Mitchell Toews's Blog, page 3
March 2, 2024
Advice from an Emerging Artist
On Thursday, February 29 poet and essayist Ariel Gordon of Winnipeg and I motored to Brandon, Manitoba to present workshops and readings at the Western Manitoba Regional Library downtown branch. We represented our mutual publisher, At Bay Press.
It was an outstanding event, well-attended by an enthusiastic group. Both Ariel and I have posted about it on Facebook, Instagram (prosebytoews), X, and elsewhere. Ariel did a poetry workshop on urban ecosystems and I introduced my break-out session on “Writing Your Culture.” Both of these programs had full classrooms and the reading was also—collectively speaking—pleasingly plump.
We had a Q & A at the “end of regulation time.” (In my imagination, Brian Propp scored the winner, assisted by Ralph Krentz. . . For all you Wheat Kings hockey fans out there.) I really enjoyed the conversation.
One of the questions was concerning “advice for young writers.” Ariel made some valuable suggestions in response. When it was my turn, I held back on expressing my immediate reaction to the embedded inference that all emerging writers are “young.” Of course, many are, but just as we no longer use ONLY male pronouns when discussing a group. . . “If a writer wants to succeed, he must blah-blah-blah,” I find it inappropriate and incorrect to add the fuzzy modifier, “young.” Presumptive gender-fixing (he-him-his) now sounds foreign and antiquated to our ears, and I long for the time when “young” and “emerging” are not used as synonyms for early career artists.
Hot air rises. Heat travels in any direction. When we say “heat rises” in an assured, generalizing, scientific-sounding manner, we become General Wrong of the Wrongsville Army.
Okay, mini-rant over.
I gave several points of advice and I was pleased with the repartee, as John Prine might sing. This morning, over a cup of familiar, at-home coffee, I thought of another way to answer, and it goes a little sumpin’ like this :
“On a business trip to the Green Building Conference in Chicago about 15 Marches ago, my colleague and I stopped in at a pizza restaurant. The place was packed and full of loud hub-bubb and stratified layers of cigar smoke. We opted for outdoor seating, under the radiant red glare of heaters.
As we waited, we watched a local resident at work. A great, dirty, adult Norway Rat was trying to extricate a pizza carton that was wedged beneath a car tire in the parking lot. Grunting, sniffing, scurrying, its pink tail waved and curled and flexed with intense determination.
Pausing for breath, it sat on thick hanches and pondered. Whiskers twitched in a nature-copies-Pixar way. Abruptly, it went to the unwedged end of the box and, clamping down with white canines, tugged repeatedly like a towtruck trying to jerk a car out of the ditch. Snarling with effort, the noisy activity attracted one of its swarmmates to the scene of the pie.
Without hesitation, Rat Due, as we named the newcomer, immediately joined Rat Uno and in seconds they were pulling in perfect coordination, a rodent duet. Outmatched at last, the box lid gave way with a final ripping scream of greasy cardboard. Rats Uno and Due plundered the contents and made good their pink-tail-waving retreat.
My advice to emerging artists: Sometimes you are Rat Uno, and sometimes you are Rat Due, but don’t just sit in the comfort of the mischief and watch.
CHEERS to playwright and English & Creative Writing Asst. Prof. Dale Lakevold. He brought along a swarm of talented students from Brandon University, and like the Marino’s Pizza he supplied before the event, his contribution made our day. Thanks too to WMRL Mgr. of Programming & Community Svcs., Alex Rogowsky who prepped and managed our twinkly evening.
February 20, 2024
February 17, 2024
The Hamilton Review of Books’ Independently Published Bestsellers List: January 2024 — Hamilton Review of Books
Spreading across Canada from author Mitchell Toews boreal home, north of 50° on Jessica Lake near the historic Tie Creek Basin, comes Bestseller #6 in Fiction, “Pinching Zwieback.” Toews’ debut collection of short stories from At Bay Press (Wpg, 2023) is scoring points with readers, booksellers, critics, and reviewers in the “Mennosphere” and far beyond…
January 24, 2024
Three Reviews—Confluence; Trifurcation; Sangam
“Pinching Zwieback: Made-up Stories from the Darp” Mitchell Toews (At Bay Press, 2023)
Here is a triumvirate of REVIEWS for my debut collection of short stories: Tim Huber, Associate Editor of Anabaptist World…Patricia Dawn Robertson, a familiar Canadian reviewer, critic, and writer with a review from the Winnipeg Free Press…Robert Boucheron, writer and editor/publisher of the Rivanna Review of Charlottesville, Virginia and his review as it appears in Ottawa’s Literary Heist.
