CLC Kreisel Lecture

With generosity and wry humour, novelist Heather O'Neill recalls several key lessons she learned in childhood from her father: memories and stories about how crime does pay, why one should never keep a diary, and that it is good to beware of clowns, among other things. Her father and his eccentric friends-ex-bank robbers and homeless men-taught her that everything she did was important, a belief that she has carried through her life. O'Neill's intimate recollections make Wisdom in Nonsense the perfect companion to her widely praised debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals (HarperCollins).

The prizewinning author of The Innocents examines the relationships among fact, fiction, fictionalization, and appropriation in this thought-provoking work. "In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business." In Most of What Follows Is True, Michael Crummey examines the complex relationship between fact and fiction, between the "real world" and the stories we tell to explain it. Drawing on his own experience appropriating historical characters to fictional ends, he brings forward important questions about how writers use history and real-life figures to animate fictional stories. Is there a limit to the liberties a writer can take? Is there a point at which a fictionalized history becomes a false history? What responsibilities do writers have to their readers, and to the historical and cultural materials they exploit as sources? Crummey offers thoughtful, witty views on the deep and timely conversation around appropriation.

The geopolitics of empire had already prepared me for this...coloniality constructs outsides and insides-worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted, and navigated-in order to live something like a real self. Internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand reflects on her early reading of colonial literature and how it makes Black being inanimate. She explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and its own consciousness.

"The outburst of cultural energy that took place in the 1960s was in part a product of the two decades that came before. It's always difficult for young people to see their own time in perspective: when you're in your teens, a decade earlier feels like ancient history and the present moment seems normal: what exists now is surely what has always existed." Margaret Atwood compares the Canadian literary landscape of the 1960s to the Burgess Shale, a geological formation that contains the fossils of many strange prehistoric life forms. The Burgess Shale is not entirely about writing itself, however: Atwood also provides some insight into the meagre writing infrastructure of that time, taking a lighthearted look at the early days of the institutions we take for granted today-from writers' organizations, prizes, and grant programs to book tours and festivals. Introduction by Marie Carrière. How the writing landscape of the 1960s shaped the present literary topography in Canada. 10 B&W images, foreword/liminaire, introduction #1 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, March 19, 2017 #3 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, April 30, 2017 "Through this lecture, Atwood provides an account of the past that is shaped by her signature wit, humour, and insight that readers have to come love and to equate with Canadian Literature. As a Canadian icon herself, Atwood provides a window into her own early writing days which will draw a lot of readers to this work.... It is a treasure for readers interested in Canadian Literature because this is where it all began." [Full review at http://www.prairiefire.ca/burgess-shale-canadian-writing-landscape-1960s-margaret-atwood/ "[Her talk] ranges from ladies' undergarments to the All-Star Eclectic Typewriter Revue, from schooling in the bible and Shakespeare and comics to starting a publishing company. Atwood's talk is, as Atwood ever is, dryly amusing.... Atwood's talk tries to sum up a decade from various angles, finally coming to the question: 'What did we think we were doing, we young writers of that decade?' Experimenting. Describing the landscape in new ways." https://canadianwritersabroad.com/2018/10/31/tell-us-a-story] "Covering amazing geographical, literary, and temporal sweeps in single witty comments, this work allows the reader a brief glimpse into the mind of a great writer and her perspective and experience living through what would now seem to many the Stone Age of the Canadian writing scene... [A]n invaluable and very readable assignment for students. I equally recommend this short work for a person looking for a light literary frolic through times past in Canada." Canadian Literature 237 (Summer 2019) [Full review at https://canlit.ca/article/rock-of-ages]

"We look around and feel as if book culture as we know it is crumbling to dust, but there's one important thing to keep in mind: as we know it." What happens if we separate the idea of "the book" from the experience it has traditionally provided? Lynn Coady challenges booklovers addicted to the physical book to confront their darkest fears about the digital world and the future of reading. Is the all-pervasive internet turning readers into web-surfing automatons and books themselves into museum pieces? The bogeyman of technological change has haunted humans ever since Plato warned about the dangers of the written word, and every generation is convinced its youth will bring about the end of civilization. In Who Needs Books?, Coady suggests that, even though digital advances have long been associated with the erosion of literacy, recent technologies have not debased our culture as much as they have simply changed the way we read.

