Canadian Literature Best Essay Prize 2014 Shortlist
April 7, 2015
We are pleased to announce the Canadian Literature Best Essay Prize 2014 Shortlist. Each year, Canadian Literature recognizes and celebrates the best article published during the previous annual cycle. Nominees are selected from a pool of approximately 24 articles, and previous winners include Michel Nareau, Meredith Quartermain, Deanna Reder, Susan Gingell, Allison Hargreaves, Daniel Heath Justice, Kristina Bidwell, and Jo-Ann Episkenew.
Editor Margery Fee says:
We hope … to signal our eagerness to receive and recognize the best submissions in our field. We know that some readers are graduate students and junior academics looking for the best examples on which to model their own writing, and one goal of this award is to make it clear what our adjudicators (selected from the editorial team and the editorial board) think is the best. We know that to receive such an award from ones peers is always welcome, and we hope that the award will encourage those who win it to continue to produce their best writing.
The 2014 nominees are as follows:
- Jamieson, Sara.
‘Surprising Developments’: Midlife in Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are?
Canadian Literature 217 (2013): 54–69. - McKegney, Sam.
‘pain, pleasure, shame. Shame’: Masculine Embodiment, Kinship, and Indigenous Reterritorialization.
Canadian Literature 216 (2013): 12–33. - Szabo, Lisa.
Adventures in Habitat: An Urban Story.
Canadian Literature 218 (2013): 67–84. - Williams, David.
Spectres of Time: Seeing Ghosts in Will Bird’s Memoirs and Abel Gance’s J’accuse
Canadian Literature 219 (2013): 113-30.
Congratulations to Sara Jamieson, Sam McKegney, Lisa Szabo, and David Williams on their excellent work. The winner will be announced at the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures reception at the Congress. Event details can be found at the University of Ottawa’s website.
Canada Reads 2015
March 16, 2015
Canada Reads, CBC’s annual battle of the books,
takes place this week! Over the next seven days, five celebrity panellists will defend five different books on their adherence to the competition theme. This year, they’re searching for the One Book to Break Barriers,
which must change perspectives, challenge stereotypes, and illuminate issues.
After each debate, a book will be eliminated and the ultimate victor will be crowned the book that all Canadians should read. The debates can be followed online, on the radio, or on the television.
Since its inception in 2002, the program has invited a great amount of critical interest, Canadian Literature included. Associate editor Laura Moss asks:
Why is it imperative that we, those who work on and in Canadian literature, take [Canada Reads] seriously? As a public presentation of a literature that is depicted as coming of age, Canada Reads has helped to open up Canadian literary works to a large market. Over the three years, it has brought eighteen writers’ names into prominence in the public domain. (Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel are listed twice.) It has become an important indicator of public support of the literary arts in Canada.
—Laura Moss,
Canada Readsin Canadian Literature 182
With these assertions in mind, we published a special issue on the program in 2007. Other critical works on Canada Reads from our journal include:
Canada Reads.
(PDF) By Laura Moss. (PDF) #182 (Autumn 2004): 6–10.Listening to the Readers of Canada Reads.
(PDF) By Danielle Fuller. #193 (Summer 2007): 11–34.Lullabies for Literature: An Interview with Heather O’Neill.
(HTML) By Kristin McHale. #193 (Summer 2007):175–177.
by Anouk Lang. #215 (Winter 2012): 120–36.A Book that All Canadians Should be Proud to Read
: Canada Reads and Joseph Boyden’s Three Day Road
If you’ve enjoyed reading through longlist as much as we have, see below for a compiled list of works about the longlisted authors from our archives. Reviews of the nominated books are in bold.
Dionne Brand
Reviews of Brand’s Works
Black Chronicles.
By Pilar Cuder-Dominiguez. #216 (Spring 2013): 186-87. Rev. of Chronicles: Early Works by Dionne Brand.Mapping and Way-making.
By Erin Wunker. #208 Prison Writing (Spring 2011): 191-92. Rev. of Fierce Departures: The Poetry of Dionne Brand by Dionne Brand.Poems of Witness.
By Hilary Clark. #192 Gabrielle Roy contemporaine/The Contemporary Gabrielle Roy (Spring 2007): 177-79. Rev. of Inventory by Dionne Brand.Soul Survivors.
