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Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and The Woodcock Fund/Writers’ Trust for funding which allowed me to write many of these stories. Thanks to the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smryna Beach, Florida, where I worked on several of these stories during a residency in 2005. Thanks to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, where I finished these stories.
I acknowledge the privilege and honour in being a guest here in Mi’kma’ki, the unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people for over 13,000 years.
Many thanks to Michelle MacAleese, my brilliant editor, for her instincts, openness, and generosity of spirit. Thanks to Janie Yoon for her unwavering faith in my work. Gratitude to the one-of-a-kind Sarah MacLachlan who one day appeared out of the Bay of Fundy fog on a dock in Parkers Cove and changed my life. To Melanie Little for meticulous and artful copyediting, and special thanks for her deep editorial touch on “Dead Time.” Heartfelt thanks to the amazing team at House of Anansi Press for welcoming me and working so hard to collect these stories into a book and sending them into the world. Thank you to Joshua Greenspon for assistance with permissions. Thanks to Alysia Shewchuk for such a beautiful cover, managing editor Maria Golikova, proofreader Linda Pruessen, and Laura Meyer, publicist extraordinaire.
Many thanks to Kerry Lee Powell for spectacular notes on every single story. To Marianne Ward for her thoughtful comments on many of these stories. Love and gratitude to Marie Cameron for reading every draft. Thank you for reading earlier drafts of stories: Sandra Lambert, Belea Keeney, Cherie Dimaline, Liz Howard, Heather Morse, Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer, Adam Lewis Schroeder, Joceline Doucette, Rick Maddocks, Douglas Glover, Jessica Johnson, Dave Johnson, Dana Mills, and Greg Foran. Thanks to Joe Ollmann for discussion on comic arts, graphic design, drawing, and story narrative. Thank you to friend and colleague Amanda Peters of Glooscap First Nation for reading drafts, and for her enthusiasm for “Eyeball in Your Throat.” Thanks to Madeleine Thien for reading numerous drafts of “The Diplomat” and “Late and Soon,” and for such insightful notes. Thanks to Stephanie Domet who originally commissioned an earlier version of “Insomnis.” Thank you to Silmy Abdullah and Shawk Alani for laughter in the mountains.
Thank you to Sue Goyette for quiet acts of kindness through many years. Thanks to Gwenyth Dwyn for all. Thanks to Lynn Coady and Rob Appleford for everything and especially acting out the various titles considered for the collection. Thank you to the band Nutsak. Thanks to Edible Art Café for the delicious food, to Jenny Osburn for mountain spirit and nutritional kindness. Thank you to my Women of Wolfville sisters: Wendy Eliott, Linda Wheeldon, Wendy LaPierre, Sandra Fyfe, Vida Mae Lantz, Sara Pound, and the powerful river of women in the WOW community. Thanks to Box of Delights Bookshop, the Annapolis Valley Regional Library, and wonder librarian Angela Reynolds.
Thank you to, and in memoriam: Terri Luanna Mountain Borne Robinson da Silva (1974–2015), Helen Marie Veino Peill (1966–2016), Rhetta Dawn Morse (1969–2002), Jeannie Robinson (1948–2010), Sheila Diakiw (1933–2016), Murdy Daniel Conlin (my dad, 1930–2017), Teva Harrison (1976–2019).
Thanks to Mary Louise (my lovely mum), Orangie-Orange the literary cat, Patricia Acheson, Caroline Adderson, Nell den Heyer, Julia Baum, Dan Kehler, Millie LaPorte, Sara White, Robert and Jane Woodworth, Rebecca Silver Slayter, Kim Kierans, Keith Maillard, Linda Svendsen, Peggy Thompson, Judge Chris Manning, Kent Hoffman, Mary Lynk, Noah Richler, Sara Selecky and her spectacular story course, Alexander MacLeod, Lisa Moore, Gary Craig Powell, Dr. Erika Dreifus, Genevieve Allen Hearn, Scott Campbell, Hardware Gallery, and Peter and Catherine Nathanson.
Some of these stories appeared in different forms in the following journals and anthologies: Best Canadian Stories, Room Magazine, Fireweed, Numéro Cinq, The Coast, Victory Meat, and Review: Literature and Art of the Americas. Earlier versions of “Occlusion” and “Desire Lines” were semi-finalists for the American Short Fiction Prize. A different form of “The Flying Squirrel Sermon” was long listed for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize. “Dead Time” was also published in a different form by Annick Press as part of a flip book shared with the multitalented Jen Sookfong Lee. A different form of “Beyond All Things Is the Sea” won the blood + aphorisms prize. A different version became the epilogue for my novel, Heave.
Thank you to Barbara Lipp and Armgard Lipp for language consultation. Thank you to Dr. Beverly Cassidy for research on depression, anxiety, memory, and sleep disorders, plus her overall medical brilliance. Thanks to Dr. Christopher Childs at the Sleep Disorders Clinic in Halifax for insight on insomnia and the elusive quest for sleep. Thanks to Bria Stokesbury and Kate MacInnes-Adams at the Kings County Museum; Dan Conlin, historian at the National Museum of Immigration at Pier 21; Burlington community historians Pat Kemp and Anna Osburn of Burlington, North Mountain, Nova Scotia, for historical background about the horrific murder of Theresa Balsor McAuley Robinson 115 years ago. “The Flying Squirrel Sermon” is in her memory.
