In the Bear’s House
Congratulation to Bruce Hunter for winning the Banff Mountain Book Festival’s Canadian Rockies Award.
Shirin and Salt Man
Congratulations to Nilofar Shidmehr, finalist for the 2009 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, one of the BC Book Prizes.
Renovating Heaven
Congratulations to Andreas Schroeder, finalist for the 2009 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, one of the BC Book Prizes.
Congratulations once again to Ron Smith and Ruth
Campbell, whose book, Elf
the
Eagle, has
been nominated for a Saskatchewan Young Readers' Choice Shining Willow Award
for 2009.
They were also finalists for the Christie Harris
Illustrated Children's Literature Prize, BC Book Prizes 2008.
Congratulations, Valerie Stetson, runner-up for the 2008 Danuta Gleed Award
for The
Year I Got Impatient.
Congratulations, George McWhirter, finalist for
the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, BC
Book Prizes 2008, for The Incorrection.
Congratulations to Laurie Block, winner of the inaugural Landsdowne Poetry
Prize
for Time Out of Mind.
Cogratulations to Bill New on being named an Officer of the Order
of Canada.
Readings
See our new Events Page for the current schedule of readings
by Oolichan authors.
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program, the Canada Council for the Arts, and the British Columbia Arts Council through the Ministry of Tourism, Small Business and Culture.
Fiction
In The Bear's House / Bruce Hunter
ISBN 978-088982-253-5 • pb • 432 pp • $22.95 •
Novel • June 2009
Part fictional memoir, part social history, In the Bear’s House details the
lives of two Scottish immigrant families — the Dunlops and Lockies — in
Calgary as they raise a deaf child.
The novel opens when seventeen-year-old Clare Dunlop gives birth to a son while her husband serves a penitentiary sentence for a serious crime.
Clare Dunlop's own dreams as a gifted student are now thwarted. She turns her creative and brooding spirit to her family, raising her deaf son
and four other children against the odds of poverty and depression.
The deaf boy's ninety-nine-year-old great-great-aunt gives him a conch
shell she brought overland to Alberta by ox cart and stagecoach before the
railway. It becomes a kind of hearing aid in which he hears not the sea, but
the stories of those around him.
Nicknamed Trout for his family’s love of
the wild and his own attachment to the watery and silent world of fishes,
he is traumatized at the death of his aunt and spirals out of control.
His mother, who is pregnant with her sixth child, wavers between depression and clarity, and can no longer cope with Trout. She sends him to live
with relatives in the wilderness. There he thrives, emerging from the claustrophobic and ironically noisy world of deafness, finding love, connection
and belonging with his partially deaf, forest ranger great-uncle and his
musician wife.
Trout discovers that while he can not always hear the world,
he can feel it and he can learn to listen for its rhythms.
Bruce Hunter is the author of three books of poetry and a collection of
short stories. Deafened as an infant, he worked in blue-collar jobs for
nearly fifteen years, including variously as a labourer, Zamboni driver and
gardener before and after attending Malaspina College. In his late twenties, he studied with W.O. Mitchell at the Banff School of Fine Arts and
attended York University.
For the past twenty years, he has taught English and Liberal Studies at Seneca College as well as stints teaching Creative Writing at the Banff Centre
and York University. In 2002, he was the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s Writer
in Residence at the Banff Centre. In the fall of 2007, he was Writer in
Residence for the Richmond Hill Public Library.
"Bruce Hunter writes with bold restraint and a poet’s sensibility. His blue
collar characters walk the tight line of their lives into the common universe
that includes us all."
—Wayson Choy, Saturday Night
Children's Titles
Born That Way / Susan Ketchen
ISBN 978-088982-254-2 • pb • 192 pp • $12.95 •
Novel • Ages 12 to 15 • April 2009
Sylvia is fourteen and she wants a horse but a few things are getting in her
way. For one, she seems to be stuck in the body of an eight-year-old. Sylvia
has an undiagnosed medical condition which makes her very short, with
funny ears and strange hands. The kids at school call her Pygmy Chimp.
Grandpa has secretly promised to buy her a horse as soon as she grows as
tall as his shoulder. Sylvia does everything she can to increase her height,
including adhering to an unconventional stretching regime. She also sets
out to demonstrate her responsible pet-care abilities by bringing home several live barnacles in sea water. Anyone would think barnacles were a pretty
safe choice — who would guess that they are hermaphrodites?
Sylvia’s ensuing Google research on barnacle care leaves a damning trail in the family’s
computer history file. Her mom decides Sylvia needs therapy to resolve her
puberty and gender-identity issues.
Sylvia does find support for her quest. In lucid dreams, a grumpy unicorn
offers her advice. Sylvia meets others who are equally obsessed with horses
and so discovers she is a member of the herd of horsewomen. However,
her greatest challenge comes when, on the brink of having her wishes fulfilled, she must reconcile the attainment of her childhood dreams with the
emerging powers and responsibilities of womanhood.
Susan Ketchen was born in Nanaimo, B.C. She holds an M.Sc. degree in
Marriage and Family Therapy. She has successfully pursued an alarming
number of not overly long careers and now resides on a small Vancouver
Island hobby farm with her husband, two horses, two cats and a flock of
chickens.
