This page covers literary works in English (fiction, drama, and poetry) about or by authors from New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Labrador, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. This is by no means an extensive list, but rather a starting point for your research. Looking for a title or author not listed on this page - try using the search box below. If you cannot find a specific title, you can either request for UFV Library borrow it from another library or that the UFV Library purchases the item (see the corresponding links below).
Nights below Foord Street : Literature and Popular Culture in Post-Industrial Nova Scotia by 
The Black Atlantic Reconsidered by 
Pathways of Creativity in Contemporary Newfoundland and Labrador by 
Myth and Milieu by 
In the Interval of the Wave by 
The Newfoundland Diaspora by Here is a small selection of Atlantic authors (who either were born, lived a significant amount of time, or died in Atlantic Canada) in the UFV Library collections:
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L. M. Montgomery and War by 
Alistair MacLeod by 
Ernest Buckler by 
A Name for Himself by 
"A brother and sister are orphaned in an isolated cove on Newfoundland's northern coastline. Their home is a stretch of rocky shore governed by the feral ocean, by a relentless pendulum of abundance and murderous scarcity. Still children with only the barest notion of the outside world, they have nothing but the family's boat and the little knowledge passed on haphazardly by their mother and father to keep them. As they fight for their own survival through years of meagre catches and storms and ravaging illness, it is their fierce loyalty to each other that motivates and sustains them. But as seasons pass and they wade deeper into the mystery of their own natures, even that loyalty will be tested." - Summary
"David Adams Richards' Governor General's Award-winning novel is a powerful tale of resignation and struggle, fierce loyalties and compassion. This book is the first in Richards' acclaimed Miramichi trilogy. Set in a small mill town in northern New Brunswick, it draws us into the lives of a community of people who live there, including: Joe Walsh, isolated and strong in the face of a drinking problem; his wife, Rita, willing to believe the best about people; and their teenage daughter Adele, whose nature is rebellious and wise, and whose love for her father wars with her desire for independence. Richards' unforgettable characters are linked together in conflict, and in articulate love and understanding. Their plight as human beings is one we share." - Summary from hardcover edition
"A World Elsewhere has all the hallmarks of Wayne Johnston's most beloved and acclaimed novels: outsiders yearning for acceptance, dreams that threaten to overpower their makers, and unlikely romance. It is an astounding work of literature that questions the loyalties of friends, family and the heart. At the centre of this story is a mystery: the suspected murder of a child. This sweeping tale immerses us in St. John's, Princeton and North Carolina at the close of the nineteenth century." - Summary
"A landmark of nationalist fiction, Hugh MacLennan's Two Solitudes is the story of two peoples within one nation, each with its own legend and ideas of what a nation should be. In his vivid portrayals of human drama in First World War-era Quebec, MacLennan focuses on two individuals whose love increases the prejudices that surround them until they discover that "love consists in this, that two solitudes protect, and touch and greet each other." - Description
"Forced to flee England, the Andrews family books passage to a fresh start in a distant country, only to discover a barren, inhospitable land at the end of their crossing. To seventeen-year-old Lavinia, uprooted from everything familiar, it seems a fate worse than the one they left behind. Driven by loneliness she begins a journal. Random Passage satisfies the craving for those details that headstones and history books can never give: the real story of our Newfoundland ancestors, of how time and chance brought them to the forbidding shores of a new found land." - Summary
"In Thanks for Listening: Stories and Short Fictions by Ernest Buckler, Marta Dvořák gathers together many of those stories as well as some previously unpublished pieces. At times she has chosen to include the fuller, original versions, and has reinstated some of the lost passages that were cut from stories to fit popular magazine requirements. Ernest Buckler’s writing is rooted in the magic of the ordinary. He celebrates the land and its community, and sensuously recreates a paradise — almost a Garden of Eden. Buckler’s American editors were right in believing that no one evoked the lost world of North Americas agrarian past better than Ernest Buckler." - Summary
"Eleven stories deal with Canadian farmers, fishermen, miners, and lighthouse keepers." - Summary
"In 1835 Thomas Chandler Haliburton introduced Samuel Slick of Slicksville, Connecticut, into the pages of the Novascotian in order to awaken his fellow citizens to the economic opportunities of their province. From this Halifax newspaper trotted out the Connecticut Yankee, manufacturer and seller of clocks, with his original dialect and unique comic vision, to become the chief character in three series of The Clockmaker published between 1836 and 1840." - From Description
Winner of the 2017 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick Book Prize.
