Fall 08 catalogue_hi-res

2008

freehand books

Does Canada really need another literary publisher? From the Kilimanjaro of submissionswe’ve received, it’s clear that Canada’s writers think so. But what about readers? Festival

programmers, bookstore owners, and book-buyers themselves tell us there are too many booksbeing published. They are overwhelmed by volume and by choice.

We think that makes a small, highly selective imprint like Freehand all the more crucial. Ourbooks have been painstakingly chosen and just as painstakingly edited and produced. Extremelygood books that people, lots of them, will want to read: the formula is simple—and it isn’t.

Freehand. I’ve thought a lot about those two powerful syllables as this inaugural list has takenshape. Most immediately, they evoke a playful, unfettered creativity, a personal stamp and verve,within an area of expert endeavour. There’s freehand lacemaking. Freehand drawing, of course.And the list goes on—freehand circle drawing, freehand yo-yo tricking, freehand glowsticking(hello, ravers). But there’s something else, too. An ice dancer, one arm entwined with her part-ner’s, is routinely warned not to flail her free hand around. And bull riders, who might think theyhave nothing in common with figure skaters, must pay a similar kind of attention. Touch the bullor the reins with that all-important free hand, and you’re out.

So there’s a tension, clearly, between freedom and discipline here. Dennis Lee, that avatar of con-trolled anarchy, calls this duality “the nag and improv” of good writing. We look for writers whoare equally engaged in this exacting dance.

Our first list is eclectic, representing the range of genres we intend to publish throughout the com-ing years. We are presenting a novel, a collection of short stories, a non-fiction memoir-in-essays,and a collection of poetry. Yet each of our first four writers have a single, vital thing in common:they all marry great creativity and imagination with an astonishing level of control over their craft.The result, as we’re sure you’ll agree, is a collection of four of the best books being published inCanada, or anywhere else, this year. These are books to admire and enjoy in equal measure.Happy reading.

Melanie Little, Editor

412, 815-1st St SWCalgary, Alberta, Canada T2P 1N3tel. 403-232-6863 fax 403-233-0001melanie@broadviewpress.comwww.freehand-books.comwww.broadviewpress.com

freehand books

Marina Endicott

Good to a FaultA NOVEL

Marina Endicott’s critically lauded first novel, Open Arms, wasnominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada Award. Free-

hand Books is immensely proud to launch its publishing life withher triumphant second novel, Good to a Fault.Absorbed in her own failings, Clara Purdy crashes her life into a

sharp left turn, taking the family in the other car along with her.When the youngmother proves to have late-stage cancer, Clara movesthe three children and their terrible grandmother into her own house—and then has to cope with the consequences of practical goodness:exhaustion, fury, hilarity, and unexpected love. While Lorraine pre-pares for death, Clara expands into life. But is she acting out of good-ness, or guilt? Worse, does she simply want the baby for her own?Endicott digs deep into themes of morality, class, and social re-

sponsibility, lighting each page with humour, humanity, and an un-canny observational eye. In pitch-perfect prose, Good to a Faultconjures the glorious messiness of life.

“Good to a Fault is a wise and searching novel about the fine linebetween being useful and being used.” Elizabeth Hay

PRAISE FOR OPEN ARMS:Endicott’s writing is clear as fast-running water and hard as gem-stones. She writes with wisdom, grace and conviction, and a lucid,hard-won faith in the ability of people to find love and hold tight.It’s hard to imagine wishing for anything more. The Vancouver Sun

Lucid, unembellished prose that hides convolutions of deepermeaning… events scattered over thousands of miles and severaldecades are finally fused into a striking emotional whole, a contin-uum of fractured, rarely spoken, but persistent and mysterious love.

The Globe and Mailº

Endicott shows a deft touch, infusing the principals with great hu-manity and refreshing individuality… she has [Alice] Munro’s abilityto sneak a character into a reader’s heart. The Hamilton Spectator

Marina Endicott’s first novel, Open Arms,was nominated for the Amazon/Books in Canada

Best First Novel award and serialized on CBCRadio’s Between the Covers. Her stories have beenfeatured in Coming Attractions and short-listed for

the Journey Prize. She lives in Alberta.

• National Tour & Multi-city Launch• Festival Pitches• National Review Mailing• Advance Reading Copies• Book Club Guide• E-card Media Blast• National Advertising• Targeted Virtual Book Tour• goodtoafault.blogspot.com

A TRIUMPHANT NEWWORK BY A MASTER NOVELIST

Fiction/Novel978-1-55111-929-8

1-55111-929-36 X 8.5 Paperback

376 pagesSeptember 2008

$25.95

Susan Olding

PathologiesESSAYS

“In simple terms, pathology is the scientific study of the way thingsgo wrong.” In fifteen searingly honest personal essays, debut au-

thor Susan Olding takes us on an unforgettable journey into the com-plex heart of being human. Each essay dissects an aspect of Olding's lifeexperience—from her vexed relationship with her pathologist father toher tricky dealings with female peers; from her work as a high schoolcounsellor and teacher to her persistent desire, despite struggles withinfertility, to have children of her own. Olding bravely recounts theadoption of her daughter, Maia, from an orphanage in China, and tellsus the story of Maia’s difficult adaptation to the unfamiliar state ofbeing loved.These essays trace the life-in-progress of a remarkably compassionate,

articulate, and observant woman. Written with as much lyricism, de-tail, and artfulness as the best short stories, Pathologies provides all thepleasures of fiction combined with the enrichment derived from thecareful presentation of fact. It is the work of one of Canada's finest newwriters, one who has taken the challenging, much-underused form ofthe literary essay and made it her own.

