Anthologies/Books

Emblem Editions (2011)
Jared Bland, editor 

Thirty-one writers share deeply personal stories and discoveries in this exciting new anthology edited by Jared Bland and published by McClelland and Stewart. 

Contributors: Diana Athill, Tash Aw, David Bezmozgis, Joseph Boyden, David Chariandy, Denise Chong, Karen Connelly, Alain de Botton, Emma Donoghue, Gord Downie, Marina Endicott, Stacey May Fowles, Rawi Hage, Elizabeth Hay, Steven Heighton, Lee Henderson, Guy Gavriel Kay, Mark Kingwell, Martha Kuwee Kumsa, Annabel Lyon, Linden MacIntyre, Pasha Malla, Lisa Moore, Alice Munro, Stephanie Nolen, Heather O’Neill, , Richard Poplak, Moez Surani, Miguel Syjuco, Madeleine Thien, and Michael Winter. 

McClelland & Stewart (2006)
Constance Rooke, editor

In Writing Life, fifty celebrated authors reveal surprising truths about what it means to be a writer, and about the sparks that can result when writing and life intersect — and sometimes collide. Provocative, candid, often very funny, personal, and passionately engaged, this inspired collection will take readers deep into the heart of the writing life.

Margaret Atwood revisits how she came to write five of her novels; Russell Banks reveals why he doesn’t do research; John Berger and Michael Ondaatje discuss gate-crashing characters and the magical instant when a work begins; Joseph Boyden takes time out from promoting his first novel to go moose-hunting; Margaret Drabble considers the “wickedness” of stealing material from real life; Howard Engel describes the stroke that took away his ability to read, and where that left him as a writer; Yann Martel reflects on the impossible, necessary challenge of writing about the Holocaust; Lisa Moore shows how crucial the mess and vitality of family life are to her writing; Alice Munro shares why she might “give up” writing; Rosemary Sullivan negotiates the risks and responsibilities that come with telling the story of a life; Susan Swan wrestles with historical fact, fiction, and Casanova.

Contributors: André Alexis, Margaret Atwood, Russell Banks, David Bergen, John Berger, George Bowering, Marilyn Bowering, Joseph Boyden, Di Brandt, Barry Callaghan, Lynn Coady, Susan Coyne, Michael Crummey, Margaret Drabble, Bernice Eisenstein, Howard Engel, Damon, Galgut, Jonathan Garfinkel, Greg Gatenby, Camilla Gibb, Charlotte Gray, Elizabeth Hay, Michael Helm, Sheila Heti, Annabel Lyon, David Macfarlane, Alistair MacLeod, Margaret MacMillan, Alberto Manguel, Yann Martel, Anne Michaels, Rohinton Mistry, Lisa Moore, Shani Mootoo, Alice Munro, Susan Musgrave, Michael Ondaatje, Anna Porter, Eden Robinson, Marilynne Robinson, Peter Robinson, John Ralston Saul, Shyam Selvadurai, Russell Smith, Rosemary Sullivan, Susan Swan, Madeleine Thien, Jane Urquhart, Michael Winter, and Patricia Young.

Banff Centre Press (2005)
Maggie Helwig, editor

While writers living in exile have much to say, they often lack a space in which to be heard. Speaking in Tongues offers the personal reflections of writers in exile-many now living in Canada-as they engage with and interrogate the act of translation.
As one writer living in exile has said, “Crossing borders, one after another, is a bloody devastating experience, but an experience done and over. Translating the self into another self through another vocabulary is what we face, right after we have finished the crossing. It is the last border, and it is invisible. And it is there during the ‘translation’ period that we slip away.”

Introduction by John Raulston Saul.

McClelland & Stewart (1997)
Constance Rooke, editor
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The sequel to Writing Away, the acclaimed and successful travel anthology, Writing Home is a rich, provocative, and entertaining collection of pieces on the highly personal subject of home by forty-four celebrated Canadian authors and personalities. Among them: Margaret Atwood brings her wit to bear on the language of home; Wayson Choy discovers s long-lost mother; Ron Graham reflects on Quebec’s possible separation; Greg Hollingshead elects a weather dock as quintessential home; Rohinton Mistry tells a cautionary tale of a king downsizing his kingdom; Michael Ondaatje finds a strange home when, ill in Sri Lanka, he sees his own death; broadcaster Shelagh Rogers confirms the dream-like power of “the cottage”; Carol Shields reveals images of home carried with her while abroad; Linda Spalding writes movingly of the death of her brother; Jane Urquhart revisits, through memory, the vanished world of a mining settlement north of Lake Superior.

