The Journey Prize Stories 17: From The Best Of Canada's New Writers Selected by James Grainger and Nancy Lee

by Various, McKinley HellenesKrantz

With an introduction by the jury, and now featuring authors’ comments on the inspiration for their stories.

This is the seventeenth edition of The Journey Prize Stories , Canada’s most popular annual fiction anthology. As well as receiving high praise every year, it is an important indicator of up-and-coming writers, presenting the most exciting new Canadian voices from coast to coast. Writers whose stories have appeared in the anthology — Yann Martel, André Alexis, David Bergen, Dennis Bock, Michael Crummey, Elizabeth Hay, Annabel Lyon, Lisa Moore, Eden Robinson, Timothy Taylor, Madeleine Thien, and M.G. Vassanji — have gone on to become finalists for or winners of some of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards.

The stories included in the anthology are contenders for the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, which is made possible by James A. Michener’s generous donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel Journey (M&S, 1988). The winner will be announced in the spring of 2006 as part of The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Great Literary Awards event.

208 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2005

About the author

Various is the correct author for any book with multiple unknown authors, and is acceptable for books with multiple known authors, especially if not all are known or the list is very long (over 50).

If an editor is known, however, Various is not necessary. List the name of the editor as the primary author (with role "editor"). Contributing authors' names follow it.

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Reviews

[Mark Young · Rating 3 out of 5]

The experience of reading this collection of the year's best short stories was a lot like reading any one of the literary journals from which they were selected. There were a few I really liked, several more which were pretty good and then a couple of pieces which I just didn't get or wondered how they were ever published in the first place. My favorites were actually quite numerous: Anthropologies, Failure to Thrive, Heard Melodies are Sweet, Rice and Curry Yacht Club, and Scrapbook. I'm still trying to figure out the Short Story form. I feel like it is a required skill for a writer, but I don't seem to be able to write short.

As Lawrence Block noted in his "Telling Lies for Fun and Profit," writing short stories is like writing novels, only harder. Each one requires the same germ of an idea, but if you're like Alice Munro and you spend your entire career writing short stories, it's like having to come up with ideas for hundreds of novels. The best of the form is condensed and rich with detail and nuance. I have lots of respect for the writers of the above, who do it well.