Waiting
An Anthology of Essays
- Publisher
- The University of Alberta Press
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2018
- Category
- Essays, Canadian
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781772123838
- Publish Date
- Aug 2018
- List Price
- $27.99
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9781772124187
- Publish Date
- Oct 2018
- List Price
- $24.99
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Description
The verb esperar means to wait. It also means to hope.—“The Past Was a Small Notebook, Much Scribbled-Upon”, Cora Siré
Waiting, that most human of experiences, saturates all of our lives. We spend part of each day waiting—for birth, death, appointments, acceptance, forgiveness, redemption. This collection of thirty-two personal essays is as much about hope as it is about waiting. Featuring literary voices from the renowned to the emerging, this anthology of contemporary creative nonfiction will resonate with anyone who has ever had to wait.
Contributors: Samantha Albert, Rona Altrows, Sharon Butala, Jane Cawthorne, Weyman Chan, Rebecca Danos, Patti Edgar, John Graham-Pole, Leslie Greentree, Edythe Anstey Hanen, Vivian Hansen, Jane Harris, Richard Harrison, Elizabeth Haynes, Lee Kvern, Anne Lévesque, Margaret Macpherson, Alice Major, Wendy McGrath, Stuart Ian McKay, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Susan Olding, Roberta Rees, Julie Sedivy, Kathy Seifert, Cora Siré, Steven Ross Smith, Anne Sorbie, Glen Sorestad, Kelly S. Thompson, Robin van Eck, Aritha van Herk
About the authors
Rona Altrows is the author of two books of short fiction, A Run on Hose and Key in Lock, as well as a children's chapbook, The River Throws a Tantrum. With Naomi K. Lewis, she co-edited the anthology Shy. Her work has earned her several awards, including an IPPY silver medal (shared with Lewis), the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize, and the 2017 Alberta Literary Award. With Julie Sedivy, Altrows is currently co-editing an anthology of essays about Waiting. She lives in Calgary, Alberta.
Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative at the University of Calgary. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada’s literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. Her novel, No Fixed Address, was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.
Samantha Albert's profile page
Sharon Butala is the author of nineteen books of fiction and nonfiction, numerous essays and articles, some poetry and five produced plays. She published her first novel in 1984, Country Of The Heart, which was nominated for the Books in Canada First Novel Award, followed closely by a collection of short stories, Queen of the Headaches. She was born in Nipawin, Saskatchewan. After graduating from the University of Saskatchewan, she taught English in Saskatchewan, British Columbia and Nova Scotia. She eventually returned to Saskatoon, before moving near Eastend, Saskatchewan, to live on her husband, Peter Butala’s ranch. Sharon’s books have been on the Canadian bestseller lists, including her memoir, The Perfection Of The Morning, which reached #1 in July 1994 and remained on the list for over a year. Most recently, Wild Rose was also on the bestseller lists. Sharon has read all over Canada and in the United States as well as in Mexico, the Czech Republic, and Ireland. She has been a guest at nearly every literary festival in Canada and some US festivals, as well as teaching literally dozens of writing workshops. Sharon has been a guest at the “Geography of Hope” conference on Wallace Stegner, at Point Reyes Station, California. She has also been a guest speaker at Speak to the Wild: a multi-disciplinary gathering dedicated to the politics and poetics of wilderness, at Wells Gray Provincial Park, BC. She is also in demand as a lecturer, having spoken recently at the Edmonton Jung Forum, the Banff Centre for the Arts Book Discussion Weekend, the “Books ‘n’ Brunch” series in Toronto, the UBC and Hollyhock’s “Summer Speakers’ Series” in Vancouver, the Vancouver Institute, and was a keynote speaker at the narratology conference at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, among other engagements. Sharon has also been a keynote speaker at the International Grasslands conference and delivered the inaugural annual lecture at University of Saskatchewan Creative Writing program.
Shorter:
Jane Cawthorne is a writer, editor, and feminist activist. Her first novel, Patterson House, is forthcoming with Inanna Publications in 2022. She recently published the anthology, Writing Menopause, with Elaine Morin in 2017. Jane writes about women on the brink of transformation.
