Wildfire

MFA Alumni Book Highlights: From 50 to 80 Publications

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I posted a rundown of books published by grads of the MFA in CNF program, and in that time the number has jumped from 50 to about 70—or 71, because I just added my own book to the list below.

I actually think the number is higher than that, maybe as high as 80, but I’m not sure everyone’s books are listed here. (I took this list from the UKing’s website.)

If your book(s)—either the one you started for your master’s degree or any you’ve published since then—aren’t listed here, please let me know and I will update the list.

(It’s great to see how many of us have gone on to write more books after that first one.)

Tamara Baluja (class of 2024) Nav Bhatia: The Heart of a Superfan, Penguin Random House Canada, 2024. Review to come. 

Niko Bell (class of 2023) Risk, Freedom, and the Future of Safe Sex, ECW Press, TBA.

Sheima Benembarek (class of 2020) Halal Sex: The Intimate Lives of Muslim Women in North America, Penguin Random House Canada, 2023.

Gloria Blizzard (class of 2021) Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Alec Bruce (class of 2022) The Cooperators: The People Behind the Rebirth of a Nova Scotia Movement, Pottersfield Press, 2024.

S. Lesley Buxton (class of 2016) One Strong Girl: Surviving the Unimaginable—A Mother’s Memoir, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Esmeralda Cabral (class of 2019) How to Clean a Fish and Other Adventures in Portugal, University of Alberta Press, 2023.

Michaela Cavanaugh (class of 2024) Present Tense: How We Reckon with the End of the World, McClelland & Stewart (Canada) and The New Press (US), 2027.

Marilyn Carr (class of 2020) Nowhere Like This Place: Tales from a Nuclear Childhood, Iguana Books, 2020. Review to come. 
How I Invented the Internet, Iguana Books, 2022.

Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) On Borrowed Time: Shaking Complacency in North America’s Seismic Zones, Goose Lane Editions, 2021.
Why Humans Build Up: The Rise of Towers, Temples, and Skyscrapers, Orca Publishing, 2022.
Radio Jet Lag, Cormorant Books, 2023.
Our Crumbling Foundation: How We Solve Canada’s Housing Crisis, Penguin Random House, 2024.

Pauline Dakin (class of 2015) Run, Hide, Repeat: A Memoir of a Fugitive Childhood, Penguin Random House, 2017.

Moira Dann (class of 2016) Craigdarroch Castle in 21 Treasures, Touchstone Editions, 2021.
Fat Camp Summer: Advice I Would Have Given My Parents, Sutherland House Books, 2025.

Deborah Dundas (class of 2023) On Class, Biblioasis, 2022.

Marsha Faubert (class of 2018) Wanda’s War: An Untold Story of Nazi Europe, Forced Labour, and a Canadian Immigration Scandal, Goose Lane Editions, 2023.

Amy Fish (class of 2023), One in Six Million: The Baby by the Roadside and the Man Who Retraced a Holocaust Survivor’s Lost Identity, Goose Lane Editions, 2025.

Catherine Fogarty (class of 2018) Murder on the Inside: The True Story of the Deadly Riot at Kingston Penitentiary, Biblioasis, 2021.
Someone You Know: An Unforgettable Collection of Canadian True Crime, HarperCollins, 2023.

Stacey May Fowles (class of 2015) The Girl in the Woods, McLelland and Stewart, 2018.
Baseball Life Advice: Loving the Game that Saved Me, Penguin Random House, 2017. 
Whatever Gets You Through: Twelve Survivors on Life After Sexual Assault, Greystone Books, 2019.
Good Mom on Paper: Writers on Creativity and Motherhood, Book*hug Press, 2022.

Joan Francuz (class of 2016) Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon, 1920 House Press, 2018.

Kim Fraser (class of 2021) The Accidental Caregiver: Challenges and Triumphs of Intimate Family Caregivers, Sutherland House, 2022. Review to come. 

Maryanna Gabriel (class of 2022), On Earth as It Is: Walking the Camino, Pottersfield Press, 2023.

MJ Grant (class of 2016) A Cure for Heartache: Life’s Simple Pleasures, One Moment at a Time, Hodder, 2019.

Stephanie Griffiths (class of 2016) Sit Still and Prosper: How a Former Money Manager Discovered the Path to Investing with Greater Clarity, Calmness, and Confidence, Bird in the Sky Press, 2018. Review to come. 

Sue Harper (class of 2016), Winter in the City of Light: A Search for Self in Retirement, Amazon, 2019.