By Evelyn C. White. #188 (Spring 2006): 183-84.
Rev. of What We All Long For by Dionne Brand.Orbiting Toronto.
By Heather Smyth. #182 Black Writing in Canada (Autumn 2004): 97-98. Rev. of Thirsty by Dionne Brand.Uses of Cultural Memory.
By Maureen Moyangh. #170-171 Native / Culture (Autumn/Winter 2001): 193-95. Rev. of At the Full and Change of the Moon by Dionne Brand.Still Need the Revolution.
By Susan Gingell. #161-162 On Thomas King (Summer/Autumn 1999): 182-84. Rev. of Land to Light On by Dionne Brand.
Articles about Brand
‘Streets are the dwelling place of the collective’: Public Space and the Cosmopolitan Citizenship in Dionne Brand’s What We All Long For.
(PDF) By Emily Johansen. #196 (Spring 2008): 48-62.Mapping the Door of No Return: Deterritorialization and the Work of Dionne Brand.
(PDF) By Marlene Goldman. #182 Black Writing in Canada (Autumn 2004): 13-28.Dionne Brand’s Winter Epigrams.
(PDF) By Edward Kamau Braithwaite. #105 (Summer 1985): 18-30.
Thomas King
Reviews of King’s Works
- Rev. of The Inconvenient Indian. By Brendan McCormack. Upcoming.
Also see our Governor General’s Literary Awards 2014 post for other works about and by Thomas King from our archives.
Lee Maracle
Reviews of Maracle’s Works
- Rev. of First Wives Club: Coast Salish Style. By Madeleine Jacobs. Upcoming.
Response and Responsibility.
By John Moffatt. #184 (Spring 2005): 176-77. Rev. of Will’s Garden by Lee Maracle.Family and Forever.
By Michelle La Flamme. #182 Black Writing in Canada (Autumn 2004): 154-56. Rev. of Daughters Are Forever by Lee Maracle.Being Raven.
By Jo-Ann Thom. #174 Travel (Autumn 2002): 165-66. Rev. of Sojourners and Sundogs: First Nations Fiction by Lee Maracle.
Articles by Maracle
Yin Chin.
(PDF) By Lee Maracle. #124-125 Native Writers & Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 156-61.
Articles about Maracle
Global Drift: Thinking the Beyond of Identity Politics.
(PDF) By Roy Miki. #199 Asian Canadian Studies (Winter 2008): 145-57.‘A Life Only Has One Author’: Twice-Told Aboriginal Life Narratives.
(PDF) By Sophie McCall. #172 Auto/biography (Spring 2002): 70-90.‘Being a Half-breed’: Discourses of Race and Cultural Syncreticity in the Works of Three Metis Women Writers.
(PDF) By Jodie Lundgren. #144 Native Individual State (Spring 1995): 62-77.‘Pleace Eunice, Don’t Be Ignorant’: The White Reader as Trickster in Lee Maracle’s Fiction.
(PDF) By Susie O’Brien. #144 Native Individual State (Spring 1995): 82-96.Contemporary Native Women’s Voices in Literature.
(PDF) By Agnes Grant. #124-125 Native Writers & Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 124-32.The Politics of Representation: Some Native Canadian Writers.
(PDF) By Barbara Godard. #124-125 Native Writers & Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 183-225.
Saleema Nawaz
Reviews of Nawaz’s Works
Potential Energy.
By Duffy Roberts. #201 Disappearance and Mobility (2009): 145-46. Rev. of Mother Superior by Saleema Nawaz.
Eden Robinson
Reviews of Robinson’s Works
Indigenous Storytelling.
By Nancy Van Styvendale. #219 (Winter 2013): 147-48. Rev. of The Sasquatch at Home: Traditional Protocols & Modern Storytelling by Eden Robinson.Fear Factor.
By Laurie Kruk. #191 (Winter 2006): 182-84. Rev. of Blood Sports by Eden Robinson.Beauty and Substance.
By Jennifer Andrews. #168 Mostly Drama (Spring 2001): 160-62. Rev. of Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson.Trapped Tales.
By Dee Horne. #156 (Spring 1998): 160-62. Rev. of Traplines by Eden Robinson.
