Art, Literature, and Literary Criticism
Our Newest Releases
Buy Now From CommonWord |
New & Selected PoemsSarah Klassen Watch the livestream of the June 1 launch at McNally Robinson Booksellers In this inaugural volume of the Lyrik Poetry Series, honouring Canada’s foremost Mennonite poets, CMU Press presents the finest work, past and present, of Manitoba’s wonderful Sarah Klassen, who has been publishing poetry since her award-winning first collection in 1988, Journey to Yalta. In a long and distinguished poetry career, Klassen has explored hope and suffering, language and its limits, movement and stillness—always inviting readers into her care. Including an introduction by editor Nathan Dueck and an afterword by the poet, this volume presents new and uncollected poems as well as a generous selection from Sarah Klassen’s eight books of poetry. Full of faith, curiosity, and surprise, these poems offer readers grace and insight at every turn. Sarah Klassen was born in Manitoba in 1932. A Winnipeg English teacher for many years, she also taught in Lithuania and Ukraine. Her poetry has received two National Magazine Poetry Awards, one silver, one gold. In 2017 Sarah Klassen was shortlisted for the Mitchell Prize for Faith and Poetry, and she has won a Word Guild Award, a Canadian Authors Association prize, and a High Plains book award. Her published work includes eight poetry collections and four books of fiction. Lyrik series editor Nathan Dueck is the author of three collections of poetry, king’s(mère) (2003), he’ll (2014), and A Very Special Episode (2019). Raised in Manitoba, he did his BA and MA in English at the University of Manitoba, and in 2009 received his doctorate from the University of Calgary. He teaches English and Creative Writing at College of the Rockies in British Columbia. His next book is the creative memoir 1979-, to be published in fall 2024.
|
Buy Now From CommonWord |
Ice: Moments
|
BUY NOW |
Half price during our Summer Sale (until Aug 30, no returns): On Mennonite/s Writing
|
Hildi Froese Tiessen lives in Kitchener, Ontario. Raised in Manitoba, she earned her BA at University of Winnipeg and MA and PhD at University of Alberta. She taught English and Peace & Conflict Studies (1987–2012) at Conrad Grebel University College, University of Waterloo, where she also served as academic dean. Before her retirement she was literary editor of Conrad Grebel Review and on the editorial board of Rhubarb magazine. She is the editor of Liars and Rascals (1989), an anthology of short fiction by Mennonite authors, and also 11 Encounters with Mennonite Fiction (2017). With Paul Tiessen, she is the editor of After Green Gables: L.M. Montgomery’s Letters to Ephraim Weber (2006). Editor Robert Zacharias teaches at Toronto’s York University. He is the author of Reading Mennonite Writing: A Study in Minor Transnationalism (2022) and Rewriting the Break Event: Mennonites and Migration in Canadian Literature (2013); he is also the editor of After Identity: Mennonite Writing in North America (2015).
|
BUY NOW |
Wonder-WorkSelected Sonnets of Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg POETRY / LITERATURE IN TRANSLATION / 17th CENTURY STUDIES November 2023 | 168 pages | 5½ x 8 paper | $30.00 Poetry Silver Medalist, Illumination Christian Book Awards 2024 An unusual poet from the Baroque period meets 21st century poet-translators in this exceptional book. Catharina Regina von Greiffenberg's intense devotional poems are matched with innovative and moving new English versions from Canadians Epp, Ito, and Klassen. This is astonishing Metaphysical poetry: original, provocative, reverent. The translators have chosen 65 poems from 300 in Greiffenberg's best-known work, Geistliche Sonette, Lieder und Gedichte. The sonnets in Wonder-Work are presented in both German and English. |
Buy Now from CommonWord |
The Russian Daughter
|
Buy Now from CommonWord |
Half price during our Summer Sale (until Aug 30, no returns): Return Stroke: essays & memoirDora Dueck
2022 | 248 pages | 6 x 9 paper | Book Club Discussion Questions These graceful, probing personal essays by award-winning fiction writer Dora Dueck engage with a diverse range of ideas (becoming a writer, motherhood, mortality, the ethics of biography, a child's coming-out) because in non-fiction, she writes, “the quest for meaning bows to the experience as it was.” Yet within Return Stroke, one theme in particular does resonate—change. “How wonderful,” the author writes, that our “bits of existence, no matter how ordinary, are available for further consideration—seeing patterns, facing into inevitable death, enjoying the playful circularity of then and now.” The book’s title, Return Stroke—the title of one essay, where it literally refers to lightning—suggests such a dynamic: “When I send inquiry into my past, it sends something back to me.” The topic of memory, in all its malleability, impermanence, and surprising power, is especially central to the collection’s concluding piece, an absorbing memoir of the author’s 1980s life in the Paraguayan Chaco. Whether she is discovering the more meaningful part that imagination holds within her religious faith or relating with astonishing clarity and honesty the experience of giving birth away from her home country, Dora Dueck’s beautifully written essays and memoir make her an insightful and generous companion.
