Read The Journey Prize Stories 24 Online
Authors: Various
The Journey Prize Stories 24
1989
Holley Rubinsky for
“Rapid Transits”
1990
Cynthia Flood for “My Father
Took a Cake to France”
1991
Yann Martel for “The Facts
Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”
1992
Rozena Maart for “No Rosa,
No District Six”
1993
Gayla Reid for
“Sister Doyle’s Men”
1994
Melissa Hardy for
“Long Man the River”
1995
Kathryn Woodward for “Of
Marranos and Gilded Angels”
1996
Elyse Gasco for “Can You Wave
Bye Bye, Baby?”
1997 (shared)
Gabriella Goliger for
“Maladies of the Inner Ear”
Anne Simpson for
“Dreaming Snow”
1998
John Brooke for
“The Finer Points of Apples”
1999
Alissa York for “The Back of the
Bear’s Mouth”
2000
Timothy Taylor for
“Doves of Townsend”
2001
Kevin Armstrong for
“The Cane Field”
2002
Jocelyn Brown for
“Miss Canada”
2003
Jessica Grant for
“My Husband’s Jump”
2004
Devin Krukoff for
“The Last Spark”
2005
Matt Shaw for “Matchbook for a
Mother’s Hair”
2006
Heather Birrell for
“BriannaSusannaAlana”
2007
Craig Boyko for
“OZY”
2008
Saleema Nawaz for
“My Three Girls”
2009
Yasuko Thanh for
“Floating Like the Dead”
2010
Devon Code for
“Uncle Oscar”
2011
Miranda Hill for
“Petitions to Saint Chronic”
Copyright © 2012 by McClelland & Stewart
Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited
Emblem and colophon are registered trademarks of McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.
“Is Alive and Can Move” © Kris Bertin; “Why I Read
Beowulf
” © Shashi Bhat; “Ice Break” © Astrid Blodgett; “You Were Loved” © Trevor Corkum; “Ashes” © Nancy Jo Cullen; “To Have to Wait” © Kevin Hardcastle; “I’m Sorry and Thank You” © Andrew Hood; “Manning” © Andrew Hood; “The Many Faces of Montgomery Clift” © Grace O’Connell; “Barcelona” © Jasmina Odor; “Crisis on Earth-X” © Alex Pugsley; “Sea Drift” © Eliza Robertson; “My Daughter of the Dead Reeds” © Martin West. These stories are reprinted with permission of the authors.
The lyrics quoted on
this page
are from the song “(I’ll be with you) In Apple Blossom Time.”
A cataloguing record for this publication is available from Library and Archives Canada.
We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.
Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901
Library of Congress Control Number: 2012941714
McClelland & Stewart,
a division of Random House of Canada Limited
One Toronto Street
Suite 300
Toronto, Ontario
M5C 2V6
www.mcclelland.com
eISBN: 978-0-7710-9587-0
v3.1
The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to an emerging writer of distinction. This award, now in its twenty-fourth year, and given for the twelfth time in association with the Writers’ Trust of Canada as the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, is made possible by James A. Michener’s generous donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel
Journey
, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988. The Journey Prize itself is the most significant monetary award given in Canada to a developing writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work in progress. The winner of this year’s Journey Prize will be selected from among the thirteen stories in this book.
The Journey Prize Stories
has established itself as the most prestigious annual fiction anthology in the country, introducing readers to the finest new literary writers from coast to coast for more than two decades. It has become a who’s who of up-and-coming writers, and many of the authors who have appeared in the anthology’s pages have gone on to distinguish themselves with collections of short stories, novels, and literary awards. The anthology comprises a selection from submissions made by the editors of literary journals from across the country, who have chosen what, in their view, is the most exciting writing in English that they have published in the previous year. In recognition of the vital role journals play in fostering literary voices, McClelland & Stewart makes its own award of
$2,000 to the journal that originally published and submitted the winning entry.
This year the selection jury comprised three acclaimed writers:
Michael Christie
’s debut collection,
The Beggar’s Garden
, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, shortlisted for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and won the City of Vancouver Book Award. He received his MFA in Creative Writing at UBC in 2008. A two-time Journey Prize contributor, he now lives in Thunder Bay, where he is at work on a novel. For more information, please visit
www.MichaelChristie.net
.
Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer
is the author of the novels
Perfecting
and
The Nettle Spinner
as well as the short fiction collection
Way Up
. Her short fiction has been published in
The Walrus, Granta Magazine
, and
Storyville
. She is the inaugural recipient of The Sidney Prize for Short Fiction. She is an award-winning creative writing instructor through the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies and Associate Faculty with the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA. Please visit
www.KathrynKuitenbrouwer.com
.
Kathleen Winter
’s first novel,
Annabel
, was longlisted for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, shortlisted for the Orange Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and won the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her debut collection of stories,
boYs
, won the Winterset Award and the Metcalfe-Rooke Award. She lives in Montreal.
The jury read a total of eighty-two submissions without knowing the names of the authors or those of the journals in which the stories originally appeared. McClelland & Stewart would like to thank the jury for their efforts in selecting this year’s anthology and, ultimately, the winner of this year’s Journey Prize.
McClelland & Stewart would also like to acknowledge the continuing enthusiastic support of writers, literary journal editors, and the public in the common celebration of new voices in Canadian fiction.
For more information about
The Journey Prize Stories
, please visit
www.mcclelland.com
and
www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize
.
The Journey Prize Questionnaire
About the Contributing Journals
Juries are tricky things, and though a blind jury has its advantages, it also comes with complications. Writing is an ethical as well as an aesthetic profession, and as readers and judges we fought at times against ourselves: would the stories in the anthology justly represent Canada and its multiplicity of voices? Should that even be a consideration? The jury for the Journey Prize is meant to come up with both a selection of the best stories and something like a cohesive anthology. Ultimately, though we kept a hope of achieving a balanced representation of voices in this country, our jury made decisions based on overall craft – we cared about stories realizing their full potential through their gorgeous attention to words, and their forceful drive toward their own meaning.
We learned that unlike the proverbial customer, the reader is not always right, especially when charged with the near-impossible task of picking the best stories from a sea of almost uniformly impressive works by new and emerging Canadian writers. A few stories were overlooked on our first reading. But as we chose the long list there were spectacular reversals. Many stories that initially refused to yield their riches bloomed upon subsequent readings, and jurors cozied up to others they had declared insufferable. Other stories that wowed us at first lost their flavour after a second look. Throughout, we cajoled and convinced, we argued and wooed, we decamped and betrayed.
We were three jurors with vastly differing perspectives and taste, and we saw first-hand the beauty of this – the joy of convincing and shifting one another’s views while feeling our own preferences evolve. In the end, we are all happy to have a collection that represents craft, brilliance, audacity, subtlety, and force. We couldn’t have done it without listening carefully to one another and being willing to question ourselves. More than anything, we were each able to pluck our heels out of the dirt and change our minds. And we believe that after surviving the messy inexactness of this process, the final anthology is stronger for it. But enough of us, the stories are the true reason you’re reading this anthology. So here’s how they moved us and why we chose them.