Making Waves (Paperback)

Literary Nonfiction. Essays. Recommended by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. MAKING WAVES offers a mosaic of fresh approaches toward shaping a new "literacy of place"—a more coherent understanding of British Columbia and Pacific Northwest literature in the 21st century. Providing new insights into how vividly local—but never far removed from cosmopolitan developments—the region's literary production has been, the collection features archival references to a constellation of the area's essential literary figures. The fifteen essays by established and newer voices examine creation myths among West Coast literary institutions, gender roles, and ethnicity in the region's expanding literary community, critical challenges to nationalist and ecological traditions, and also pay homage to some of our celebrated elders, including Earle Birney, George Woodcock, Robin Blaser, and P.K. Page, among many others from the 1950s onward. Features essays by Carolyn Zonailo, George Mcwhirter, Judith Copithorne, Susan Mccaslin, Hilary Turner, Joseph Blake, Michael Barnholden, Colin James Sanders, Mike Doyle, Frances Cabahug, Paul Falardeau, Chelsea Thornton, Martin Van Woudenberg, Ron Dart, and Trevor Carolan.

"As the planet goes through unprecedented climate chaos brought on by rampant materialism, the Newtonian-Cartesian ethos of reductionism, and the abandonment of the sacred, it will be the ethos represented well in many essays of MAKING WAVES that survives. In the editor's parlance, it is a 'Dharma Citizenship' that must take root... MAKING WAVES is a primer into the quickly maturing regional literature that can lead a new global culture deeply into this Third Millennium."—Paul Nelson, Pacific Rim Review of Books

"The book is a welcome addition to a burgeoning field and an instigation to further critical inquiry into multiple literary traditions of the Northwest."—Prairie Fire

"MAKING WAVES is... most useful in its privileging of the 'North-South' relationship between BC and the American Northwest as an area of study worthy of critical consideration that stretches across national borders... Joseph Blake's interview with a candid P.K. Page in the final year of her life stands out for its intrinsic value to scholars interested in Canadian modernism and literary community."—Canadian Literature

"...fantastic work contained in MAKING WAVES; the information contained in each piece is eye opening. The different voices that come out of each essay offer an intriguing look into the many different areas of literature in BC and the Northwest United States. This book will surely serve as a stepping stone for a more widespread appreciation of the regions talent."—The Cascade

A frequent collaborator with Canadian visual artists, composers and musicians, Trevor Carolan writes internationally on East-West humanities and Buddhism. He currently teaches Asia-Canada studies at Simon Fraser University.