About the Book

Ten years, ten authors, ten critics.

The Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne reaches into its ten-year archive of Brown Bag Lunch readings to sample some of the most diverse and powerful voices in contemporary Canadian literature.

This anthology offers readers samples from some of Canada's most exciting writers of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Each selection is introduced by a brief essay, serving as a point of entry into the writer's work. From the east coast of Newfoundland to Kitamaat territory on British Columbia's central coast, there is a story for everyone, from everywhere. True to Canada's multilingual and multicultural heritage, these ten writers come from diverse ethnicities and backgrounds, and work in multiple languages, including English, French, and Cree.

Ying Chen essay by Julie Rodgers

Lynn Coady essay by Maïté Snauwaert

Michael Crummey essay by Jennifer Bowering Delisle

Caterina Edwards essay by Joseph Pivato

Marina Endicott essay by Daniel Laforest

Lawrence Hill essay by Winfried Siemerling

Alice Major essay by Don Perkins

Eden Robinson essay by Kit Dobson

Gregory Scofield essay by Angela Van Essen

Kim Thúy essay by Pamela V. Sing

About the Author: Marie Carrière is the Director of the Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne and teaches French, English, and Comparative Literature at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on contemporary women's writing and the theory and history of feminism. Curtis Gillespie is the author of five books, including the memoirs Almost There and Playing Through and the novel Crown Shyness. He has won or been nominated for a variety of awards for his books including the Danuta Gleed Award, the Henry Kreisel Award and the MacEwan Prize. He is the recipient of seven National Magazine Awards from twenty nominations for his writing on science, politics, sports, travel and the arts, including a record-tying four awards in 2014. In 2010, he co-founded the narrative journalism magazine Eighteen Bridges, which he also edits. In addition to his own writing, he has worked with many of Canada's best writers as an editor, teacher and mentor at the University of Alberta, the Banff Centre for the Arts and Eighteen Bridges. Jason Purcell is a graduate student at the University of Alberta in the Department of English and Film Studies. He is the Communications Officer for the Canadian Literature Centre/ Centre de littérature canadienne at the University of Alberta, the Circulation Coordinator for Eighteen Bridges magazine, and the Manuscript Coordinator at NeWest Press. Lynn Coady is an award-wining author and journalist. Her first novel, Strange Heaven, was nominated for the Governor General's Award, and in 2011, her novel The Antagonist was shortlisted for the prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize, an award she won in 2013 for her short story collection Hellgoing. Coady lives in Toronto, where she writes for television. Ying Chen left her native Shanghai and settled in Montreal in 1991. Her first novel, La mémoire de l'eau was published by Leméac in 1992. Subsequent novels include the award-winning Les Lettres chinoises (Leméac, 1993); L'ingratitude (Leméac, 1995), Immobile (Boréal, 1998) which won the Prix Alfred-DesRochers 1999), Un enfant à ma porte (Boréal, 2008) and La rive est loin (Boréal, 2013). Chen lives in Vancouver. Michael Crummey is a poet, novelist, and short story writer from Newfoundland. His first novels, River Thieves (Doubleday, 2001) and The Wreckage (Doubleday, 2005) were each finalists for various prestigious literary awards. His third, Galore (Doubleday, 2009), won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book. His most recent novel Sweetland (Doubleday, 2014) was released in August.

Jennifer Bowering Delisle is the author of the lyric family memoir, The Bosun Chair, and a book of literary studies, The Newfoundland Diaspora: Mapping the Literature of Out-Migration. Her poetry and prose have been published in magazines and anthologies across North America. Delisle has a PhD in English, regularly teaches creative writing at the University of Alberta Faculty of Extension, and is on the board of NeWest Press. She is a settler living in Treaty 6 territory (Edmonton).