"Through readings of a wide range of northeastern texts – including Puritan captivity narratives, Wabanaki wampum belts, and contemporary Innu poetry – Rachel Bryant explores how colonized and Indigenous environments occupy the same given geographical coordinates even while existing in distinct epistemological worlds. Her analyses call for a vital and unprecedented process of listening to the stories that Indigenous peoples have been telling about this continent for centuries. At the same time, she performs this process herself, creating a model for listening and for incorporating those stories throughout." - Description
"In 1927, Day wrote his autobiographical reflections on fishing, family, and, more broadly, humanity's place in the natural world. The Autobiography of a Fisherman is a wonderful recollection of one man's life, with characters struggling in a depressed economy, contending with the social pressures of local village life, and responding in one way or the other to the pull of the big city." - From Description
"The events of the horrific Halifax explosion are well documented: on December 6, 1917, the French munitions ship Mont Blanc and the Belgian relief ship Imo collide in the Halifax harbour. Nearly 2,000 people are killed; over 9,000 more are injured. The story of one of the world's worst non-natural disasters has been told before, but never like this. In a sweeping narrative, Curse of the Narrows tells a tale of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, retracing the steps of survivors through the wreckage of a city destroyed now one hundred years after the fatal explosion." - Summary
"The untold story of how war transformed the city of Halifax. Stephen Kimber recreates life in Halifax during the Second World War, a city transformed by the influx of military and civilian personnel serving the war effort. Poorly governed and corrupt, the city erupted at the end of the war in Europe in the infamous V-E Day riots of May 1945. Halifax was the only Canadian city directly caught up in the drama, danger, death, and disaster of our last "good" war. Through the eyes and experiences of the people who lived it -- sailors, slackers (civilians), prohibitionists, spies, profiteers, and just plain local folk -- Stephen Kimber brings this extraordinary period of history to life." - Summary
"Tony Robinson-Smith, his wife Nadya, and ten Bhutanese college students set out to run 578 kilometres (360 miles) across the Kingdom of Bhutan in the Himalayas. Joined by a stray dog, they slogged over five mountain passes, bathed in ice-clogged streams, ate over log fires, and stopped at every store, restaurant, guesthouse, and dzong to raise money for the Tarayana Foundation. The “Tara-thon” was the first endeavour of its kind and gave 350 village children the chance to go to school. En route, the Long Distance Dozen met a Buddhist lama, a royal prince, a Tibetan renegade, and a matriarch who told them the secret to long life. On arrival in Thimphu, they were decorated by Her Majesty the Queen. In this contemplative memoir, Tony describes Bhutan in rich detail at a transformative period in its history and reflects on tradition, belief, modernization, and happiness." - Description
"Halifax's Poet Laureate Afua Cooper and photographer Wilfried Raussert collaborate in this book of poems and photographs focused on everyday Black experiences. The result is a jambalaya--a dialogue between image and text. Cooper translates Raussert's photos into poetry, painting a profound image of what disembodied historical facts might look like when they are embodied in contemporary characters. This visual and textual conversation honours the multiple layers of Blackness in the African diaspora around North America and Europe. The result is a work that amplifies black beauty and offers audible resistance."-- Provided by publisher.
"In Abolitionist Intimacies, El Jones examines the movement to abolish prisons through the Black feminist principles of care and collectivity. Understanding the history of prisons in Canada in their relationship to settler colonialism and anti-Black racism, Jones observes how practices of intimacy become imbued with state violence at carceral sites including prisons, policing, borders, and through purported care institutions such as hospitals and social work. The state also polices intimacy through mechanisms such as the prison visit, strip search, and managing community contact with incarcerated people. Despite this, Jones argues, intimacy is integral to the ongoing struggles of prisoners for justice and liberation through the care work of building relationships and organizing with the people inside..."-- Provided by publisher.