Longer:
Jane Cawthorne is a writer, editor, and feminist activist. Her first novel, Patterson House, is forthcoming with Inanna Publications in 2022. She recently published the anthology, Writing Menopause, with Elaine Morin in 2017. She has written about her personal experience with illness before in “The Cure for a Cancer Cliché,” which was the first runner-up in the PRISM International Creative Non Fiction Contest in 2007, and again in her essay, “Something As Big As A Mountain,” published in PRISM in 2012 and listed as a notable essay in Best American Essays 2013.
She has an MFA in Creative Writing and writes about women on the brink of transformation.
Weyman Chan
Born in Calgary, Alberta, Weyman Chan has published poems and short stories in a wide variety of literary journals and anthologies.
He won the 2002 National Magazine Awards silver prize for his poem “At work,” and the 2003 Alberta Book Awards for his first book of poetry, Before a Blue Sky Moon. His second book, Noise from the Laundry (Talonbooks), was nominated for the 2008 Governor General’s Award for Poetry.
A laboratory technician by trade, Chan distills a unique inner voice in the spiraling, non-sequential and non-temporal syntax of poetry.
Leslie Greentree is the author of two books of poetry, guys named Bill (2002) and go-go dancing for Elvis (2003), shortlisted for the Griffin Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her short story, The Brilliant Save, was a winner of CBC Radio's annual Alberta Anthology competition. Leslie has read across much of Canada and at the Dublin Writers’ Festival. She lives in Red Deer, Alberta. This is her first book of short stories.
Leslie Greentree is the author of two books of poetry, Guys Named Bill (2002) and go-go dancing for Elvis (2003), shortlisted for the Griffin Award for Excellence in Poetry in 2004. Leslie has read across much of Canada and in Ireland at the Dublin Writers’ Festival in 2005. She lives in Red Deer, Alberta. This is her first book of short stories. Winner of CBC Radio's annual Alberta Anthology competition in professional fiction category with short story, The Brilliant Save, which will be part of a book anthology (Sept 2006).
Leslie Greentree's profile page
John Graham-Pole's profile page
Jane Harris is a writer from Lethbridge, Alberta, who turns complex research into engaging scenes and easily understood messages. Finding Home in the Promised Land is her second book to be published by J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, with the eBook by Signature Editions. Jane's first book, Eugenics and the Firewall: Canada’s Nasty Little Secret was published in 2010. Jane has also contributed to two Canadian anthologies and her articles about business, personal finance, history, faith, politics and social issues have appeared in more than a dozen publications including Write, Alberta Views, Winnipeg Free Press, Canadian Capital, Alberta Venture, Lethbridge Herald, and The Anglican Planet. She won a 2016 Alberta Literary Award (James H. Gray Award for Short Non-Fiction), and was a finalist in the 2016 Alberta Magazine Publishers’ Association Showcase Awards for her essay, “The Unheard Patient.”
Lee Easton and Richard Harrison are writers living in Calgary. They both work for Mount Royal College. Easton is a specialist in literature dealing with such subject areas of gender, media, literary theory, multi media and film. Harrison — nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 1999 — is the author of six books of poetry. He has also worked as an editor on more than 20 books.
Richard Harrison's profile page
Lee Kvern is the award-winning author of short stories and novels. Novels: Afterall and The Matter of Sylvie were nominated for the Alberta Book Awards, Sylvie was long-listed for the Relit Award. Her short stories are also well celebrated: "White" was the national winner of the CBC Literary Awards, "I May Have Known You" was nominated for the Howard 'O'Hagan Award, and "Detachment" was a finalist in the Malahat Open Season. Her work has been produced for CBC Radio, and published in Event, Descant, and enRoute, and on Joyland.ca (New York) and Foundpress.com.
Please visit www.leekvern.com or follow Lee on Twitter @LeeKvern.
Elizabeth Haynes' short story collection Speak Mandarin Not Dialect was a finalist for the Alberta Book Awards. Her writing has been published in literary magazines including Alberta Views, The New Quarterly, The Malahat Review, Prism and Room, and a number of anthologies, most recently Shy: an Anthology and Waiting (University of Alberta Press). Her awards include the Western Magazine Award for Fiction, the American Heart Association award for fiction, and the Writers Guild of Alberta Jon Whyte award for non-fiction. She studied writing at the Universities of Victoria and Calgary, and UBC. Elizabeth lives in Calgary, Alberta.
Elizabeth Haynes' profile page
Anne Lévesque's poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction have been published in Canadian and international journals and anthologies. Lucy cloud is her first novel. She lives with her husband near Inverness, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia.
