The Journey Prize Stories 22 Read online

  WINNERS OF THE $10,000 JOURNEY PRIZE

  1989

  Holley Rubinsky for

  “Rapid Transits”

  1990

  Cynthia Flood for “My Father

  Took a Cake to France”

  1991

  Yann Martel for “The Facts

  Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”

  1992

  Rozena Maart for “No Rosa,

  No District Six”

  1993

  Gayla Reid for

  “Sister Doyle’s Men”

  1994

  Melissa Hardy for

  “Long Man the River”

  1995

  Kathryn Woodward for “Of

  Marranos and Gilded Angels”

  1996

  Elyse Gasco for “Can You Wave

  Bye Bye, Baby?”

  1997 (shared)

  Gabriella Goliger for

  “Maladies of the Inner Ear”

  Anne Simpson for

  “Dreaming Snow”

  1998

  John Brooke for

  “The Finer Points of Apples”

  1999

  Alissa York for “The Back of the

  Bear’s Mouth”

  2000

  Timothy Taylor for

  “Doves of Townsend”

  2001

  Kevin Armstrong for

  “The Cane Field”

  2002

  Jocelyn Brown for

  “Miss Canada”

  2003

  Jessica Grant for

  “My Husband’s Jump”

  2004

  Devin Krukoff for

  “The Last Spark”

  2005

  Matt Shaw for “Matchbook for a

  Mother’s Hair”

  2006

  Heather Birrell for

  “BriannaSusannaAlana”

  2007

  Craig Boyko for

  “OZY”

  2008

  Saleema Nawaz for

  “My Three Girls”

  2009

  Yasuko Thanh for

  “Floating Like the Dead”

  Copyright © 2010 by McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  Emblem is an imprint of McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

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  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher - or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency - is an infringement of the copyright law.

  A cataloguing record for this publication is available from Library and Archives Canada.

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  “Serial Love” © Carolyn Black; “Confluence of Spoors” © Andrew Boden; “The Dead Dad Game” © Laura Boudreau; “Uncle Oscar” © Devon Code; “Publicity” © Danielle Egan; “The Longitude of Okay” © Krista Foss; “Mating” © Lynne Kutsukake; “When in the Field with Her at His Back” © Ben Lof; “Eat Fist!” © Andrew MacDonald; “Ship’s Log” © Eliza Robertson; “Five Pounds Short and Apologies to Nelson Algren” © Mike Spry; “Laud We the Gods” © Damian Tarnopolsky.

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart Ltd., P.O. Box 1030, Plattsburgh, New York 12901

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2010923465

  This book was produced using ancient-forest friendly papers.

  eISBN: 978-0-7710-4345-1

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

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  ABOUT THE JOURNEY PRIZE STORIES

  The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to an emerging writer of distinction. This award, now in its twenty-second year, and given for the tenth time in association with the Writers’ Trust of Canada as the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, is made possible by James A. Michener’s generous donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel Journey, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988. The Journey Prize itself is the most significant monetary award given in Canada to a developing writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work in progress. The winner of this year’s Journey Prize will be selected from among the twelve stories in this book.

  The Journey Prize Stories has established itself as the most prestigious annual fiction anthology in the country, introducing readers to the finest new literary writers from coast to coast for more than two decades. It has become a who’s who of up-and-coming writers, and many of the authors who have appeared in the anthology’s pages have gone on to distinguish themselves with collections of short stories, novels, and literary awards. The anthology comprises a selection from submissions made by the editors of literary journals from across the country, who have chosen what, in their view, is the most exciting writing in English that they have published in the previous year. In recognition of the vital role journals play in fostering literary voices, McClelland & Stewart makes its own award of $2,000 to the journal that originally published and submitted the winning entry.

  This year the selection jury comprised three award-winning writers:

  Pasha Malla’s debut collection of stories, The Withdrawal Method, won the Trillium Book Award and the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada/Caribbean), and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. He is also the author of a collection of poetry, All our grandfathers are ghosts. A two-time Journey Prize finalist, he lives in Toronto and teaches in the University of Toronto’s Department of Continuing Studies. His first novel, People Park, will be published in 2011.

  Joan Thomas’s first novel, Reading by Lightning, won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book (Canada/Caribbean) and the Amazon First Novel Award. Her second novel is Curiosity. Joan was a long time contributing reviewer for the Globe and Mail and co-edited the anthology Turn of the Story: Canadian Short Fiction on the Eve of the Millennium. She lives in Winnipeg. For more information, please visit www.joanthomas.ca.

  Alissa York’s novels include Mercy, Effigy, which was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and, most recently, Fauna. She is also the author of a collection of short fiction, Any Given Power. Her stories have won the Bronwen Wallace Award and the Journey Prize, and have appeared in various literary journals and anthologies. She has lived all over Canada, and now makes her home in Toronto. For more information, please visit www.alissayork.com.

