The Longest Winter

M. Wayne Cunningham is a past executive director of the Saskatchewan
Arts Board and the former director of Academic and Career Programs at
East Kootenay Community College.

Evoking the twin themes of time and nostalgia, The Longest Winter is the
result of a collaboration between Montreal photographer Julie Doiron and
Ottawa Valley poet, fiction writer, and aspiring screenwriter Ian Roy.

Forming the centrepiece of the book are Doiron’s 28 black-and-white
photographs. They feature Doiron; her artist-husband, Jon Clayton; their
children, Charlotte and Ben; several friends; and members of the
Canadian band, Eric’s Trip, with which Doiron was associated for
several years as singer, songwriter, and bassist. Roy’s loosely
constructed imaginative narrative, which ebbs and flows to fit the mood
of the photographs, “is meant to accompany the photographs in an
elliptical interchange: together they tell a story.”

An afterword by the publisher provides insights into Doiron and Roy’s
collaboration and the literary-visual tradition in which their book can
be situated. Recommended for writers, photographers, instructors of the
visual or literary arts, and interested general readers.