"The incisive and vital first poetry collection from Mi'kmaw spoken-word poet and former poet laureate of Kjipuktuk (Halifax) We remember tomorrow and a thousand years ago. From eel weirs to the buffalo. We remember petroglyphs and Instagram photos. See, we remember our history, Without statues, money, or pictures of the Queen. In Mi'kmaw, three similarly shaped words have drastically different meanings: kesalul means "I love you"; kesa'lul means "I hurt you"; and ke'sa'lul means "I put you into the fire." ..."-- Provided by publisher.
"Blues singer, preacher, cultural critic, exile, Africadian, high modernist, spoken word artist, Canadian poet--these are but some of the voices of George Elliott Clarke. In a selection of Clarke's best work from his early poetry to his most recent, Blues and Bliss: The Poetry of George Elliott Clarke offers readers an impressive cross-section of those voices." - Summary
"Processional is Anne Compton's second book of poems, the follow-up to her widely-acclaimed, award-winning debut, Opening the Island . Here Compton is at the head of a poetic procession, a guide leading readers through a house affected by both daily life and the extraordinary - stopping only to take in the change of seasons and prepare the outside yard for it. With one breath, she tells of life and death, with the next, play and metaphysics, joy and heartbreak. She is a guide like no other, accomplished and versatile, leading by example and from a distance at the same time." - Summary
Writers across the globe speak out against sexual assault and abuse in this powerful new poetry anthology, edited by Sue Goyette. These collected poems from writers across the globe declare one common theme: resistance. By exploring sexual assault and violence in their work, each writer resists the patriarchal systems of power that continue to support a misogynist justice system that supports abusers. In doing so, they reclaim their power and their voice.
"Experienced tailor Norman Davenport has barely opened the doors to his new clothing store in downtown Halifax when Sophie, an exuberant young woman, barges in looking for work, followed by Patrick, a single father who claims to be handy. Hesitantly Norman hires them both to tie up the last few threads before the grand opening. And whether Norman realizes it or not, he needs help getting into the twenty-first century to cater to the current tastes of his customers. When the shop's first customer, Alisha Sparrow, a friendly, attractive woman, drops in looking for a suit for her husband, Norman is smitten against his better judgment. His sensible, modest world has become profoundly complicated in less than a week, and Norman longs to live in a simpler time. Unfortunately for him, his life is about to get messier as he wakes to find things are not what they used to be." - Description
"Spanning two decades, Smallwood's story is anchored and propelled by one of Johnston's most memorable creations: the fictitious Sheilagh Fielding, a caustic newspaper columnist whose own battles with the past and alcohol addiction find full vent and expression in her tireless dogging of Smallwood's climb to power. At its heart, The Colony of Unrequited Dreams is the story of a man whose career is buoyed and sometimes sunk by his unresolved feelings for a woman he never allowed himself to love. It is also the story of Newfoundland's final years as a country, the end of one cultural and political trajectory, and the beginning of another." - Description
"Four short plays by one of Canada's exciting, new theatre voices. In The Russian Play, the flower-shop girl tells the story of her love for the gravedigger. Essay casts a teaching assistant in the shadow of his professor as they argue the merits of a female student's paper. In USSR, a young woman relates her journey to Canada from Russia, and Mexico City follows Henry and Alice on their vacation in 1960. These four plays bring each character to life in full colour, jumping off the page before you and onto the stage." - Description
"A funny, satirical story, Never Swim Alone is about Frank and Bill, two egotisitical men locked in a ruthless competition of one-upmanship for seemingly no reason. A hilarious metaplay, This Is A Play follows three actors who, while performing, reveal their own thoughts and motivations as they struggle through crazy stage directions and an unoriginal musical score." - Description
The "Critical Perspectives on Canadian Theatre in English [series] sets out to make the best critical and scholarly work in the field readily available. The series publishes the work of scholars and critics who have traced the coming-into-prominence of a vibrant theatrical community in English Canada." - Description
You can use the following resources to find information on titles and authors from the Atlantic provinces. Associations will likely also have news and updates that may feature interviews or prize winners.