Susan is a member of the B.C. Horse Council, the Comox Valley Dressage Club, and the Comox Valley Writer’s Society. She is a monitor with
the Wildlife Tree Stewardship Program, giving her an official excuse to
spend many hours staring out the window . . . at the eagles perching and
nesting at the edge of the property. She attends meetings of the Psychiatry
Journal Club. She is interested in animal training and teaches her horses to
recognize a remarkable number of words, play the piano with their noses,
and identify flash cards. She has given up trying to master dressage but still
enjoys her riding lessons immensely. She is inspired by her surroundings,
by the animals domesticated and wild, and by the many interesting people
in her life. Her favourite places to come up with new ideas are the barn,
the pasture, and the shower. She has never received creative inspiration
while vacuuming.
Kaleidoscopes and
Butterfly Dreams /
Nancy Hundal
ISBN 978-088982-256-6 • pb • 112 pp • $12.95• Novel • Grades 5 to 8/Ages 10 to 14 • June 2009
Change. Krista hates it, but it’s everywhere: new town, new house, new
kids. And what’s worse, the town is ugly, the house is shabby and every
kid is skinny and already has a best friend. Whereas Krista is lonely and .
. . round. Forced to leave her best friend and fancy home behind, Krista
struggles to fit into a town with no place for a book-loving city kid whose
worst fear is appearing lakeside in a bathing suit.
Krista wants to find a real friend to share her secrets with, not just the retired gym teacher or a seven-year-old with endless snoopy questions. Will
that ever happen, when her only activity is going door-to-door, selling
broccoli-flavoured diet bars called Weight Wackers?
In a story filled with kaleidoscopes and butterfly dreams, Krista comes to
learn that home is more a state of mind than a place. And in a town filled
with things that will never change and things that never cease changing,
she learns that a true friend can come in any size or at any age.
Nancy Hundal grew up and still lives amongst the blues and greens of
Vancouver, Canada; she spent summers in the tans and mustards of Alberta. Libraries, kaleidoscopes and friends are a few of her favourite things.
She is the author of nine picture books; one of these, I Heard My Mother
Call My Name, won the B.C. Book Prize. You can visit her online at www.nancyhundal.com
Poetry
The Rope-Maker’s Tale /
W. H. New
ISBN 978-088982-252-8 • pb • 120 pp • $16.95• Poetry • April 2009
The old rope-maker who sits under the apple tree quietly watches the
world that passes him by, but while he does so, he gathers the world’s
stories. So when he starts to tell his tale, everything can happen, and does:
the wind will rise, the bells at the city gate will begin to peal, and a motley
group of travellers will set out on the ring road of life, taking listeners with
them. While the Rope-maker twists together sisal, hemp, jute, and cotton, his stories coil inside other stories—stories of war, disguise, trickery,
passion, fear; stories of birth, hope, rivalry, laughter, play; stories of sorrow and death, friendship and family, defiance and recuperation.
All of life swirls here. Braiding past and promise, The Rope-maker’s Tale cautions
against passivity, celebrates joy and generation, and affirms the power of
story-telling itself to take us on a journey into ourselves.
W. H. New lives in Vancouver. Among his many books are Underwood
Log, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry,
Borderlands, Grandchild of Empire, Touching Ecuador, and The Year I Was
Grounded. The Rope-Maker’s Tale is his ninth book of poetry. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada in 2006.
Other Oolichan titles by W. H. New: Along A Snake Fence Riding
Night Room
Raucous
Riverbook & Ocean
Science Lessons
Stone Rain
Touching Ecuador
Underwood Log
Desert Rose,
Butterfly Storm /
David Manicom
ISBN 978-088982-255-9 • pb • 80 pp • $16.95• Poetry • April 2009
A farewell letter to a departing son, and a scream of fury against the age:
Desert Rose, Butterfly Storm is a symphony of chaos and a lyric loving plea,
an anthem for the age of terror and laser-guided death. Soaring and bit-
ter, sweet and savage, David Manicom’s new book of poetry follows his
Governor-General’s Award-nominated The Burning Eaves with a remarkable departure. Riffing and sampling on Yeats and Radiohead, Eliot and
Ginsburg, the Bible and the Pentagon, Manicom has composed a searing
new Howl for our times.
David Manicom has published four previous collections of poetry, including The Burning Eaves; the award-winning Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire; a collection of short fiction; and, most recently, two
novels, The School at Chartres and Anna’s Shadow.
Raised in rural Ontario,
Manicom’s Canadian address has been in Quebec for the past twenty-five
years. After postings to Moscow, Islamabad, Beijing and Geneva, he and
his family currently live and work in New Delhi, India.“This is beautiful, sophisticated writing from an accomplished poet.
"David
Manicom has depth, intelligence, ambition and immense talent."
— Ottawa Citizen
"The Burning Eaves overflows with continuous surprise and delight."
— The 2004 Governor-General’s Award Jury
"Manicom is a poet to read, quote, study and memorize . . . His lines shimmer and ring with something resembling genius."
— Books in Canada
Other Oolichan Titles by David Manicom: Theology of Swallows
The Older Graces
Progeny of Ghosts: Travels in Russia and the Old Empire
The Burning Eaves
The School at Chartres
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