Research books consulted include: Scenarios: Of Walking in Ice by Werner Herzog; Werner Herzog: A Guide for the Perplexed (Conversations with Paul Cronin); Every Night the Trees Disappear: Werner Herzog and the Making of Heart of Glass by Alan Greenberg; Scenarios by Werner Herzog; Letters from a Stoic, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium by Seneca, selected and translated by Robin Alexander Campbell; Ad Lucilium espistulae morales by Seneca; Lusicus Annaeus, ca. 4 B.C. – 65 A.D., translated by Richard M. Gummere; In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times (Volume 1 of 2) by Fridtjof Nansen, translated by Arthur G. Chater, 1911; Suasoriarum, collected in L. Annaei Senecae (1557), Vol. 4, 620; The Suasoriae of Seneca the Elder introductory essay, text, translation and explanatory notes; Being the ‘Liber suasoriarum’ of the work entitled L. Annaei Senecae Oratorum et rhetorum sententiae, divisiones, colores, translated by W.A. Edward, 1928; Sailing Alone Around the World by Joshua Slocum, 1900; The Strange Last Voyage of Donald Crowhurst by Nicholas Tomalin and Ron Hall, 1970; And the Sea Will Tell by Vincent Bugliosi and Bruce Henderson; Desire Lines, The shortest way from A to B by Jan Dirk van der Berg; Undine by Friedrich Heinrich Karl de la Motte, Baron Fouqué; Custom of the Country by Edith Wharton; and the work of Paracelsus, German Swiss physician and alchemist, who was active during the German Renaissance.
With heartfelt appreciation to Dr. Sarah Emsley, always ready with an inspiring Jane Austen quotation for any occasion, for the marvellous literary friendship and correspondence about literature and the writing life, and for so carefully reading and commenting on the many drafts of these stories.
Thanks to my wonderful children, Silas, Angus, and Milo, whose joy and delight in daily adventures, be they travels abroad or twilight walks out back to see the beaver and night birds, endlessly inspire. And my darling husband, Andy Brown, whose magnificence has imprinted on my life as a watermark does on paper. Andy, my first reader and constant encourager — there are no words to express my appreciation for the miraculous life we have created together. Thank you for the graphic novels always there on the table by the woodstove, for the pink chair contemplations by the pond.
Finally, thanks to dear Maggie Estep, novelist and spoken word artist, who died unexpectedly in 2014. I had the privilege of working with Maggie in 2005 when she was a master artist at the Atlantic Center for the Arts in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Maggie was instrumental in the shaping of “Late and Soon,” supplying endless notes and encouragement even when I was back home in Nova Scotia. In 2015, I internet-stumbled upon a beautiful essay in Vice by writer Chloe Caldwell commemorating Maggie’s final years in Hudson, New York. I’ve read “Maggie and Me: My Last Days with the Legendary Maggie Estep” countless times. My heart breaks every time I read it when Maggie briefly lives again. With Chloe’s permission, I quote a line from the essay: “The owner of the yoga studio where Maggie taught said a few words, about how some people are suns and some people are moons, but then there was Maggie, who
was a shooting star.”
Whether we are suns or moons, shooting stars or waves that break upon the shore, may we all find some of that brightness which Maggie strew about wherever she went.
Thank you for reading these stories.
About the Author
© Kate Inglis CHRISTY ANN CONLIN is the author of two acclaimed novels, Heave and The Memento. Heave was a national bestseller, a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and the Dartmouth Book Award, and was a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book. Her stories have appeared in numerous literary journals including Best Canadian Stories and have been longlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the American Short Fiction Prize. She also co-created and hosted Fear Itself, a CBC national summer radio series. She holds degrees from the University of British Columbia, the University of Ottawa, and Acadia University. She was born and raised in Nova Scotia, where she still lives.
Instagram: @christy.ann.conlin
Website: christyannconlin.com
About the Publisher
HOUSE OF ANANSI PRESS was founded in 1967 by writers Dennis Lee and David Godfrey. Anansi started as a small press with a mandate to publish Canadian writers, and quickly gained attention for publishing authors such as Margaret Atwood, Matt Cohen, Michael Ondaatje, and Erín Moure, as well as George Grant and Northrop Frye. French-Canadian works in translation have always been an important part of the list, and prominent Anansi authors in translation include Roch Carrier, Marie-Claire Blais, Anne Hébert, and France Daigle. Today, the company specializes in finding and developing writers of literary fiction, poetry, drama, and nonfiction, including Katherena Vermette, Lisa Moore, Patrick deWitt, Tanya Talaga, Djamila Ibrahim, Kathleen Winter, and Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, and in maintaining the culturally significant backlist that has accumulated in the decades since the house was founded.