Linden MacIntyre reads this Wednesday 8PM at UNB

The University of New Brunswick would like to invite you to a reading by the critically acclaimed novelist Linden MacIntyre, author of Punishment, published last year by Random House. In this new novel MacIntyre presents a powerful exploration of justice and vengeance, and the peril that ensues when passion replaces reason, in a small town shaken by a tragic death.

A Canadian journalist, broadcaster and novelist, MacIntyre has won eight Gemini Awards, an International Emmy, and numerous other awards for writing and journalistic excellence. His childhood memoir Causeway (2006) won The Evelyn Richardson Prize and The Edna Staebler Award for Non-Fiction. His fiction has included his bestselling novel The Long Stretch (1999), and The Bishop’s Man (2009), which was the winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the 2010 Libris Fiction Book of the Year Award.

His reading will be held on Wednesday, January 21st at 8:00pm in the Bailey Auditorium, room 102 of Tilley Hall, on the UNB Fredericton Campus.

Admission is free and all are welcome to attend!

Fiddlehead News

The Ottawa Citizen has a story of its 15 most anticipated new fiction books, which features Fiddlehead fiction editor Mark Jarman who has a new book of stories Knife Party at the Hotel Europa coming out in March from Goose Lane Editions. Mark's book also is highly anticipated by The Toronto Star. In their Spring Lookahead, it is one of the top 25 books they can't wait to read.

Which book are you looking forward to this Spring?

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And The Fiddlehead is now on Twitter. Follow us at @TheFiddlehd to keep up to date on all the scintillating literary happenings in Fiddlehead-land!

UNB Reading Series Presents Kathleen Winter on January 14

The University of New Brunswick would like to invite you to hear a reading by the critically acclaimed writer Kathleen Winter, author of The Freedom in American Songs, published last year by Biblioasis. In this collection of stories, Winter employs her unusual sensuality, lyrically rendered settings, and subversive humour to examine themes of modern loneliness, small-town gay teens, catastrophic love, and the holiness of ordinary life.

Winter's novel, Annabel (2010), was a #1 bestseller in Canada, has been translated around the world, was shortlisted for the Giller Prize, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and the Governor General’s Award, and won the Thomas Head Raddall Award. Her debut story collection, boYs (2007), won the Winterset Award and the Metcalf-Rooke Award. Her Arctic travel memoir, Boundless (House of Anansi), was published just last fall, and was shortlisted for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction.

Her reading will be held on Wednesday, January 14th at 8:00pm in the Alumni Lounge of the Alumni Memorial Building on the UNB Fredericton Campus. Admission is free and all are welcome to attend!

Happy Holidays!

The Fiddlehead office is closing for the holiday season.

On behalf of the editors and staff, we wish you safe and happy holidays. And we wish you all the best for 2015!

An Interview with Charlie Fiset, contributor to Fiddlehead 261 (Autumn 2014)

No. 261, Autumn 2014

The Autumn 2014 issue of The Fiddlehead, No. 261, features a story by UNB Alumni, and current student, Charlie Fiset. This story, entitled “Maggie’s Farm,” is a fictitious account based on Fiset’s own European travels, imbued with a Greek mythological theme drawn from Homer’s Odyssey. This story was originally part of Fiset’s creative thesis for her MA in Creative Writing.

Charlie Fiset is now in her first year of PhD studies at UNB. Originally from Kirkland Lake in northern Ontario, she has her undergrad degree in Classics and English from Nipissing University in North Bay, Ontario. “Maggie’s Farm” is her first publication, but she has another story upcoming in The Fiddlehead's summer 2015 fiction issue. That story is about gold-mining and Persephone’s katabasis to the Underworld.

Fiset was kind enough to offer some insight into “Maggie’s Farm” and her creative process, in response to the following questions.

Greg Brown
Editorial Assistant
The Fiddlehead

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Greg Brown: What types of stories or works do you like to read, and which ones inspire you? 

Charlie Fiset: I love epic poems, Ernest Hemingway, and Flannery O’Connor.

GB: What types of stories do you like to write?

CF: Long-short ones!

GB: Does your current dissertation inform your writing at all? And if so, in what way?

CF: My dissertation will be a comparative study of epiphany in the epics of Pound, H.D., and Eliot. I find modern epicists interesting because of the manner in which they consider the history of knowledge; in studying modern epics you’re able to study particular vantages on epistemology since the time of Homer. Pound begins The Cantos in medias res, when Odysseus and his shipmates are leaving Circe’s island. This modernist refiguring of The Odyssey inspired me to refigure my own experiences in an Odyssean frame. I got the idea from Dr. Demetres Tryphonopoulos’ study of The Cantos called The Celestial Tradition.

UNB Reading Series: Michael Crummey Reads on November 25! And more!

The University of New Brunswick invites you to a public reading by award-winning Newfoundland author, Michael Crummey! Join us on Tuesday, November 25th, 2014 at 8:00pm in Tilley Hall 102 (Bailey Auditorium) on the UNB Fredericton campus.

Michael Crummey is an accomplished author who grew up in Wabush, Labrador. He has published several books of poetry, fiction, and non-fiction, including Hard Light, River Thieves, and Galore. His most recent novel, Sweetland, was shortlisted for the 2014 Governor General’s Literary Award; it tells the story of Moses Sweetland—a resident of a small island off the coast of Newfoundland that shares his family name — who fakes his own death in order to avoid forced resettlement by the Newfoundland government. Sweetland is described in the National Post as having a “focus on a contemporary story, imbuing it with the force and weight of history and myth.”

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Catching up on some local news . . . Fiddlehead fiction editor Mark Jarman, who has a new book forthcoming with Goose Lane Editions in 2015, recently read excerpts at two Goose Lane 60th anniversary parties in Fredericton and Toronto. You can read a roundup of the Toronto celebration at Descant's blog! And you can check out some of his work at Numéro Cinq.

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And Qwerty, UNB's graduate student magazine, is launching its issue 32, on Thursday, November 26th at 7pm in Fredericton's Wilser's Room, 366 Queen Street.

Our Autumn Issue is Out!

The Fiddlehead no. 261 (Autumn 2014)

The Fiddlehead's autumn issue is now on its journey to subscribers' mailboxes and available at newsstands across the country. Visit our website now for a glimpse at the table of contents and a few excerpts from the issue.

As you can see by our cover image, we're celebrating Alistair MacLeod. We've republished "The Vastness of the Dark," his second-ever published story, which appeared in The Fiddlehead back in 1971. It is republished with the permission of Penguin Random House.

In this issue you will find tributes to Alistair MacLeod from editor Ross Leckie, fiction co-editor Mark Anthony Jarman, and friends Douglas Gibson and D.R. MacDonald. You will also find the best poetry and fiction we could find: Stephanie Yorke, Brian Bartlett, Richard Cumyn, Catherine Graham, and Kerry-Lee Powell to name only a few!

Congratulations to another of our contributors to this issue, Michael Prior, who has just won The Walrus poetry prize!

In other contributor news, congratulations to Anne Compton, most recently featured in our Summer Poetry issue (no. 260). Anne has just been awarded New Brunswick's 2014 Lieutenant-Governor's Award for High Achievement in English Language Literary Arts.