Issues

The 50 Issues Project
Issue #180

Issue Date: Fall, 2012
Editor: John Barton
Pages: 160
Number of contributors: 35

Buy Issue 180: Print Edition


Cover of issue #180

Issue #180 celebrates the best of Canada’s East Coast writers, just as The Fiddlehead, Atlantic Canada’s literary journal, collaborated on a complementary issue devoted to writing from the West Coast. This Malahat issue features Halifax writer Kris Bertin’s story, “Your #1 Killer and Extra Hands,” about a woman forced to re-enact her motherly duties when her adult son moves back home and finds comfort in the oddest—and bloodiest—of jobs. (This story won the Malahat’s 2012 Jack Hodgins Award. In 2011, Bertin won this same award for “Girl on the Fire Escape,” which appeared in Issue #173, Winter 2010.) A man whose marriage is in shambles finds peace with a charitable insomniac in Kerry-Lee Powell’s “The Prince of Chang.” (Powell was a recent winner of the Malahat’s Far Horizon’s Award for Fiction with her story, “Palace of the Brine,” which will appear in Issue #184, Fall 2013.) Acclaimed novelist Lisa Moore contributes the story, “Guard of What,” a dark, almost cinematic, slice of life. In his creative nonfiction story, “Test,” Chris Donahoe recalls cold, dark nights spent in the oil-and-gas industry in northern Alberta. Every minute counts in Shane Neilson’s “The Entirely Beautiful,” a creative nonfiction piece about a father marking time during his son’s seizure. Michael Crummey explores the big cities with his contribution of four poems. Poets Matt Cornfield and David Helwig steep each of their poems in autumn’s stillness. Other acclaimed poets represented here include Anne Compton, Tammy Armstrong, George Elliott Clarke, Brian Bartlett, Anne Simpson, John Steffler, and Mary Dalton. Anita Lahey talks poetry, music, and home in her interview with M. Travis Lane, also a contributor of two poems to this East Coast issue.

Discover more reviews and interviews with Issue #180 contributors, on our East Coast / West Coast Blog: http://fiddleheadwest-malahateast.blogspot.ca/

—PJ Grace

About the 50 Issues Project

Have a look at our last featured issue, issue #177