Raised in Yellowknife, now Denendeh, NWT, Margaret Macpherson quickly got an education in the outside world travelling extensively in Europe, Australia, and Central America before settling into an English Lit undergraduate degree at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton in the early ’80s. Macpherson wrote for periodicals and magazines (as well as being sole employee of a Halifax volunteer-run leftist bookstore) during her eight years in Atlantic Canada. In 1988 she and her husband moved to Bermuda where Macpherson worked as a full-time reporter.
Returning to Canada in 1992, Macpherson embarked on a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from UBC and completed the program as a visiting grad student at Edmonton’s U of A. She published a few contract non-fiction books as well as a biography of firebrand Nellie McClung Voice for the Voiceless in the early 2000s, but it was the publication of her short story collection Perilous Departures that launched her literary career. A first novel, Released was nominated for a Manitoba best book award in 2009, followed by a second novel Body Trade which won the De beers NorthWords Prize for Outstanding book in 2012.
Meanwhile, Macpherson formed an extraordinary network of creatives in Edmonton where she acted as a fiction editor of the Other Voices literary journal, became a driving force in the Alberta Branch of the Canadian Authors Association, and later, was elected the AB/NWT Rep for The Writers’ Union of Canada.
While living with her partner and three (occasionally four) children during her middle years, Macpherson worked as a theatre arts editor for the alternative press, and was hired as Writer-in-Residence for the Edmonton Public Library system. She taught creative writing at King’s College University, the U of A Women and Word program, as well as through Edmonton’s Metro continuing education. She also supported her writing by teaching high school English Literature at Northern Institute of Technology (NAIT) while juggling a number of mentorships with younger (and older) writers though the Writers Guild of Alberta.
Macpherson paints, travels, laughs long and often, and continues to explore and record the mystical communion of living things. She has recently moved to Deep River, in Northern Ontario, to begin her third act with her life partner.
Margaret Macpherson's profile page
Alice Major emigrated from Scotland at the age of eight, and grew up in Toronto before coming west to work as a weekly newspaper reporter. She served as the City of Edmonton’s first poet laureate from 2005–2007. Among her previous books are Memory's Daughter, for which she won the Stephan G. Stephansson Award in 2011; The Occupied World; and The Office Tower Tales, for which she won the Pat Lowther Award in 2009. In 2010, she received a lifetime achievement award, presented by the City of Edmonton and the Professional Arts Coalition of Edmonton.
Wendy McGrath's most recent novel Broke City is the final book in her Santa Rosa Trilogy. Previous novels in the series are Santa Rosa and North East. Her most recent book of poetry, A Revision of Forward, was released in Fall 2015. McGrath works in multiple genres. BOX (CD) 2017 is an adaptation of her long poem into spoken word/experimental jazz/noise by QUARTO & SOUND. MOVEMENT 1 from that CD was nominated for a 2018 Edmonton Music Award (Jazz Recording of the Year). She recently completed a collaborative manuscript of poems inspired by the photography of Danny Miles, drummer for July Talk and Tongue Helmet. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction has been widely published. Wendy lives in Edmonton, Alberta, on Treaty Six Territory.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn was born and raised in Western Canada and moved to Nova Scotia in 1983. An ethnographer and essayist, she is the author and editor of six academic books on research and literacy. Her first book of poems, all the perfect disguises, appeared in 2003. She was appointed Poet Laureate for Halifax for 2005-2009.
Lorri Neilsen Glenn's profile page
Susan Olding was named one of The New Quarterlyâ??s â??Most Loved Living Writersâ? alongside authors including Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro. Her poetry and prose have appeared widely in literary journals and anthologies across Canada and the United States. She has been a finalist for a National Magazine Award, two Western Magazine Awards, and a CBC Literary Award; she is also a two-time winner of the Event Creative Non-fiction Contest and a winner of the Prairie Fire Non-fiction Contest. Susan earned a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Education from Queenâ??s University, and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She has been a frequent contributor to several discussion groups, workshops, and web resources for adoptive parents. Her work has also appeared in numerous anthologies. Susan Olding currently lives with her family in Kingston, Ontario.
Roberta Rees lives in Calgary where she has taught high school and university English courses and now teaches Creative Writing for Women.
