The Journey Prize Stories 29 Read online

  WINNERS OF THE $10,000 JOURNEY PRIZE

  1989: Holley Rubinsky for “Rapid Transits”

  1990: Cynthia Flood for “My Father Took a Cake to France”

  1991: Yann Martel for “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”

  1992: Rozena Maart for “No Rosa, No District Six”

  1993: Gayla Reid for “Sister Doyle’s Men”

  1994: Melissa Hardy for “Long Man the River”

  1995: Kathryn Woodward for “Of Marranos and Gilded Angels”

  1996: Elyse Gasco for “Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby?”

  1997 (shared): Gabriella Goliger for “Maladies of the Inner Ear” Anne Simpson for “Dreaming Snow”

  1998: John Brooke for “The Finer Points of Apples”

  1999: Alissa York for “The Back of the Bear’s Mouth”

  2000: Timothy Taylor for “Doves of Townsend”

  2001: Kevin Armstrong for “The Cane Field”

  2002: Jocelyn Brown for “Miss Canada”

  2003: Jessica Grant for “My Husband’s Jump”

  2004: Devin Krukoff for “The Last Spark”

  2005: Matt Shaw for “Matchbook for a Mother’s Hair”

  2006: Heather Birrell for “BriannaSusannaAlana”

  2007: Craig Boyko for “OZY”

  2008: Saleema Nawaz for “My Three Girls”

  2009: Yasuko Thanh for “Floating Like the Dead”

  2010: Devon Code for “Uncle Oscar”

  2011: Miranda Hill for “Petitions to Saint Chronic”

  2012: Alex Pugsley for “Crisis on Earth-X”

  2013: Naben Ruthnum for “Cinema Rex”

  2014: Tyler Keevil for “Sealskin”

  2015: Deirdre Dore for “The Wise Baby”

  2016: Colette Langlois for “The Emigrants”

  Copyright © 2017 by “Old Growth” © Lisa Alward; “Butter Tea at Starbucks” © Sharon Bala; “Reading Week” © Sharon Bala; “Leech” © Patrick Doerksen; “They Come Crying” © Sarah Kabamba; “The Most Human Part of You” © Richard Kelly Kemick; “The Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition” © Richard Kelly Kemick; “Used to It” © Michael Meagher; “She Is Water” © Darlene Naponse; “Subject Winifred” © Maria Reva; “The Nature of Things” © Jack Wang; “A Girl and a Dog on a Friday Night” © Kelly Ward.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by

  McClelland & Stewart, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request

  ISBN: 9780771048203

  Ebook ISBN 9780771048210

  The quotations from Of the Nature of Things by Lucretius that appear in “The Nature of Things” are taken from the translations by Ronald Melville (Oxford University Press, 2009) and by William Ellery Leonard.

  Cover design: Leah Springate

  Cover art: Shutterstock.com

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

  v4.1

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  ABOUT THE JOURNEY PRIZE STORIES

  The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to an emerging writer of distinction. This award, now in its twenty-ninth year, and given for the seventeenth time in association with the Writers’ Trust of Canada as the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, is made possible by James A. Michener’s generous donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel Journey, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988. The Journey Prize itself is the most significant monetary award given in Canada to a developing writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work in progress. The winner of this year’s Journey Prize will be selected from among the twelve stories in this book.

  The Journey Prize Stories has established itself as the most prestigious annual fiction anthology in the country, introducing readers to the finest new literary writers from coast to coast for more than two decades. It has become a who’s who of up-and-coming writers, and many of the authors who have appeared in the anthology’s pages have gone on to distinguish themselves with short story collections, novels, and literary awards. The anthology comprises a selection from submissions made by the editors of literary journals from across the country, who have chosen what, in their view, is the most exciting writing in English that they have published in the previous year. In recognition of the vital role journals play in fostering literary voices, McClelland & Stewart makes its own award of $2,000 to the journal that originally published and submitted the winning entry.

  This year the selection jury comprised three acclaimed writers:

  Kevin Hardcastle is a fiction writer from Simcoe County, Ontario. He is the author of the novel In the Cage and the short story collection Debris, which won the Trillium Book Award and the ReLit Award for Short Fiction, was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Hardcastle’s short fiction has been widely published in Canada and the United States, in journals such as The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Puritan, EVENT, and Shenandoah. His writing has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories 24 and 26, Best Canadian Stories 15, and Internazionale. He lives and works in Toronto.

  Grace O’Connell is the author of the novels Be Ready for the Lightning and Magnified World, the latter of which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail 100 selected book. She was the 2014 winner of the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award, and her work has appeared in publications such as the Globe and Mail, the National Post, ELLE Canada, This Magazine, The Journey Prize Stories 24, and Taddle Creek, where she previously served as Associate Editor. She holds an MFA in creative writing and teaches at the University of Toronto while working as a freelance writer and editor.

  Ayelet Tsabari was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long listed for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, a Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally to great acclaim. Excerpts from her forthcoming book have won a National Magazine Award and a Western Magazine Award. She lives in Toronto.

