editorial

Welcome to issue 300 — those double zeros are so satisfying to write. And they represent an enormous collective effort. I think back to all the people who have furthered the life of The Fiddlehead over the years, and I’m grateful to everyone who has pitched in time, money, words, ideas, skills, care. I’m especially grateful to the host of volunteers who have sustained the journal. In particular I thank Sabine Campbell, who volunteered for many years as our reviews editor after retiring as managing editor and who has contributed greatly to The Fiddlehead in both these roles.

Welcome to the spring issue of The Fiddlehead, which features Jaeyun Yoo’s Ralph Gustafson Prize-winning poem, “have you seen my father.” Congratulations, Jaeyun! And congratulations to everyone who took the risk of sending their work into the contest. Big thanks to Kirby, Sadiqa de Meijer and Rebecca Salazar for their work as judges of the shortlisted poems.

One summer, the narrator of “Husbands” arrives at an all-girls camp in Maine, her body gangling and conspicuously mature, yet she still carries a “little layer of baby fat which unfortunately had not melted away in the fires of puberty.” Thus, Emma, like all her thirteenand fourteen-year-old bunkmates, stands on the perilous threshold between childhood and adolescence. In the fog of that time, they begin to play a seemingly innocent game. “The game didn’t start with the bad stuff, that came later,” the older narrator, now married, tells us.

By happenstance, I picked Anne Marie Todkill’s “Storm Damage” as this year’s winner shortly after a citywide July storm cracked the trunk of a much-loved dozy Manitoba Maple out back. However, it matters little whether one has recently encountered and grieved a fallen tree, when it comes to this axiomatic and spellbinding piece. Todkill’s eulogy for a basswood undone by a Gilgameshing derecho’s “unmethodical and ghoulish mangling” will beguile anyone lucky enough to read it.

Creative Nonfiction Contest Editorial

Summer 2022 Editorial

A story. A story. Please tell me a story.

I grew up around storytellers. My paternal grandmother offered up family stories alongside Sunday dinners. I myself performed storytelling in schools as an elementary schoolteacher, prior to becoming a writer. When someone shares a personal account, they are offering up the truth of their experience. What a gift that is to be shared and received. That is why I feel so honoured to be The Fiddlehead’s creative nonfiction editor for this special summer CNF issue that is most dear to my heart.