The Journey Prize Anthology: The Best Short Fiction from Canada's Literary Journals

Boyd Holmes is an editor with Dundurn Press.

The Journey Price Anthology is a perennial series that, since its 1989
inception, has collected what its editors consider the finest short
fiction to appear in Canada’s literary journals during the previous 12
months; the series title comes from James A. Michener’s 1988 novel
Journey, the Canadian royalties of which fund the $10,000 given annually
to the story judged the best. This year, the editors have selected 16
tales by promising newer writers; with the title of the winning piece to
be printed in the next volume. Among the brightening literary lights
included are Rick Hillis, André Alexis, Terry Griggs, Kenneth Radu,
Cynthia Flood, Lawrence O’Toole, Virgil Burnett, Thomas King, and
Douglas Glover.

The winning story was “My Father Took a Cake to France” by Cynthia
Flood. That piece, a first-person account of a father in which the
heroine-storyteller tries to conceal both bitterness and love, is a
skillful presentation of a dishonest narrator.

The remaining stories are also successful; had the editors not selected
Flood’s story, the prize should have been shared between “Limbo
River” (by Hillis) and “Despair: Five Stories From Ottawa” (by
Alexis). “Limbo River” distinguishes itself with charged prose:
“And as he said this our cage jerked, lifted us into the night sky and
we spun upside-down and Marcel’s change flew out of his pockets,
whizzed past our ears like shrapnel. My heart tore free of my chest and
I felt it in my mouth. We dove towards the ground, but at the last
minute were scooped up, swirling through the blackness, me and Marcel,
screaming at the stars between our shoes.” “Despair” is
simultaneously hilarious and horrific; it is best described as a cross
between Jerzy Kosinski’s Steps and Fran Lebowitz’s Metropolitan
life.