Pottersfield Press | Publisher | Atlantic Canada

NEW RELEASES

Ode to the Unpraised

A collection of prose and poetry exploring the practical knowledge, life lessons and personal experiences of women of colour in North America and Ghana.

This book was born out of Abena’s curiosity about her late grandmother’s humble yet textured life as a wife, homemaker, and respected community member. After a missed opportunity to gather her grandmother’s personal reflections, Abena extended her reach to elders, peers, and other relatives to collect their experiences.

Nova Scotia: Shaped by the Sea – A Living History

Lesley Choyce weaves the legacy of this unique coastal province, piecing together the stories written in the rocks, the wrecks, and the record books of human glory and error. In this sweeping true-life adventure, he provides a thoughtful down-to-earth journey through history.

Originally published in 1996, this new edition brings the story up to date and looks at the changes in politics, economy, and global climate that will challenge Nova Scotians in the years ahead.

The Silence of the Vessel

Elspeth is not sure how to deal with her teenage daughter Cecelia’s post-secondary plan to become a nun. As Cecelia approaches graduation, the gap between mother and daughter seems to become more than merely an age thing.
Trying to understand her strange desire to become a nun, Cecelia befriends the aging Sister Madonna at the convent in Mabou. Cecelia is looking for hope in an increasingly fragile world but Madonna’s past, if she can face it, may challenge all of them.

Halifax and Me

A memoir of life in Halifax from an award-winning author, and one of Canada’s top nonfiction writers.

In 1971, Harry Bruce settled in Halifax—and he moved away. Several times, in fact. Yet he kept returning to Halifax and each time he found it had changed for the better, becoming a little more like the lively, welcoming, cosmopolitan town he hoped it would be.

Working From Home for a Harmonious Life.

Since Luc Desroches began working from his home office in 2016, he has been writing about how the move has allowed him to create a more harmonious life for both himself and his family. This book was mostly written pre-COVID-19, when working from home was more the exception than the rule.
Now is an opportunity for millions of people to make a more informed decision on whether they should continue working from home or return to their pre-COVID workplaces.

The Painted Province

Since 1972 Joy Laking has lived and painted in Nova Scotia, capturing beauty in watercolours, oils, and acrylics in many locations. She sees beauty in both the usual and the unusual. Here, Joy has grouped some of her favourite paintings into forty regions, each with her personal commentary. In each of the regions, one of the images will have its GPS coordinates. You are encouraged to bring this book along in your travels. This collection lets the reader see Nova Scotia through an artist’s eyes.

Boy With A Problem

Twelve short stories about love, loss, failure and acceptance by an award-winning author.

In sharp, insightful prose, "Boy With a Problem" taps into the heart of our deeply human fear of failing to truly connect with others. The fissures that erupt between us, how quickly they widen from cracks to chasms—this is the thread running through these wise, raw, and tender stories.

The Hermit of Africville 10th Anniversary Edition

Eddie Carvery’s Africville protest reached its 50th year in 2020. He was just 23 when the City of Halifax bulldozed Africville under the guise of "urban renewal."

This updated edition includes an introduction from Eddie himself reflecting on 50 years of fighting racism and his vision for a Canada that embraces all its peoples.

100% of the royalties go to Eddie Carvery and his Africville protest.

Daring, Devious, and Deadly

This is a collection of fifteen true tales of crime and justice that spans more than 150 years of Nova Scotia’s history, from a triple murder in 1791 at a farm near Lunenburg to 1947, when Angus Walters, skipper of the racing schooner Bluenose, was attacked in the pages of an American magazine. A supporting cast includes a wise-cracking Cape Breton judge, legendary journalist-turned-politician Joseph Howe, circus showman P.T. Barnum, and future prime minister John Thompson.

Rum Tales: Down Home Yarns Around a Pot-Bellied Stove

Arthur Benjamin Lohnes was proprietor of a small country store known locally as The Shop in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia, from 1919 through 1957. AB provided a welcoming haven to people eager to indulge in the venerable art of loafing and storytelling. The yarns were spun by some of the most colourful characters of the time, with the storytellers ranging from grizzled old blue water sea captains through ordinary seamen to shore fishermen, a preacher, store owner, and a part-time postmaster.

Green Ghost, Blue Ocean

This is a travel memoir about a 40,000 nautical mile adventure that spans seventeen years.
When Jennifer and her husband Nik begin to imagine a life outside the norm, they seize on the idea of long-distance sailing as the perfect way to journey down a road less travelled. This is a story about the importance of starting and the acceptance of an imperfect plan. It is a tale of the triumph of conviction: if you believe that you'll figure it out when you get there, it's amazing how far you can go.