Articles about Robinson
Indigeneity and Diversity in Eden Robinson’s Work.
(PDF) By Kit Dobson. #201 Disappearance and Mobility (Summer 2009): 54-67.‘Close, very close, a b’gwus howls’: The Contingency of Execution in Eden Robinson’s Monkey Beach.
(PDF) By Rob Appleford. #184 (Spring 2005): 85-101.Strategic Abjection: Windigo Psychosis and the ‘Postindian’ Subject in Eden Robinson’s ‘Dogs in Winter.’
(PDF) By Cynthia Sugars. #181 (Summer 2004): 78-91.
Doug Saunders
Reviews of Saunders’ Works
Challenging Slums.
By Daniel Harvey. #213 New Work on Early Canadian Literature (Summer 2012): 180-82. Rev. of Arrival City: The Final Migration and Our Next World by Doug Saunders.
Mariko Tamaki
Reviews of Tamaki’s Works
The School of Life.
By Gisele M. Baxter. #203 Home, Memory, and Self (Winter 2009): 133-34. Rev. of Skim by Mariko Tamaki.
Kim Thúy
Reviews of Thúy’s Works
- Rev. of Man. By Hannah McGregor. Upcoming.
Face à l’autre.
By Jean-Pierre Thomas. #209 Spectres of Modernism (Summer 2011): 168-69. Rev. of Ru by Kim Thúy.
Miriam Toews
Reviews of Toews’ Works
Family Matters.
By Tina Trigg. Rev. of All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews.*Allusions and Illusions.
By Kathleen McHale. #213 New Work on Early Canadian Literature (Summer 2012): 156-58. Rev. of Irma Voth by Miriam Toews.Out of Control.
By Paul Denham. #200 Strategic Nationalisms (Spring 2009): 196-97. Rev. of The Flying Troutmans by Miriam Toews.Uncomplicated Luck.
By Lisa Grekul. #195 Context(e)s (Winter 2007): 185-87. Rev. of Summer of My Amazing Luck by Miriam Toews.Complicated Lives.
By Barbara Pell. #186 Women & the Politics of Memory (Autumn 2005): 103-04. Rev. of A Complicated Kindness by Miriam Toews.
*Also nominated for the 2015 Folio Prize.
CanLit Submit Updates
March 5, 2015
As some submitters may have already noticed, we moved to Open Journal Systems over the weekend.CanLit Submit now redirects to our new submissions portal. We are excited to join fourteen other journals atUBC Library in providing open access to journal content.
Please be sure to register for an account in order to access the full functionality offered to OJS users with our journal, such as submitting articles, poetry, and book reviews. As an open source project, OJS provides many online resources that help new users with understanding the system. Guidance on how to create submissions can be found at:
- The Public Knowledge Project’s Step-by-Step Submission Guide or
- The Centre for Digital Research and Scholarship’s Video Submission Guide.
For general questions, please feel free to contact us at can.lit@ubc.ca, or cl.submit@ubc.ca for more specific inquiries about OJS and submissions.
New Website and Submission System
February 16, 2015
Canadian Literature has just turned 55! Since the first web server was activated in 1991, our online presence has grown in ways we never could have imagined. Over the last two decades, we have developed a robust website of new book reviews, video and transcribed interviews, and databases of Canadian publishers, poets, and scholars; the dedicated submission system CanLit Submit; our popular teaching resource CanLit Guides; and an engaged social media presence on Facebook and Twitter. We’ve been working hard to keep up—by the time we turn 60, we know that everything will have changed again.
New ways of thinking about knowledge and its dissemination have encouraged us to remodel our online connections. We are excited to announce that we are currently preparing a new website and moving to Open Journal Systems to enhance our interactions with CanLit readers, contributors, and peers. With these developments, we hope to improve our open access commitments, ease of submissions, and connections with the broader community.
We hope you’ll like the new website and submissions system as much as we do, and thank you again for 55 years of support!
