What Can't Be Undone
Page 17
When Breathless walks back to the jazz player, he half-smiles, his face tipped toward her above his sax, inviting.
“Lucinda,” she says, nodding in time to the music inside her, the bridge’s wires singing far above. “My name. It’s Lucinda,” and it seems to her that he weaves those three syllables into his song while the river runs on to where water and sky blur into horizon.
Acknowledgments
“Monroe’s Mandolin” was published in The Antigonish Review,summer 2011, Vol. 166
“The Quinzhee” was a shortlisted finalist for The Malahat Review’s 2009 Far Horizons Short Fiction Award, and in FreeFall’s 2011 open short fiction contest. It was published as “The Quinzie” in FreeFall, spring 2012, Vol. XXII, No. 2.
“Undercurrents” was published in The Malahat Review , summer 2011, Vol. 175
“The Good Husband” was a shortlisted finalist in FreeFall’s 2012 open short fiction contest.
“Still Life with Birds” was a shortlisted finalist in The New Quarterly’s 2012 Peter Hinchcliffe Short Story Contest.
An early version of “Exercise Girls” was a runner-up with Honourable Mention for the 2009 Brenda Strathern Late Bloomers Creative Fiction Award.
The Saskatchewan Arts Board, Access Copyright, and Sage Hill Writing provided much-appreciated financial assistance.
To my brilliant, fey, fierce, and generous editor, Seán Virgo, “Go raibh maith agat.”
Many of these stories were begun or concluded at the Saskatchewan Writers’ Guild colonies at Emma Lake and St. Peter’s Abbey. Two were written at Wallace Stegner House in Eastend. Thanks to the province’s writers and artists for adopting me.
Thank you to Guy Vanderhaeghe, Johanna Skibsrud, and especially Sandra Birdsell.
Dave Carpenter and Honor Kever, for quinzhees, constructive criticism, many kindnesses and friendship. Philip Adams and Yvette Nolan.
My colleagues in Visible Ink, especially Andréa Ledding and Lisa Bird-Wilson.
Jeanette Lynes, professor and coordinator of the University of Saskatchewan’s MFA in Writing. My colleagues in the program.
Sage Hill Writing’s participants, facilitators and staff. The Banff Centre.
Cathy Ostlere, Terry Jordan, Charlotte Gill, Barb Howard. Kim Suvan and Heidi Grogan. The late and infinitely kind Alistair MacLeod.
The publishers and editors of Canada’s literary magazines and presses, for giving writers a home. My publishers, Al and Jackie Forrie, and the terrific team at Thistledown Press, a thousand times.
Sarah-Jane Newman, Gail Norton and Phyllis McCord, for seeing me through up-and-down times. My dogs, for daily walks. The coyotes out on the edge for inviting me to join them.
The art of Mary Pratt, Emily Carr, Auguste Rodin, Sonny Rollins, lessons in light and living.
Dave Margoshes, for all he does and is, and for always reading with the ear of his heart.
Mom and Dad, with love. My sons, Darl and Dailyn, for being. These stories are for you.
dee Hobsbawn-Smith grew up in a gypsy Air Force family and currently lives on the family land west of Saskatoon with her partner, the writer and poet Dave Margoshes. She has two sons.
Her award-winning poetry, essays, fiction and journalism have appeared in literary journals, books, newspapers, magazines, and anthologies in Canada, the USA, and elsewhere, in such diverse publications as The Malahat Review, Gastronomica, Western Living, and Swerve. Her debut collection of poetry, Wildness Rushing In, was published by Hagios Press in 2014. She recently completed her MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan. Prior to that, she attended Sage Hill Writing five times. Her fifth book, Foodshed: An Edible Alberta Alphabet, which examined the issues and politics of small-scale sustainable agriculture, won Best Culinary Book at the 2013 High Plains Book Awards; Best (Canadian English-language) Food Literature Award in the 2013 Gourmand World Book Awards; and 3rd place in the 2014 Les Dames D’Escoffier MFK Fisher Book Award. She is at work on her first novel, The Dryland Diaries, and an essay collection, Bread & Water, which won 2nd place in the 2014 John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Award. What Can’t Be Undone is her first collection of short stories.