Through Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg stories about our relative, the beaver, award-winning author Leanne Betasamosake Simpson explores the life-giving possibilities of dams and the world-building possibilities of blockades, deepening our understanding of Indigenous resistance.

"In all creative writing, the question of what is true and what is real are two very different considerations. Figuring out how to dance between them is a murky business." In Most of What Follows Is True, Michael Crummey examines the complex relationship between fact and fiction, between the "real world" and the stories we tell to explain it. Drawing on his own experience appropriating historical characters to fictional ends, he brings forward important questions about how writers use history and real-life figures to animate fictional stories. Is there a limit to the liberties a writer can take? Is there a point at which a fictionalized history becomes a false history? What responsibilities do writers have to their readers, and to the historical and cultural materials they exploit as sources? Crummey offers thoughtful, witty views on the deep and timely conversation around appropriation. Introduction by Margaret Mackey. Is there a limit to the liberties a writer can take with the real world? Foreword/liminaire, introduction "Fiction writers influence the way people see the world around them. And with that influence comes authorial responsibility.... Crummey offers a double proviso to the debate over cultural appropriation. He recommends impatience with the blinkered novelist who doesn't deign to learn about the world he or she is describing. And perhaps more importantly, Crummey asks that a generous dose of tolerance, be given to that minority of one, the author, who is doing his or her best to tell us a story." "[Crummey examines] Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, Lisa Moore's Open and Alligator, Annie Proulx's The Shipping News, Howard Norman's The Bird Artist, and Crummey's own River Thieves. These parallels bring into relief the question of whether there is something greater to be served by deviations from the factual... All creative writers appropriate the world to some extent-and might get things wrong-but sensitivity to an evocative, true, and aesthetically meaningful depiction is key." [Full article at https://canlit.ca/article/parallel-stories/]

Home, for me, was not a birthright, but an invention. It seems to me when we speak of home we are speaking of several things, often at once, muddled together into an uneasy stew. We say home and mean origins, we say home and mean belonging. These are two different things: where we come from, and where we are. Writing about belonging is not a simple task. Esi Edugyan chooses to intertwine fact and fiction, objective and subjective in an effort to find out if one can belong to more than one place, if home is just a place or if it can be an idea, a person, a memory, or a dream. How "home" changes, how it changes us, and how every farewell carries the promise of a return. Readers of Canadian literature, armchair travellers, and all citizens of the global village will enjoy her explorations and reflections, as we follow her from Ghana to Germany, from Toronto to Budapest, from Paris to New York. Introduction by Marina Endicott. Esi Edugyan interlaces fact and fiction, storytelling and dreaming to capture the essence of belonging. "Esi's Kreisel Lecture explores the concept of home. With the wild success of Half-Blood Blues, she has travelled enough in these last few years to have had time to think passionately, in lonely airport lounges and hotel beds, about belonging and home. She's had a lifetime to think about citizenship, and the complicated ways we define where we are from." -Marina Endicot, Introduction "I want to begin by telling you a story. It is almost entirely true." Thus begins Esi Edugyan's 2013 Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture. With the finesse of a writer who is in complete control of the worlds she creates, Esi Edugyan guides readers through her experience of home and belonging. She moves effortlessly from cities in Canada and Germany to the bustle of Accra, Ghana, as she finds her identity in the diaspora. Readers interested in travel, literature, and the post-colonial search for belonging will become her willing travel companions on this journey. Foreword/liminaire, introduction # 6 on the Edmonton Journal's Bestsellers list (Edmonton Nonfiction) for the week of April 25, 2014 "Newcomers now are educated, eloquent and outspoken. Much will change, and some things will not change at all.... Edugyan is one of the accomplished voices of the New Immigrant Experience.... In Dreaming of Elsewhere she recounts the familiar story of conflict and disconnection known to many first-generation Canadians.... Dreaming of Elsewhere is vivid and intimate. This is the voice of change." Holly Doan, Blacklock's Reporter, accessed May 27, 2014 [Full review at http://www.blacklocks.ca/review-big-plans] "Given that our human ancestors began their migrations more than 100,000 years ago, 'home' must always have been an idea as well as a physical location, 'where we come from, and where we are,' as Esi Edugyan writes in her new book. Home is 'the actual and the possible.'… Edugyan knows that home, whether a physical location or an idea, is never static. Where we belong-or, more painfully, are forbidden from belonging-alters.… Confronted by the question of whether North America has reached a post-racial age and a colour-blind society, Edugyan answers simply and courageously: 'I confess I find the notion ridiculous'." [Full review at http://bit.ly/X8Z6mY] "…Esi Edugyan offers an eloquent meditation on identity, culture and belonging in Dreaming of Elsewhere: Observations on Home.… A wise, elegant and engrossing read." "Thinking through her own story of living in many countries in her late twenties, and revisiting her parents' country of origin, Ghana, in 2006, Edugyan reflects that 'I, who had lived so much of my life looking elsewhere, was slowly coming to acknowledge that non-belonging, also, can be a kind of belonging.'... To consider belonging a paramount objective, Edugyan suggests, runs the risk of enforcing 'a simple "us" vs. "them" manner of thinking.'"