  The jury read a total of seventy-four submissions without knowing the names of the authors or those of the journals in which the stories originally appeared. McClelland & Stewart would like to thank the jury for their efforts in selecting this year’s anthology and, ultimately, the winner of this year’s Journey Prize.

  McClelland & Stewart would also like to acknowledge the continuing enthusiastic support of writers, literary journal editors, and the public in the common celebration of new voices in Canadian fiction.

  For more information about The Journey Prize Stories, please consult our website: www.mcclelland.com/jps.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page


  Copyright

  Reading the 2010 Journey Prize Stories

  A Conversation with Pasha Malla,

  Joan Thomas, and Alissa York

  CAROLYN BLACK

  Serial Love

  (from Exile: The Literary Quarterly)

  ANDREW BODEN

  Confluence of Spoors

  (from Vancouver Review)

  LAURA BOUDREAU

  The Dead Dad Game

  (from PRISM international)

  DEVON CODE

  Uncle Oscar

  (from The Malahat Review)

  DANIELLE EGAN

  Publicity

  (from Vancouver Review)

  KRISTA FOSS

  The Longitude of Okay

  (from Grain Magazine)

  LYNNE KUTSUKAKE

  Mating

  (from The Dalhousie Review)

  BEN LOF

  When in the Field with Her at His Back

  (from The Malahat Review)

  ANDREW MACDONALD

  Eat Fist!

  (from EVENT)

  ELIZA ROBERTSON

  Ship’s Log

  (from The Malahat Review)

  MIKE SPRY

  Five Pounds Short and Apologies to Nelson Algren

  (from This Magazine)

  DAMIAN TARNOPOLSKY

  Laud We the Gods

  (from subTerrain Magazine)

  About the Authors

  About the Contributing Journals

  Previous Contributing Authors

  READING THE 2010 JOURNEY PRIZE STORIES

  A CONVERSATION WITH PASHA MALLA,

  JOAN THOMAS, AND ALISSA YORK

  ALISSA YORK: There’s so much to say about the jurying process. It was an intense, immersive experience, reading and evaluating all those diverse narratives; at times my mind swam with characters and settings, images and events. In the end, though, I believe we all zeroed in on those stories that really stayed with us – the ones that not only moved into our hearts and minds, but stuck around to unpack.

  JOAN THOMAS: When you think about it, all we read was the equivalent in pages of two or three novels – and yet there were all those separate imagined worlds to enter. The writer of a short story has so few pages to set up the rules of the game and then play it out. I found I had to do my reading in short sessions to really savour the concentrated force of each story.

  PASHA MALLA: One thing I think we were all looking for was to be surprised. And I hope readers of this anthology will find surprises – whether in language, structure, voice, emotional oomph, or in the unexpected twists and turns of a well-told story.

  AY: Absolutely – good fiction surprises us the way life does, which is odd, given how easily a story can fail by sticking to “what really happened.” I find the sweetest surprises are often the small ones, such as the moment in Lynne Kutsukake’s “Mating” when the protagonist focuses on the whorl of greying hair at the crown of his wife’s head and feels “an inexplicable tenderness for this secret spot, a sudden urge to protect it with the palm of his hand.” Nothing like getting swept up in a character’s unexpected rush of love.

  JT: It was remarkable to see what different stories two writers could produce on similar subjects – in the case of “Mating” and Carolyn Black’s “Serial Love,” a subject as specific as speed dating. “Mating” beautifully juxtaposes traditional Japanese cultural attitudes with contemporary dating practices, and “Serial Love” listens in on a first encounter between a man and woman and reveals menace in every word and gesture. It’s a story of such precisely balanced ambiguity that its possibilities surprise you with every reading.

  PM: And then there were those stories that grab you by the throat from the first line. From their cracking openings on, every sentence of Damian Tarnopolsky’s “Laud We the Gods” and Mike Spry’s “Five Pounds Short and Apologies to Nelson Algren” is visceral, unsettling, uncompromising, and astonishing. Both are told in the sort of voice that needles its way into your brain and stays with you long after the story is over.

  JT: I’ve come around to thinking that point of view is everything, how fully you inhabit it. Devon Code’s “Uncle Oscar,” for example, pleased me with every detail that fell under the alert eye of the thirteen-year-old protagonist: the upside-down milk crate that served as a footstool in the basement TV room, a Sepultura T-shirt and an Ibanez guitar, the smell of the unbathed uncle (“a sweet smell like brown bananas”) – it’s Leo’s eye on ordinary stuff that aligns us entirely with his experience.

  AY: Yes, and those same details often serve as evidence of an original mind at work. Among others, I’m thinking here of “The Dead Dad Game” by Laura Boudreau and “Ship’s Log” by Eliza Robertson, both of which deliver fresh, even startling, takes on the popular theme of childhood loss and grief.

