And now we are 60. To mark this momentous occasion, the editors at Goose Lane have selected six tiny perfect stories for your reading pleasure. Authored by some of Canada's finest writers, they come from the sweep of Goose Lane's publishing history. Each story will be individually bound and gathered with the others in a nifty sleeve as a collection, or they may be purchased individually in eBook singles. Here's what you can expect to find in this sexagenarian sextet:
ALDEN NOWLAN's "A Boy's Life of Napoleon," a brilliant piece of short fiction adapted from Nowlan's first novel, The Wanton Troopers, written in 1960, but published posthumously in 1988.
The beguiling "Woman Gored by Bison Lives" from DOUGLAS GLOVER's 1991 GG-nominated story collection, A Guide to Animal Behaviour.
Giller Prize-winner LYNN COADY's unforgettable Christmas story "The Three Marys," adapted from her award-winning debut novel, Strange Heaven, published in 1993.
Commonwealth Prize winner SHAUNA SINGH BALDWIN's glittering story "Simran" from her 1996 debut collection, English Lessons and Other Stories.
KATHRYN KUITENBROUWER's haunting "What Had Become of Us," from her 2003 debut book of short fiction, Way Up.
The extraordinary "Knife Party" from a new collection of stories by MARK ANTHONY JARMAN, forthcoming in the spring of 2015.
Lynn Coady's
Strange Heaven was nominated for the Governor General's Award for Fiction and the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and won the Dartmouth Book Award and the Atlantic Booksellers' Choice Award. She has since written three books of fiction,
Play the Monster Blind, Saints of Big Harbour, and
Mean Boy, all national bestsellers. Her work has appeared in
Saturday Night, This Magazine, and
Chatelaine. She also writes a column on relationships for the
Globe and Mail.
Born in Hants Co., Nova Scotia, in 1933, Alden Nowlan moved to Hartland, New Brunswick, when he was nineteen, and worked on the
Hartland Observer as reporter, editor, and general facilitator until he went to Saint John (and the
Telegraph Journal) in 1963. In 1968 he was invited to take up the position of Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Alden Nowlan died on June 27th, 1983.
Douglas Glover was recipient of the 2006 Writers' Trust of Canada Timothy Findley Award for his body of work. His bestselling novel
Elle won the Governor-General's Award and was a finalist for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
A Guide to Animal Behaviour was a finalist for the 1991 Governor-General's Award, and
16 Categories of Desire was shortlisted for the 2000 Rogers Writers Trust Fiction Award.
Shauna Singh Baldwin's first novel, What the Body Remembers, was published in 1999 by Knopf Canada, Transworld UK, Doubleday USA, and (as an audiobook) by Goose Lane Editions. It received the 2000 Commonwealth Writer's Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean region) and has been translated into fourteen languages. Her second novel The Tiger Claw was a finalist for Canada's Giller Prize 2004. Shauna is the author of English Lessons and Other Stories and coauthor of A Foreign Visitor's Survival Guide to America. Her awards include the 1995 Writer's Union of Canada Award for short prose and the 1997 Canadian Literary Award. English Lessons received the 1996 Friends of American Writers Award.
A former radio producer and ecommerce consultant, her fiction and poems are widely published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, and India. She has served on several juries and teaches short courses in creative writing. Shauna holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. We Are Not in Pakistan: Stories was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2007. Shauna's third novel, The Selector of Souls, was published by Knopf Canada in September 2012. Reviews, reading schedule, and interviews at: www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com.
Critics described the stories in
Way Up, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer's first book of fiction, as "some of the most impressive examples of new Canadian fiction in recent memory." Published in 2003, Way Up received a Danuta Gleed Award and was a finalist for the Relit Award.
The Nettle Spinner, her first novel, was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award and was also named a best of 2005 by
January magazine. Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer is the former fiction editor of the
Literary Review of Canada and has also worked as a tree-planter, a lumberjack, and a baker. Her reviews have appeared in the
Globe and Mail, the
San Francisco Chronicle, the
Toronto Star, and the
National Post. She teaches creative writing at the University of Toronto and is the magazine editor for Bookninja.com.
Mark Anthony Jarman is an award-winning Canadian author of six books of fiction and the critically acclaimed Ireland's Eye. He has won a National Magazine Award in non-fiction, and his essays have appeared in the
Walrus,
Canadian Geographic,
Hobart, the
Barcelona Review,
Vrig Nederland, and the
Globe and Mail. He lives in Fredericton.