"During my first post-lockdown massage, I willingly engaged in the requisite chit chat about lockdown experiences with my therapist. He gushed behind his mask: 'Oh man. It was so great. Every day I woke up, drank coffee, read, rode my bike…' My therapist's description did sound pretty great. But it was nothing like my own anxiety-ridden ordeal… Had I done the lockdown wrong?" In Next Time There's a Pandemic, artist Vivek Shraya reflects on how she might have approached 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic differently, and how challenging and changing pervasive expressions, attitudes, and behaviours might transform our experiences of life in-and after-the pandemic. What might happen if, rather than urging one another to "stay safe," we focused instead on being caring? What if, instead of striving to "make the best of it" by doing something, we sometimes chose to do nothing? With generosity, Shraya captures the dissonances of this moment, urging us to keep showing up for each other so we are better prepared for the next time...and for all times. Afterword by J.R. Carpenter. "Had I done the lockdown wrong?" Artist Vivek Shraya reflects on how she might have approached pandemic times differently. Foreword/liminaire, joint afterword with J.R. Carpenter About the Book: • Artist and writer Vivek Shraya reflects on how she might have approached 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic differently, and what she wishes we, collectively, might have done differently. • The book is based on the Kreisel Lecture presented by Shraya; hosted annually by the Canadian Literature Centre. The lecture is on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihR1VoCyjeQ. • Why is the book relevant? It's topical, succinct, and is a mix of reflective and directive ideas. • Shraya has authored seven other books in various genres: nonfiction, fiction, memoir, short stories, graphic novels, poetry, and even a children's book. • She came out as a trans woman in 2016 and has been a Pride Toronto Grand Marshal. • Shraya is a director on the board of The Tegan and Sara Foundation, which fights for health, economic justice, and representation for LGBTQ women. • Her imprint, VS. Books, supports young writers of colour. • Shraya is currently adapting her debut play, How To Fail As A Popstar for television with the support of CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation). • As a musician, Shraya has toured extensively in North America. • Shraya is a well-established figure in various communities and maintains a high profile. Her Twitter account has almost 15K followers (https://twitter.com/vivekshraya) and her Instagram almost 30K followers (https://www.instagram.com/vivekshraya/). • Author website: https://vivekshraya.com. Audience: This will be an excellent book for a general readership, since we all experienced the Coronavirus pandemic over the past year and more. It will also resonate with readers from racialized communities and LGBTQ communities and artists. We hope that policy makers and academics will also turn to this book when looking to the future. About the Author: Vivek Shraya is an artist whose body of work crosses the boundaries of music, literature, visual art, theatre, and film. Her best-selling book, I'm Afraid of Men, was heralded by Vanity Fair as "cultural rocket fuel," and her album Part‑Time Woman was nominated for the Polaris Music Prize. A seven-time Lambda Literary Award finalist, Shraya lives in Treaty 7 territory, where she is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Calgary. About J.R. Carpenter: Writer of the afterword, J.R. Carpenter works across performance, print, and digital media. The Gathering Cloud won the New Media Writing Prize 2016. An Ocean of Static was highly commended by the Forward Prizes 2018. This is a Picture of Wind was one of The Guardian's best poetry books of 2020. J.R. Carpenter was the Writer-in-Residence at the University of Alberta in 2020-21. She l

Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. In this personal and thoughtful book, award-winning author Wayde Compton explores how we might collectively develop a poetic approach that makes space for diversity by doing away with universalism in both lyric and avant-garde verse. Poignant and contemporary examples reveal how white authors often forget that their whiteness is a racial position. In the propulsive push to experiment with form, they essentially fail to see themselves as "white artists." Noting that he has never felt that his subjectivity was universal, Compton advocates for the importance of understanding your own history and positionality, and for letting go of the idea of a common aesthetic. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics offers validation for poets of colour who do not work in dominant western forms, and is for all writers seeking to engage in anti-racist work. "I have never felt that my subjectivity is universal or outside a cultural or racial position. The sensation-or perhaps the lack of sensation-that one must feel when they are lined up squarely to the norm is something I can only imagine. This is true for so many of us, in different ways…" Wayde Compton Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. Foreword/liminaire, introduction by Michael Bucknor "...short, incisive, and essential." Dawn Macdonald, Literary Hub, July 1,2025 • Introduction by Michael A. Bucknor • • 1: Windows • • 2: Trails • • 3: Camps • • 4: Innovations • • 5: Orphans • • 6: Offsets • • 7: Poetics • • 8: Attritions • • 9: Traditions • • Works Cited •

Censorship and book burning are still present in our lives. Lawrence Hill shares his experiences of how ignorance and the fear of ideas led a group in the Netherlands to burn the cover of his widely successful novel, The Book of Negroes, in 2011. Why do books continue to ignite such strong reactions in people in the age of the Internet? Is banning, censoring, or controlling book distribution ever justified? Hill illustrates his ideas with anecdotes and lists names of Canadian writers who faced censorship challenges in the twenty-first century, inviting conversation between those on opposite sides of these contentious issues. All who are interested in literature, freedom of expression, and human rights will enjoy reading Hill's provocative essay. Introduction by Ted Bishop. Threat of book burning ignites passionate discussion about censoring, banning, and other responses to books. Back Cover In 2011, Canadian writer Lawrence Hill received an email from a man in the Netherlands stating that he intended to burn The Book of Negroes, Hill's internationally acclaimed novel. Soon, the threat was international news, affecting Hill's publishers and readers. In this provocative essay, Hill shares his private response to that moment and the controversy that followed, examining his reaction to the threats, while attempting to come to terms with the book burner's motives and complaints. Drawing on other instances of book banning and burning, Hill maintains that censorship is still alive and well, even in this age of access to information. All who are interested in literature, freedom of expression and human rights will appreciate this passionate defence of the freedom to read and write. Front Flap "In June of 2011, less than a month after launching the Dutch edition of my novel, The Book of Negroes, in The Netherlands, I received the most surprising email of my life. It is worth quoting verbatim: 'Dear Sir Lawrence Hill, We, descendants of enslaved in the former Dutch colony Suriname, want let you know that we do not accept a book with the title "The book of Negroes." We struggle for a long time to let the word "nigger" disappears from Dutch language and now you set up your book of Negroes! A real shame! That's why we make the decision to burn this book on the 22nd of June 2011.. Sincerely, Roy Groenberg, Chairman Foundation Honor and Restore Victims of Slavery in Suriname' I wrote a reply that, in retrospect, seems outrageously Canadian in its politeness and tact." Back Flap: Lawrence Hill is a Canadian novelist and writer of non-fiction. His best-known work, The Book of Negroes, won the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, the Roger's Writer's Trust Prize, and CBC's Canada Reads; internationally it was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. It has sold more than 600,000 copies in Canada alone. In 2012, he received the Freedom to Read Award from the Writers' Union of Canada. Lawrence Hill lives in Hamilton, Ontario. Visit him at www.lawrencehill.com. Foreword/liminaire, introduction "Those who engage this work, subtitled "An Anatomy of a Book Burning," will find much to like, not least Hill's generous capacity for integrating autobiography - around the racial and cultural experiences of three generations of his own family - with historical commentary on book-burning and censorship campaigns, and also on the institution of slavery, specifically in its Dutch and British Empire-era Canadian versions as well. He pays particular attention to the racial textures and even blasé racism that informs some Dutch words to this day." Randy Boyagoda, National Post, May 13, 2013 [Full post at http://bit.ly/11mCc9V] "Hill delivered a lecture on the incident to the Canadian Literature Centre which has recently been published by The University of Alberta Press. In Dear Sir, I Intend to Burn Your Book he offers a thoughtful, sometimes comical, very personal meditation on literary censorship. Far from an isolated incident, the subject of censorship has been

