The Canadian Shields brings together fifty short writings by Carol Shields, including more than two dozen previously unpublished short stories and essays. Invaluable to scholars and admirers of Shields’s work, the writings presented to the public here for the first time vividly illuminate the chapters of Shields’s writing life.
Authors
- Pages
- 336
- Published in
- Winnipeg, CA
- Rights
- Carol Shields
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Contents 10
- Foreword. "'A Soap Bubble Hovering over the Void': 12
- Acknowledgements 16
- Abbreviations 18
- Introduction: The Canadian Shields, or How an American Writer Became an Award-Winning Canadian Author 20
- Part 1: Carol Shields’s Previously Unpublished Stories and Essays 40
- Stories 44
- Protein Dust 46
- A Message from Beyond 51
- The Golden Boy, or Some Things Only Happen Once 60
- Essays 70
- Gifts 72
- Christmas Interruptus 74
- Coming to Canada 79
- Did Anything Much Happen to You in the Fifties? 84
- Writers Are Readers First 87
- Books that Meant 90
- The Reader–Writer Arc 93
- The Writer’s Second Self 97
- The Writing Life 99
- Making Words/Finding Stories 101
- My Back Pages 112
- Women’s Voices in Literature 115
- Women and the Short Story 119
- The Feminine Line 123
- The New Canadian Fiction 131
- Crossing Over 139
- Writers’ Gender Swapping 143
- The Unity of Our Country 150
- Address to University of Winnipeg Graduands 156
- University of Winnipeg Convocation Luncheon Address 160
- University Leadership and Social Change 162
- Idealism and Pragmatism in Two Novels of Sara Jeannette Duncan 168
- The Two Susanna Moodies 180
- The Healing Journey 191
- Part 2: Carol Shields’s Previously Published 202
- Essays 208
- I’ve Always Meant to Tell You: A Letter to My Mother 210
- At Home in Winnipeg 216
- Living at Home 219
- Sunday Dinner, Sunday Supper 222
- My Favourite Place: At Home in Deepest France 224
- Travelwarp 228
- A Legacy of Stone 232
- Others 235
- What’s in a Picture 239
- Rare Petals 241
- A Purse of One’s Own 243
- Heidi’s Conundrum 245
- Parties Real and Otherwise 248
- The Best Teacher I Ever Had . . . 254
- The Visual Arts 256
- A Delicate Balancing Act 262
- Divorce 268
- Introduction to Duet 274
- Carol Shields’s Booker Prize Report 275
- Foreword to The Stone Diaries 277
- Afterword to Life in the Clearings 279
- Introduction to Mansfield Park 284
- Afterword to Dropped Threads: What We Aren’t Told 287
- Afterword to Dropped Threads 2: More of What We Aren’t Told 291
- Conclusion 294
- Afterword: “Carol’s Haunting Voice” 302
- Notes 306
- Works Cited 334