Contributors: Margaret Atwood, Sandra Birdsell, Anne Carson, Wayson Choy, Adrienne Clarkson, Jack Diamond, David Donnell, Trevor Ferguson, Timothy Findley, Marian Botsford Fraser, Alison Gordon, Wayne Grady, Ron Graham, Terry Griggs, Kristjana Gunnars, Louise Bernice Halfe, Diana Hartog, Steven Heighton, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Yann Martel, Don McKay, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, P. K Page, Paul Quarrington, Nino Ricci, Sharon Riis, Shelagh Rogers, Constance Rooke, Leon Rooke, Jane Rule, John Ralston Saul, Carol Shields, Merilyn Simonds, Esta Spalding, Linda Spalding, John Steffler, Rosemary Sullivan, Judith Thompson, Jane Urquhart, Guy Vanderhaeghe, and Jan Zwicky.

McClelland & Stewart (1994)
Constance Rooke, editor

In this unique and entertaining volume, the literary fund-raising event of the decade, thirty-four of Canada’s most renowned writers take us on their personal journeys around the world, These fresh, individualistic pieces — humorous, passionate, nostalgic, sobering, adventurous — have never before been published, and visit such locales as the Australian outback, a medieval French village, Tobago, Corfu, rural Ontario, Buenos Aires, Rio de Janeiro, Nigeria, and Mexico.

Special elements include a piece by honorary PEN member Salman Rushdie, photographs by Michael Ondaatje, drawings by artist Tony Urquhart, and an introduction by volume editor Constance Rooke.

Contributors: Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Dionne Brand, Nicole Brossard, June Callwood, George Elliott Clarke, Leonard Cohen, Robertson Davies, Timothy Findley, George Galt, Graeme Gibson, Peter Gzowski, Jack Hodgins, Isabel Huggan, Janice Kulyk Keefer, Thomas King, Myra Kostash, Alberto Manguel, David McFadden, Rohinton Mistry, Daniel David Moses, Alice Munro, Michael Ondaatje, P.K. Page, Nino Ricci, David Adams Richards, John Ralston Saul, Carol Shields, Linda Spalding, Susan Swan, Judith Thomson, Jane Urquhart, Aritha van Herk, and Ronald Wright.

Harper & Collins (1987)
Margaret Atwood, editor

The Canlit Foodbook is not exactly a cookbook; on the other hand, it isn’t exactly not a cookbook either. Viewed one way, it’s a civilized literary symposium on the subject of food, containing as it would, a great many extracts selected from Canadian poetry and prose, past, present, and coast-to-coast, on the subject of some of the things people put into their mouths, with a view to ingest. Viewed another way, it’s a collection of recipes preceded by some amusing verbal shenanigans.

Any cookbook creates its own imagined view of its world. It seemed logical, then, to investigate the eating aberrations of Canadians through their literature. I found out fairly quickly that authors could be divided into two groups: those that mention food, indeed revel in it, and those that never give it a second thought.

To sum up then: this may not be the most useful foodbook you will ever read. On the other hand, it may be the most eclectic.

Contributors: More than 100 Canadian writers, including bp Nichol, Erika Ritter, A.M. Klein, Gwendolyn MacEwen, Milton Acorn, Michael Ondaatje, Graeme Gibson, Irving Layton, Marian English, Constance Beresford-How, Alice Munro, Robertson Davies, Earle Birney, L.M. Montgomery, Margaret Laurence, Joanne Kates, June Callwood, Timothy Findley, Mordecai Richler, Stephen Leacocok, Howard Engel, Pierre Berton, Dennis Lee, Joan Barfoot, Susan Mendelson, Farley Mowat, Mavis Gallant, and Susanna Moodie.