The geopolitics of empire had already prepared me for this…coloniality constructs outsides and insides-worlds to be chosen, disturbed, interpreted, and navigated-in order to live something like a real self. Internationally acclaimed poet and novelist Dionne Brand reflects on her early reading of colonial literature and how it makes Black being inanimate. She explores her encounters with colonial, imperialist, and racist tropes; the ways that practices of reading and writing are shaped by those narrative structures; and the challenges of writing a narrative of Black life that attends to its own expression and its own consciousness. How Black life is made and unmade by and in literature; arguing for new vocabularies. Foreword/liminaire "An Autobiography of the Autobiography of Reading is exemplary and eye-opening. It reckons with coloniality and the narrative demands it makes in our lives and in our stories, examining canonical texts through close-reading strategies and reflexive thinking that are unparalleled in their clarity and rigour." [Full article at https://humberliteraryreview.com/reviews-1/2020/06/10] "How ... do we begin to detoxify our reading practice in a way that lets the reader into the frame, away from the aegis of racism, xenophobia, and violence that layer our 'timeless' classics?" "Brand brings a poet's emotional lucidity to her recollections of growing up a voracious reader, and of the creeping realization that the literature she consumed as a Black woman was not written for her." "Born in 1953, nine years before Trinidad & Tobago gained independence from the United Kingdom in 1962, she is uniquely poised to critique empire, the literary canon being an imperial project.... In this lecture...Brand mapped its limits and questioned its capacity to contain us, when these books are so often hailed to effortlessly do just that." "Like all of Brand's writings-her fiction, poetry, and essays-this book offers another compelling perspective on the possibilities of Black aesthetics and continues her crucial interventions that seek to overturn the epistemic violences engendered by colonial literature, reading, and archival practices.... Brand reflects on her early experiences of reading the colonial canon of writers like Thackeray and how encounters with colonialist tropes in effect render her-and other similar postcolonial othered subjects-invisible."

In Every Story Is a Call to Action, David A. Robertson explores the role of Indigenous stories in stitching together a new understanding of Canada and nurturing a collective experience that helps create lasting social change. He emphasizes the vital and ongoing role of young people in the generational work of reconciliation. A full-time writer who travels across the country to speak in classrooms, conferences, prisons, and festivals, Robertson demonstrates how writing is activism. He shows that stories are catalysts for community-building and youth empowerment. These narratives spark crucial conversations, create vital space for understanding, and inspire taking action for a better future. Robertson's words not only show readers a transformative path, they encourage everyone to walk it together. "Accurate, representative literature should be a human right. Everybody deserves the ability and access to see themselves in a story or learn about the lives of others who live in this community with us, which leads to understanding, love, and respect." "The focus of my writing has always been activism, and with each story I write, I ask myself the same question… I ask myself not only if what I am writing is a good story, but, almost more importantly, whether or not it can help to create meaningful change." Explores the role of Indigenous stories in creating a new understanding of Canada, nurturing a collective experience that helps create lasting social change. Explores the role of Indigenous stories in creating a new understanding of Canada, nurturing a collective experience that helps create lasting social change. Introduction by Conor Kerr

Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. In this personal and thoughtful book, award-winning author Wayde Compton explores how we might collectively develop a poetic approach that makes space for diversity by doing away with universalism in both lyric and avant-garde verse. Poignant and contemporary examples reveal how white authors often forget that their whiteness is a racial position. In the propulsive push to experiment with form, they essentially fail to see themselves as "white artists." Noting that he has never felt that his subjectivity was universal, Compton advocates for the importance of understanding your own history and positionality, and for letting go of the idea of a common aesthetic. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics offers validation for poets of colour who do not work in dominant western forms, and is for all writers seeking to engage in anti-racist work. Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. Foreword/liminaire, introduction by Michael Bucknor Toward an Anti-Racist Poetics seeks to dislodge the often unspoken white universalism that underpins literary production and reception today. • Introduction by Michael A. Bucknor • • 1: Windows • • 2: Trails • • 3: Camps • • 4: Innovations • • 5: Orphans • • 6: Offsets • • 7: Poetics • • 8: Attritions • • 9: Traditions • • Works Cited • "I have never felt that my subjectivity is universal or outside a cultural or racial position. The sensation-or perhaps the lack of sensation-that one must feel when they are lined up squarely to the norm is something I can only imagine. This is true for so many of us, in different ways…" Wayde Compton

An Anthology of Monsters by Cherie Dimaline, award-winning author of The Marrow Thieves, is the tale of an intricate dance with life-long anxiety. It is about how the stories we tell ourselves can help reshape the ways in which we think, cope, and ultimately survive. Using examples from her books, from her mère, and from her own late night worry sessions, Dimaline choreographs a deeply personal narrative about all the ways in which we tell stories. She reveals how to collect and curate our stories, how they elicit difficult and beautiful conversations, and how family and community is a place of refuge and strength. A deeply personal narrative about all the ways in which we cower and crush through stories. Sales Tips: • Cherie Dimaline is the award-winning Métis author of The Marrow Thieves. • Like many others, Dimaline struggles with life-long anxiety. • The stories we tell ourselves can reshape the ways in which we think, cope, and survive. • Dimaline reveals how to collect and curate these stories, how they elicit difficult and beautiful conversations, and how family and community is a place of refuge and strength. • This is a deeply personal narrative, using examples from books and her life. Audience: • Dimaline's many readers will want to read this book. • People who suffer from anxiety will want to read it. • People who want to learn more about Indigenous ways of thinking will want to read it. • Instructors who teach about Dimaline's writing will want to assign it to their students. Introduction Horror Stories In the Beginning Looking for Solace Night Terrors Manifesting Good and the Good Days as Bad Omens Healing Stories Mapping and Kinship Medicine Laughter and Survival Warnings Rougarou How to Stand Up Lee Maracle and the Way to Stand The Double-Edged Sword of Being a Writer Living Through Writing Creating Optimism Keeping an Anthology (Of Both, But in Order] How to Avoid the Edit Reel How to Curate the Anthology The Celebration of You RuPaul's Present How We Begin My own personal anxiety has been the mean, twisted, maniacal life partner I drag from apartment to house, and over the midnight mark into every new year, despite promises to finally kick it to the curb. It sticks and it sings and more than anything, it tells stories... And so, anxiety and I, with our storytelling genes, we exist in a kind of friendly/dysfunctional competition that's been set up between us-who can tell the most powerful stories and which one will determine how I feel that day. #7 on Edmonton Non-fiction Bestsellers list, March 26, 2023 #6 on Edmonton Non-fiction Bestsellers list, April 30, 2023

