non-fiction

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.

Nemea by Eliis Scott

Excerpt

I smelled fryer oil and my rank shoes. Hunched over in a scarlet shell seat at a Wimpy in South Kensington, I averted my eyes from the manager and nursed a small orange crush in a waxed cup, feeling the glares of casual disgust from the diners in the far corner. Hooked on Classics blared from the ceiling speaker.

Invisible Walls: A Decentred Hermit Crab Sticky Note Narrative by Shirley Harshenin

Excerpt

Tabarnacle by Ellen McGinn

Excerpt

On the day, there is a darkness, raven black, on the far edge of the ocean, a soft settled line breaks the sky from the sea and the sea from the sky. Both summer blue, like twins. 

Do not start with darkness. Consider blackberry picking this afternoon. Consider a pie. The wasps going insane.

Greenland melts.

Australia is on fire.

“A student of morning”

Daystart Songflight: A morning journal, Brian Bartlett. Pottersfield Press, 2021.

The Human Cost

Horseplay: My Time Undercover on the Granville Strip, Norm Boucher. NeWest Press, 2020