The UNB Reading Series Presents Acclaimed Writers Joan Clark, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Maureen Hynes

The University of New Brunswick would like to invite you to a literary reading by acclaimed writers Joan Clark, Ruth Roach Pierson, Maureen Hynes. The reading will be held on Friday, Sept 21, 2012 at 8pm in the Alumni Memorial Lounge on the UNB Fredericton Campus.

Joan Clark is writer-in-residence at UNB from September 2012 to April 2013. She is available to the public and to make an appointment contact her at joan.clark@unb.ca or at 506-452-6356. Joan is the multiple-award-winning author of several novels, short story collections for adults and novels for young readers. Her last adult novel, Latitudes of Melt, was nominated for the 2002 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, the 2001 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize, Canada-Caribbean, and was a New York Times Notable Book.

Ruth Roach Pierson is a retired academic and award-winning poet. Her poems have appeared in ARC, CV2, Event, The Fiddlehead, The Literary Review of Canada, The Malahat Review, MIX Magazine, Pagitica, Pottersfield Portfolio, Prism International, Queen’s Feminist Review, Quills, and Room of One’s Own as well as a number of anthologies. Her book of poems, Aide-Mémoire (2007), was named a finalist for the 2008 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry.

Maureen Hynes is the poetry editor for Our Times magazine and the author of two books of poems. Her work has been shortlisted for the CBC Literary Awards and appears in Best Canadian Poetry 2010. She is a past winner of the Petra Kenney Poetry Award (London, England), and her book, Rough Skin (1995), won the League of Canadian Poets’ Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry.

The reading is presented by the UNB English Department, UNB Faculty of Arts, the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts NB, the UNB Fredericton Bookstore, & The Fiddlehead.
Admission is free and all are welcome to attend.

2012-2013 Reading Series!

Below is a list of writers scheduled to read at the University of New Brunswick in the upcoming academic year, sponsored by the UNB English Department, the UNB Bookstore, the Canada Council for the Arts, The Writers Trust of Canada, and The Fiddlehead. All readings are free and open to the public! If you are here in the Fredericton area (or visiting), then take advantage to hear these great Canadian authors reading from their latest works!

Most readings are in the evenings either at Memorial Hall or Alumni Memorial Hall on the University of New Brunswick campus. Please click here for a map of UNB. Look for additional details in this space leading up to each reading.

Fall 2012
Joan Clark, Ruth Roach Pierson & Maureen Hynes	21 Sept	Alumni Memorial
Poetry Weekend	29-30 Sept	Memorial Hall
Margot Livesey	8 Nov	Alumni Memorial
Stephanie Bolster & Susan Gillis	20 Nov	Alumni Memorial
Winter 2013
Ami McKay	22 Jan	Alumni Memorial
Madeline Thien	5 Feb	Alumni Memorial
Clark Blaise	12 Mar	Alumni Memorial

A New Website to Follow, Plus Exciting News from a Recent Contributor

Want to keep updated on the literary culture of New Brunswick, the home province of The Fiddlehead? Our fiction co-editor Gerard Beirne has begun curating a website devoted entirely to New Brunswick writing, The New Brunswick Literary Times. In the website's own words: 

The province of New Brunswick has a rich literary history. The New Brunswick Literary Times provides up-to-date news of writers from or currently living in New Brunswick in a magazine format via articles available online.

One recently featured article caught our attention: an interview at Open Book Ontario with former long-time poetry editor Robert Gibbs.

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The Fiddlehead is pleased to report that Orlando Ricardo Menes, a contributor to our recent all-poetry summer issue, has recently won the Prairie Schooner Book Prize for Poetry. His winning manuscript, Fetish, contains the two poems we published in No. 252, "Parable" and "Panegyric for the Condor." Congratulations Orlando!

Website Update

Our website is now updated with information about our new issue, the special all-poetry Summer 2012 issue. You can find samples from some of the poets featured, along with a full list of contributors, and details about our 22nd annual contest, which closes on December 1.

“Deviance is a Quality I Admire”: An Interview with Gerard Beirne, The Fiddlehead’s Fiction Co-Editor



Gerard Beirne


Over at The Review Review, our fiction co-editor Gerard Beirne chats with Hadley Catalano about his advice for writers, the art of storytelling, and how The Fiddlehead stays fresh and young after all these years, among other topics. Here's an excerpt:

   HC: The narrative path is made to be broken. Do you see fictional short stories taking a completely different route, following a completely different structure in the future? And if so, what might that narrative structure look like?

    GB: “A completely different structure?" No. The form of storytelling has evolved naturally. We may sometimes shake it up a bit, rearrange its parts, but at the end of the day, to do its job, to convey meaning to other human beings it requires a form that humans are receptive to . . . .

Go read the rest of “Deviance is a Quality I Admire.”

