Wayne Curtis
Categories: Male Authors - Anglophone Authors - Poets - Novelists - Authors of Non-Fiction - Miramichi River
Source: Author
Biography
Wayne Curtis was born near Blackville, New Brunswick, in 1943. He was educated at the local schoolhouse and St. Thomas University majoring in English. He started writing prose in the late sixties. His work has been described by Books in Canada, as “A pleasure to read, for no detail escapes his discerning eye.” He has won the David Adams Richards Award for short fiction as well as the George Woodcock Award and A and B grants from NB Arts Board, and the Canada Council. He has been a contributor to several newspapers including The National Post and The Globe and Mail as well as commercial magazines; Quill and Quire, Outdoor Canada, The Fly Fisherman (USA), Atlantic Insight, The Atlantic Advocate and The Atlantic Salmon Journal. His stories have appeared in literary journals; The Fiddlehead, The Cormorant, Pottersfield Portfolio, Nashwaak Review, Antigonish Review, Origins Literary Journal, New Brunswick Reader, New Maritimes and in the anthology Atlantica. His short stories have been dramatized on CBC radio and for CBC television. In the spring of 2005 Wayne Curtis received an Honorary Doctorate of Letters from St. Thomas University. He has lived in southern Ontario, the Yukon and Cuba. He currently divides his time between the Miramichi River and Fredericton, New Brunswick.
How has New Brunswick influenced your work?
I am steeped in the landscape of New Brunswick and so I write about how the land is a part of my soul and vice versa. I am, in truth, a landscape artist. And according to David Adams Richards, the best one in Canada. I feel that we are a part of the landscape and as country people, this landscape becomes a part of our soul. I believe that in this day of virtual reality, and the frivolous and unearthy stories that are coming forth out of our urban cell-phone world, someone has got to express the true feelings of the people of the land and in New Brunswick, I am that man.
What do you consider to be the highlight of your career so far?
I consider the Honorary Degree I received from St. Thomas University to be the highlight of my career so far.
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Literary Prizes |
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| Honorary Doctorate, St.Thomas University - 2005 | |
| New Brunswick Arts Board Creation Grants “B” | |
| New Brunswick Arts Board Creation Grants “A” | |
| Writer in Residence at Berton House, Dawson City, Yukon | |
| George Woodcock Award | |
| The David Adams Richards Prize for Short Fiction |
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Featured Publication |
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Wild Apples: Field Notes from a River Farm (2006) |
Excerpt: Everyone knew the brooks had a life of their own: the smells, tastes, and sounds were an extension of their very existence, and our lifeblood. These were the badlands where spider webs stretched between rushes like miniature hammocks from trees, where globs of frog spawn lay on the surface in patches of transparent salted jelly studded with little wiggly eyes, and where polliwogs scampered to rile the rose-hip leafed bottom. This was where the willow, juniper, and black alder grew, and the tiger lily and the lupine took root, blossomed, matured in many different directions because of the freedom they had beyond the perimeters of the cultivated land. These were plants that had to be trashed before their ungoverned nature crept into the sowing and spread like mysticism, and with perhaps a little trickery, unnoticed, until the farm had returned to the wilds once more, the labour of generations overtaken by the rushes of bad seed. Wild Apples, "Mowing the Brooks" (p. 52) |
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Find this author in the New Brunswick public libraries catalogue.
Source(s): Author
