Acclaimed photographer Geoffrey James spent months tracking the Prairie light while photographing the city of Lethbridge and its environs. His exquisite eye caught the changing seasons of a town and a landscape in flux. Those images, which have established his international reputation as one of the finest contemporary photog-raphers of our time, reveal something of a place, a sensibility and a harsh light that together probe to the core of the Canadian experience. The images formed the basis of a critically acclaimed exhibition, The Lethbridge Project, at the Southern Alberta Art Gallery. Now, they have been married with the powerful words of Rudy Wiebe to present a vision of the very soul of Canada, and of that Prairie experience which has so informed recent Canadian fiction. Rudy Wiebe, one of Canada's leading writers, offers an accompanying set of brief stories that draw on many layers of history as well as his personal memories to evoke the sense of place - of land, water, sky and human action - that is Lethbridge.

Geoffrey James has been a photographer since 1970. He has solo exhibitions around the world, and his work has appeared in many books, including, Running Fence, Toronto, and Place. He has received many awards, and in 2002 won both the Roloff Beny Award for photography and the Gershon Iskowitz Prize for lifetime achievement in the visual arts. Born in Wales and educated at Oxford, he lives in Toronto.

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Rudy Wiebe was born near Fairholme, Saskatchewan in 1934. From the University of Alberta, he received a B.A. 1956 and a M.A. in Creative Writing in 1960. He studied under a Rotary International Fellowship at the University of Tuebingen in West Germany, and in 1962 he received a Bachelor of Theology degree from the Mennonite Brethren Bible College. In 1962ᆧ63 he was editor of the Mennonite Brethren Herald, a position which he resigned because of the controversy over his first novel,Peace Shall Destroy Many. From 1967 to 1992 he was Professor of Creative Writing and English at the University of Alberta. Wiebe has published twenty-five books, including nine novels and the non-fiction best-sellerStolen Life: The Journey of a Cree Woman, co-authored with Yvonne Johnson. He was awarded the Governor General’s Award for fiction forThe Temptations Of Big Bear in 1973, and again in 1994 forA Discovery Of Strangers. He is also the winner of the Lorne Pierce Gold Metal of the Royal Society of Canada for his contribution to Canadian literature ླ87). Wiebe has served as chairman of both the Writer’s Guild of Alberta and the Writers’ Union of Canada. He now lives in Edmonton, Alberta.

Rudy Wiebe's profile page