Edna Alford (born 19 November 1947 in Turtleford, Saskatchewan) is a Canadian author and editor. She was a graduate of Adam Bowden Collegiate, Saskatoon, and got scholarships to attend the Saskatchewan Summer School of the Arts. Some of her teachers include; Jack Hodgins , W. P. Kinsella , Rudy Wiebe , and Robert Kroetsch . She majored in English at the University of Saskatchewan, and worked summers at hospitals and nursing homes for the chronically ill. [1] As a writer she is known for the collections "A Sleep Full of Dreams and The Garden of Eloise Loon". She has also won the Marian Engel Award and the Gerald Lampert Award. As an editor she co-founded the magazine Dandelion and edited fiction for Grain from 1985–1990. [2] Edna was born to George and Edith Sample and was the second eldest of the children aside from brother Stanley. She also has brothers Lorne (deceased) and Gregory as well as a younger sister Beth. Edna is currently married to internationally known theoretical mathematician Richard Cushman.
Alford's first short story collection, A Sleep Full of Dreams, looks at the lives of residents and workers in Pine Mountain Lodge. Jeremy LaLonde describes Alford's collection as a narrative of community. [3] "On a thematic level, what distinguishes A Sleep Full of Dreams from other narratives of community is that the community it portrays (a retirement home) has rarely been depicted in a sustained way or with such stark realism," LaLonde writes. [4] He also calls the collection "exemplary in its use of imagistic links." [5]
Reviewer M.G. Osachoff noted that through the collection, Alford shows readers "that there is beauty and dignity in growing old. Avoiding sentimentality, she gives us all the unsavory details about old age, and yet makes us care about the old women who are Aria's (sic) patients." [6]
Alford's second collection, The Garden of Eloise Loon, deals with mental illness and apocalyptic themes. Most of the stories are set in rural Saskatchewan, and many of them in the Turtle Lake area. David Carpenter writes that Alford "usurps the quaint moderation that has been accorded to Saskatchewan by those who don't understand its hazardous otherness. The occupation of disaster, the story of loss, pain, and indignity, recites a quintessentially Saskatchewan moment of hesitation inlaid with the exaggerated tales the province incites." " [7]
Alford is also a well-regarded literary editor. She co-edited several anthologies, including Meltwater, Rip-rap, and Intersections, published by the Banff Centre. [8] She also edited Gloria Sawai's A Song for Nettie Johnson, which won the Governor General's Award for Fiction, [9] along with short story collections by Bonnie Burnard, Fred Stenson and many others. [10]
Alford also served as associate director of the Banff Centre's Writing Studio for over a decade. During that time, she mentored several award-winning writers, including Yann Martel and Lisa Moore. [11] She also sat on Coteau Books' editorial board along with several literary juries such as the Canada Council, Saskatchewan Arts Board, and CBC's annual short story contest. [12] In 1975, Alford, along with author Joan Clark and visual artist Velma Foster, founded Calgary's Dandelion Magazine.
Bonnie Burnard was a Canadian short story writer and novelist, best known for her 1999 novel, A Good House, which won the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Myrna Kostash is a Canadian writer and journalist. She has published several non-fiction books and written for many Canadian magazines including Chatelaine. Of Ukrainian descent, she was born in Edmonton, Alberta and educated at the University of Alberta, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto. She resides in Edmonton, Alberta.
Steven Heighton was a Canadian fiction writer, poet, and singer-songwriter. He is the author of eighteen books, including three short story collections, four novels, and seven poetry collections. His last work was Selected Poems 1983-2020 and an album, The Devil's Share.
Dianne Warren is a Canadian novelist, dramatist and short story writer.
Anne Szumigalski, SOM was a Canadian poet.
Warren Cariou is a Canadian writer and associate professor of English at the University of Manitoba.
Elizabeth Winifred Brewster, was a Canadian poet, author, and academic.
Linda Aksomitis, née Demyen, is a Canadian author specialising in children's and travel literature, as well as nonfiction about the history of the snowmobile. She is a former president of the Saskatchewan Writer's Guild.
Joan Clark was a Canadian fiction author.
Gloria Sawai, born Gloria Ruth Ostrem in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was an American-born fiction author, based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. She died on 20 July 2011.
Coteau Books was a small, non-profit literary press based in Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada. It was established in 1975 by Bob Currie, Gary Hyland, Barbara Sapergia and Geoffrey Ursell when they realized that there was little opportunity for Saskatchewan writers to get published, especially first-time authors. The press closed its doors and entered bankruptcy protection in February 2020.
Beth Goobie is a Canadian poet and fiction writer.
Jacqueline Jill Robinson is a Canadian writer and editor. She is the author of a novel and four collections of short stories. Her fiction and creative nonfiction have appeared in a wide variety of magazines and literary journals including Geist, the Antigonish Review, Event, Prairie Fire and the Windsor Review. Her novel, More In Anger, published in 2012, tells the stories of three generations of mothers and daughters who bear the emotional scars of loveless marriages, corrosive anger and misogyny.
Maureen Hynes is a Canadian poet and author. Her debut collection of poetry, Rough Skin, won the League of Canadian Poets' Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry by a Canadian in 1996.
Jeanette Lynes is a Canadian author, poet and professor born in Hanover, Ontario. She went to high school in Hanover and Flesherton, Ontario. She then earned an Honours B.A. in English from York University, Toronto, and went on to earn an M.A. and a Ph.D. in English from York University. In 2005 she received an M.F.A. in Writing from the University of Southern Maine's low-residency Stonecoast Program. Jeanette has taught university in Canada and the United States since the mid-1980s. She was the Pathy visiting Professor of Canadian Studies at Princeton University in 2003. She is a former co-editor of The Antigonish Review. Lynes has been a Writer in Residence at Northern Lights College in B.C., Saskatoon Public Library, Kwantlen Polytechnic University and The Kingston Writers' Festival. She has also been on faculty at The Banff Centre and The Sage Hill Writing Experience (2006-2008) She is now Coordinator of the M.F.A. in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan and a professor in the Department of English at the University of Saskatchewan. Lynes is the author of seven collections of poetry and two novels.
Fereshteh Molavi is an Iranian-Canadian fiction writer and essayist. She is also a renowned scholar and translator.
Geoffrey Ursell was a Canadian writer, who won the Books in Canada First Novel Award in 1985 for his novel Perdue, or How the West Was Lost.
Barbara Klar is a Canadian poet, who won the Gerald Lampert Award in 1994 for her poetry collection The Night You Called Me a Shadow.
Louise Bernice Halfe, is a Cree poet and social worker from Canada. Halfe's Cree name is Sky Dancer. At the age of seven, she was forced to attend Blue Quills Residential School in St. Paul, Alberta. Halfe signed with Coteau Books in 1994 and has published four books of poetry: Bear Bones & Feathers (1994), Blue Marrow (1998/2005), The Crooked Good (2007) and Burning in this Midnight Dream (2016). Halfe uses code-switching, white space, and the stories of other Cree women in her poetry. Her experience at Blue Quills continues to influence her work today. Halfe's books have been well-received and have won multiple awards.
Dandelion Magazine was an independent literary magazine published in Calgary, Alberta between 1975 and 2011. In its day, according to The Literary History of Alberta, it was considered Alberta’s leading literary magazine. It started as an annual publication and then became biannual. Over the years, Dandelion featured fiction, poetry, visual art and reviews. Contributors consisted of emerging and established Canadian authors including Joan Clark, Edna Alford, Carol Shields, Robert Hilles, W. P. Kinsella, Robert Kroetsch, Guy Vanderhaeghe, Aritha van Herk, and Karen Connelly, among others.
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