Skip to content

New book celebrates the northern experience

BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN heidi@northernlife.
BY HEIDI ULRICHSEN

When Your Scrivener Press owner Laurence Steven put out a call last spring for Northern Ontario short fiction stories to be published in an anthology, he never expected to get enough material to fill two books.

Your Scrivener Press owner Laurence Steven is hosting a book launch for Outcrops at the Jubilee Centre on Oct. 16 from 2 to 5 pm
But well-known and amateur writers from across the northeast flooded the small, Sudbury-based independent publisher with approximately 80 submissions. Half of them met Steven?s criteria for publication.

The first anthology is entitled Outcrops: Northeastern Ontario Short Stories. It focuses on ?social realism,? or the reality of living in this region. The book includes 20 stories by authors such as Tomson Highway, F.G. Paci, Mansel Robinson, Armand Garnet Ruffo, Margo Little and Eric Moore.

The second anthology, Bluffs, is slated for publication next spring and will feature 20 more stories. It will explore ?magic realism? in the north, or things you wouldn?t normally experience in day to day life.

?I want to show a good audience of Northeastern Ontario that you have good writers among you,? says Steven, who works during by day as an English professor at Laurentian University.

?With this book, a lot of people would read it just because they want to have a nice book of stories to read. It doesn?t mean that they?re cutesy little
fun stories. They?re solid, and they have a lot of tragedy.?

The official launch for Outcrops takes place Oct. 16 at the Jubilee Centre in Sudbury from 2 to 5 pm. The book is available for purchase at the launch, and all Chapters and Coles stores from Thunder Bay to Parry Sound, as well as in many independent bookstores in the northeast.

One of the more well known contributors to Outcrops is Highway, who became famous after writing a critically acclaimed play set on Manitoulin Island called The Rez Sisters. The Cree author spends part of each year in the Sudbury area.

Highway?s story, Hearts and Flowers, is about a small Cree boy who learns to play the piano at a residential school.

?One of the things he has to do is play a piece called Hearts and Flowers with a white girl...He?s coming into his own awakening as they win the Kiwanis Festival, playing this piece of music,? Steven says.

?It coincides with native people getting the right to vote in 1960. In the boy?s mind, the reason they get the vote is because he was able to play the piece beautifully, when people were saying he couldn?t.?

Chapleau-born Ruffo, who will speak at the Outcrops launch, submitted a story called Homeward about a native foster child who wants to go back to her own family.

?She goes back (to her birth family) and it doesn?t work out. It?s just a fascinating exploration of what home means...It?s a very good piece, but very sad.?

Little, a Gore Bay author, writes about a group of old men who meet at a coffee shop on Manitoulin Island to voice their political opinions.

?In effect, the men have no role anymore,? says Steven.

?The narrator is starting to say ?There?s not much point,? and one of the men has committed suicide. They feel really important, but time has passed
them by, and now they watch life.?

Steven thinks it?s important to promote northern writers because they reflect our distinct cultural identity.

?I believe that a national identity is made up of regional identities. If we give up or say that our region doesn?t have any identity, you have to go to Toronto and write there before you can become a Canadian writer,? he says.

?What you get then is urban writing that is, in some sense, cut off from its roots.?



Comments

Verified reader

If you would like to apply to become a verified commenter, please fill out this form.