Jean Baird - The Heart Does Break: Canadian Writers on Grief and Mourning

JEAN BAIRD has been an English professor, magazine publisher, consultant for non-profit organizations and creative director of Canada Book Week for the Writers Trust of Canada. GEORGE BOWERING is a poet, novelist, essayist, critic, historian and editor. In 2002 he was appointed Canadas first Parliamentary Poet Laureate. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada.

BRIAN BRETT is the author of ten books of poetry, fiction and memoir. Active in promoting Canadian literature and culture, he is a retired Chair of the Writers Union of Canada. Uproars Your Only Memoir was published in 2004, and in the fall of 2009, his new memoir/natural history, Trauma Farm, was released. He lives with his family on Salt Spring Island.

CATHERINE BUSH is the author of three novels. Claires Head was chosen as a Best Book of the Year by The Globe and Mail. The Rules of Engagement was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book and a Best Book of the Year by the L.A. Times and The Globe and Mail. Bush has a degree in Comparative Literature from Yale University, has held a variety of Writer-in-Residence positions and has taught Creative Writing at universities including Concordia, the University of Florida, the University of Guelph and the University of British Columbia. Her non-fiction has appeared in The Globe and Mail and The New York Times Magazine. She is at work on a new novel.

In addition to the 2003 Commonwealth Writers Prize, AUSTIN CLARKE is the winner of the 2002 Giller Prize and the 2003 Trillium Prize for The Polished Hoe. Clarke is the author of six short-story collections and ten novels. His latest novel is More. He was born in Barbados and immigrated to Canada to attend the University of Toronto. He became a leader of the civil rights movement. Clarke has been a visiting professor at Yale, Brandeis, Williams, Wellesley, Duke and the universities of Texas and Indiana, and has served in prominent cultural and political positions in his native Barbados.

GEORGE ELLIOTT CLARKE , O.C., O.N.S. is a poet and scholar, and the E.J. Pratt Professor of Canadian Literature at the University of Toronto. He received the Governor Generals Award for Poetry in 2001 and the Trudeau Fellows Prize, 2005-2008.

Poet STEPHEN COLLIS is the author of Mine, two parts of the ongoing Barricades ProjectAnarchive and The Commonsand two books of criticism: Through Words of Others: Susan Howe and Anarcho-Scholasticism and Phyllis Webb and the Common Good. A long-standing member of the Kootenay School of Writing, he teaches poetry, poetics and American literature at Simon Fraser University.

FRANK DAVEY is a past editor of Tish and the Coach House Press, founder and editor of Open Letter, the Canadian journal of writing and theory, and trainer and handler of nationally ranked Great Dane show dogs. He is the author of twenty-two books of poetry, including The Abbotsford Guide to India and Back to the War, and twelve books of literary criticism and cultural theory, including Post-National Arguments: The Politics of the Anglophone-Canadian Novel Since 1967, Canadian Literary Power, Karlas Web: A Cultural Examination of the Mahaffy-French Murders and Mr & Mrs G. G.

ENDRE FARKAS is a poet and playwright who has published ten books of poetry and two plays. His work has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Hungarian and Slovenian. He has read and performed his work across Canada and in the United States, Europe and Latin America. His most recent book is Quotidian Fever: New and Selected Poems 19742007. He is currently working on a play about the poet A.M. Klein.

BRIAN FAWCETT lives in Toronto and is trying to write a book about the Epic of Enkidu. His most recent non-fiction book is Virtual Clearcut: Or, The Way Things Are in My Hometown.

JILL FRAYNE is the author of a travel memoir, Starting Out in the Afternoon. She lives at the top of Algonquin Park.

JOAN GIVNER was professor of English at the University of Regina. She is the author of two biographies, an autobiography, two novels and several collections of short stories. Most recently she has written the Ellen Fremedon series of young adult novels.

HIROMI GOTO was born in Japan and immigrated with her farming family to Canada in 1969. She no longer picks mush rooms long into the night, but she can be found searching for matsutake in the mountains in the autumn. Her latest novel is Half World.

MARNI JACKSON has written for The Globe and Mail, The London Times, Rolling Stone, Outside, Explore and The Walrus. She is the author of The Mother Zone and Pain: The Science and Culture of Why We Hurt. Her new non-fiction book is about coming of age (or not) in your twenties.

Based in Cape Breton, LINDA MCNUTT writes novels and teaches literary theory and Shakespeare. She recently completed a follow-up to her first novel, Summer Point. Her current project is a novel about new beginnings and is set in Calgary circa 1912.

ERN MOURE is a Montreal poet and translator. Her most recent book is O Cadoiro.

PAUL QUARRINGTON is a writer and musician. He has won many awards for his fiction, including the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, Canada Reads and the Governor Generals Award. His most recent novel is The Ravine. He sings and plays in the band Porkbelly Futures.

STEPHEN REID , author of Jack Rabbit Parole, is on day parole and living in the Victoria area. He divides his time between there and his home on Haida Gwaii. He continues to write and live with the poet Susan Musgrave.

RENEE RODIN was born in Montreal and moved in 1968 to Vancouver, where she raised her three children. She ran R2B2 Books, along with its weekly reading series, from 1986-1994. Her books of poetry are Bread and Salt and Ready for Freddy. A collection is forthcoming in 2010 with Talon.

ANNE STONE , a Vancouver-based teacher and novelist, is senior editor at Matrix Magazine. She is the author of three novels: jacks: a gothic gospel, Hush and, most recently, Delible. Delible, chosen as a Globe and Mail Best Book, tells the story of Melora Sprague, a fifteen-year-old girl whose sister is missing.

WILLIAM WHITEHEAD , was born in 1931, grew up in Regina, worked initially as a biologist, then as an actor and ultimately, for twenty years, as an award-winning writer of documentaries for radio, film and television. In 1982, he began devoting himself full-time to the editing and managing of the work of Timothy Findley, until their forty-year partnership was ended by Findleys death in 2002.

Tasting My Father Copyright 2009 Brian Brett

The Embrace Copyright 2009 Catherine Bush

There Is No Good in a Black Night Copyright 2009 Austin Clarke

The Baggage Handler Copyright 2009 George Elliott Clarke

On the Material, or, Gails Books Copyright 2009 Stephen Collis

This Gentleman, bpNichol Copyright 2009 Frank Davey

Waiting to Grieve Copyright 2009 Endre Farkas

My Fathers Blue Skies Copyright 2009 Brian Fawcett

Her Great Art Copyright 2009 Jill Frayne

On Preparing My Daughters Fiction for Posthumous Publication Copyright 2009 Joan Givner