The Journey Prize Stories 30 Read online

  WINNERS OF THE $10,000 JOURNEY PRIZE

  1989: Holley Rubinsky for “Rapid Transits”

  1990: Cynthia Flood for “My Father Took a Cake to France”

  1991: Yann Martel for “The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios”

  1992: Rozena Maart for “No Rosa, No District Six”

  1993: Gayla Reid for “Sister Doyle’s Men”

  1994: Melissa Hardy for “Long Man the River”

  1995: Kathryn Woodward for “Of Marranos and Gilded Angels”

  1996: Elyse Gasco for “Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby?”

  1997 (shared): Gabriella Goliger for “Maladies of the Inner Ear”

  Anne Simpson for “Dreaming Snow”

  1998: John Brooke for “The Finer Points of Apples”

  1999: Alissa York for “The Back of the Bear’s Mouth”

  2000: Timothy Taylor for “Doves of Townsend”

  2001: Kevin Armstrong for “The Cane Field”

  2002: Jocelyn Brown for “Miss Canada”

  2003: Jessica Grant for “My Husband’s Jump”

  2004: Devin Krukoff for “The Last Spark”

  2005: Matt Shaw for “Matchbook for a Mother’s Hair”

  2006: Heather Birrell for “BriannaSusannaAlana”

  2007: Craig Boyko for “OZY”

  2008: Saleema Nawaz for “My Three Girls”

  2009: Yasuko Thanh for “Floating Like the Dead”

  2010: Devon Code for “Uncle Oscar”

  2011: Miranda Hill for “Petitions to Saint Chronic”

  2012: Alex Pugsley for “Crisis on Earth-X”

  2013: Naben Ruthnum for “Cinema Rex”

  2014: Tyler Keevil for “Sealskin”

  2015: Deirdre Dore for “The Wise Baby”

  2016: Colette Langlois for “The Emigrants”

  2017: Sharon Bala for “Butter Tea at Starbucks”

  Copyright © 2018 by McClelland & Stewart

  “Mute” © Shashi Bhat; “Bear” © Greg Brown; “Love” © Greg Brown; “Tracks” © Alicia Elliott; “Never Prosper” © Liz Harmer; “The Forbidden Purple City” © Philip Huynh; “Before He Left” © Jason Jobin; “Barcelona” © Aviva Dale Martin; “Castaways” © Rowan McCandless; “Desperada” © Sofia Mostaghimi; “Two Sex Addicts Fall in Love” © Jess Taylor; “A Separation” © Iryn Tushabe; “Resurfacing” © Carly Vandergriendt.

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication is available upon request

  The lines here are from The Tale of Kieu by Nguyen Du, as translated by Cam-Loi Huynh.

  The epigraph to “Never Prosper” is from the piece “Nervous Splendor” by Anthony Gottlieb, published in the April 9 issue of The New Yorker.

  Published simultaneously in the United States of America by McClelland & Stewart, a Penguin Random House Company

  Library of Congress Control Number is available upon request

  ISBN: 9780771050756

  Ebook ISBN 9780771050763

  Cover design: Leah Springate

  Cover art: © rusm/E+/Getty Images

  McClelland & Stewart,

  a division of Penguin Random House Canada Limited,

  a Penguin Random House Company

  www.penguinrandomhouse.ca

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  ABOUT THE JOURNEY PRIZE STORIES

  The $10,000 Journey Prize is awarded annually to an emerging writer of distinction. This award, now in its thirtieth year, and given for the eighteenth time in association with the Writers’ Trust of Canada as the Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, is made possible by James A. Michener’s generous donation of his Canadian royalty earnings from his novel Journey, published by McClelland & Stewart in 1988. The Journey Prize itself is the most significant monetary award given in Canada to a developing writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work in progress. The winner of this year’s Journey Prize will be selected from among the thirteen stories in this book.

  The Journey Prize Stories has established itself as the most prestigious annual fiction anthology in the country, introducing readers to the finest new literary writers from coast to coast for three decades. It has become a who’s who of up-and-coming writers, and many of the authors who have appeared in the anthology’s pages have gone on to distinguish themselves with short story collections, novels, and literary awards. The anthology comprises a selection from submissions made by the editors of literary journals and annual anthologies from across the country, who have chosen what, in their view, is the most exciting writing in English that they have published in the previous year. In recognition of the vital role journals play in fostering literary voices, McClelland & Stewart makes its own award of $2,000 to the journal or anthology that originally published and submitted the winning entry.

  This year the selection jury comprised three acclaimed writers:

  Sharon Bala lives in St. John’s, where she is a member of The Port Authority writing group. In 2017, two of her short stories were included in The Journey Prize Stories 29, and her story “Butter Tea at Starbucks” went on to win the Writers’ Trust / McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Her debut novel, The Boat People, was a #1 national bestseller and was a finalist for CBC’s Canada Reads and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Please visit SharonBala.com.