New books for 2023: Fiction books
Chekhov of the darp
Stories from the Darp
And, here’s where to buy your copy, and where to send your friends to get theirs: https://mitchellaneous.com/2023/12/17/where-can-i-buy-pinching-zwieback/
January 20, 2024
Libraries & BiblioCommons
Want to borrow PINCHING ZWIEBACK from your local library? NO PROBLEM!
Services like BiblioCommons are linked to At Bay Press and a copy can go to your local library in Canada, the US, the UK, or Australia. ALMOST ANYWHERE. Just request Pinching Zwieback by Mitchell Toews (At Bay Press, 2023) and you can get it. . . In Burlington, Springfield (all of them), Come by Chance, WaWa, Walla Walla, and Wallaby Junction.
Okay, I made the last one up. But seriously, it’s AVAILABLE!
(Or BUY it here: https://bit.ly/BUYpinchingzwieback)
January 14, 2024
The Shuffling of Souls
Image: *Preservings* Issue Number 47, FALL 2023: “Marriage of Russlaender Maria Pauls and Old Colony Corneilius Driedger, March 1927. JAKE BUHLER PRIVATE COLLECTION
“The indelicate clacking of the men’s heels and the shuffling of their soles reminded him that their grade of culture differed from his. He would only make himself ridiculous by quoting poetry to them which they could not understand. They would think that he was airing his superior education.”—MC Gabriel’s thoughts in “The Dead” from Dubliners (Public Domain).
Could Irishman Gabriel not just as easily be a Russlaender attending some inelegant affair in prairie places like Gruenfeld or Neubergthal?
“That in the beginning when the world was young there were a great many thoughts but no such thing as a truth. Men made the truth and each truth was a composite of a great many vague thoughts… There was the truth of virginity and the truth of passion, the truth of wealth and of poverty, of thrift and of profligacy, of carelessness and abandon.” —Author Sherwood Anderson from the prologue of Winesburg Ohio (Public Domain).
Again, we can hear the distant cannon fire of class and gender warfare.
“I had heard about Mennonites all my life, about the brawls, the fist-fights at socials and hockey games. The hypocrisy as they kept liquor out of their town, but then drove to La Broquerie or Ste, Anne for booze. How they’d look down their noses at us for doing in the open what they did in the dark,” —MC Richard’s acute observations from Matthew Tétreault’s Hold Your Tongue (NeWest Press, 2023) summarizes the abrasive relationship common between Francophone/Métis Ste. Anne, Manitoba and its nearby, predominantly Mennonite neighbour, Steinbach.
“I hear them (the ‘wealthy church ladies’) get up from the living room and walk past the kitchen. They’re coming down the stairs now, all talking at once. Like cedar waxwings, in a flock, turning in the sky, then landing as one. Beautiful in a way, but still capable of turning on you. Hurting you to make things better for themselves.”—MC Justy Zehen’s thoughts in “Willa Hund” from Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023).
“This book is a double bun, doughy anecdotes from a spirited childhood coupled with the realisation that manhood is a more complex goal than just being strong, especially when strength translates into bullying, especially of women, the archetypal bakers of the author’s imagination.” —Linda Rogers van Krugel in her REVIEW of Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023).
The quiet shuffling of souls—betraying different classes, genders, racial origins, and beliefs (and more) together with their ironfast allegiances—appear to be present in all groups, denominations, and Gemeinde: from the Ha’Penny Bridge to the dusty small towns of Southern Manitoba to Ohio and beyond.
January 1, 2024
A Review of Pinching Zwieback
https://bit.ly/WFPpzREVIEWpdRobertson
Here are stories written and compiled over the years 2015-2023. Many of them are based on my personal experience in the half-decade from the late Fifties onwards but are given the cloak of fiction. It is Autofiction that is meant to be read in the spirit of openness by all members of the human congregation.