Suzanne Elki Yoko Hartmann (class of 2021) The Nail That Sticks Out: Reflections on the Postwar Japanese Canadian Community, Dundurn, 2024.

Virginia Heffernan (class of 2021) Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness, ECW Press, 2023.

Taslim Jaffer (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home, Book*hug Press, 2024. Review to come. 

Kirk Angus Johnson (class of 2019) Some Kind of Hero: Love, Death, and Trauma in a Nova Scotia Town, Penguin Random House, TBA.

Kevin Kelloway (class of 2019) The Performance Equation, University of Toronto Press, TBA.

Kim Kierans (class of 2025) Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty, Bighorn Books, 2024. Review to come. 

Gwen Lamont (class of 2019) The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed, Ginger Press, 2024.

Nellwyn Lampert (class of 2017) Every Boy I Ever Kissed: A Memoir, Dundurn Press, 2019.

Nellwyn Lampert with Pamela Oakley, Christian Smith, and Gillian Turnbull, eds., Bad Artist: Creating in a Productivity-Obsessed World, Touchwood, 2024.

Tyler LeBlanc (class of 2018) Acadian Driftwood: One Family and the Great Expulsion, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

An artist's rendering of a river, mountains and trees in shades of grey, brown , and red, with the book title and author's name.

Lezlie Lowe (class of 2016) Nowhere to Go: How Public Toilets Fail Our Private Needs, Coach House Books, 2018.
The Volunteers: How Halifax Women Won the Second World War, Nimbus Publishing, 2022.

James MacDuff (class of 2024) with Mirriam Mweemba, The Illogical Adventure: A Memoir of Love and Fate, Pottersfield, 2025. Review to come.

Susan MacLeod (class of 2018) Dying for Attention: A Graphic Memoir about Nursing Home Care, Conundrum Press, 2021.

Leslie Marion (class of 2018) Easy Money: A Bankspeak Primer for Small Business, 4th Floor Press, 2020. Review to come. 

Jessica McDiarmid (class of 2016) Highway of Tears: A True Story of Racism, Indifference and the Pursuit of Justice for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Penguin Random House, 2020.

Lori McKay (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets, Nimbus Publishing, 2024. Review to come. 

Lauren McKeon (class of 2016) F-Bomb: Dispatches from the War on Feminism, Goose Lane Editions, 2017.
No More Nice Girls: Gender, Power, and Why It’s Time to Stop Playing by the Rules, House of Anansi, 2020.
Women of the Pandemic: Stories from the Frontlines of COVID-19, Penguin Random House, 2021.

Lynne Melcombe (class of 2015) No Such Thing: A True Story of “Mild” Traumatic Brain Injury and My Twenty-Year (so far) Recovery, Iguana Books, 2026. 

Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) The Fruitful City: Building Communities Around Nature’s Bounty, ECW Press, 2018.

Chris Moore (class of 2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal, HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Philip Moscovitch (class of 2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More, Formac Publishing, 2019. Review to come. 

Jason Murray (class of 2016) A Distorted Revolution: How Eric’s Trip Changed Music, Moncton and Me, Nimbus Publishing, 2017. Review to come. 

Jesse O’Reilly-Conlin (class of 2019) Visiting Africa: A Memoir, Demeter Press, 2021. Go: A Memoir of Movement, Iguana Books, 2023. 

Robin Pacific (class of 2021) Skater Girl: An Archaeology of the Self, Guernica Editions, 2024. Review to come. 

A microphone and cords on a white tabletop.

David Pate (class of 2023) The Worst Songs in the World: The Terrible Truth about National Anthems, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Renée Pellerin (class of 2016) Conspiracy of Hope: The Truth About Breast Cancer Screening, Goose Lane Editions, 2018.

Jen Powley (class of 2015) Just Jen: Thriving Through Multiple Sclerosis, Fernwood Publishing, 2017.
Making a Home: Assisted Living in the Community for Young Disabled People, Fernwood Publishing, 2023.

Laura Pratt (class of 2020) Heartbroken: Field Notes on a Constant Condition, Random House Canada, 2023.

Adelle Purdham (class of 2022) I Don’t Do Disability and Other Lies I’ve Told Myself, Dundurn Press, 2024.

Andrew Reeves (class of 2016) Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, ECW Press, 2019.

Bonny Reichert (class of 2022) How to Share an Egg: A True Story of Hunger, Love and Plenty, Appetite/Penguin Random House (Canada), and Ballantine/Random House (US), 2024.

Dylan Reid (class of 2021) Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything, Coach House Books, 2025. Review to come. 