Read more about Gerard’s latest book, Games of Chance, at his blog about it.

The Fiddlehead Summer Poetry Issue (No. 252) has Arrived

We here at The Fiddlehead hope your summer is going well. It`s about to get a whole lot more summery, though, as our special summer poetry issue is on its way to your mailbox. Look for it soon. Enjoy 192 pages packed with poetry and reviews: pure sunlight and summer breezes on every page!

Can a Young Writer Speak?

John Keats 1795-1821

A few months ago I had the honour to read a story of mine publicly at an undergraduate conference. The reading went well and after a hearty St. Patrick's Day celebration it would have escaped my memory besides a short note on my CV. However, a friend, and now my co-editor on our zine aptly named "What Killed Keats," enjoyed the story and encouraged me to show it to our philosophy professor. My professor promised nothing beyond reading it, so I was surprised when I got an email a month or two later describing the flaws in the story in a laborious critique one would expect to see in a negative review. The critique differed from most feedback in that it was more like in-depth criticism and it was exclusively and bitingly negative except for one line at the end to encourage me to continue writing. Jan Zwicky claims in her essay “The Ethics of the Negative Review” that a negative review is a “Squelching of self and creativity,” but for me my first semblance of a negative review was a grand inspirational moment, a first milestone to becoming a writer. Someone had taken my work to be worth criticizing on a higher level than mere feedback and deemed it to be worth spending the time to criticize. That was a great compliment.

No one appreciates it when someone decides that they know what is best for them. Gillian Jerome states that CWILA supports stronger critical awareness of marginalized voices when a young writer's voice has not been heard. From a young writer's perspective, Zwicky's essay is written in a maternal fashion, suggesting that she has to save writers from the negative reviewer. She claims negative reviews have prevented writers from publishing when she says that poets are sensitive to their environment. She attempts to speak for young writers when young writers were never included in the conversation. She wants to protect young writers from negative reviewers like a parent protects children from a bully, when all I'm saying is that it is more complicated. I acknowledge that I write from a male point of view on criticism and I don't want to attack Zwicky; I only take issue with Zwicky attempting to speak for me.

I have found that a young writer has to fight hard for any useful criticism, and any movement against negative criticism is deeply worrying for me. I began writing at sixteen and I've run a gauntlet of workshops, so I know firsthand that it is hard to give—and almost impossible to find—good criticism. Praise can be found easily and in my experience has never helped me improve my writing.  I write with Queer characters predominantly, so in my experience, positive criticism is more often than not patronizing, while negative criticism shows that someone takes what I have to say seriously. I look to negative reviews to learn what the reviewer thinks is stale or overdone and what doesn't work in a piece. Therefore I have the most to lose under the arguments of Zwicky's essay. I agree that criticism that focuses on personal attacks and so-called “scorched earth tactics” is not helpful for anyone, but Zwicky never defines what she means by a negative review and this makes me anxious.

To be frank, Zwicky oversimplifies publishing by casting the writer as a hero who has to persevere amid criticism. I always look back to a workshop I took in high school with the then UNB writer-in-residence Gerard Beirne. One of my friends was a talented writer who had a completed novel manuscript and had asked Gerard for advice. After working with her for several months, he suggested to her that she should delay publishing when she had been convinced that she had to publish. His advice to everyone is that it takes a long time to have work that's worth publishing and that you should never rush into publishing. He has always used solid examples of writers whose work has progressed and now look back on their early work with embarrassment, even if it is well-written. However, other writers thought that she should just publish if she had something that was worth publishing. Both views were still valid, and although I personally agree with Gerry, the conflict shows how one view of publishing cannot know what's best for a young writer.

All I ask is for established writers to keep in mind that they can't know what's best for young writers. I appreciate the amazing level of effort and resources put towards young writers, but I do think there are problems. Technological advances such as e-publishing have been touted endlessly as a great resource for young writers, but the negatives are always glossed over. Although some of the new technology is amazing and has potential, I don't think that the next generation of young writers is better off. If a young writer publishes something online, then it will never disappear. Imagine the nightmare for a writer to become successful only to have their writing from when they were fifteen emerge. It is infuriating to see articles on e-publishing act as if they have discovered self-publishing when zines and other non-traditional forms of media have always existed. Publishing in a zine was never given as an option or even discussed in any of the writing and publishing workshops I took, but zines are a valuable resource for young writers. Zines are disposable and limited; they can be distributed to those interested in writing and can be kept for yourself, not for the whole world to see. My father still has a few of his first self-published chapbooks and looks on them fondly. Zines can give young writers an independent voice to speak for themselves, but it is another matter if anyone will listen.

Kelly Jarman

Fall 2011/Winter 2012 Fiddlehead Intern

For more information about zines, visit Broken Pencil.

For more information about "What Killed Keats," email the editors.