....to my website! I'm glad you found it.
In this website you’ll find news, a bio, interviews, reviews, and information on what I've been publishing recently and how to buy my books. I will also be posting info on the work of writers I admire, and periodic thoughts on the art and craft of fiction.
Flannery O'Connor described fiction as both canny and uncanny. And I think that is my favorite adage for this most exacting, frustrating and satisfying art. It is a craft -- but it is also a mystery, and the interweaving of these two aspects create, at least for me, the fascination that keeps me going.
If you’d like information for your bookclub, please visit Random House’s bookclubs.ca
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Featured News
Two Friends on Roncesvalles
How exciting to wander into Another Story Books on Roncesvalles Avenue in Toronto and see my friend Caroline Adderson's brilliant new novel, The Sky is Falling featured prominently on the bookshelves.I last saw this book in manuscript form, as Caroline and I discussed the details of her layered plot while drinking wine at the Copper Tank in Vancouver. I immediately bought a copy for my friend Eva Stachniak and gave it to her at lunch (Eva is another wonderful writer -- her book, My Catherine, is being published this spring with Bantam and Doubleday.) Caroline's new novel -- which recreates the passions and terrors of a group of Vancouver peace activists in the 1980s -- is wise, poignant and scathingly funny.
October, 2010
The Vancouver Writers Festival is gearing up again and the lineup of authors looks exciting. I will moderate two sessions: "Suffer the Little Children" -- with Kathleen Winter, Robert Weirsema, Pascale Quiviger and Emma Donaghue (Wed Oct 20,8:00 pm Waterfront Theatre), and "Raw Material," featuring Charlotte Gray, Jack Hodgins, Don McKay, and Terence Young (Friday Oct 22, Revue Stage, 10:00-11:30).
September, 2010
I will be reading new work at the Rhizome Cafe, 317 East Broadway, Thursday September 9th at 7:00 pm. As part of the Writers Studio reading series.
January, 2011
Shaena will be mentoring Vancouver writers and teaching fiction in 2011 through The Writers' Studio at Simon Fraser University. For more information, visit the Writers' Studio website.
October, 2010
Two of Shaena's short stories -- "A Wandering Bird" and "A Small Haunting" -- have been selected by editor John Metcalf for Best Canadian Stories (2010, 2011). Best Canadian Stories is an annual anthology produced by Oberon Press of the best fiction published in Canada each year. "A Wandering Bird" originally appeared in The New Quarterly. "A Small Haunting" was published in Zoetrope: All Story.
July, 2010
Look for Shaena’s short story, The Cage, in this month's Vancouver Review.
November, 2009
Shaena was one of three judges for the 2009 Governor General's Award in Fiction, along with Judy Fong Bates and Wayne Johnstone. The short list was: Michael Crummey's Galore, The Golden Mean, by Annabel Lyon, Deborah Willis's story collection, Vanishing, Alice Munro's collection, Too Much Happiness and Kate Pullinger's The Mistress of Nothing. Read these wonderful books! Kate Pullinger's novel was chosen as this year's GG winner.
September, 2009
Georgia Strait Alliance
Shaena recently joined the board of the Georgia Strait Alliance, the only organization dedicated solely to protecting the Georgia Strait -- a beautiful body of water between Vancouver Island and the coastal mainland. It is the most diverse ecosystem anywhere on the west coast of North America, containing the Fraser River with its huge salmon runs, estuaries on the flight paths of the snowgeese and western sandpipers, and an aquatic home for the pacific octopus, wolf eel and orca. For more info, visit the GSA website.
