These 17 essays ponder the character of prairie literature. What is prairie literature now, what has it been, and what is its future? That the prairies are “west of Eden” is an idea only, and a somewhat mischievous one. Is this spot distant from the glory of the garden? Writers have often pondered the ambiguous sanctity of the prairies, while those who recruited settlers certainly exploited the notion. These varied essays engage with Margaret Laurence, Rudy Wiebe, and Neil Young. They present analysis of NFB films and the gopher as icon. Here are strategies for teaching and views of the Canadian prairies from abroad. This is a significant collection of fresh views of prairie literature.

Sue Sorensen was born in Saskatchewan, the youngest of seven children, and moved to Winnipeg in 2000. She is the author of a novel, A Large Harmonium (2011), winner of Best First book at the Manitoba Book Awards, and the editor of West of Eden: Essays on Canadian Prairie Literature (2008). In 2014 Sue published the non-fiction study The Collar: Reading Christian Ministry in Fiction, Television, and Film. Her poetry has been published in The New Quarterly, Exile, CV2, Grain, Room, and Prairie Fire. “Blue: Three Sonnets to Mary” won Best Poem in Exile’s 2017 Gwendolyn MacEwen Poetry Competition.

Sue has a PhD from the University of British Columbia. Academic publications range from studies of the novels of A. S. Byatt, Henry James, Ian McEwan, and Guy Vanderhaeghe to biblical illustration, detective fiction, children’s books, rock lyricists, and the filmmaking of Neil Young. She teaches English at Canadian Mennonite University and also serves as the Director of CMU Press.

Sue Sorensen's profile page

Warren Cariou was born in Meadow Lake, Saskatchewan, into a family of mixed Métis and European heritage. He has written many articles about Canadian Aboriginal literature, especially on Métis culture and storytelling, and he has published two books: a collection of novellas, The Exalted Company of Roadside Martyrs (1999) and a memoir/cultural history, Lake of the Prairies: A Story of Belonging (2002). He has also co-directed and co-produced two films about Aboriginal people in western Canada’s oil sands region: Overburden and Land of Oil and Water. Cariou has won and been nominated for numerous awards. His most acclaimed work to date, Lake of the Prairies, won the Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize in 2002 and was shortlisted for the Charles Taylor Prize for literary nonfiction in 2004. His films have screened at many national and international film festivals, including Hot Docs, ImagineNative, and the San Francisco American Indian Film Festival. Cariou has also served as editor for several books, including an anthology of Aboriginal literature, W’daub Awae: Speaking True (2010), and he is the fiction co-editor of Prairie Fire. Cariou is a Canada Research Chair in Narrative, Community and Indigenous Cultures at the University of Manitoba, where he also directs the Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture.

Warren Cariou's profile page

West of Eden takes us to a new stage in prairie writing: we dare to rejoice: we rejoice in our abundance of writers, in our many and varied talents, in our literary accomplishments. (Robert Kroetsch)

The most comprehensive look at prairie culture to emerge to date out of the scholarly study of the prairie west. (Christian Riegel)

Gems abound in this display, particularly those cut by Sorensen, Cooley, and Calder. The Introduction alone is worth the price of admission. (Kenneth G. Probert)