Writing Away: The PEN Canada Travel Anthology

Marguerite Andersen is a professor of French studies at the University
of Guelph.

This anthology features travel pieces by 37 Canadian contributors. June
Callwood’s “Swimming Around the Planet” is thoughtful and witty.
John Ralston Saul’s “Subversion in the North” is interesting.
Alberto Manguel’s account of his Tunisian travels is moving; his
description of Kairouan, its mosques, and its carpet industry offers a
sensitively rendered contrast. Other stories are amusing or clever, such
as Margaret Atwood’s “The Grunge Look,” about her first trip to
Europe in 1964. Greece, the Caribbean, the Yukon (as described by Pierre
Berton or Peter Gzowski), Australia, the Philippines, India, South
America, the Ukraine—Canadian writers seem to have been almost
everywhere. Some hate traveling; others cannot get enough of it. Some,
like Dionne Brand, return to their country of origin and view it with
new Canadian eyes, while others, such as Alice Munro, stay very close to
home and do so with grace.

Writing Away was produced as a fundraiser for PEN, the international
authors’ organization that works on behalf of free speech and writers
in prison around the world. Hence, all contributors are well-known
Canadian authors. While this guarantees sales, the anthology might have
included a few pieces by lesser-known PEN members. For example,
immigrant writer Martha Kumssa could have been invited to tell of her
travels from an Ethiopian prison to Canada—travel as an act of
fleeing.