The New Story Writers

Elizabeth S. Masih is the editor of Write On: The Newsletter for Young
Canadian Writers and Readers.

Editor John Metcalf presents readers with a sampler of stories from nine
innovative Canadian writers who have taken the “story into new forms
which . . . express new worlds, new sensibilities.” Railing against
tidy “epiphany” stories and forms that “have hardened into a
classicism,” Metcalf has found authors who “have pushed at the
conventions to discover, shape, and then define their own voices.”
These writers, according to Metcalf, understand that “the shape of the
story is the story. There is no division between form and content.”

As a way of introduction to some of these “new story writers,”
Metcalf has selected for his anthology two stories each by Don
Dickinson, Keath Fraser, Douglas Glover, Terry Griggs, Steven Heighton,
Dayv James-French, Rohinton Mistry, Diane Schoemperlen, and Linda
Svendsen. However, readers should be cautioned that, because of their
very “innovativeness,” it is highly unlikely that all of these
stories will appeal to everyone. Instead, the anthology should be used
as catalogue that one can browse through to become familiar with new
products. Once the reader has determined what is on the market, he or
she can decide which writers to adopt, and then “move forward with
them as their fiction develops and evolves.”

To further aid in his introduction to these talents, Metcalf has
included a worthwhile afterword that touches briefly on “traditions”
in Canadian literature and provides useful and interesting insights into
the minds of the “new story writers,” and especially into how they
create their stories.