  Kerry Clare is a National Magazine Award-nominated writer, editor of The M Word: Conversations About Motherhood, and author of the novel Mitzi Bytes. She is the editor of the Canadian books website 49thShelf.com, and has been writing about books and reading on her blog, Pickle Me This, for more than a decade.

  Zoey Leigh Peterson was born in England, grew up in the United States, and has spent most of her adult life in Canada. Her fiction has appeared in The Walrus, EVENT, Grain, PRISM international, and has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories and Best Canadian Stories. She is the recipient of the Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction and the Peter Hinchcliffe Fiction Award. Her debut novel, Next Year, For Sure, was longlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize and shortlisted for the BC Book Prize’s Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and a Lambda Literary Award.

  The jury read a total of one hundred submissions without knowing the names of the authors or those of the publications in which the stories originally appeared. McClelland & Stewart would like to thank the jury for their efforts in selecting this year’s anthology and, ultimately, the winner of this year’s Journey Prize.

  McClelland & Stewart would also like to acknowledge the continuing enthusiastic support of writers, literary editors, and the public in the common celebration of new voices in Canadian fiction.

  For more information about The Journey Prize Stories, please visit www.facebook.com/​TheJourneyPrize.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Winners of the $10,000 Journey Prize

  Title Page

  Copyright

  About the Journey Prize Stories

  Introduction

  AVIVA DALE MARTIN

  “Barcelona”

  (from PRISM international)

  ROWAN McCANDLESS

  “Castaways”

  (from Prairie Fire)

  SHASHI BHAT

  “Mute”

  (from The Dalhousie Review)

  GREG BROWN

  “Bear”


  (from Pulp Literature)

  ALICIA ELLIOTT

  “Tracks”

  (from The New Quarterly)

  JASON JOBIN

  “Before He Left”

  (from The Malahat Review)

  SOFIA MOSTAGHIMI

  “Desperada”

  (from This Magazine)

  PHILIP HUYNH

  “The Forbidden Purple City”

  (from EVENT)

  JESS TAYLOR

  “Two Sex Addicts Fall in Love”

  (from This Magazine)

  IRYN TUSHABE

  “A Separation”

  (from CVC Anthology Series)

  CARLY VANDERGRIENDT

  “Resurfacing”

  (from CVC Anthology Series)

  GREG BROWN

  “Love”

  (from Pulp Literature)

  LIZ HARMER

  “Never Prosper”

  (from The New Quarterly)

  About the Contributors

  About the Contributing Publications

  Previous Contributing Authors

  INTRODUCTION

  A package arrived in the mail. Inside: exactly one hundred short stories with the authors’ names blacked out. Our job was to read them all and choose the very best for inclusion in the thirtieth edition of The Journey Prize Stories. The instructions were straightforward. The decisions were not.

  One hundred disparate works of art, each a unique specimen with its own plot, characters, and style. What does it mean to be “the best”? Does it mean the most accomplished? The most original? The most ambitious? The most important or timely?

  One requirement that was immediately obvious: the narrative of the story had to pull us in and keep us asking, “What happens next?” Crisp prose was desirable, of course, and deep emotion very welcome. But first and foremost, a story had to excite our curiosity and grip it to the end.

  It also had to show us something new and, paradoxically, something old, something we recognized from the world. The stories that delighted us were ones that recast the familiar—stories that took an emotion, place, or theme we knew well and turned it to show us a new angle. Regina through the eyes of a student from Uganda; a mercurial friendship between two older women; being lost in the woods inside a bear that isn’t a bear; a story that name drops Cheever in the first paragraph, then veers in a direction Cheever would never have gone.

  To be clear: we three jurors did not always see eye to eye, at least not on the first read. However, as we debated and reconsidered, our opinions shifted and coalesced. Unsurprisingly, the stories that emerged as our unanimous selections were ones that reward re-examination—tales so rich they reveal new insights on second, third, and even fourth reads.

  This process of discussing and engaging and, ultimately, selecting has made us increasingly thoughtful and critical readers. As we whittled down the selections, we were forced to interrogate not just the stories, but also our own aesthetic preferences and biases. The thirteen that remain came through this crucible unscathed.

  In this collection, you will find stories set in Vietnam and Spain and California, in a suburban strip mall in the Prairies, and at track level in a Toronto subway station. Some are minimalist, spare in detail but rich in emotional truth. Others are densely written, full of startling metaphor and image. There is birth. There is death. Also: love triangles, parental anxiety, betrayal, grief, adventure, unexpected moments of levity, and arresting dialogue. All are thoughtful explorations of what it means to be alive, rendered with inquisitiveness, insight, and uncertainty.

  Yes, these stories are suspended in uncertainty—about what, exactly, has happened; about whose point of view is reliable; about what conclusions we might draw at a story’s end. At times, this can be unsettling for the characters and readers alike. But these thirteen stories also underline the expansive potential of uncertainty, which requires one to reach beyond the limits of their knowledge, and demands an openness to asking questions, considering different answers, and finding new possibilities in mutability.

