The Canadian Shields: Stories and Essays

The Canadian Shields brings together fifty short writings by Carol Shields (19352003), including more than two dozen previously unpublished short stories and essays and two dozen essays previously published but never before collected. Invaluable to scholars and admirers of Shieldss work, the writings discovered in the National Library Archives by Nora Foster Stovel and presented to the public here for the first time reflect Shieldss interest in the relationship between reality and fiction, mothers and daughters, and gender and genre. They also reveal her love of Canada, especially Winnipeg, her home for twenty years. Originally written for womens magazines, travel journals, convocation addresses, and even graduate school term papers, Shieldss imaginative essays explore ideas about home, Canadian literature, contemporary womens writing, and the future of fiction. Whether autobiographical, cultural, or feminist in focus, these works vividly illuminate the multiple chapters of Shieldss writing life.

Margaret Atwood and Lorna Crozier frame Shieldss texts with tributes to her work and impact. An introduction by Stovel situates Shields as a Canadian author and subversive feminist writer, demonstrating how American-born-and-raised Carol Anne Warner became the Canadian Shieldsa quintessential and beloved Canadian writer and the only author to win both the Pulitzer Prize and the Governor Generals Gold Medal for Fiction.