Mean Streets

Following WWII, a new generation of politicians and planners across North America set out to reimagine their cities. They proposed that cities tear down great swaths of their aged and decaying homes in an effort they called "slum clearance." These "slums" were also populated by the most vulnerable members of the city, those who had little power to make their own decisions and determine their own fate.
Author Steven Laffoley set off in search of the city that existed before this "urban renewal."

While Crossing the Field

This is Deborah Banks's debut book of poetry. Her poems take us out onto the land where experiences in the natural world are filtered through the internal landscape of longing, presence, gratitude, and attentiveness. From the lowly spider to the vast expanse of the Atlantic below her house, the poet invites us to consider who we are when everything in our bustling world is removed and we are left with the greatest expanse of all: the Now and how it can inform our every breath.

Teaching at the Top of the World

Odette Barr and her partner, YoAnne Beauchamp, spent nearly ten years completely immersed in Inuit culture in the decade prior to the official birth of Nunavut Territory. This is the account of their experiences as teachers and community members in Pangnirtung, Hall Beach, and Grise Fiord. Odette and YoAnne learned quickly that to be successful northern teachers, you must enter into the lives of your students and their rich culture in meaningful and significant ways.

Memoir: Conversations and Craft

The best memoirs are maps of the heart and mind, and Marjorie Simmins invites you to explore the map of your own life. Here are the probing questions and dynamic writing ideas, coupled with inspirational interviews with best-selling memoirists, to light your own imagination afire. This book is for any reader or writer who is fascinated by the renegade memoir form—personal life stories that demand to be read, refuse to be forgotten.

Waiting for the Small Ship of Desire

Allan Cooper's latest poetry collection includes some of his most personal poems, including revelations to him after the death of his mother and sharply etched emotional memories of childhood and grandparents.

Readers return to Allan Cooper's poems to be reminded of the quiet power of nature and how it can shape our lives and provide sustenance, vision, and even salvation when necessary. Here are poems to be read slowly and cherished.

Winter Road

The latest short story collection by master storyteller Wayne Curtis. Here are illuminating stories of love, heartbreak, daydreams, and expectations – fulfilled and unfulfilled. Curtis charts the lives of small-town boys and girls, men and women who struggle with the challenges and limitations of poverty, isolation, and a kind of discrimination rarely documented in fiction.

An Imperfect Healer

Every patient tells a story. Drawing on a forty-year medical career, Dr. Larry Kramer has written about some of the people he has met along the way. The stories chronicle love and loss, tragedy and comedy, and empathetically observe patients who live and die, some with courage and some with fear. These accounts frame the story of one physician's life and how it was shaped, changed, and guided by those he encountered every day.

Against the Grain

Many knew Dr. Savage as their physician. Others speak about his time as mayor of Dartmouth. Yet most remember him as Nova Scotia's twenty-third premier. From tackling the health and education systems to making turn-the-province-on-its head decisions while premier, John was determined to change the way things were done. "Against the Grain" chronicles how he fought the status quo with unwavering conviction to leave a lasting legacy that would change the province of Nova Scotia forever.

Sculpting Towards the Light

"Sculpting Towards the Light" is an intimate and insightful story of a sculptor and his work. It follows the paths of imagination and activity which gave birth to a very unique work of art. The paths are diverse and unexpected, twisting into personal history, racing forward into the future, and then resting in the euphoric moments when the mind and its thoughts no longer exist and the carving occurs as if of its own accord.

Colours in Winter

"Colours in Winter" is a whimsical children's picture book. The child, with her two bird friends, wishes that the giant snowflakes were coloured. Everything is too white. She thinks of green frogs in the spring, enormous red strawberries in the summer, and yellow and brown leaves in the autumn. Her desire becomes true and the snowflakes are suddenly all different colours. When everything turns back to white, she makes a wonderful discovery: there is colour everywhere in the winter.

Pottersfield Press

Publishing fiction, non-fiction, poetry, and Maritime interest books (with a focus on Mi'kmaq and African Nova Scotian) since 1979.

CANADA REMEMBERS

Where Duty Lies

"Where Duty Lies" tells the story of how 23-year-old Frank Grimmer of St. Andrews, New Brunswick, ended up in the quicksand-like mud of Passchendaele labouring under heavy artillery fire helping construct supply lines that supported the Canadian advance during the Third Battle of Ypres, often referred to as the most horrific in a war of horrific battles. His bravery earned him the Military Medal—and a thousand nights of torment remembering the violence of the events.

