Off the Record
- Publisher
- Biblioasis
- Initial publish date
- Dec 2023
- Category
- Essays, Canadian, Publishing
-
Paperback / softback
- ISBN
- 9781771965453
- Publish Date
- Dec 2023
- List Price
- $26.95
Classroom Resources
Where to buy it
Description
Editor John Metcalf has inspired, challenged, and championed countless writers over his long career. In Off the Record, he encourages six to reveal what one rarely discusses in polite society: how they became writers instead of radio announcers or cabinet makers. The essays collected here, each accompanied by a short story, offer fascinating insight into the relationships between writers, their editors, and their fiction.
Off the Record brings together work by six noted Canadian writers, among them the winners of the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Butler Book Prize, and the Marian Engel Award: Caroline Adderson, Kristyn Dunnion, Cynthia Flood, Shaena Lambert, Elise Levine, and Kathy Page. Their essays are candid, moving, and surprisingly relatable—providing plenty of inspiration for those among us who want to write.
About the authors
John Metcalf is one of Canada's most distinguished literary editors, writers, critics, and anthologists. He has helped shape the sensibility of an entire group of emerging writers through his work at the Porcupine's Quill press. Known for his strong views about literary standards, Metcalf has nurtured some of our most essential writers, including Leon Rooke, Russel Smith, Terry Griggs, Caroline Adderson, Annabel Lyon, Andrew Pyper, Steven Heighton, Jane Urquhart, Elise Levine, Clarke Blaise, Michael Winter, and Mary Swan, among dozens of other fine authors.John Metcalf is the Senior Editor of Porcupine's Quill. An accomplished writer, editor, and anthologist, he is the author of more than a dozen works of fiction and non-fiction including "Adult Entertainment, The Lady Who Sold Furniture", and "Kicking Against the Pricks: Essays".
Caroline Adderson is the author of Very Serious Children (Scholastic 2007), a novel for middle readers about two brothers, the sons of clowns, who run away from the circus. I, Bruno (Orca 2007) and Bruno for Real are collections of stories for emergent readers featuring seven year-old Bruno and his true life adventures.
Caroline Adderson also writes for adults and has won two Ethel Wilson Fiction Prizes, three CBC Literary Awards, as well as the 2006 Marion Engel Award given annually to an outstanding female writer in mid-career. Her numerous nominations include the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist, the Governor General's Literary Award, the Rogers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Most recently, Caroline was the Vancouver Public Library's 2008 Writer-in-Residence.
Her eight year-old son Patrick and his many friends inspire her children's writing. Caroline and her family live in Vancouver, British Columbia.
Caroline Adderson's profile page
Kristyn Dunnion is a self-professed "Lady punk warrior" and the author of the novels Big Big Sky, Missing Matthew, and Mosh Pit (all Red Deer Press). She studied English Literature and Theatre at McGill University and earned a Masters Degree in English at the University of Guelph. She performs creeptastic art as Miss Kitty Galore, and is also the bass player for dykemetal heartthrobs, Heavy Filth. She lives in Toronto. kristyndunnion.com
Kristyn Dunnion's profile page
Cynthia Flood’s stories have won numerous awards, including The Journey Prize and National Magazine awards, and have been widely anthologized. Her novel Making a Stone of the Heart was nominated for the City of Vancouver Book Prize in 2002. She is the author of the acclaimed short story collections The Animals in Their Elements (1987) and My Father Took a Cake to France (1992). She lives on Vancouver’s East side.
SHAENA LAMBERT’s stories have appeared in a number of magazines, including The Walrus, and have been chosen three years running for Best Canadian Stories. Her first book of stories, The Falling Woman, was a Globe and Mail Best Book of the Year and her first novel, Radiance, was a finalist for the Rogers Writers' Trust Award and the Ethel Wilson Prize. She has been a fiction mentor with Humber College and The Writer's Studio of Simon Fraser University. She lives in Vancouver, B.C., with her family.
WEB: shaenalambert.com
Kathy Page's seven novels include The Story of My Face, long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002; Alphabet, shortlisted for a Governor General's Award in 2005; and The Find, shortlisted for the 2011 ReLit Novel Award. She is also a winner of the Bridport International Prize for short fiction and the Traveller Award, and a contributor to many prose anthologies. Kathy teaches creative writing at Vancouver Island University, and is a member of the Federation of BC Writers and the Writers Union of Canada. She lives on Salt Spring Island with her husband and two children.
Please visit www.kathypage.info.
Editorial Reviews
Praise for Off the Record
"A dazzling collection of memoir and fiction."
—Robert Wiersema, Toronto Star
"[Metcalf's] appreciation for the challenges of being a published writer is reflected in the clever approach he takes in Off the Record . . . The authors in Off the Record chart the course of their careers with stories of rejection, bad publishing decisions, punishing reviews, eventual triumph, and formative experiences. Which is the best kind of education for any wannabe writer—and a reminder for readers of the commitment involved in creating the fiction they get to enjoy."
—Sarah Hampson, Literary Review of Canada
“John Metcalf deserves a round of applause for bringing together such an excellent variety of voices on the subject of being a writer.”
—Dave Williamson, Winnipeg Free Press
"Metcalf challenges six decorated Canadian authors to consider and share just how they became writers. Each essay is accompanied by a short story, showcasing each writer's literary identity and style, and providing insight into how each writer approaches their work and their editorial relationships."
—Open Book
"Carefully wrought, tonally diverse, artful, thoughtful, revelatory, and nothing short of enticing..."
—Brett Josef Grubisic, The BC Review
"If you write—or even just think you’d like to write—you can’t go wrong with adding this anthology to the stack on your nightstand."
—Miramichi Reader
"The authors’ reflections illustrate the complex interplay between craft and intuition that goes into writing fiction ... and provide revealing case studies of how stories move from inspiration to published product. Aspiring writers will be enlightened."
—Publisher's Weekly
Praise for John Metcalf
“[Metcalf’s] talent is generous, hectoring, huge, and remarkable.”
—Washington Post
"[Metcalf's] exacting eye and his ongoing willingness to call out what he considers substandard, inert, or deadening in our literary culture has earned him opprobrium ... One need not agree with everything [he] says to find much to gnaw on in his analyses of the various ways literary technique and style ... are too often downgraded or outright ignored. ... While it’s amusing to wrestle with the temerity and gall of Metcalf’s settled esthetic standards ... his achievement in translating this approach into practice as mentor and guiding light is invaluable and we are all in his debt."
—Steven W. Beattie, Toronto Star
"[Metcalf] deliver[s] a layered and textured narrative highlighting a wide range of writing and writers, one that immerses the reader into the soul of what writing, and thus literature, is supposed to be. And in this, he has succeeded."
—Ottawa Review of Books
“Hilarious, touching and delightful … brilliant concision and understated humor.”
—Los Angeles Times
“John Metcalf has written some of the very best stories ever published in this country.”
—Alice Munro
“In the past few decades, Canada has won a reputation as a prolific producer of high-quality short stories. Alice Munro, Mavis Gallant and John Metcalf are among those who have proven themselves masters of the difficult form.”
—Maclean’s
“A master stylist confidently at work in his favoured form.”
—Oxford Companion to Canadian Literature: Second Edition
“Masterful ... Harsh reality, hope, and caricature mingle in this tour de force.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
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