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Here's a picture of the recent books received at the office. What are you most looking forward to reading this summer? Tell us! Go to the comment field below (or to Facebook or Twitter)!

The Fiddlehead and the Writers' Federation of New Brunswick are pleased to announce the winners of the third annual New Brunswick Book Awards, which were handed out at an awards presentation at the Lily Lake Pavilion in Saint John on Friday, June 8. A total of 36 total submissions were received. Congratulations to all the nominees, and thanks again to the judges: Angie Abdou, Sheree Fitch, Susan Gillis, and Andrew Westoll!

The winners, who each received $500 prizes, are as follows:

Look for poems from Catherine Seton in our upcoming Summer 2018 Poetry Issue!

Three books of reference are my secret sauce: Jerome Irving Rodale’s The Synonym Finder, 1978; from the Editors of Reader’s Digest, Reader’s Digest Illustrated Reverse Dictionary: Find the Words at the Tip of Your Tongue, 1990; and Theodore M. Bernstein’s Bernstein’s Reverse Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1988. All are available at online used book sites.

For sheer musical delight, I turn to the joyful word-play of Atsuro Riley’s Romey’s Order.

excerpt from "The Fish and the Dragons" 

excerpt from "The Wet Nurse Late of the House of Karenin"

1. Available immediately

"Qui vincit? (medicamina)"

This house could hold more empty seats but the people 
who would sit in them were put away long ago.

There is no work here bring out your dead no bodies left 
to pass the piss-test, close the factory down. 

Everything is not what you read, old colic torques to form 
new cancer a different diagnosis to ponder,

collections of atypical things eventually typify something
— backpain, beatings, boredom, parties —

"Recurrent"

If the river stood still it would
           become a mountain.

Built on the backs of mallards
           and trout. Their bodies etched
in stone; we dig them out

Excerpt from "The Press"

The materials had finally arrived. On the porch lay twelve body-length planks, a cardboard box, and three Styrofoam tubs shaped like lozenges. Cliff nicked the planks free of their straps and ran one shaking hand along the grain. Nestled in a wad of bubble wrap was a jar of screws in a shade so silver they were almost blue. Cliff considered calling in sick, but he had double history in the afternoon, and his class was already behind. 

By Ross Leckie. Editor

Editorial 275: Spring Contest 

How can you not love Sweden? They have such simultaneous precision and poetic fog. Spring is defined as the first time the average daytime temperature rises above 0 degrees Celsius for seven consecutive days. So spring arrives all over Sweden on different days! Oh Canada. Is it our lot to call spring March, April and May? Surely we can join the CBC rebellion: “But in parts of Canada, spring doesn’t start until April, or even May!”

"The Day After the Best Before"