Editors Jamie Dopp and Richard Harrison have put together a wide-ranging collection of essays that examine all aspects of Canada's beloved sport. From its mythical beginning on a frozen northern pond to its evolution into a sport for mass consumption, with many fascinating stops along the way, this collection celebrates hockey while acknowledging that there is more to it than a lone figure skating on an outdoor rink.

Jamie Dopp is an associate professor of Canadian literature at the University of Victoria. He is the author of two novels, three collections of poetry, and many articles and reviews on Canadian and popular subjects. He has co-edited three collections of essays on sports literature: Now is the Winter: Thinking about Hockey with Richard Harrison; and Writing the Body in Motion: A Critical Anthology on Canadian Sport Literature and Not Hockey: Critical Essays on Canada’s Other Sport Literature with Angie Abdou.

Jamie Dopp's profile page

Lee Easton and Richard Harrison are writers living in Calgary. They both work for Mount Royal College. Easton is a specialist in literature dealing with such subject areas of gender, media, literary theory, multi media and film. Harrison — nominated for the Governor General’s Award in 1999 — is the author of six books of poetry. He has also worked as an editor on more than 20 books.

Richard Harrison's profile page

"Dopp and Harrison's collection of essays, Now is the Winter, melds the personal with the academic, and it does so with skill and eloquence." - Journal of Canadian Studies

"Hewson's critical alertness to complications of the normative national identity echo in much of the rest of the collection, which includes Anne Hartman on the trickster dimension of women's shinny, Brian Kennedy on 'scripting' the NHL game according to Bakhtin's carnivalesque, David McNeil's affectionate speculations about hockey photos as text, Sam McKegney on sports writing and racialization of the Jonathan Cheechoo story, and E.W. Mason on storytelling techniques in New Zealand sports writing. The collection is supplemented by a rich bibliography and a helpful index." - Canadian Literature

"You don't have to love hockey to love Now is the Winter. The insights gleaned are not limited to this single game. The book is multidisciplinary in the truest sense, with the contributors representing over a dozen fields of study, including Canadian Literature, Kinesiology, History, Creative Writing, Social Anthropology, Sport Management, Business, Indigenous Literatures, and Communications. Some essays consider hockey and popular culture in general terms, and some are as specific as the analysis of the 2006 trade of former Edmonton Oiler Chris Pronger." - Arete