  For the past three decades, the Journey Prize anthology has been a harbinger, a sampling of the literary talent emerging in this country. This year in particular, as Canadian literature struggles to dismantle what is broken and rebuild a better, stronger culture from within, it is heartening to read the stories in this collection, each one meticulously crafted and told with precision and care. These stories and their authors, with their assured new voices, represent the future of literature in this country. And the future is hopeful.

  Sharon Bala

  Kerry Clare

  Zoey Leigh Peterson

  May 2018

  AVIVA DALE MARTIN

  BARCELONA

  You call and tell me you have a flat in Barcelona for the month of August. In September you will be renting a car to drive to France.

  Join me in Spain. Join me in France.

  I was hoping to stay home and swim at the beach this newly retired summer. And paint a large canvas in my backyard.

  But

  Free lodging. Sharing car expenses.

  You can’t miss this opportunity, you tell me.

  I can’t.

  While I try to salvage something of my summer plans, you go ahead of me. I swim every day in cool Pacific waters but never get to the canvas. Instead there is organizing and arranging and packing to do.

  * * *

  —

  You meet me at Plaza Sant Jaume after you have waited in midday heat for two hours. You lead me to our flat. My jetlagged mind flickers with images of stone walls and window pots. My suitcase rolls and jumps behind me, sending messages from antiquity through my body. Time travel.

  We have walked to Barcelona’s nude beach. We place our sarongs on the sand amid swimmers and sunbathers who wear bottoms or bikinis or nothing at all. You wear nothing at all. You are tall and slim and your wispy, layered blond hair sweeps your face. One of your nipples has a bright pinkish scar beneath it from the lumpectomy you had in the spring. Even naked you stand with poise, graceful. Even naked at seventy-two, you are elegant.

  I want to hide in my clothes. But I take them off to reveal sagging skin and breasts that drop to my waist. A pronounced curve in my spine raises one hip almost an inch above the other. Exposed, I walk to the water’s edge. And enter. The warm Mediterranean Sea is my sanctuary.

  You were so happy to see me. You’d put food in the fridge: oranges, cheeses, bread, wine. You’d spent days washing the floors, my bedding, making a place for my stuff. You squeezed orange juice for my breakfast.

  We sit at the table mornings and evenings and talk for hours. You tell me about your previous travels in Spain and Italy and Turkey. And stories from your three weeks here before I arrived. You show me the blouse you bought at the Miró museum and the silk scarves from the Picasso. You read to me from the travel books you have carted with you.

  The route from my room to the toilet takes me past your bed but you are a light sleeper and you do not want me to leave my room. You hand me a yellow bucket to pee into. At four in the morning, I am still awake with jetlag and the eight-hour time change and the bucket is almost full. I take a sleeping pill.

  * * *

  —

  You are so eager to show me the Barcelona you have discovered. Everything is new and rich to me. Everything is old and familiar to you. You lead me along your preferred routes, pointing out things you love: your favourite cafe, the enormous Lichtenstein sculpture on our way to the beach, the outdoor market where you bought your sarong. As we walk you tell me more stories of your adventures here and point to what I should notice. I look past your stories to the flower boxes and floating curtains that decorate windows. I finger the ancient stones in the high wall bordering the courtyard at the end of our street, stopping to follow cracks and mortar, up, up, with my eyes.

  Your voice surrounds me like gauze, separating me from my journey. You are telling me about the kitten that lives down that street. Let’s go that way t
o find it. Your words pull me away from the cathedral at the end of the block. We stop for you to caress every animal we meet. You have long talks with the dogs and their owners while I try to break away, to find my own experience. When we locate the cat, you grin up at me seeking my collusion. I watch you caress the animal, silent about my aversion to pets.

  My arm is sore from trying to unlock the door to our apartment. You have tried to teach me how: push the key in, turn it, pull it halfway back, turn it the rest of the way while pushing the door with the other hand. You are not impatient, assuring me that it took you days to get it. We mount the sixty-four breathless stairs and I sink when you hand me the key to attempt it again. I know it won’t work but if I say that you’ll blame my negative thoughts for my failure.

  Because I can’t open the door to our apartment I have to stay with you when we go out. I have to listen to your continuous stories, your impressions that block out my own. Your favourite routes are not the shortest. You want to walk and walk and walk, and I follow, my back sore. You show concern for my back pain but continue to lead me on the longest course. I want to stop and rest and see the street musicians, Spanish guitar, flamenco. You stop with me but you talk and talk and talk.

  * * *

  —

  We finish our novels at almost the same time and exchange them, both books by Canadian women authors, both of us preferring print on paper to e-books. After you have read the first chapter of Lisa Moore’s February you tell me that two of your favourite sections were ones I’d underlined. At the back of Lullabies for Little Criminals, I find you’ve made notes of the same pages and paragraphs I intend to reread. We are drunk with the two authors’ stunning imagery and we laugh and hug to find our reading preferences and styles so similar.