  The jury read a total of eighty-five submissions without knowing the names of the authors or those of the journals in which the stories originally appeared. McClelland & Stewart would like to thank the jury for their efforts in selecting this year’s anthology and, ultimately, the winner of this year’s Journey Prize.

  McClelland & Stewart would also like to acknowledge the continuing enthusiastic support of writers, literary journal editors, and the public in the common celebration of new voices in Canadian fiction.

  For more information about The Journey Prize Stories, please visit www.facebook.com/​TheJourneyPrize.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Introduction

  Kevin Hardcastle, Grace O’Connell, and Ayelet Tsabari

  SHARON BALA

  Butter Tea at Sta
rbucks

  (from The New Quarterly)

  MICHAEL MEAGHER

  Used to It

  (from PRISM international)

  RICHARD KELLY KEMICK

  The Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition

  (from The New Quarterly)

  SARAH KABAMBA

  They Come Crying

  (from Room)

  SHARON BALA

  Reading Week

  (from PRISM international)

  RICHARD KELLY KEMICK

  The Most Human Part of You

  (from Maisonneuve)

  JACK WANG

  The Nature of Things

  (from The Malahat Review)

  PATRICK DOERKSEN

  Leech

  (from (parenthetical))

  KELLY WARD

  A Girl and a Dog on a Friday Night

  (from Taddle Creek)

  MARIA REVA

  Subject Winifred

  (from The Malahat Review)

  DARLENE NAPONSE

  She Is Water

  (from The Malahat Review)

  LISA ALWARD

  Old Growth

  (from The New Quarterly)

  About the Contributors

  About the Contributing Publications

  Previous Contributing Authors

  INTRODUCTION

  Short fiction is an unforgiving form. And that’s what makes it so fantastic. A great short story has memorable, unique characters, a plot that readers can’t look away from, and gorgeous, essential language—all contained in a stack of pages that’s usually thinner than a toonie. Getting to the core of an emotional landscape in just a few thousand words is a feat to be savoured and celebrated.

  Short fiction is the gymnastics of writing: technical, demanding, and, when done well, looks effortless. But writers know that writing an excellent story is the furthest thing from effortless. The short story is prose at its most distilled, and luckily for readers, Canada is as good at distilling fiction as we are at distilling even boozier materials.

  As writers, readers, and lovers of the short story, we were thrilled to be asked to put together the anthology you hold in your hands, which meant reading some of the finest short fiction published in Canadian literary magazines in the previous year. We each came into this process with our own notions of what makes a good story: a strong, clear voice, finely honed technique, and well-crafted characters. In the end, the twelve stories we selected were the ones that gripped, moved, surprised, and inspired us—and stayed with us long after reading. The stories varied in style and tone, subject matter and sensibility. If we had to choose one distinct quality that defined these stories as a group and set them apart from the other submissions, it would be an undefined “aliveness”—that singular, elusive characteristic that told us we were in the presence of something special. We are proud that these stories prove that there continues to be an infusion of new talent into our literary community.

  Sharon Bala’s “Butter Tea at Starbucks” ambitiously and seamlessly weaves together the personal and the political, the mundane and the momentous, and does so in beautifully crafted prose. Bala has an ear for dialogue, a keen eye for detail, and a perceptive, merciless gaze that makes for complex and deeply flawed characters. The result is remarkable, at once delightful and unsettling. Notably, Bala is the first of a pair of authors with multiple stories included in this collection. Her second Journey Prize selection, “Reading Week,” is a story built on subtlety and understated emotion, yet one that still manages to move the reader and foster a real sense of loss and longing. The writing elevates what, on the surface, appears to be a seemingly ordinary story into a narrative that is rich and quietly profound.

  Michael Meagher’s “Used to It” delves expertly into the lives of the working class, and explores the peculiarities and harsh demands of the hard, physical labour that the protagonist does to keep a roof over his head. The writing is rugged and muscular, but still lends dignity to the story’s rough cast of characters. The dialogue and description kept us enthralled throughout, and the world that the author depicts is painfully real.

  The story-within-a-story structure of Richard Kelly Kemick’s “The Unitarian Church’s Annual Young Writer’s Short Story Competition” is a creative and unsentimental way to talk about the complexity of grief and loss. Deliciously strange and yet strangely moving, it showcases the same balance of narrative sophistication and subtle yet razor-sharp emotional awareness that Kemick displays in his second story in the collection, “The Most Human Part of You.” While we didn’t know these two stories were written by the same writer when we initially made our selections, they are both precisely crafted, and filled with powerful longing and gem-like sentences.

  There isn’t a word wasted in Sarah Kabamba’s nuanced “They Come Crying.” Kabamba writes with an assured hand, using restrained, evocative prose to portray the rituals of grief as seen through a child’s eyes, while illuminating the cultural gaps common within immigrant families, and the power of food and stories to bridge them.