PRAISE FOR THE PRIZE-WINNING ESSAYS IN PATHOLOGIES:

“Push-Me-Pull-You” describes the almost impossible balancing act thatthe mother of an emotionally damaged child must perform every day...swerving neither into self-pity nor self-aggrandizing, neither aggressionnor sentimentality. It is both tough and loving. I can't imagine a finerpiece on this subject. Mark Abley, Prairie Fire Non-fiction Contest judge

“At Lingyin Si” compels raptness from the reader... fluid, intense, andsuffused withmagic. Ross Laird, Event Creative Non-fiction Contest judge

Recently named one of The New Quarterly’s “MostLoved Living Writers,” Susan Olding has been a fi-nalist for a National Magazine Award, two WesternMagazine Awards, and a CBC Literary Award. Heressays have won the Prairie Fire and Event non-fic-tion contests and the Brenda Ueland Prize forLiterary Non-fiction. She lives in Kingston.

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Non-fiction/Essays978-1-55111-930-4

1-55111-930-76 X 8.5, Paperback


$23.95

HEART-STARTING ESSAYS BY A NEWWRITER ALREADY DUBBED “MOST LOVED”

Saleema Nawaz

Mother SuperiorSTORIES

Lisa Moore. Annabel Lyon. Nancy Lee. Every so often, a new writeremerges whose voice is so fresh and distinctive that the entire liter-

ary community takes notice. Saleema Nawaz is just such a writer. Hersensuous, elegant prose style combines with edgy, taboo-breaking sub-ject matter to create fiction unlike anything else being written in Canadatoday.

A prostitute takes shelter with a group of young anarchists. A sistergoes missing, mailing a trail of encoded postcards from around theglobe. The daughters of aMontreal bagel-shop owner navigate the trickyterrain of being young, Sikh, and female. A woman watches with lustand longing as the object of her affections, her pregnant roommate, ispursued by a pompous suitor with unsavory interests. And a precociouschild spies on her adoptive mother, trying to grasp the secret of hermother's hidden obsession and of her own unexplained origins. Theseven stories and two novellas in Mother Superior are a heady blend ofmisfits and mothers, of sisters and complex, mysterious others. Nawaztraces the scars left by family secrets and sings the complex, captivatinglanguage of lust and of love.

“TheWhite Dress,” the final novella in this book, placed second inthe Malahat Review's novella contest and won the inaugural RobertKroetsch Award for Best Creative Thesis at the University of Manitoba.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR MOTHER SUPERIOR

Mother Superior is superb. Saleema Nawaz writes with grace and com-passion about a sisterhood of young women facing down theirdemons and developing faith in themselves.

Neil Smith, author of Bang Crunch

Saleema Nawaz was born in Ottawa in 1979.Her fiction has appeared in journals

including Prairie Fire, Grain, The NewQuarterly, and Prism International and she isan alumnus of the Writing Studio at the Banff

Centre for the Arts. She lives in Montreal,where she is at work on her first novel.

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A DEBUT COLLECTION OF STORIES BY ONE OF CANADA'S BRIGHTEST NEWTALENTS

Fiction/Short Stories978-1-55111-927-4

1-55111-927-76 X 8.5, Paperback


$23.95

Jeanette Lynes

It’s Hard Being Queen:THE DUSTY SPRINGFIELD POEMS

Who's the new voice? Boxers lower their gloves. Typists stop typing.Thunderbird roadsters ignite rubber, eighteen-wheelers that didn'tdown-shift in a hundred miles down-shift.

In this, her fourth book of poetry, one of Canada's hottest poetstakes on one of the most compelling pop divas of our time. JeanetteLynes's captivating, compulsively readable suite of connected poemsreimagines and reanimates the art, life, and times of Dusty Spring-field, from her inauspicious beginnings as a convent-school girlthrough her turbulent life of spectacular triumphs, equally spectacu-lar crashes, and courageous reinventions. Each poem is filled withplayful, obsessive detail, and, of course, music. Jeanette Lynes notonly steps into the icon’s shoes—she lives in her skin.

Her ears are ace. Onion juice cuts her throat open.The sound? She wants it dark. Urgent. Chambered

and released. A breath breathing a breath breathing a breath.

PRAISE FOR JEANETTE LYNES:

The language is loaded and expertly controlled, her taut linesdropped with comic timing. Atlantic Books Today

Lynes is elegance in poetic lines. Read.

George Elliott Clarke, Halifax Sunday Herald

Jeanette Lynes is the author of A Woman Alone onthe Atikokan Highway, The Aging Cheerleader's Al-phabet, and Left Fields (shortlisted for the PatLowther Award). She has been a winner of theRalph Gustafson Poetry Prize and the Bliss Car-man Award, and is a faculty member of the SageHill Writing Experience and co-editor of TheAntigonish Review.

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Poems978-1-55111-926-7

1-55111-926-96 X 8.5, Paperback


$16.95

“YOU HAVE SUCCEEDED IN DOING SOMETHING ODD ANDWONDERFUL.” WARREN ZANES

BOOK ORDERSBroadview Press Inc.280 Perry Street, Unit 5Peterborough, Ontario Canada K9J 7H5tel. [email protected]

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www.broadviewpress.com • www.freehand-books.com

Freehand Books, an imprint of Broadview Press Inc., acknowledges financial support for its publishing programfrom the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

freehand booksan imprint of Broadview Press

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