The Journey Prize Anthology

For more than three decades, The Journey Prize Stories has been Canada's most celebrated annual fiction anthology and a who's-who of up-and-coming writers. With settings ranging from a wildlife rescue centre to a Living Body exhibit, the thirteen stories in this collection represent the year's best short fiction by some of our most exciting emerging literary talents. On Sunday afternoons, a coven of teenagers gathers at The Lois Lanes bowling alley to discuss their shared obsession with the second hottest boy in school. A patient joins her therapist and her therapist's granddaughter for an unconventional session--a field trip to confront the reviled Feed Machine. Troubled by dreams and trailed by crows, a woman far from home struggles to confront an old guilt. As a half-remembered Beach Boys song plays in the background, a daughter recalls the man her father used to be through a tender inventory of their time together. In a community plagued by petrochemical-induced diseases and environmental ruin, a man spends his nights caring for his dying partner and his days navigating a dangerous workplace. An android watches her creators' relationship break down before her eyes. A gang of girls roams the streets of a ravaged city, hunting their would-be predators. In her journey to become a woman and a healer, a Cree girl enters the woods alone to learn the stories and medicines of plants, only to be transformed by an unexpected connection. The stories included in this volume are contenders for the $10,000 Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize.

For more than twenty-five years, The Journey Prize Stories has been Canada’s most celebrated annual fiction anthology and a who’s who of up-and-coming writers. With settings ranging from Toronto’s Royal Conservatory of Music to a hospital ward in Thailand, from British Columbia’s Burrard Inlet to St. John’s Bowring Park, the stories in this collection represent the year’s best short fiction by some of our most exciting new writers. Among the stories this year: A woman’s quest to trend on social media blinds her to her inability to connect with her own adult daughter. The delicate equilibrium maintained by a newly pregnant expat living in Israel is shattered when a missile lands in her backyard. An unusual guide to caring for an exotic pet highlights the many opportunities owners will have to learn valuable life lessons – beginning with the pet’s death. The tender relationship between two musical prodigies is no match for the machinations of the adult world. After a woman returns to her parents’ house to recuperate from a life-changing surgery, she discovers how difficult it is for others to accept who she has become. A terrible act of cruelty forces the tensions between two workers at a fish processing plant to spill out into the surrounding waters. When a former couple has a chance encounter on a B.C. ferry, old grievances and desires alike resurface with surprising results.

For more than thirty years, this celebrated anthology has introduced readers to the next generation of great Canadian writers. With settings ranging from a Saskatchewan wheat field marked by crop circles to a dystopian metropolis where people are under constant surveillance, the twelve stories in this collection represent the year's best short fiction by some of our most exciting emerging voices. An aspiring artist looking for inspiration in the "aliveness of the desert" gets less--and more--than she bargained for when she signs up for a residency at a roadside motel. After years of toiling to pay off a debt that has devastated his family, a young Chinese fisherman makes a magical catch that will change the course of his life. As a populist candidate stands poised to triumph at a political convention, his campaign strategist and childhood best friend reflects on the dark legacy of their relationship. A brutal assault on a Toronto taxi driver leads his friend on a desperate search for answers. When troubling stories of women's encounters with aliens start to dominate the news cycle, a reporter reluctantly returns to her hometown to cover the phenomenon. A carpet collector reimagines his family's fractured history by weaving new tapestries to tell their stories. Unsure of whether his client is really dying, an end-of-life gift professional must assess the man's extravagant last wish. A Ktunaxa grandmother tells a parable of why you shouldn't speak to Kupi (owl) at night.