Leslie Greentree is the author of two books of poetry, guys named Bill (2002) and go-go dancing for Elvis (2003), shortlisted for the Griffin Award for Excellence in Poetry. Her short story, The Brilliant Save, was a winner of CBC Radio's annual Alberta Anthology competition. Leslie has read across much of Canada and at the Dublin Writers’ Festival. She lives in Red Deer, Alberta. This is her first book of short stories.
Cora Siré lives in Montréal where she writes fiction, essays and poetry. She is the author of two novels, Behold Things Beautiful (Signature Editions, 2016), The Other Oscar (Quattro Books, 2016) and Signs of Subversive Innocents (Signature Editions, 2014), a collection of poetry. Her work has been shortlisted for various literary prizes. Born in Canada, she often writes of elsewheres, drawing on her encounters in faraway places as well as her family’s history of displacement.
Steven Ross Smith is a multi-disciplinary sound and performance poet, writer of fiction, poetry, book reviews, and artist profiles. He has served as publisher/editor with Underwhich Editions, Business Manager of Grain magazine, and as Managing Editor with Banff Centre Press and editor of the online magazine Boulderpavement. He has been a Writer-In-Residence in a variety of long and short-term residencies, including the twelve-month terms at Saskatoon Public Library and Weyburn Public Library. Smith has been publishing literary work since the 1970s, appearing in one hundred periodicals and thirteen books, including one non-fiction title, two collections of short fiction, and ten poetry books. Smith's book Disarray: fluttertongue 3: won the 2005 Saskatchewan Books Awards Book of the Year Award. The chapbook Pliny's Knickers, a collaboration between Smith, poet Hilary Clark and artist Betsy Rosenwald, won the 2006 bpNichol Chapbook Award. In 2008, he moved to Banff to become Director of Literary Arts at The Banff Centre, where he served until February 2014. Smith currently lives in Banff, Alberta. Connect with Smith at www.fluttertongue.ca or on Twitter @SonnyBoySmith.
Anne Sorbie has published three books, including the poetry collection, Falling Backwards Into Mirrors (Inanna, 2019). Her work has appeared in magazines, e-zines, journals and anthologies, and on CBC Canada Writes. Her poetry has been translated into Farsi and broadcast by Ottawa Persian Radio (2021), and shared in Piacenza, Italy as part of Global Poetry Patchwork (2020). She is a staunch believer in equity and an active community advocate. Her writing often focuses on the lives of women. Anne lives in Calgary, Alberta.
Heidi Grogan's writing and work address issues at the intersection of trauma, social justice, and spirituality. She has published in ROOM magazine, Weavings, and the Boobs Anthology (Caitlin Press, 2016). For 15 years, she taught creative writing to women healing from sexual exploitation and edited their publication, Cry of the Streets. She has engaged adults healing from trauma in multiple Calgary programs, attending to the links between poverty, literacy, and literary fluency. Heidi lives in Calgary, Alberta.
One of Canada's most revered poets, Glen Sorestad has been writing for over 30 years from his Saskatchewan home. Also the co-founder and president of Thistledown Press, he helps to expose the talent of emerging western poets. Sorestad's work has appeared in countless journals across Canada, in the United States, Australia and Europe. Recently one of his stories was produced for the Bravo! cable network and another was broadcast on CBC Radio One. He holds a master's degree in education and has edited many short story and poetry anthologies.
Aritha van Herk teaches Creative Writing, Canadian Literature and Contemporary Narrative. Her novels include Judith, The Tent Peg, No Fixed Address (nominated for the Governor General's Award for fiction), Places Far From Ellesmere (a geografictione) and Restlessness. Her critical works, A Frozen Tongue (ficto-criticism) and In Visible Ink (crypto-frictions) stretch the boundaries of the essay and interrogate questions of reading and writing as aspects of narrative subversion. With Mavericks: an Incorrigible History of Alberta (winner of the Grant MacEwan Author's Award) van Herk ventured into new territory, transforming history into a narratological spectacle. That book frames the new permanent exhibition that opened at the Glenbow Museum in 2007. van Herk is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and is active in Canada's literary and cultural life, writing articles and reviews as well as creative work. She has served on many juries, including the Governor General's Award and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. She is well known in the broader community of the city, the province, and the country as a writer and a public intellectual.