New Issue: Science & Canadian Literature #221 (Summer 2014)
February 6, 2015
Canadian Literature’s Issue 221 (Summer 2014), Science & Canadian Literature, is now available for order. Janine Rogers introduces this special issue with Duncan Campbell Scott’s metaphor on the intersection of literature and science:
In 1922, when Duncan Campbell Scott gave the annual address to the Royal Society of Canada, he spent some time considering the relationship between literature and science. On the whole, he saw it as a positive one:
Science has taught the modern [poet] that nature lives and breathes,Scott mused, although he also felt that poetryhas no connection with material progress and with those advances which we think of as specialties of modern life(266, 269). Wrestling with these contradictory instincts, Scott tried to articulate how both the natural and mechanical aspects of science might be poetically combined. He imagines what he callsthe poetry of the aeroplane(270).
—Janine Rogers, ‘A Beauty and Daring all its Own’: A Note on Science and Canadian Literature
Science & Canadian Literature contains articles by Tania Aguila-Way; Monica Kidd; Ghislain Thibault and Mark Hayward; Victoria Kuttainen; Sarah de Jong Carson; and Ceri Morgan, with additional notes by Kathleen McConnell and Graham N. Forst. This issue also features new work by Canadian poets Elana Wolff, David McGimpsey, Emma Stothers, and Dave Margoshes as well as a collection of book reviews.
New Poetry Editor: Stephen Collis
January 22, 2015
We would like to thank long-time poetry editor Iain Higgins for a wonderful term and to extend a warm welcome to his successor, Stephen Collis.
Collis is an award-winning poet, academic, and activist. He lectures at Simon Fraser University, specializing in contemporary poetry, poetics, and American literature. His ongoing Barricades Project includes Anarchive (2005), The Commons (2008), On the Material (2010)—which won the 2011 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize—and To the Barricades (2013).
Collis is a former member of the Kootenay School of Writing and was a Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow at Simon Fraser University in 2011/2012.
We look forward to the bright and exciting directions he will bring to Canadian Literature’s poetry. Welcome to the team, Stephen Collis!
Call for Papers: Teaching and Learning Literatures in Canada and Quebec
January 16, 2015
Kathryn Grafton of CanLit Guides is welcoming papers for the Association for Canadian and Quebec Literatures (ACQL) panel at Congress 2015.
The panel aims to open up discussions on teaching and learning literatures in Canada and Quebec by considering questions such as: How can sharing case studies of particular texts, activities, and assignments offer us insights into best pedagogical practices? What happens when we teach a writer or text in a national as compared to a regional, Aboriginal, postcolonial, or world literature context?
Analyses of both historical and contemporary texts as well as a variety of theoretical and pedagogical approaches are encouraged, provided they have a focus on teaching and learning.
This is part of a larger project that includes further development of CanLit Guides, a modular online learning resource; a workshop at the University of British Columbia (2016); and a special issue of Canadian Literature on teaching and learning literatures in Canada (2017).
Proposals for papers are due 1 February 2015 (maximum 300 words with a short biography and a 50-word abstract). For more information, visit ACQL’s Call for Papers.
130th MLA Annual Convention in Vancouver
December 18, 2014
Promoting the studying and teaching of languages and literatures since 1883, the Modern Language Association (MLA) has become one of the world’s largest scholarly organizations, with nearly 28,000 members in approximately 100 countries.
Their 130th Annual Convention will be taking place at the Vancouver Convention Centre, 8-11 January 2015. Visit the MLA website to learn about the presidential theme, Negotiating Sites of Memory, browse program events, speakers, and sessions, and access additional information about the convention.
All attendees must register to participate in or attend meetings, visit the exhibit hall, take part in job interviews, or reserve hotel rooms at special MLA rates.
For a discounted rate and other membership benefits, join MLA today.
Governor General’s Literary Awards 2014
November 27, 2014
The Canada Council for the Arts announced the results of the Governor General’s Literary Awards 2014 last week, and we are pleased to congratulate Canadian Literature contributor Thomas King on winning the fiction prize for his novel, The Back of the Turtle (2014).
Thomas King is a long-time figure of study for Canadian Literature scholars, among them Margaret Atwood, who have produced a significant body of critical work that includes articles, interviews, and a dedicated special issue.
Our online teaching resource, CanLit Guides, includes a module on King’s Green Grass, Running Water (1993). The guide provides an overview of key themes, critical questions, and suggested assignments, as well as an exercise on how to participate in/respond to journalistic academic discourse.
