The Boughwolfen and Other Stories

by Al Pittman

Buckingham Road, the Burnt Hills, boughwolfens and baseball are all part of the familiar and foreign world Al Pittman creates in these stories. Their setting is a neighborhood on the edge of an industrial town in Newfoundland, but the territory they explore is the inner world, the secret world of children oppressed by their own innocence.

114 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Born in St. Leonard's, Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, Pittman grew up in Corner Brook. He moved to Montreal in 1964 where he began writing poetry and plays, and in 1966 published his first book of poems, The Elusive Resurrection. While in Montreal he was associated with Raymond Fraser and others in editing the literary magazine Intercourse: Contemporary Canadian Writing. From 1968 to 1970, Pittman was a student at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick, where he befriended fellow poet Alden Nowlan. Pittman moved to St. John's in 1972, where he associated with many of the artists, writers, and musicians active in the city at the time, including Rufus Guinchard and Gerald Squires. In 1973 he co-founded Newfoundland's first publishing house, Breakwater Books, with Pat Byrne, Dick Buehler, Tom Dawe, and Clyde Rose. Pittman continued to write throughout his life, producing many other volumes of poetry, plays, books for children, short stories, songs, magazine articles, and essays, as well as writings for radio, television and film. He eventually returned to his childhood home of Corner Brook, where he co-founded the March Hare, an annual poetry and music festival.