Jo-Ann Roberts (class of 2023) Storm the Ballot Box: An Insider’s Guide to a Voting Revolution, Nimbus Publishing, 2025.

Jason Schreurs (class of 2022) Scream Therapy: A Punk Journey through Mental Health, Flex Your Head Press, 2023.

RC Shaw (class of 2017) Louisbourg or Bust: A Surfer’s Wild Ride Down Nova Scotia’s Drowned Coast, Pottersfield Press, 2018.
Captain Solitude: One Surfer’s Search for the World’s Greatest Sailor, Goose Lane Editions, 2024.

Sharron J. Simpson (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition, Harbour Publishing, 2025.

Christian Smith (class of 2017) The Scientist and the Psychic: A Son’s Exploration of His Mother’s Gift, Random House, 2021.

Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons, Pottersfield Press, 2018.

Karen Stiller (class of 2018) The Minister’s Wife: A Memoir of Faith, Doubt, Loneliness, Forgiveness and More, Tynedale House, 2019.
Holiness Here: Searching for God in the Ordinary Events of Everyday Life, NavPress, 2024.

William Sullivan (class of 2017) The City and the Smelter: How Against All Odds Did It Happen, First Choice Books, 2023. Review to come. 

Jon Tattrie (class of 2020) Peace by Chocolate: The Hadhad Family’s Remarkable Journey from Syria to Canada, Goose Lane Editions, 2020.

Gillian Turnbull (class of 2017) Sonic Booms: Making Music in an Oil Town, Eternal Cavalier Press, 2019. Review to come.

Jennifer Thornhill Verma (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboy, Nimbus Publishing, 2019.

Aaron Williams (class of 2017) Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir, Harbour Publishing, 2017.
The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era, Harbour Publishing, 2024.

Jennifer Robin Wilson (class of 2025) The Heart of Homestay: Creating Meaningful Connections When Hosting International Students, Page Two Books, 2025.

Gina Leola Woolsey (class of 2015) Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey through Disaster, Guernica Editions, 2023.

Remember, if you’re an MFA in CNF grad and you have a CNF book that’s not shown here, let me know and I’ll update this list in a future post.

Best Canadian Reads for Earth Day 2023

/ Lynne Melcombe / Leave a comment

April 22 is Earth Day. Here are some great books about the environment by Canadian authors to commit to reading.

Cover of 'Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir' by Aaron Williams featuring a wildfire scene with smoke and flames among tall trees against an orange sky.

I live in the Pacific Northwest, where two things are ever-present on people’s minds: how bad the wildfires will be this summer and when the next big earthquake will hit. Although Aaron Williams (class of 2017) wrote Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour Publishing, 2017) as a memoir of one summer (of many) on a firefighting crew in the dense forests of British Columbia, it wouldn’t be possible to write such a memoir without touching on the impacts of a warming planet on creating the conditions that are making wildfires worse every year (2023 was Canada’s worst season on record). From hectares of dry brush where forests were clearcut to fire seasons that begin earlier and end later each year, Chasing Smoke not only describes a wildfire fighter’s lifestyle but a problem that must be addressed if we don’t wish to see our planet go up in flames.  

Book cover of 'On Borrowed Time' by Gregor Craigie featuring an urban skyline with yellow seismic wave graphics, emphasizing themes of earthquake preparedness.

One might not think climate change influences earthquakes, and that’s not where Gregor Craigie (class of 2019) focuses his attention in On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake (Goose Lane Editions, 2021). But science acknowledges that as hurricanes, floods, and wildfires increase in frequency and severity, so too does global warming contribute to the frequency and severity of earthquakes. “As a result of the man-made global warming, the melting of land ice, mainly in Antarctica and Greenland, occurs in an accelerating process and sea levels are rising worldwide” as are increasing emissions of greenhouse gases. “Both phenomena also have an impact on earthquake risk since they lead to a small but notable increase in pressure on tectonic faults in the subsurface due to hydrostatic load….” And “sea-level fluctuations of just a few decimetres are enough to trigger earthquakes.” (https://www.gfz.de/en/press/news/details/mehr-erdbeben-durch-menschengemachten-klimawandel) Reading Craigie’s deeply researched book provides frightening insight into what can happen when the next Big One hits. 

Cover of the book 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring illustrations of various fish on a light blue background.

In Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis (ECW, 2019) Andrew Reeves (class of 2016), an award-winning environmental journalist, tackles the eponymous environmental crisis head on. When I began reading Overrun, I’d never heard of Asian crap, much less the crisis they’ve caused. But as I read Reeves’ entertaining account of how, with all good intentions, this voracious and prolific fish was introduced to control invasive water weeds in aquaculture farms in the southern US, I became increasingly aware of just how dangerous it can be to import any species of life to any part of the world where it lacks natural predators. From a few fish in the 1950s, several species of Asian carp have taken over river systems from the mouth of the Mississippi River watershed north to where they’re a handful of miles now threatening the ecology of the entire Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River system. This is what happens when humans, with all the best intentions, believe they can improve on billions of years of evolution and try to take nature into their own hands. 

Of the books I’ve reviewed to date, these three are the ones I’d recommend most highly as Earth Day reading. But they’re not the only ones to touch on environmental themes, even though the environment is not the main thrust of the book. I also highly recommend Ring of Fire: High-Stakes Mining in a Lowlands Wilderness (ECW, 2023) by Virginia Heffernan, which advocates for a different approach to resource extraction, one that is more environmentally safe and concerned with the welfare of Indigenous Peoples. The Fruitful City: The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest (ECW, 2018) by Helena Moncrieff (class of 2016) focuses predominantly on community sharing of the harvest of fruit trees within any city, but in so doing it also speaks to feed the human population by stopping our environmentally stupid wasting of nature’s bounty just because it sits on privately owned land.

Cover of the book 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful leaf illustrations and a subtitle about the urban food forest.

While Jenn Thornhill Verma’s (class of 2019) Cod Collapse: The Rise and Fall of Newfoundland’s Saltwater Cowboys (Nimbus Publishing, 2019) is a memoir of a family’s lost way of life, one that had endured for generations in many families, it’s also a tale of the consequences of overfishing, not only to the environment but to those who depend on the sea for their living. And for those of us currently living in the Pacific Northwest, it’s a cautionary tale about the way deal with dwindling salmon populations. And finally, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield Press, 2019) by Suzanne Stewart (class of 2016) is more directly about the link between different people’s food-producing labour with a particular month, it’s also a compelling series of essays about how people can and do choose to live in harmony with the seasons. And it’s hard to imagine anything more environmentally advantageous than that. 

Must-Read Books from Recent Canadian Graduates: Part 2 of The List So Far

/ Lynne Melcombe / 1 Comment

So many new authors on this list! (For comparison, see the first list here.) Congratulations to all the newly published authors (at least since the first list), to all the authors who were published long before I reviewed your books, I’m reading as fast as I can, and to all the authors who’ve been published that I still haven’t got to … I’m reading as fast as I can! And to anyone reading this, if I’ve missed anything, gotten any details wrong, or in some cases don’t know the year you graduated, please let me know. And the winners are:

(Edited to add: Apparently I missed quite a few books that should go on this list. I’ve added them at the top of the list so you won’t miss them. There have been several more deals but the books aren’t out yet and I’m unable to find complete information about them.)

Barone, Rina (class of 20??) Art Always Wins: The Chaotic World of Avant-garde Pioneer Al Hansen, (press and year?)

Jaffer, Taslim (class of 2022) with Omar Mouallem, Back Where I Came From: On Culture, Identity, and Home. Book*hug Press, 2024.

Kierans, Kim (class of 2025), Journalism for the Public Good: The Michener Awards at Fifty. Bighorn Books, 2024.

Kuzmyk, Emma (class of 2025) with Addy Strickland, This Wasn’t On the Syllabus: Stories from the Front Lines. Simon & Schuster, 2024.

McKay, Lori (class of 2020) Searching for Mayflowers: The True Story of Canada’s First Quintuplets. Nimbus Publishing, 2024.

Moore, Chris (2024) The Power of Guilt: Why We Feel It and Its Surprising Ability to Heal. HarperCollins (Canada), BenBella (US), August Books (UK), 2025.

Moscovitch, Philip (2019) Adventures in Bubbles and Brine: What I Learned from Nova Scotia’s Masters of Fermented Foods—Craft Beer, Cider, Cheese, Sauerkraut and More. Formac Publishing, 2019.

Simpson, Sharon J. (class of 2021) The Kelowna Story: An Okanagan History, 2nd Edition. Harbour Publishing, 2025.

John Larsen’s (Class of 2023 I think) book is not out yet–due in 2026 I think. 

Book cover of 'Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas' by Gloria Blizzard, featuring a colorful abstract background with wavy lines.
Book cover for 'Press Enter to Continue: Scribes from Babylon to Silicon' by Joan Francuz, featuring an image of ancient scribes on a laptop screen.
Book cover for 'The View from Coffin Ridge: A Childhood Exhumed' by Gwen Lamont featuring a black and white photograph of a corridor with scattered leaves.