  Jack Wang’s “The Nature of Things” pushes the limits of the short story by spanning generations and continents. The tale of two Chinese-Canadian lovers who travel to Shanghai and find themselves caught in the Second Sino-Japanese War is so epic in scope that it reads almost like a mini-novel. Wang employs rich imagery, lyrical language, and a wistful tone to evoke a tumultuous time and place in history.

  The unnamed child narrator in Patrick Doerksen’s “Leech” is unforgettable. The monster of the story is truly chilling, and the central metaphor is handled deftly and nimbly. Balancing innovation with emotion, it’s a deceptively simple story that hits the bull’s eye perfectly.

  “A Girl and a Dog on a Friday Night” is another story that looks beyond the mundane particulars of everyday life to uncover the potential for catastrophe and ruin that exists in the lives of those who have slipped between the cracks. The opening scene is tense, and the narrative is increasingly unpredictable and surprising. Kelly Ward captures the truth of a young mother’s struggle without being heavy-handed or forcing our focus. Instead, the reader is drawn naturally, and with great concern, into the life of the protagonist and her daughter.

  In “Subject Winifred,” Maria Reva creates an unusual framing device to tell the story of a precocious child who is as endearing as she is tragic, and whose obsession with keeping tally of everything—from how many times she’s woken up since birth to the number of days her mother has been in a relationship with God—helps her make sense of a chaotic home life. The story stood out for its immediacy, for its distinct voice, and for Reva’s skill in building tension throughout the fragmented narrative, leading to an inevitable, though no less shocking, conclusion.

  A beautiful, sometimes masterfully raw journey, “She Is Water” is a story that we felt in our bones even before Darlene Naponse told it. The unsentimental depiction of life in a remote First Nations community distinguishes this story, as does the way small joys and major tragedies are handled with equal measures of empathy and clear-sightedness; they flow over the reader as water might.

  There’s so much quiet confidence on display in “Old Growth” by Lisa Alward. This is a writer who knows what she is doing; there’s an old-school attention to craft and line-by-line quality, but the story feels absolutely fresh and contemporary. As a reader, you simply feel you are in good hands with Alward.

  We invite you to read these stories and add these names to your list of authors to keep an eye on. The skill, vision, and dedication required to write the best short stories provides a writer with a set of tools that they will carry with them throughout their careers. And we truly believe the writers in this anthology are positioned to use those tools and their talent to add something special to our national literature. We would encourage the writers who narrowly missed the cut to keep working on and sharing their stories. The well is deep, and we are certain that those who did not make it into these pages will fill t
hem up in the years to come.

  We want to honour the writers whose stories made such an impact on us this year, and we are proud to present them here. This anthology is a celebration of the strength and dexterity of our short story writers, and shows the promising future of Canadian literature.

  Kevin Hardcastle

  Grace O’Connell

  Ayelet Tsabari

  June 2017

  SHARON BALA

  BUTTER TEA AT STARBUCKS

  The flames flap with a noise like laundry on a line. The fire is an orange column. A plastic bag pirouettes in mid-air. The camera, unsteady, lingers and lingers. And in the middle, the figure stands upright, stoic or suicidal. Pema thinks: She’s already dead.

  There’s a blizzard. Jamal’s voice, through the phone, is in her left ear.

  Pema looks away from the TV. In the waiting room people slump into the plastic chairs, turning the pages of the Toronto Sun or Today’s Parent. Outside the black window, snow whirls like a thousand dervishes.

  Here too, she says. Pearson is closed.

  I can’t believe I’m going to miss it, Jamal says.

  Pema wants to ask Jamal, Have you seen the news? But of course he hasn’t. He’s got other things to think about and now so does she. The intercom pages Dr. Patel to Maternity.

  They’re calling the doctor, Pema says. I have to go. I’ll text you. Think of a name.

  —

  Karma’s room smells like blood and shit. There is a beeping machine and an impassive nurse in a hairnet and blue booties. Pema has never heard her sister make noises like this before. Urgent, animal sounds that roar out from some place deep inside that Pema had not known existed. She wants to call their mother, but Karma says no in her big sister don’t-fuck-with-me-now voice.

  Jamal sends impotent texts. Pema’s pocket buzzes. A little envelope lands on the screen.

  He says he loves you. She holds up the phone so Karma can see that he has spelled out all the words.

  I love you. I love you. What else is there to say? The wind howls and the ambulances scream as Karma bears down. And Pema is repulsed and terrified. Because the room is hot, damp. It is a jungle, raw and wild. And how could this be? No, it could not be Karma, who, age sixteen, looked Amala and Pala straight in the eyes and said, I will do exactly as I like. Just you try to stop me. Battle cries, a warrior in the throes of death. The phone in Pema’s pocket, demanding attention. The nurse and now the doctor saying, One more push. And Karma sitting up, her body yawning open, reaching down, the crown of flattened jet-black hair. And the nurse asking, Can you see it? forcing Pema to look, even though she doesn’t want to, swallowing back bile. And the storm and the people in the hallway and the green line spiking up, diving down, running straight. And finally, finally, the small mewling cry. And Pema overcome with sobs that heave out of her mouth, joy bursting from every orifice, taking her by surprise.