Going Over

This is the biography of Titus Mossman, a veteran of the “Great War” who served with the 85th Canadian Infantry Battalion (Nova Scotia Highlanders) on the Western Front. This book blends social, political and historical issues of those turbulent times with the story of one young Canadian turned soldier, caught at the sharp edge of history.

An Ordinary Hero

Imagine you are a pilot, shot from the sky, alone in enemy territory where no one speaks your language. It is winter, and soon will be dark. You could freeze to death, starve or be captured by the Nazis. And you are a Jew. This is David Goldberg’s predicament on March 8, 1944.

This is is Goldberg’s account of how, assisted by the French Underground, he made his way through occupied France and Spain and evaded capture by the enemy.

From Nova Scotia to North Africa

When Canada went to war in 1939, the life of twenty-year-old Clayton Graham changed in a heartbeat.

This a largely first-person account of Graham's experiences and adventures as a pilot in the Royal Air Force. He recounts in detail the sometimes exhilarating but often terrifying process of learning to fly fighter aircraft. He survives bombings on the ground and dogfights in the air. He sees comrades die in service and the devastation war brings to ordinary people swept up in historic events.

Otto Strasser in Paradise

Otto Strasser, along with other top Nazis, laid plans to take over Europe and then the world. But Otto eventually disagreed with Adolf Hitler on various issues in the National Socialist Party and was ejected from it. Strasser continued to criticize Hitler from outside Germany. Britain whisked him out of harm's way and sent him to Canada where he remained from 1941 to 1955, literally a prisoner, in Bridgetown, Clarence, and Paradise, Nova Scotia.

Never Speak of this Again

It is 1917 and Nellie, seventeen years old and pregnant, has just returned to Cape Breton from Boston to find her lover. Instead of a safe haven, she encounters rejection and humiliation and is told to clear out and never speak of this again. Her world becomes a matter of daily survival, while so many in the world try to survive the catastrophic chaos of WWI and the Spanish Flu. Nellie's story takes the reader from eastern Canada to western Canada, to Europe, and back again.

Down The Coaltown Road

It is the summer of 1940. Mussolini has just thrown his support behind Hitler, bringing Italy into the war, and Prime Minister Mackenzie King has rendered a list of Italian-Canadians who can be classified as possible dissidents.
Tomassio, one of a small Cape Breton town’s most hardworking miners, is among the Italian-Canadians rounded up for an internment camp in either New Brunswick or Ontario.

BOOKS TO SUPPORT BLACK AUTHORS & LEARN BLACK NOVA SCOTIAN HISTORY

Ode to the Unpraised

A collection of prose and poetry exploring the practical knowledge, life lessons and personal experiences of women of colour in North America and Ghana.

This book was born out of Abena’s curiosity about her late grandmother’s humble yet textured life as a wife, homemaker, and respected community member. After a missed opportunity to gather her grandmother’s personal reflections, Abena extended her reach to elders, peers, and other relatives to collect their experiences.

The Way We Hold On

This is Abena Beloved Green's debut book of poetry. Her poems address cultural, social, and environmental issues, relationships, and reflect on everyday life as a small-town raised, semi-nomadic, first-generation Canadian. Here are poems about holding on and letting go—of ideas, opinions, beliefs, people, places, and things.

Righting the Wrongs

During his 50 years in Nova Scotia, Gus Wedderburn fought social injustice in his home province. A driving force for many years in the Nova Scotia Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, he was a founder of the Black Educators Association, the Black United Front, the Nova Scotia Human Rights Commission, and the Black Cultural Centre. Gus was a vocal crusader for the rights of the disadvantaged at a time when discrimination in education, employment and housing was the status quo.

Afraid of the Dark

Trapped by her own insecurities, Kahlua cannot relate to the person in the mirror. She believes that if she doesn't acknowledge her thick hair, big lips, and dark skin maybe, just maybe, she'll be able to blend in. Hiding in the back of the class, she writes, passionately expressing and releasing emotions about identity, home, community, culture, and forgiveness. All Kahlua wants is freedom, whatever that really means.

Winds of Change

From working in the steel plant and as a sleeping car porter to being awarded the Order of Canada and appointed to the Senate of Canada, Calvin Ruck worked diligently to ensure that his children, and his children’s children, wouldn’t have to go through the same things he went through. His efforts were the beginning of a major movement for Black employment in the Nova Scotian community. Through his tireless efforts and dedication, he initiated a significant social transformation in Nova Scotia.

Save the World for Me

Maxine Tynes's third book addresses children and adults with heartfelt concerns and her exhilarating insight into the workings of the world. In 1988, Maxine was named the Milton Acorn People's Poet of Canada for her lively and intense writing.

