Claire Caldwell & Christine Fischer Guy
Thursday Mar 05 2015 7:30 pm, Winnipeg, Grant Park in the Travel Alcove
An evening of readings from Claire Caldwell, author of Invasive Species (Wolsak & Wynn), and Christine Fischer Guy, author of The Umbrella Mender (Wolsak & Wynn), featuring special guests Alison Calder and Ariel Gordon.
Invasive Species is the eagerly awaited debut collection from poet Claire Caldwell. In this book the calamities of climate change and the dangers of the natural world are juxtaposed against the intimacies of daily life. The poems are compassionate, witty and original, and in them bears, whales and people take unexpected forms. Named one of the top five poetry collections of 2014 by the National Post, this is poetry by an exciting new voice.
Claire Caldwell is a poet and editor living in Toronto. She was the 2013 winner of the Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and her work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including Maisonneuve and Prism International. Claire holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph.
The Umbrella Mender is a moving debut novel from Christine Fischer Guy which Miriam Toews called “an absolutely compelling read from start to finish.” In 1950s Moose Factory, Nurse Hazel MacPherson is ready to pour everything into stopping tuberculosis from ravaging the local aboriginal peoples. But Hazel did not expect the realities of the northern hospital to be what they are and she was not prepared for Gideon Judge, the itinerant umbrella mender, who upends her certainties in tragic ways.
Christine Fischer Guy’s fiction has appeared in Descant and Prairie Fire, and was nominated for a Journey Prize. Excerpts from The Umbrella Mender appeared in Descant and Ars Medica. Christine reviews fiction for The Globe and Mail and teaches creative writing at the School for Continuing Studies at the University of Toronto.
Alison Calder is the author of the poetry collections Wolf Tree, which won two Manitoba Book Awards and was shortlisted for both the Gerald Lampert Award and the Pat Lowther Award, and 2014’s In the Tiger Park. She teaches Canadian literature and creative writing at the University of Manitoba.
Ariel Gordon is a Winnipeg writer. Her second collection of poetry, Stowaways, was launched in spring 2014. When not being bookish, Ariel likes tromping through the woods and taking macro photographs of mushrooms.
See:
Invasive Species
- Claire Caldwell 
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Invasive Species is the eagerly awaited debut collection from poet Claire Caldwell. In these poems the calamities of climate change and the dangers of the natural world are juxtaposed against the intimacies of daily life. You will hear the voice of a woman, mauled to death by a bear, asking only to be remembered for her courage. Wildcats invade condominium balconies. A girl learns how natural it feels to hold a shotgun. And in "Osteogenesis," the prize-winning final sequence, you will hear the beautifully entwined stories of a student named M, a medical school cadaver, a pair of young lovers and the body of a blue whale decomposing at the bottom of the sea. Caldwell renders all of these improbable connections in startlingly original verse, alive with compassion and wit.
The Umbrella Mender
- Christine Fischer Guy
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$22.00 - Add to Cart
Reader Reward Price: $19.80
Though a stroke has left her mute, the story Hazel MacPherson has to share is unforgettable. As a talented nurse in the early 1950s, she went north to Moose Factory to help fight the epidemic of tuberculosis that was ravaging the Cree and Inuit peoples. Each week the boat brought new patients from the James Bay, Hudson Bay, and Nunavik communities to the little hospital. It was a desperate undertaking, fraught with cultural and language difficulties that hampered the urgent, sometimes reckless, efforts of the medical staff. But Hazel is soon distracted from the tensions of the hospital by an enigmatic drifter named Gideon Judge, an itinerant umbrella mender searching for the Northwest Passage. From her own hospital bed, the older Hazel struggles to pass on to her grandniece the harrowing tale of her past in the North, including the fate of Gideon and the heartbreaking secrets she left behind.