See below for a catalogue of work about and by Thomas King from our archives:
Poetry by Thomas King
Coyote Learns to Whistle.
By Thomas King. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 250-51.Coyote Goes to Toronto.
By Thomas King. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 252-53.Coyote Sees the Prime Minister.
By Thomas King. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 252.The City on the Hill.
By Thomas King. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 265.
Articles
A Double-Bladed Knife: Subversive Laughter in Two Stories by Thomas King.
(PDF) By Margaret Atwood. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 243-50.‘Everybody knows that song’: The Necessary Trouble of Teaching Thomas King’s Truth and Bright Water.
By Tanis Macdonald. #201 Disappearance and Mobility (Summer 2009): 35-51.Happy Trails to You: Contexted Discourse and Indian Removals in Thomas King’s Truth & Bright Water.
(PDF) By Robin Ridington. #167 First Nations Writing (Winter 2000): 89-107.There Is No Bentham Street in Calgary: Panoptic Discourse and Thomas King’s Medicine River.
(PDF) By Florence Stratton. #185 (Summer 2005): 11-27.
Book Reviews of Thomas King’s Works
Making Associations.
By Jennifer Andrews. Review of Truth and Bright Water by Thomas King. #168 Mostly Drama (Spring 2001): 151-52.Smack! Whup! Honk!
By Duffy Roberts. Review of A Short History of Indians in Canada by Thomas King. #191 (Winter 2006): 175-76.The Trickster Discourse of Thomas King.
(PDF) By Coral Ann Howell. Review of The Native in Literature: Canadian and Comparative Perspectives edited by Thomas King, Helen Hoy, and Cheryl Calver. #183 Writers Talking (Winter 2004): 307-308.
Reviews of Scholarship on Thomas King’s Works
The Trickster Discourse of Thomas King.
By Marlene Goldman. Review of Border Crossings: Thomas King’s Cultural Inversions by Arnold E. Davidson, Jennifer Andrews, and Priscilla L. Walton. #183 Writers Talking (Winter 2004): 117-18.
Transcripts and Videos
An Interview with Thomas King.
Interview by Margery Fee and Sneja Gunew. Interviews. Canadian Literature, Aug. 1999.Another Interview with Thomas King.
Interview by Jordan Wilson. Interviews. Canadian Literature, Oct. 2009.Thomas King at the Museum of Anthropology.
Museum of Anthropology, Vancouver. 1 Oct. 2009. Address.
Also see our reviews of other works by Governor General’s Literary Award winners José Acquelin, Carole Fréchette, André A. Michaud, and Arleen Parée:
José Acquelin
Fantômes glissant.
(PDF) By Anthony Raspa. Review of Tout Va Rien by José Acquelin. #124-125 Native Writers and Canadian Writing (Spring/Summer 1990): 376-78.
Carole Fréchette
Nouveautés théâtrales.
By Alain-Michel Rocheleau. Review of Jean et Béatrice by Carole Fréchette. #178 Archives and History (Autumn 2003): 101-03.After the Apple: Women and Power.
By Anne Nothof. Review of John Murrell’s translation of The Small Room at the Top of the Stairs/Thinking of Yu by Carole Fréchette. Web.
Andrée A. Michaud
Ravissements et exils.
By Marie Carrière. Review of Le ravissement by Andrée A. Michaud. #181 (Summer 2004): 166-68.Trois Histoires.
By Agnès Whitfield. Review of La Femme de Sath by Andrée A. Michuad. #122-123 The Long Poem/Remembering bp Nichol (Autumn/Winter 1989): 265-67.
Arleen Parée
- Review of Lake of Two Mountains by Arleen Parée. Upcoming in 2015.
The Art of Work.
By Crystal Hurdle. Review of Paper Trail by Arleen Parée. #205 Queerly Canadian (Summer 2010): 136-37.
Deadline Extension: Call for Papers on Queer Frontiers
November 20, 2014
Our Call for Papers on Queer Frontiers in Canadian and Québécois Literature has been extended. The new deadline is 1 March 2015. Learn more about the topic and review our submission requirements here.
Many thanks to everybody who has already submitted a paper for our consideration.
Send your articles through our online submission system, CanLit Submit, today.