Dora Dueck is the author of four books of fiction, All That Belongs (2019), What You Get At Home (2013), This Hidden Thing (2010), and Under the Still Standing Sun (1989). Her novella “Mask” won the 2014 Malahat Review novella contest. This Hidden Thing was Book of the Year at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards, while What You Get at Home won the High Plains Award for short fiction. A lay historian and former editor, Dueck grew up in Alberta, resided later in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, and Paraguay, and has retired to British Columbia. She and her late husband Helmut have three children and ten grandchildren. You can find Dora’s writing on her Borrowing Bones blog. If you're in the USA, order from Bookshop.org: |
Backlist Art, Literature, and Literary Criticism
BUY NOW |
To and From Nowhere: A Biographical NovelThe Conclusion of Favoured Among Women Book Club Discussion Questions What terrible storms they have in this place, Greta thought, her skin screaming a silent protest, her eyes blind against the driving snow. "Where are we?" she called into the wind, but her words were swept behind her. In this gripping and moving novel, Greta and her family, treated as "non-existent" along with thousands of Russian Germans, Mennonites, and other ethnic groups displaced by Stalin, struggle to exist in the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1976. Based on painstaking historical research and interviews with Greta's family, To and From Nowhere tells a harrowing and beautiful story in the unusual style that author Hedy Martens has fused, combining narrative, biography, poetry, history, and personal reflection. |
BUY NOW |
Favoured Among Women: A Biographical NovelHedy Leonora Martens Book Club Discussion Questions
This vibrant and unusual re-creation of one woman's life is the result of years of painstaking research and interviews. Favoured among Women combines biography, personal reflection, poetry, historical commentary, and (above all) vivid storytelling. We meet Greta Enns as a curious, observant, and compassionate child born in peaceful times which are soon torn asunder. Her life becomes one of hardship and the utter confusion of war, but one also marked by profound religious hope, as well as love and joy. Hedy Leonora Martens has written a novel both epic and intimate, dramatically presenting daily life in Leninist and Stalinist Russia in the first decades of the twentieth century. |
BUY NOW |
This Hidden ThingDora Dueck Book Club Discussion Questions
The young woman standing at the back door of the prosperous Winnipeg house that cold day in 1927 knew she had to have work. An immigrant, she needed to help her family. But she had no idea, when she finally got inside the house to be a domestic, that her experiences there would mark her for the rest of her life. This Hidden Thing reminds us how dangerous and powerful secrets can be. This is a lyrical and moving novel that offers one woman's compelling, ordinary, and surprising life. Dora Dueck is author of the novels Under the Still Standing Sun and All That Belongs and the short story collection What You Get At Home (winner of the High Plains Book Award). In 2014 she was the winner of the Malahat Review Novella Prize. Her most recent book is the creative non-fiction collection Return Stroke, also available from CMU Press. She lives in British Columbia. |
BUY NOW |
West of Eden: Essays on Canadian Prairie LiteratureSue Sorensen, Editor
These 17 essays ponder the character of prairie literature. What is prairie literature now, what has it been, and what is its future? That the prairies are "west of Eden" is an idea only, and a somewhat mischievous one. Is this spot distant from the glory of the garden? Writers have often pondered the ambiguous sanctity of the prairies, while those who recruited settlers certainly exploited the notion. These varied essays engage with Margaret Laurence, Rudy Wiebe, and Neil Young. They present analysis of NFB films and the gopher as icon. Here are strategies for teaching and views of the Canadian prairies from abroad. This is a significant collection of fresh views of prairie literature. |
BUY NOW |
On the Zwieback TrailA Russian Mennonite Alphabet of Stories, Recipes and Historic Events On the Zwieback Trail is a delightful and informative children's alphabet book of Russian Mennonite history, lovingly assembled as attractive collages of artefacts, historical narratives, photographs, recipes, and personal anecdotes of the past. Every page has something new to offer—whether it's the meaning of the word "Anabaptist", the role tractors played in the story of Mennonite Central Committee, or a delicious recipe for fluffy zwieback, this alphabet book is sure to charm and educate children and adults alike.
|
BUY NOW |
A World of Faith & Spirituality: Yours, Mine, Theirs & OursDiversity in ManitobaManju Lodha, Ray Dirks 2022 | 214 pages | hardcover | $35.00 includes DVD Leap in Faith A co-publication with MHC Gallery Discover the many faith traditions of Manitoba through stories and art. Featuring Indigenous Spirituality, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, the Bahá?í Faith, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, and Unitarian Universalism. Artists Manju Lodha and Ray Dirks explore friendships across many enriching cultures and spiritual practices. A richly illustrated book for youth and adults learning about diversity in Canadian faith communities. |
BUY NOW |
Along the Road to Freedom: Mennonite Women of Courage and FaithRay Dirks 2017 | 132 pages | hardcover | $35.00 A co-publication with MHC Gallery In story paintings and words Along the Road to Freedom follows the journeys of mothers and grandmothers, mostly widowed, who led or attempted to lead families out of the former Soviet Union to peace, freedom, and safety in Canada—primarily during the chaotic aftermath of the Russian Revolution and in the midst of World War II. |