Still Fighting for Change

In their own words, the twenty authors create a conversation with the reader about the Black social workers in Canada who have struggled to bring change not for themselves, but for their communities. Included are stories of foster care, adoption, immigration, disability, poverty and how social workers deal with the everyday racism in education and in their practice. These writers invite readers to think critically about their experiences, their journeys and the lessons learned along the way.

Expect the Unexpected

This is a highly charged first collection of spoken word poetry based on the lives of inner city youth. It's deep, raw, uncut, and unflinching in telling their stories. Each poem will take you into the inner life of young people trying to survive in a hostile world. Here are poems created to break barriers, stigmas, and stereotypes that keep us all stuck in darkness, poems to open hearts and minds.

Lush Dreams, Blue Exile

These poems range from a personal evocation of Black Nova Scotian history to an intense, intimate response to world events in the last thirty years. All are “fugitive poems” evolving from 1979 to 1991.

Music in the Dark

This is a compelling novel set in Prohibition-era Montreal when alcohol, drugs and jazz music ruled “Sin City.” Taylor Williams is a young black musician struggling to find fame in the Montreal Harlem District amid gangsters, racism and bootleggers. As a young boy, Taylor escaped a terrifying ordeal that haunts him as he pursues his dream of becoming a famous jazz musician.

The Hermit of Africville: The Life of Eddie Carvery

After Africville was bulldozed in the 1960s under the guise of “urban renewal,” Eddie Carvery returned to the site of his former hometown and pitched a tent in protest. Forty years, three families, seven heart attacks and numerous attempts on his life later, he remains living on the land where he was born. He’s been shot at, had his residence set on fire and been run off his land countless times. He’s rebuilt himself and never given up his dream of Africville.

Shadowboxing

George Dixon was the finest boxer of his generation and arguably among the finest boxers ever. His accomplishments in the ring were extraordinary: the first Black boxing champion, the first Canadian boxing champion, the first boxing champion of multiple weight classes, and the first boxing champion to lose to regain his title. He defended his title more than any other champion - then or since - and he reportedly fought in an unprecedented 800 bouts.

Pulling No Punches: The Sam Langford Story

Sam Langford was so good that many boxers refused to fight him, so good that he took bouts with bigger men just to get a match, so good that he once fought the greatest boxer of his age, Jack Johnson, who was forty pounds heavier and a good foot taller—and still went the distance. From his first bout in 1902 until his last a quarter century later, he battled boxing’s colour barrier that kept him from being world champion in three different weight classes.

Redemption Songs

This book tells the extraordinary story of how one of Bob Marley's greatest songs was born in Nova Scotia. It opens with Marley's live acoustic performance of Redemption Song at the end of his life, and reveals that the core lyric comes from a speech Marcus Garvey delivered in Sydney, Nova Scotia, in 1937. The author explores why Marley so revered Garvey, and, in doing so, looks at the roots of Rastafarianism and ideas about race.

IN THE NEWS

December 23, 2020: Harry Bruce discusses his new book "Halifax and Me."
November 16, 2020: Marjorie Simmins wins the Established Artist Recognition Award at the Creative Nova Scotia Awards gala! Congratulations, Marjorie!
November 15, 2020: An Interview with Chris Benjamin, author of "Boy With A Problem."
October 19, 2020: An Interview with Joy Laking on her new book, The Painted Province: Nova Scotia Through an Artist's Eyes.
September 29, 2020: Three-ring robbery: an excerpt from Dean Jobb's new book, Daring, Devious & Deadly.
August 15, 2020: Janice Landry wins the Gold Award for Non-Fiction in The Miramichi Reader's "The Very Best!" Book Awards, for her book Silver Linings.
August 10, 2020: Finding a forgotten Halifax: an article on Steven Laffoley's new book, "Mean Streets."
July 8, 2020: Announcing the winners of the Third Annual Pottersfield Prize for Creative Nonfiction!
April 9, 2020: A Q&A with author Marjorie Simmons on the importance of memoir.
March 24, 2020: An article about Carole Glasser Langille's book "Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison."
January 6, 2020: A review of Andrea Miller's "Awakening My Heart" by Buddhist Book Reviews.
November 21, 2019: A review of Blain Henshaw's "The Peddlers" by The Miramichi Reader
November 6, 2019: Janice Landry speaks to Stephanie Beaumont of the Sea and Be Scene and Heard Podcast about her new book "Silver Linings"
August 23, 2019: Author Larry Kramer discusses his upcoming book "An Imperfect Healer"

UPCOMING EVENTS

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