Book cover design for 'The Fruitful City' by Helena Moncrieff, featuring colorful illustrations of leaves and flowers, with the subtitle 'The Enduring Power of the Urban Food Forest'.
Book cover for 'Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis' by Andrew Reeves, featuring various species of fish against a light blue background.
Book cover of 'Peace by Chocolate' by Jon Tattrie, depicting the Hadhad family by the sea, highlighting their journey from Syria to Canada.

Chasing Smoke: A Memoir of Firefighting in British Columbia’s Interior

/ Lynne Melcombe / 5 Comments

Long ago, in a previous life, I worked in archaeology. One summer in Hat Creek Valley, 26 kilometres beyond Cache Creek, BC, our 26-person crew was dawdling over breakfast when local ranchers drove by to notify us that a few small fires had broken out at the north end of the valley. Would we help put them out?

Book cover of 'Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir' by Aaron Williams, featuring a forest scene with smoke and an orange sky.

We put down our breakfast dishes, piled into our trucks, and sped off (like the heroes we thought we were) to spend the morning digging small fireguards and throwing dirt on flames that kept cropping up here and there. It was hot, hard work for a bunch of university students who spent most of our time sitting on stools in one-metre-square holes in the ground excavating millimetres at a time with trowels and paint brushes. 

I was thinking about that as I was reading Aaron Williams’s Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir (Harbour Publishing, 2017), which tells of his firefighting experience during the summer of 2014 (he’d been firefighting since 2006). Of course, there’s no comparing my miniscule experience with his, yet I can’t help thinking that the memory of how easily a single spark can jump 20 metres, or a small flame can travel underground along a tree root and pop up 10 metres away gives me a tiny bit of perspective on what real forest-firefighters are up against. 

Chasing Smoke provides insight into how firefighting works, why forest fires have been getting worse with climate change, and what the whole experience of firefighting is like, from a brutal training camp in May to sheer exhaustion in August. The author’s descriptions of fire are intensely visual:

A thunderstorm approaches. Little pockets of fire, previously resting in the moss, are brought to life by the strong winds preceding the downpour. The flames look tenacious under the dark clouds. I stand and watch a pocket of heat thrash around as it starts spitting rain. The flames, billowing and wide on the forest floor, find a spruce tree. One more kill before they lose the battle to the rain. 

The fire grabs on to the spruce and its lower limbs being to sizzle. Flames climb the tree and when they reach the top they balloon out, feasting on the fat clump of recent growth crowding the tree’s peak. The fire burns slow up there and the rest of the tree cools down and fades to a less intense orange. But the top still burns bright, the colour of a street light against the storm.

Many moments in this memoir are reminders that this work is decidedly dangerous:

Trees start coming down like I’ve never seen before. They’re limbless save for their very tops, where wind catches the foliage and pushes the tree over. … 

At first I’m calm as the trees fall. But suddenly a mess of wood, bent horizontal and cribbed into the trees above us, comes down in a rush of a hundred machine-gun snaps. Trees caught in the nest flail around before hitting the ground. Our eyes dart everywhere, trying to keep track of every moment. Trees break free and swing themselves like catapults. Splintered chunks of wood slash through the air like propellers. Tabes and I look in opposite directions, standing guard for each other. We don’t dare move, as that would take our complete focus from the storm of debris. 

As soon as it’s over I turn to Tabes. “Fuck this, let’s get out of here.” 

For all its intensity, though, Chasing Smoke is also an entertaining read. Williams has a sardonic sense of humour and laughs at himself and his crew at least once every few pages:

Dan holds the after-work meeting while we grill the steaks. The crew is paying more attention to us than to Dan’s end-of-day spiel. The pressure of getting the meat right is immense. Is it too rare? Or the ultimate shame—is it too cooked? It turns out fine, and Tabe and I share a moment when it’s all done. A stern nod to each other acknowledges that our integrity as men has never been stronger.

This was one of the first books I read when I decided to pursue this project of working my way through and reviewing all the books published by alumni of University of King’s College’s MFA program in Creative Nonfiction Writing. And it’s a great example of why I keep coming back for more. 

Books on different types of disasters:

On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake, by Gregor Craigie.

Overrun: Dispatches from the Asian Carp Crisis, by Andrew Reeves.

Fifteen Thousand Pieces: A Medical Examiner’s Journey Through Disaster, by Gina Leola Woolsey.