Best Kind: New Writing Made in Newfoundland

by Robert Finley

Overview

In Best Kind, editor and essayist Robert Finley introduces twelve of the most exciting essay writers currently working in Newfoundland. Highlighting a varied and electrifying range of new voices, this groundbreaking anthology presents the first generation of island writers to actively and consistently engage in the burgeoning field of creative nonfiction, blazing a trail into newfound territory.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781550817164
Publisher:	Breakwater Books
Publication date:	05/23/2018
Pages:	184
Product dimensions:	5.30(w) x 8.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Robert Finley is coordinator of Memorial University's Creative Writing Diploma Program where he teaches literature and creative nonfiction. His books, translations and collaborations include The Accidental Indies, A Ragged Pen, and K.L.Reich.

Table of Contents

Robert Finley / Introduction

Bridget Canning/ Questions and Answers on Flight and Butchery

John Robinson Blackmore / La respiration sacrée

Eva Crocker / Swimming Pools

Danielle Devereaux / Des biscuits

Elena Slawinska / Pleasure and Other Nutritious Matters

Amy Donovan / Night Walk

Matthew Hollett / Painting the Curlew

Joan Sullivan / Clive Wearing Writes (and Writes and Writes) His Autobiography

Irene Velentzas / Hidden in Plain Sight

Michelle Porter / She Gets a Paper Route so She Can Save Up for a Bicycle

Heidi Wicks / Fireflies

Paul Whittle / A Sketch of Stephen

Acknowledgements

Contributors

Editorial Reviews

“Michelle Porter and Bridget Canning, in two of the strongest entries in the book, make it clear that they are aware of how memory shapes story... This is especially effective in Porter's case, as her sisterly tale of narrowly avoiding sexual molestation as children is repeatedly framed by time and memory. It's a true story, but it's also a gothic story, one in which Porter doesn't realize she was the hero until she's an adult, in the frame narrative, talking on the phone to the sister she saved. That frame provides a pleasing irony: the helpless female heroines of the British gothic were always repeatedly framed in narratives meant to lend verisimilitude to the story of barely thwarted rape by cruel aristocratic Catholic uncles.  Porter's true story of the neighbourhood pervert provides a similar frame but conveys its reality via subjective judgment rather than locating it in the fixed text of the dusty, lost manuscript of so many gothic and horror tales... The writing [in Best Kind] is strong and consistent throughout, and the book reads briskly... These are some good stories, stories that make us think about how stories — fiction and non-fiction alike — depend on the mind and the tongue of the teller.”

Newfoundland and Labrador Studies - Nathan R. Elliott