Atlantica - Tapa blanda

The world has taken notice. From Alistair MacLeod's recent IMPAC literary award, through movies based on the work of David Adams Richards and Sheldon Currie, to the epic television series based on the work of Bernice Morgan, the international community has soundly acknowledged the critical and commercial success of Atlantic writers.

Atlantica is the first major anthology of Atlantic fiction since Best Maritime Short Stories was published in 1988 and showcases stories by some of Canada's most exciting authors — established, newly popular, and emerging. Given the regional penchant for storytelling, it's not surprising that the Maritimes and Newfoundland produce a continuous stream of spellbinding writers.

Among the stories in Atlantica are Anne Simpson's Journey Prize-winning "Dreaming Snow," Carol Bruneau's "The Tarot Reader," "Batter My Heart" by Lynn Coady, Bernice Morgan's "Poems in a Cold Climate" "The Train Family" by Joan Clark, "Missing Notes" by David Helwig, "The Party" by Herb Curtis and "Clearances" by Alistair MacLeod. Readers from "away" will recognize Sheldon Currie's hilariously gothic tale "The Glace Bay Miner's Museum" as the basis of Helena Bonham Carter's acclaimed movieMargaret's Museum. Some stories have been excerpted from novels, including David Adams Richards'sThe Bay of Love and Sorrows, Wayne Johnston's The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, John Steffler'sThe Afterlife of George Cartwright, and Donna Morrissey's Kit's Law.

Remarkably diverse in age, style, and cultural identity, the writers in this anthology raise a common voice that defines Atlantic Canada. Each with an individual approach to language and writing, they offer a collective view of the east, conscious of tradition but not confined by it. By turns funny, poignant and pensive, the stories in Atlantica firmly place eastern Canadian culture on the world map of literature.

Atlantica is a region of the imagination, a territory where story remains essential. Here, lives are woven into anecdote, narrative, legend and myth, and truth takes many forms. A complex place, its greatest fortune is its language, its greatest conflicts those within the human heart.

Atlantica: Stories from the Maritimes and Newfoundland showcases fiction by twenty of Canada's most exciting authors — established, newly popular, and emerging. Provocative and contemporary, their stories come from cities and shopping malls as well as from wharves, woods, and farms. Lynn Coady, David Adams Richards, Wayne Johnston, and others recreate Atlantica's opulent vocabulary and syntax. Laughter and grief, beauty and sorrow are inseparable in stories by writers including Alistair MacLeod, Sheldon Currie, Herb Curtis, and Donna Morrissey.