When writers place food in front of their characters – who after all do not need sustenance – they are asking readers to be alert to the meaning and implication of food choices. As readers begin to listen closely to these cues, they become attuned to increasingly layered stories about why it matters what foods are selected, prepared, served, or shared, and with whom, where, and when. In Canadian Literary Fare Nathalie Cooke and Shelley Boyd explore food voices in a wide range of Canadian fiction, drama, and poetry, drawing from their formational blog series with Alexia Moyer. Thirteen short vignettes delve into metaphorical taste sensations, telling of how single ingredients such as garlic or ginger, or food items such as butter tarts or bannock, can pack a hefty symbolic punch in literary contexts. A chapter on Canada’s public markets finds literary food voices sounding a largely positive note, just as Canadian journalists trumpet Canada’s bountiful and diverse foodways. But in chapters on literary representations of bison and Kraft Dinner, Cooke and Boyd bear witness to narratives of hunger, food scarcity, and social inequality with poignancy and insistence. Canadian Literary Fare pays heed to food voices in the works of Tomson Highway, Rabindranath Maharaj, Alice Munro, M. NourbeSe Philip, Eden Robinson, Fred Wah, and more, inviting readers to listen for stories of foodways in the literatures of Canada and beyond.

When literary writers place food in front of their characters - who after all do not need sustenance - they are asking readers to be alert to the meaning and implication of food choices. As readers begin to listen closely to these cues, they become attuned to increasingly layered stories about why it matters what foods are selected, prepared, served, shared, and with whom, where, and when. In Canadian Literary Fare Nathalie Cooke and Shelley Boyd explore food voices in a wide range of Canadian fiction, drama, and poetry, drawing from their formational blog series with Alexia Moyer. Thirteen short vignettes delve into metaphorical taste sensations, telling of how single ingredients such as garlic or ginger, or food items such as butter tarts or bannock, can pack a hefty symbolic punch in literary contexts. A chapter on Canada's public markets finds literary food voices sounding a largely positive note, just as Canadian journalists trumpet Canada's bountiful and diverse foodways. But in chapters on literary representations of bison and Kraft Dinner, Cooke and Boyd bear witness to narratives of hunger, food scarcity, and social inequality with poignancy and insistence. Canadian Literary Fare pays heed to food voices in the works of Tomson Highway, Rabindranath Maharaj, Alice Munro, M. NourbeSe Philip, Eden Robinson, Fred Wah, and more, inviting readers to listen for stories of foodways in the literatures of Canada and beyond.

The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, a Canadian bestseller, is a novel about Newfoundland that centres on the story of Joe Smallwood, the true-life controversial political figure who ushered the island through confederation with Canada and became its first premier. Narrated from Smallwood's perspective, it voices a deep longing on the part of the Newfoundlander to do something significant, “commensurate with the greatness of the land itself.” Smallwood’s chronicle of his development from poor schoolboy to Father of the Confederation is a story full of epic journeys and thwarted loves, travelling from the ice floes of the seal hunt to New York City, in a style reminiscent at times of John Irving, Robertson Davies and Charles Dickens. Absorbing and entertaining, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams provides us with a deep perspective on the relationship between private lives and what comes to be understood as history and shows, as E. Annie Proulx commented, “Wayne Johnston is a brilliant and accomplished writer.” The New York Times said, “this prodigious, eventful, character-rich book is a noteworthy achievement: a biting, entertaining and inventive saga.... a brilliant and bravura literary performance.”

This book offers readers a concise introduction to Atwood's published novels and the central themes motivating her writing. The volume starts with an overview of the author's biography and the relationship of her writing to relevant literary traditions. Because Atwood is internationally renowned, many commentaries ignore the Canadian roots of her work. Cooke corrects this oversight by sketching the ways in which her work is shaped by, and has shaped, the Canadian literary scene. As the author of a full-length Atwood biography, Cooke is able to summarize feminist, Canadian nationalist, and postmodern influences on Atwood's work and on her development as a writer. The book offers close scrutiny of three illustrative works: Cat's Eye as the artist novel, The Handmaid's Tale as a dystopian novel, and The Blind Assassin as a villainess novel. This book extends the dialogue surrounding Atwood's work in several important ways. As a book written by a Canadian about a Canadian writer, it illustrates how readings of Atwood's work can be significantly enriched through attention to the Canadian literary and cultural context. Noting that Atwood's work not only entertains but also challenges and disturbs, it argues that all of Atwood's novels can be read as satires that expose society's double standards. By locating the beginnings of satire as far back as Atwood's first published novel, and tracing it in Atwood's later novels as the impulse behind challenges to character (in the artist novels), setting (in the dystopic fiction), and plot (in the villainess novels), this study provides a startlingly original interpretation of The Blind Assassin and new insights into the earlier novels.

Winner of the American Indian Library Association Youth Literature Awards, Best Picture Book. Trickster Coyote is having his friends over for a festive solstice get-together in the woods when a little girl comes by unexpectedly. She leads the party-goers through the snowy woods to a shopping mall -- a place they have never seen before. Coyote gleefully shops with abandon, only to discover that fi lling your shopping cart with goodies is not quite the same thing as actually paying for them. The trickster is tricked and goes back to his cabin in the woods -- somewhat subdued -- though nothing can keep Coyote down for long. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.4 Describe how words and phrases (e.g., regular beats, alliteration, rhymes, repeated lines) supply rhythm and meaning in a story, poem, or song.

In the twenty-first century, food is media – it is not just on plates, but in literature and on screens, displayed in galleries, studios, and public places. Canadian Culinary Imaginations provokes new conversations about the food-related concepts, memories, emotions, cultures, practices, and tastes that make Canada unique. This collection brings together academics, writers, artists, journalists, and curators to discuss how food mediates our experiences of the nation and the world. Together, the contributors reveal that culinary imaginations reflect and produce the diverse bodies, contexts, places, communities, traditions, and environments that Canadians inhabit, as well as their personal and artistic sensibilities. Arranged in four thematic sections – Indigeneity and foodways; urban, suburban, and rural environments; cultural and national lineages; and subversions of categories – the essays in this collection indulge a growing appetite for conversations about creative engagements with food and the world at large. As the essays and images in Canadian Culinary Imaginations demonstrate, food is more than sustenance – as language and as visual and material culture, it holds the power to represent and remake the world in unexpected ways.