The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk by Jennifer Niven

Much of my reading these days is related to topics I am writing and, as a result, leans heavily on non-fiction. At the moment, I am part-way through The Ice Master: The Doomed 1913 Voyage of the Karluk by Jennifer Niven (Hyperion, 2000). The Karluk was a former whaling ship converted to floating laboratory that left Victoria, British Columbia on June 1913 on a scientific mission headed by expedition leader Vilhjalmar Stefansson. Six weeks into the journey, the Karluk became locked in ice north of Alaska, pitting the 28 people aboard - scientists, Inuit hunters and sailors - in a life and death struggle against the elements. Only 17 survived the ordeal. Drawing on archival reports and the diaries of survivors, Niven recreates the story of the Karluk with such fluid detail that I feel that I am on the mission myself, experiencing the same rollercoaster ride of anxiety, fear and decision-making that the passengers on the ill-fated journey likely felt themselves. So far, the book has been a fascinating read.

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3 contests, $6,000 in cash prizes!

Bliss Carman Poetry Award The poetry first prize is in part donated by the Banff Centre for the Arts, who will also award a jeweller-cast replica of poet Bliss Carman¹s silver and turquoise ring to the first prize winner. (1-3 poems per entry, maximum 150 lines per entry)

Short Fiction (one story per entry, maximum 10,000 words)

Creative Non-Fiction (one article per entry, maximum 5,000 words)

1st prize $1,250, 2nd prize $500, 3rd prize $250 in all categories

Send entries to: Prairie Fire Press, 423-100 Arthur Street, Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3. For more information check out our website at www.prairiefire.ca, call (204) 943-9066, or e-mail us at prfire@mts.net.

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Especially because I spend so much time in the studio, where paint and intuition rule, I feel it's important to feed that other part of my brain when I'm not painting; by reading. I'll admit that I devoured an awful lot more literature earlier in my life than I do now. But aside from my beloved weekly New Yorker magazine, which is a wonderful cheater's way of being intimately -and instantly- informed on all current matters that may hit the dinner party conversations, I always have a few new discoveries ready to be broken in. Here are two books that are on top of the stack right now.

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J.D. Salinger has passed away at the age of 91. He authored Catcher in the Rye (1951), Nine Stories (1953), a collection of a novella and a short story, Franny and Zooey (1961), and a collection of two novellas, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour: An Introduction (1963).

What I was really hanging around for, I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by. I mean I've left schools and places I didn't even know I was leaving them. I hate that. I don't care if it's a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place I like to know I'm leaving it. If you don't, you feel even worse. ~J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, Chapter 1