily routine of cleaning milk and tomato sauce off the walls. Largely, they’ve helped him along on a journey that started with being the homebody to a 2.5 month-old. Another of his writing projects is a manuscript based on the diary he kept while on a 50-day canoeing expedition across the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. He lives in Toronto.

Nico Rogers' profile page