Northwords

By Joseph Boyden, Noah Richler, Sarah Leavitt and 3 more

Northwords is a cross-platform project that takes urban Canadian writers Joseph Boyden, Sarah Leavitt, Rabindranth Maharaj, Noah Richler, and Alissa York to some of the world’s most extreme environments, to join the conversation about the north.

Introduced by award-winning journalist and radio personality Shelagh Rogers, Northwords is a collection of stories written by acclaimed Canadian authors as they experienced one of Canada’s most awe-inspiring northern national parks Torngat Mountains National Park, the country’s newest national park, and a place steeped in geological and human history. The cross-platform project, which includes a documentary film that follows the authors as they explored the harsh and stunning terrain, had adventures, and created these new works, adds to the continuing story of the North. The stories explore the idea of the North, and what happens when the country’s best writers tackle its most overwhelmingly beautiful places.

Taking advantage of opportunities presented by transmedia integration, users can experience the stories in the writers’ own words through Anansi Digital, as well as learn more about their processes and what inspired them through interactive content. Users will have access to film and audio content, and together, these related media will create a larger story web, allowing the audience to truly immerse themselves in the sights, sounds, and stories of the North.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anansi Digital
• Release date: Oct 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781770893399

Joseph Boyden

Joseph Boyden is the Scotiabank Giller Prize–winning author of Three Day Road and Through Black Spruce.

Book preview

Northwords_cover_final.jpgNorthwords Title Page

Proceeds from the sale of this ebook will benefit

Peter Gzowski’s PGIs for Literacy charity

Copyright © 2011 Joseph Boyden, Sarah Leavitt,

Rabindranth Maharaj, Noah Richler, and Alissa York

Introduction copyright © 2012 Shelagh Rogers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Distribution of this electronic edition via the Internet or any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal. Please do not participate in electronic piracy of copyrighted material; purchase only authorized electronic editions. We appreciate your support of the author’s rights.

This edition published in 2012 by

House of Anansi Press Inc.

110 Spadina Avenue, Suite 801

Toronto, ON, M5V 2K4

Tel. [phone]

Fax [phone]

www.houseofanansi.com

ISBN 978-1-77089-339-9

Cover and ebook design: Erin Mallory

Cover illustration: Sarah Leavitt

All photographs © Joel McConvey

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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund.

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Produced in cooperation with www.filmcan.org

filmCAN_NPP_Films-logo.jpg

These stories were written as part of a project called Northwords, which saw the broadcast-journalist Shelagh Rogers take a group of five writers to Torngat Mountains National Park. A documentary crew filmed the writers, and Shelagh interviewed them in this breathtaking setting. She challenged each of them to write a new story responding to the land and their experiences there.

For more information about the Northwords project and to connect with the project’s interactive website, go to www.northwordscanada.ca. If you are reading this on an interactive device, you can click play below to watch the trailer for the feature length documentary.

Map of Torngat Mountains National Park

INTRODUCTION

By Shelagh Rogers

The e-book before you had very watery beginnings. In the summer of 2010, I was swimming in Bonne Bay, Gros Morne National Park, with my friend Jeff Anderson. Jeff is the Superintendent for the national parks of Western Newfoundland and Labrador. As we were treading water, Jeff talked about how 2011 was the centenary of Canada’s national parks service, the very first national parks service in the world, and he asked me what idea I might have for a celebration. Well, I said, what if we take a group of authors who live in big cities, and smuggle them off to the wilderness for a week. We’d make them write a new story responding to the land and their experiences there...follow them around with a recorder and, well, I could make a radio documentary about what triggers the creative process. This was just off the