Awards
- Short-listed, Cover Design of the Year | Alberta Book Awards, Book Publishers Association of Alberta
- Short-listed, Cover Design of the Year | Alberta Book Awards, Book Publishers Association of Alberta
Editorial Reviews
# 2 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, October 19, 2018
# 2 on Calgary Herald's Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, October 6, 2018
Calgary Herald
"A great deal of our lives is spent waiting. As humans we wait for public transit and for food at restaurants and food courts... And we wait for longer, more existential things: the birth of a baby, the progression of an illness, the arrival or departure of a friend or family member, acceptance or rejection of a job opportunity, love. In this edited anthology, a broad array of writers...examine various aspects of why and how we wait."
Quill & Quire
"Waiting is a universal phenomenon, and in this impressive collection editors Rona Altrows and Julie Sedivy curate a variety of nuanced and distilled personal essays from 32 writers exploring the liminal experiences of people waiting for results, news, change, release or understanding"
Jannie Edwards
"Each of these thirty-two essays is powerful, distinctive, authentic.... I closed this book feeling that I’d been on thirty-two life journeys.... Waiting is not just filling blank time. It is also about courage and love." [Full review at https://www.ottawareviewofbooks.com/single-post/2019/02/02/Waiting-An-Anthology-of-Essays-edited-by-Rona-Altrows-and-Julie-Sedivy]
Ottawa Review of Books
# 9 on Calgary Herald's Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, October 13, 2018
Calgary Herald
"There’s plenty to debate here... These are just a few of the kinds of waiting essayed here, and they are all very much worth reading." Saskatoon StarPhoenix, January 26, 2019 [Full review at https://thestarphoenix.com/entertainment/books/book-reviews-the-literary-history-of-saskatchewan-vol-3-waiting]
Bill Robertson
Other titles by Rona Altrows
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This Strange Visible Air
Essays on Aging and the Writing Life
Season of Fury and Wonder
Where I Live Now
A Journey through Love and Loss to Healing and Hope
Zara's Dead
The Look Book
Spring 2017 Sampler
Mermaid In The Watery Deep
Short Story
The Vision Of The Hohokam
Short Story
Dinner On The Edge Of The City
Short Story
Domestici
Short Story
The Metric System
Short Story
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Other titles by Weyman Chan
Other titles by Patti Edgar
Other titles by Leslie Greentree
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Other titles by Richard Harrison
Locations of Grief
An Emotional Geography
25
Poèmes de hockey inédits et revisités
On Not Losing My Father's Ashes in the Flood
Secret Identity Reader
Essays on Sex, Death and the Superhero
Now is the Winter
Thinking about Hockey
Worthy of His Fall
Hero of the Play
10th Anniversary Edition
Big Breath of a Wish
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Other titles by Elizabeth Haynes
Other titles by Anne Lévesque
Other titles by Margaret Macpherson
Tracking the Caribou Queen
Memoir of a Settler Girlhood
Canadian Political Bundle
Nellie McClung / William Lyon Mackenzie King / John Diefenbaker/ René Lévesque / Maurice Duplessis / James Douglas / John A. Macdonald / Joey Smallwood / Wilfrid Laurier
Perilous Departures
Released
Body Trade
Nellie McClung
Silk, Spices and Glory
Other titles by Alice Major
Locations of Grief
An Emotional Geography
Welcome to the Anthropocene
Ten Canadian Writers in Context
The Jade Spindle
The Office Tower Tales
Intersecting Sets
A Poet Looks at Science
Memory's Daughter
The Occupied World
Writing the Terrain
Travelling Through Alberta with the Poets
Some bones and a story
Other titles by Wendy McGrath
Other titles by Lorri Neilsen Glenn
Other titles by Susan Olding
Other titles by Roberta Rees
Other titles by Cora Siré
Other titles by Steven Smith
Other titles by Anne Sorbie
Other titles by Glen Sorestad
Other titles by Kelly Thompson
Other titles by Aritha van Herk
Recognition and Revelation
Short Nonfiction Writings
Robert Kroetsch
Essayist, Novelist, Poet
Post-glacial
The Poetry of Robert Kroetsch
The Frontier of Patriotism
Alberta and the First World War
Stampede and the Westness of West
Prairie Gothic
Photographs by George Webber
In This Place
Calgary 2004-2011
Not Drowning But Waving
Women, Feminism, and the Liberal Arts
Bear
One West, Two Myths II
Essays on Comparison