Stories written, submitted, rejected, re-written, combined, disintegrated, edited, and re-submitted many times. Like a treasured recipe, altered and fine-tuned and dependent on the ingredients at hand.
In the end, I believe At Bay Press and I have made a collection that is comfortable on a wide variety of bookshelves, nightstands, coffee tables, and commuter jacket pockets. An eclectic variety of readers; including but not just Mennonites, nor Anabaptists or Christians, and not just those who are none of those.
I hope all my readers, no matter their filters or experiences, can draw from this book. My aim is to make available meaningful connections with readers and provide thoughtful enjoyment through the characters’ lives and interactions. I also want to enable readers to relate when read as stand-alone vignettes or when viewed as a whole, from the broader narration that the plenary arc seeks to achieve.
December 30, 2023
REVIEW: Chekhov of the darp – Winnipeg Free Press
https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/arts-and-life/entertainment/books/2023/12/30/chekhov-of-the-darp
In 1966-67 a journeyman defenceman from Lethbridge named Autry (Aut) Erickson was sent up to the big club in Toronto from the Victoria Maple Leafs. Erickson finished out the season with the Leafs and his name is etched into the Stanley Cup.
Chekhov of the darp
I think Chekhov’s place in literary history is safe and I won’t be throwing any hip-checks at Ms. Munro or W.O. Mitchell. Like any hard-working rookie, I am thrilled to be mentioned in the same article as the greats, but as that perennial all-star word dangler Robert Frost observed, “etj hab väl miele noh gohna eea etj schlop*. . . ” and I can hardly even skate backwards!
Where to buy PINCHING ZWIEBACK: https://mitchellaneous.com/2023/12/17/where-can-i-buy-pinching-zwieback/
_____
December 21, 2023
Boucheron REVIEW of PZ in Literary Heist
NEW REVIEW! See what Robert Boucheron, Saturday Evening Post contributor & editor/publisher of Charlottesville, VA’s Rivanna Review, has to say about “Pinching Zwieback.”
Find it here: in Ottawa’s Literary Heist
Pinching Zwieback, stories by Mitchell Toews, At Bay Press, paperback, 257 pages, $24.95
Stories from the Darp
December 17, 2023
WHERE Can I Buy “Pinching Zwieback?”
“Pinching Zwieback” ISBN 9781998779055 by Mitchell Toews (At Bay Press, Wpg) may be purchased:
From At Bay Press: “Individual orders are placed through our website by adding books to your cart and then checking out with our secure online payment. Orders may also be placed over the phone by calling 204-489-6658 and payment will be taken over the phone. You may send an email with any questions or concerns to atbaypress@gmail.com.”
McNally Robinson Booksellers all locations.
The gift shops at both Mennonite Heritage Village (Steinbach) and Mennonite Heritage Museum (Abbotsford).
CommonWord Bookstore and Resource Centre in Winnipeg, MB
Misty River Books in Terrace, BC
Shop in person: Canadian Bookstore Map or visit the At Bay Press website SHOP LOCAL page to find the Independent bookstore near you.
Virtually all ONLINE book sources WORLDWIDE including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Thriftbooks, etc.
Libraries and booksellers in Canada and the U.S. may purchase books from At Bay Press’s distribution partners:
Canada: http://www.litdistco.ca/
U.S.: https://www.casemateipm.com/9781998779055/pinching-zwieback/
Aus/NZ: https://peribo.com.au/
Other countries: Please see https://atbaypress.com/ordering or contact Matt Joudrey atbaypress@gmail.com
Requesting “Pinching Zwieback” by Mitchell Toews (At Bay Press, Wpg, 2023) at your favourite bookstore or library is also a simple way to get a copy!
DIRECT FROM THE AUTHOR: Contact me to receive a personally signed copy. Mail costs to Manitoba addresses are reasonable! (If you don’t mind a sturdy-but-previously-used envelope.) Payment via beep-beep-boop online magic systems like e-payment and PayPal, etc.