“The collection consistently does what the oeuvre does best: communicate intense emotion with force, give life to characters that struggle with their circumstances, illuminate the universal through the specific and the particular, and turn the commonplace into art.” Globe and Mail “[The anthology] amuses, astonishes, and enlightens; it is a delicious cacophony of voices and engaging stories . . .”Books in Canada The Journey Prize Stories is Canada’s most celebrated annual fiction anthology, presenting the best stories published each year by some of our most exciting up-and-coming writers. Among the stories this year: Desperate to reinvent himself, a disgraced diplomat on what will be the last assignment of his career goes in search of a woman from his past in Eastern Croatia. As a teacher begins to unravel in the aftermath of a school shooting, a series of surprising encounters with her former students reveals their differing degrees of resiliency. Bench presses and Wonder Woman comics create an unexpected intimacy between a teenager and her Ukrainian-language tutor, a former female champion weightlifter. After his junkie uncle moves into the basement to hide out from his dealer and get clean, a lonely boy’s longing for a male role model threatens to lead him astray. When a famous author finds himself embroiled in a sex scandal while on his book tour, he discovers the only person he has left to turn to is his handler, a woman with secrets of her own. Cultural tradition gives way to modern-day Japanese efficiency when a long-married couple attend a meeting of Concerned Parents of Unmarried Offspring, a speed dating event for parents in search of spouses for their adult children. The stories included in the anthology are contenders for the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. The winner will be announced in fall 2010.

This fourth edition ofThe Journey Prize Anthologypresents twelve outstanding stories by some of the finest new Canadian fiction writers. The pieces range geographically – from Canada’s western provinces to Ontario and Quebec, from South Africa to Japan and Malta – stylistically, and in terms of subject. Among the stories: By reinventing his dead brother’s past a man exorcises old bitterness; in 1970s South Africa, a young girl witnesses two older women bathing and learns something about eroticism and grace, and that there are some secrets that can never be told; the wife and teenage son of a disappointed man become victims of his violent abuse; a woman sifts through the objects in her deceased mother’s house and coolly interprets the silence that inhabited her mother’s life. The winner of the $10,000 Journey Prize for 1992 was Rozena Maart, “No Rosa, for No District Six”.

“Expect pleasure. Expect delight. Expect surprise. Expect these twelve writers to emerge as some of this country’s most interesting voices.” Anthony De Sa, Tanis Rideout, and Carrie Snyder (from their Introduction) The celebrated annual collection showcasing the best stories by the best new writers in Canada, all contenders for the prestigious $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. A must-read for anyone looking for exciting new voices in Canadian fiction. For three decades, this acclaimed annual anthology has introduced readers to the next generation of great Canadian writers. With settings ranging from a small-town hobby farm to the streets of Hong Kong, from a dance club in 1979 to the years after the end of the world, the twelve stories in this collection represent the year’s best short fiction by some of our most exciting emerging writers. Among the stories this year: When Mercy Beatrice decides to seek out her long-lost father against the advice of her late pro-wrestler mother, she discovers that wrestling may be in her blood. After her dying husband makes a surprising wish, a woman sets herself the task of finding him a lover. A young man—lost and craving reinvention—makes the unlikely trip back to his hometown after he inherits his uncle’s farm. In a touching story about the intersection between Chinese tradition and modern expectations, a woman must weigh the possibilities in her own life when her family prepares for the naming ceremony for her cousin’s month-old baby. A philosophy student struggling with a broken heart and the meaning of Being must also contend with her new neighbours and their wildly precocious infant. Two travellers in desperate straits look for refuge on a remote Italian farm that proves to be anything but idyllic. The stories included in the anthology are contenders for the $10,000 Journey Prize, which is made possible by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A. Michener's donation of Canadian royalties from his novel Journey. The 2015 winner will be announced by the Writers' Trust of Canada on November 3, 2015. For more information: www.facebook.com/TheJourneyPrize

In this tenth-anniversary edition, the tradition of publishing the best of Canada’s emerging writers continues. The volatile last days of a crippling relationship are played out against the sensuous, surreal landscape of the Amazon. In a haunting story of survival, a daughter observes her mother’s struggles to rebuild her life after the death of her husband. French expatriates find refuge in each other when they become clandestine lovers in Quebec, amidst the growing political hostilities that will eventually tear them apart. As a black community prepares to relocate from Africville, Nova Scotia, the town’s oldest member is overwhelmed by her memories of life there. In a desperate effort to startle him into awareness of his family’s growing unhappiness, a son plots an end to his father’s string of good luck. When a woman tries to satisfy her lover’s obsession with personal tragedy, the fiction she creates begins to eclipse the truth of her own past. A mother and daughter encounter the glitz of Las Vegas and the fallout of nuclear tests in the 1950s’ Nevada desert when, together, they run away from home. The winner of the $10,000 Journey Prize for 1998 was John Brooke, for “The Finer Points of Apples.”