I broke all the rules that my dad gave me. It was he who had given me, in part, the confidence to think of my life as being worthy to mix with those of the geniuses. -Heather O'Neill With generosity and wry humour, novelist Heather O'Neill recalls several key lessons she learned in childhood from her father: memories and stories about how crime does pay, why one should never keep a diary, and that it is good to beware of clowns, among other things. Her father and his eccentric friends-ex-bank robbers and homeless men-taught her that everything she did was important, a belief that she has carried through her life. O'Neill's intimate recollections make Wisdom in Nonsense the perfect companion to her widely praised debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals (HarperCollins). Introduction by Kit Dobson. Wry and witty stories of unconventional mentors show the foundation of O'Neill's writing life. Foreword/liminaire, introduction "[Heather O'Neill's] father shared hard-earned wisdom culled from early years as a petty criminal through to his work as a kind of philosopher-janitor. Unfortunately, his enthusiasm for dispensing life advice was in direct opposition to its practical application. But it certainly makes for good reading.... [This] collection, like all of her work, is filled with humour, moments of joy, sudden bursts of deep emotion and heartbreaking sincerity... The lesson in Wisdom in Nonsense is how a writer uses autobiography to inform fiction." # 7 on Edmonton Non-Fiction Bestsellers list, April 15, 2018 ...a warm and funny collection of memories of O'Neill's dad, a single parent. Look up Wisdom In Nonsense. Buy it. Give it to your own father. He will understand, and it will bring you closer. "Wisdom in Nonsense offers up a selection of life lessons given to O'Neill as a child which come to act not as hard-and-fast rules but as guideposts to an occasionally odd-ball yet always sincere process of reflection on childhood, writing, and the father-daughter bond.... Reading about her connection with her father and the way in which they lived on the margins of society comes to illuminate O'Neill's ability to depict the strange, perhaps even unexpected beauty of such bonds in her fiction." [Full review at http://www.prairiefire.ca/wisdom-in-nonsense-invaluable-lessons-from-my-father-by-heather-oneill] "Heather O'Neill's Wisdom in Nonsense...is in some ways strange. Strange because it reads less like a biography of the late Buddy O'Neill, which it is, and more like an absurd instruction manual for living. Stranger still is the wisdom shared; although Buddy's advice is never categorically wrong, it is often preposterous and abstract. Despite the strangeness of it all, O'Neill generously translates her father's eccentricities and antics into a reflection on how much and how little one can learn from a parent, and how that learning is complicated by class and circumstance.... O'Neill elicits belly laughs and makes space for the quiet sadness of loving parents who will always be complicated to learn from and to remember." Canadian Literature, October 9, 2018 [Full review at http://canlit.ca/article/something-to-be-learned] "Bestselling novelist Heather O'Neill's book is a slim, funny and moving account of childhood and her experience of being raised by a colourful-and criminal-father. In this tender volume, O'Neill shares the life lessons she learned from her father and his eccentric friends." Prelude 1 Lesson 1 Never Keep a Diary 3 Lesson 2 Learn to Play the Tuba 5 Lesson 3 Never Share Your Scientific Research 7 Lesson 4 Make Friends with Jewish Kids 9 Lesson 5 Accept That You're Ugly and Move On 11 Lesson 6 Never Tell Anyone What Your Parents Do for a Living 13 Lesson 7 Know About Art History 15 Lesson 8 Crime Does Pay 17 Lesson 9 Enjoy a Fondue Dinner 19 Lesson 10 Respect Old Timers 23 Lesson 11 It's the Thought That Counts 27 Lesson 12 Never Watch a Paul N

"The outburst of cultural energy that took place in the 1960s was in part a product of the two decades that came before. It's always difficult for young people to see their own time in perspective: when you're in your teens, a decade earlier feels like ancient history and the present moment seems normal: what exists now is surely what has always existed." In this short work, Margaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale compares the Canadian literary landscape of the 1960s to the Burgess Shale, a geological formation that contains the fossils of many strange prehistoric life forms. The Burgess Shale is not entirely about writing itself, however: Atwood also provides some insight into the meager writing infrastructure of that time, taking a lighthearted look at the early days of the institutions we take for granted today- from writers' organizations, prizes, and grant programs to book tours and festivals.

Bodies of Art, Bodies of Labour by Kate Beaton, award-winning author of Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, explores connections between class, literature, and art from Cape Breton Island. She addresses the fact that people from poor or working-class backgrounds face significant barriers entering the Canadian arts scene and shows that if they do not write themselves into stories, others will, often with damaging results. Beaton thoughtfully examines personal and working-class legacies, celebrating the authenticity and power of truly seeing ourselves and each other in the art that we create. Kate Beaton, award-winning author of the graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, explores connections between class, literature, and art. Kate Beaton, award-winning author of the graphic novel Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, explores connections between class, literature, and art. "A beautiful, hilarious, and revelatory look at working-class culture in Nova Scotia. From the music, to the humour, to the heartache, to the myths, Beaton celebrates the community from which her imagination springs. She shows us the value of art coming from far-flung and idiosyncratic corners and communities of Canada. As with anything she touches, Beaton's honesty and candour makes this an unforgettable and illuminating read." Heather O'Neill, author of Wisdom in Nonsense