  PM: I think that sort of originality is what really set these twelve stories apart from the rest of the pack – which is saying something, as I don’t think there was a single one of the seventy-four submissions that wasn’t a solid, well-crafted piece of writing.

  AY: I love the fact that the search for the “best writing” led us to such diverse styles: the mad aria of “Laud We the Gods” at one end of the spectrum; the haunting plainsong of Andrew Boden’s “Confluence of Spoors” at the other. So different from one another and so perfectly themselves.

  JT: And, of course, to diverse worlds – it’s always a small miracle to find a world created whole within a short story. I was especially struck by writers who used settings we know and managed to disorient us by peeling back that sense of the familiar. “Confluence of Spoors” did it in a stroke, as a hunter follows a trail of blood into Vancouver’s East Side. Danielle Egan’s “Publicity” did it too, giving us a barely futuristic and surreal Vancouver.

  PM: “Confluence of Spoors” is a good example of a story, too, that deserves and benefits from repeat readings. To me that’s the mark of a truly strong piece of short fiction: something that engages on the surface, but then, when you go back to it a second (and third) time, gets richer, more nuanced and layered. I feel the same way about “Ship’s Log,” which is immediately captivating and charming, but sneaks up on you emotionally; you finish, gutted, and want to go back and figure out what was really going on the whole time.

  JT: Then of course there was our conversation the day the jury met to discuss the stories, which opened up all sorts of new meanings in the stories. “When in the Field with Her at His Back” is one of the stories that I thought especially rewards a second look. You’re aware of the buried past as a diplomat returns to postwar Eastern Croatia to look for an old lover. Revisiting this story, I realized how skilfully Ben Lof had knit his characters’ lives together through the image of unexploded landmines.

  AY: I agree, the landmines worked beautifully – a perfect underlying symbol for a story about the fragmented, dissociative state so many suffer in the wake of war. I’m fascinated by the power of well-chosen objects in many of these narratives: the soggy picture of Marilyn Monroe in Andrew MacDonald’s coming-of-age piece, “Eat Fist!” (“I find her pulpy corpse floating in the drinking fountain.”); the perfectly creepy Curious George poster in “Five Pounds Short and Apologies to Nelson Algren.” And Pasha, I remember you brought up the impact of the tights-as-tourniquet in “The Longitude of Okay” by Krista Foss – devastating!

  PM: Yeah, and also, in the same story, the belt used to secure the classroom door – there’s such power in the dramatic repurposing of everyday objects, imbuing them with sudden, unexpected narrative and emotional resonance. That sort of thing always sticks with me, and maybe speaks more broadly to what I often love in fiction: seeing the familiar cast in a new light.

  JT: What moved me most about “The Longitude of Okay” were Krista Foss’s characters. This story, about a school shooting, could so easily have been contained and prescribed by its subject, but it became instead an insightful exploration of the teacher’s self-doubt. And the students are deftly dr
awn in a few strokes. They’re so real.

  PM: The last thing I wanted to mention, and which we haven’t touched on, was humour. Being funny is so hard to do well, as it relies so much on surprising the reader, and “Uncle Oscar” and “Serial Love” have some killer lines that totally cracked me up. Devon Code’s thirteen-year-old narrator imagining cocaine to “feel like taking 500 dumps all at once” is so perfectly hilarious, and I laughed out loud a number of times at Carolyn Black’s wonderfully dry descriptions of speed dating.

  AY: So often those moments that make us laugh (or cry, for that matter) occur when the writer has hit the nail on the head, getting a character’s voice, thought, or action exactly right. It’s perhaps the fundamental challenge of writing convincing, compelling fiction, this business of spinning people out of the air – a challenge that the contributors to this year’s edition of The Journey Prize Stories meet and exceed with style.

  CAROLYN BLACK

  SERIAL LOVE

  Number 29 is talking about serial killers.

  Number 14 squints at him across the table. Her squint is a mean, suspicious wrinkle.

  “Yes,” she thinks.

  “No,” she thinks.

  Unlike other men in the nightclub – men wearing loose-knit sweaters or brightly coloured dress shirts – Number 29 wears a black dress shirt with silver pinstripes. His black pants have creases ironed down the legs. Underneath the closely shorn stubble of his hair, his head looks uneven, dented in the middle and protruding on the right side. “Bullheaded,” she thinks, as he blunders on in speech. She writes “bullheaded” down on her scorecard in jagged cursive, so she will remember later that he frightens her.

  Number 29 has said that he works as a criminologist. She has said that she works as an indexer.

  He has said he is thirty-two. She has said she is thirty-three.

  All this may be true.

  They have eight minutes to decide.

  Already, Number 14 has decided that working as a criminologist is not the only way a man might learn about the behaviour of killers and rapists.