Outcrops: Northeastern Ontario Short Stories
Edited by Laurence Steven
"These are characters we know. These are stories familiar to our lives." Ruth Fletcher, The Sault Star
"While the stories and characters, the struggles and personal conflicts contained within this anthology are true of any good short fiction, and can take place anywhere, there is also something truly unique about them together as a whole that will certainly leave the reader with a distinct sense of place." Mark Leslie Lefebvre
"...appeal is likely to extend beyond the borders of Steven's highlighted region." Andrea Belcham, Prairie Fire.
Outcrops are defined as "exposed granitic rocks . . . that weather in characteristic patterns and provide unusual habitats where a unique set of plants and animals have adapted."*
Such a definition is not an entirely whimiscal description of the 20 stories that make up Outcrops. While the recurrent themes of the collection are those that characterize all fine mainstream realistic fiction--identity, place, relationships, and home--there are patterns running through the stories that have clearly taken their shape in an northeastern environment: the influence of the resource industries, the close proximity of an uncompromising landscape, the interaction of Native and non-Native cultures, the multicultural mosaic, the love-hate relationship with the south.
In 1974 Germaine Warkentin published a fine selection called Stories From Ontario. Yet, despite her best intentions, all the authors were from southern Ontario, and most were affiliated in one way or another with the University of Toronto. Reading her introduction 31 years later, what is striking is her assumption that the values characterizing Toronto and environs applied equally to the vast human and physical landscape stretching out to the north and west of her. While Warkentin might be forgiven for holding such a view 31 years ago, there is no excuse to hold it now.
Outcrops presents 20 writers to the northeastern Ontario literary landscape who are every bit as hard to ignore as the outcrops that make our physical landscape so distinctive.
Kathy Ashby, “Raspberry”
David Burtt, “Red Ochre and Fish Oil”
Vera Constantineau, “Wages of Sin, Etc.”
Rick Cooper, “The Pagoda”
Susan Eldridge-Vautour, “Still Life With Feet”
Barry Grills, “The Winning Ticket”
Colin Hayward , “Currency Exchange”
Tomson Highway, “Hearts and Flowers”
Margo Little, “The Watcher”
Barbara Fletcher MacKay, “Mabel’s Kitchen”
Eric Moore, “Seelim’s Flowers”
F. G. Paci, “Gödel’s Theorem”
Erin Pitkethly, “Poppies Bloom in Springtime”
Heidi Reimer, “Magellan”
Mansel Robinson, “Closin’ Time”
Armand Garnet Ruffo, “Homeward”
Tish P. Sass, “After the Fall Comes Winter”
Sue Scherzinger, “Helen’s Visit”
Lola Lemire Tostevin, “The Iron Horse”
Natalie Wilson, “Visitation”
Read brief notes on the authors here...
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Book Details
October, 2005
ISBN 1-896350-16-X
224 pp., softcover
$22.00 plus $2.00 s&h, from the publisher