The Meagre Tarmac

Review"Top work from a master storyteller and border-crosser ... a gem of a book."—Margaret Atwood"Blaise is probably the greatest living Canadian writer most Canadians have never heard of."—Quill & Quire"The Meagre Tarmac is a naked instance of appropriation of voice—a literary felony justified in this case by the results."—Philip Marchand, National Post"On the leading edge of world literature."—John Barber, Globe and Mail"What holds the collection together is Blaise's mastery of the short story, his ability to give us a whole personality and the sensuous particularity of lived experiences in a handful of pages."—Steven Hayward, Globe and Mail"It is the cultural, geographical, and historical scope of the stories that most impresses ... wickedly subtle ... this book is anything but meagre."—Toronto Star"As good a collection as any I’ve read."—Montreal Gazette"A collection greater than the sum of its formidable parts."—Montreal Gazette"Masterpiece. That's a big word. In 20 years of writing book reviews I don't think I've ever used it, but I'm throwing the dart at The Meagre Tarmac."—The Underground Book ClubAbout the AuthorClark Blaise (1940-), Canadian and American, is the author of 20 books of fiction and nonfiction. A longtime advocate for the literary arts in North America, Blaise has taught writing and literature at Emory, Skidmore, Columbia, NYU, Sir George Williams, UC-Berkeley, SUNY-Stony Brook, and the David Thompson University Centre. In 1968, he founded the postgraduate Creative Writing Program at Concordia University; he after went on to serve as the Director of the International Writing Program at Iowa (1990-1998), and as President of the Society for the Study of the Short Story (2002-present). Internationally recognized for his contributions to the field, Blaise has received an Arts and Letters Award for Literature from the American Academy (2003), and in 2010 was made an Officer of the Order of Canada. Blaise now divides his time between New York and San Francisco, where he lives with his wife, American novelist Bharati Mukherjee.