Kit Dobson is Professor of English at the University of Calgary. His research and teaching are concerned with literatures in Canada, transnational studies, and questions of affect and ecology. Caterina Edwards' latest book, a work of creative non-fiction, Finding Rosa: A Mother with Alzheimer's/ A Daughter's Search for the Past (Greystone 2008), won the 2009 Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction. The Island of the Nightingales (Guernica 2000) won the Writers Guild of Alberta Award for Short Fiction. She has co-edited two books of life writing by women. Marina Endicott worked as an actor and director in Toronto and in England. She published her first novel, Open Arms (Douglas & McIntyre), in 2001. Good to a Fault (Freehand Books 2008) won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book, Canada/Caribbean region. The Little Shadows (Doubleday 2011) was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Endicott also co-wrote the screenplay for the documentary film Vanishing Point, released in 2012. Lawrence Hill is an award-winning novelist and memorist. The Book of Negroes (HarperCollins Canada, 2007), Hill's most recent and successful novel, won numerous awards. He is the author of the bestselling memoir, Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada (2001). In 2013, Hill delivered the annual Massey Lecture, published by House of Anansi as Blood: The Stuff of Life. Daniel Laforest is Associate Professor at the University of Alberta where he teaches Quebec and Canadian literatures, as well as French literature, cultural studies and critical theory. He has been Fulbright fellow at the Centre for Cultural Studies of the University of California Santa Cruz. He serves as associate editor for the academic journal Canadian Literature. 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. A widely-published author, she has won many distinctions. Her most recent book, Intersecting Sets: A Poet Looks at Science, received the Wilfrid Eggleston Award for non-fiction as well as a National Magazine Award gold medal. Her website is www.alicemajor.com. Don Perkins is a lecturer in the department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta, and has also taught for the Drama department and the Faculty of Native Studies. He teaches and publishes in the areas of non-fiction writing, Canadian drama, popular culture, literature and history, and Native literature. Julie Rodgers is a lecturer in French at Maynooth University, Ireland. She teaches and publishes on contemporary women's writing and film in French. She has published two articles on Ying Chen to-date, with a third forthcoming in a special issue of Quebec Studies in 2015. Joseph J. Pivato is a professor of Literary Studies in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at Athabasca University. He is the founding professor of the Master of Arts Integrated Studies program. His research has helped to establish the academic recognition of ethnic minority writing in Canada, particularly the Italian-Canadian literature. Eden Robinson is the internationally acclaimed author of Traplines, Monkey Beach, and Blood Sports. Traplines was the winner of the New York Times Notable Book of the Year and Britain's Winifred Holtby Memorial Prize. Monkey Beach was nominated for the Giller Prize, the 2000 Governor General's Award for Fiction, and was selected as the Globe and Mail's Editor's Choice. Robinson is a member of the Haisla and Heiltsuk First Nations. Gregory Scofield is one of Canada's most renowned Aboriginal writers, whose collections include kipocihkân: Poems New & Selected, I Knew Two Metis Women, and Love Medicine and One Song. His unique style blends oral storytelling, song, spoken word and the Cree language. His poetry and memoir, Thunder Through My Veins (1999), is widely taught across Canada and the U.S. Winfried Siemerling is a professor in the department of English Language and Literature at the University of Waterloo. His current research includes African Canadian writing, literary history, and the presence of the past. He is co-researcher of International Institute for Critical Studies in Improvisation: A Partnered Research Institute, funded by the SSHRC Partnership Grant. Pamela V. Sing is Director of the Institut d'études canadiennes/Institute of Canadian Studies at Campus Saint-Jean, the University of Alberta's francophone campus, and Associate Director of the Canadian Literature Centre/Centre de littérature canadienne at the University of Alberta. She teaches French, Québec, and Franco-Canadian literature at Campus Saint-Jean and is the co-editor of Impenser la francophonie: Recherches, renouvellement, diversité, identité with Estelle Dansereau (Campus Saint-Jean, 2012). Her research focuses on Franco-Canadian and Québécois writers, as well as Canadian and American writers of Franco-Métis ancestry. Maïté Snauwaert holds a PhD in French Literature from Université Paris 8. In Canada since 2004, she has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre de recherche sur le texte et l'imaginaire Figura at the Université du Québec à Montréal, at the CRILCQ/Université de Montréal, and at McGill University (Marie-Thérèse Reverchon scholarship). She is an assistant professor at the Campus Saint-Jean, University of Alberta. Kim Thúy's first novel Ru was published in French (Libre Expression, 2009) and translated into English by Sheila Fischman (Random House of Canada, 2012), winning numerous awards within Canada and abroad. The English translation was also nominated for prestigious prizes. Thúy's second novel, Mãn (Libre expression, 2013) garnered critical acclaim and was translated into English by Sheila Fischman in 2014 (Random House of Canada). She lives in Montreal, Quebec. Angela Van Essen is a PhD candidate in the English and Film Studies department at the University of Alberta where she is writing a dissertation on contemporary Cree bilingual literature. She has taught English courses at The King's University and at the University of Alberta and published on Indigenous writers in Canada.