Reading: John Bemrose, Michael Crummey, Jacob McArthur Mooney, Leon Rooke

John Bemrose’s debut novel, The Island Walkers, was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Bemrose is an arts journalist and contributing editor at Maclean’s. He has written for CBC Radio, the National Film Board and the Globe and Mail, and has also written a play, Mother Moon, and two poetry collections. His second novel, The Last Woman, set in the heart of Ontario’s cottage country, tells of the abrupt reappearance – after ten years absence – of local man Billy.

Michael Crummey is the author of a memoir, Newfoundland: Journey into a Lost Nation, three books of poetry, a book of short stories, and two previous novels, River Thieves and The Wreckage. A play based on one of his short stories (Afterimage) was part of the 2008/09 World Stage season at Harbourfront Centre. In his third novel, Galore, Crummey creates an intricate family saga and a love story spanning two decades in the improbable medieval world that was rural Newfoundland: remote, isolated, exposed.

Jeremy Keehn is Senior Editor at the Walrus. He edits most of the magazine’s features and writes for the arts and culture

Jacob McArthur Mooney is a Nova Scotian now living in Mississauga. He was shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award in Poetry and named the winner of the Authors at Harbourfront Centre Open Stage Night in March 2009. The New Layman’s Almanac, Mooney’s first book, tackles everything from a “Guide to Rural Routes” to a “Guide to Getting it Wrong.” Deft and dazzling, brash and boyish, it is a re-stylization of the almanac, drawing on more modern publishing phenomena such as Wikipedia to ask the question: “What are the rules?”

Leon Rooke (Canada/USA) is the author of seven novels, including The Fall of Gravity and the Governor General’s Literary Award-winning Shakespeare’s Dog. He has published over 300 short stories, as well as poetry and plays, and is the founder of The Eden Mills Literary Festival. Some of his awards include the W.O. Mitchell Prize, the Canada-Australian Literary Prize and the CBC Fiction Prize. Rooke presents The Last Shot, a novella – about the surreal adventures of Prissy Thibidault in the deep American south – and 12 short stories.